"Happiness without a hangover"

By the indefatigable Pema Chodron:

"As we train in opening our hearts we gradually feel more joy, the joy that comes from a growing appreciation of our basic goodness. We still experience strong conflicting emotions, we still experience the illusion of separateness, but there is a fundamental openess that we begin to trust. This trust in our fresh, unbiased nature brings us unlimited joy - a happiness thats completely devoid of clinging and craving. Thats they joy of happiness without a hangover. 

How do we cultivate the conditions for joy to expand? We train in staying present...we stay with our little plot of earth that can be cultivated, that cultivation will bring it to its full potential. Even though its full of rocks and the soil is dry, we begin to plow this plot with patience"

Needing religion

For a long time I’ve been thinking about religion. It’s a struggle for many modern thinkers. So much of the manifestation of religion is problematic for us. It is used to justify war, discrimination, and power hierarchies we hate. It is difficult to believe in some magical being up in the sky that controls everything.

Whatever our problems with religion, if we think about it more practically it provides a map about what we believe in as a community. So even if we reject religion in its traditional manifestations I think it is something that we need.

For example, the other day I was chatting with a friend who is striving to be vegan. She is most concerned about the ethical and environmental impacts of the meat and dairy industry. She is passionate about these issues, but she does not really talk about them with others. She does not want to “preach” and she feels like it might be hypocritical to encourage this in others because she’s not “perfect” in it herself.

So many progressive people operate in this way. They make personal decisions and sacrifices because they care passionately about certain issues. Yet, they don’t necessarily have a forum to express these and share them with others and to be encouraged. None of us are perfect. We’re doing the best we can. This does not mean that we should not get encouragement and support from community. For me, the support of others makes it easier to follow these paths. It’s more fun and it serves as a reminder for why we do what we do.

 

At this time, when the world needs transformative change can we trust that the sum of individual efforts is enough? Might it be helpful to have a place in community where we establish and repeat our values and that provides us with behaviors we can be sure fulfill those values? That’s why I’m looking for religion.