Today is a very happy day. Today is the day I received my Masters in Happiness. (It was self-conferred, from the University of Jeff, of course). It came after 3 and 1/2 years of part-time work and study on what I consider the most important aspect of our existence.
Today was the completion of a 7-day meditation retreat, hosted by Gil Fronsdal (from the Burmese Theravadin tradition), and Paul Haller (head monk of the SF Zen Center). The week was unquestionably the happiest week in my life, Thursday in particular being the happiest day I've ever experienced. Happiness only deepened and increased as the week went on. But most importantly, it confirmed that the journey I started 3 and a half years ago was in the right direction.
In fall 2007, I was living in Japan working on a startup. I was alone, and working harder than I ever had in my life. Conditions were not promising for happiness. One evening, while sitting alone in a dimly-lit communal eating hall in the basement of my apartment, I reflected on my stressful, lonely work/living situation. But as I ate a delicious fall apple and listened to a moving song on my iPod, tears of joy rolled down my face as I realized that I could still be happy in spite of my situation. The question arose: could there be happiness outside of success, wealth and always having what I want?
In Feb. 2008, I began my exploration (and my studies for my M.H.) in earnest after some suggestions from a very level-headed and scientifically minded friend that I look into meditation. I began with some TED talks on the subject (Mathieu Ricard, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLEf4HR74E), and decided to try meditating 30 minutes a day. I didn't know what I was doing, but it didn't matter -- I was extremely committed to trying it out. If it didn't work, I'd drop it and try something else.
Since then, I've done a lot as I chased after the foundations of happiness; I've read many books, spent hundreds of hours in meditation, and even taken classes and given talks. All of this while pursuing a busy life in startups and a (real) masters degree at MIT. A small sampling of the work from my (fake) masters degree includes:
Books
- Happiness, Ricard
- Authentic Happiness (from the president of the American Psychological Association), Seligman
- Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt (also a respected Psychologist)
- (a bunch of scientific papers on happiness/psychology)
- Philosopher and the Monk, Ricard/Ricard (a discussion of happiness in western and buddhist philosophy)
- Mindfulness in Plain English, Gunaratana
- and many more books on meditation...
Classes
- The Science of Happiness (Harvard, Etcoff)
- Literature, Ethics, and Authority (MIT, Hafrey, with a lot of discussions on happiness)
- an evolution class that was sort of related...
Random
- Spoke at a TEDx conference at BU on happiness/meditation
- Participating in random Calmingtech Labs discussions (at Stanford)
- Meditation retreat
(Sort of felt like I was writing a resume there...)
But the point is, this week (while spending all of my waking hours in meditation or applying meditation to eating/walking/sleeping), I realized the fruition of that work. After experiencing what was unquestionably the happiest day of my life, I knew that the time I had spent questioning and developing happiness was time well spent. In the last few years, my life has been gradually transformed; more and more of everything I do is steeped in happiness, and less and less is tainted by sadness or anger. If challenged, I could spend an entire day in deep happiness. If you asked me to do that 4 years ago, I wouldn't have known where to start (I had some guesses, involving planning the perfect day, but those days turned out to be oddly unsatisfying.)
The point is, it took me only a few years of (part-time!) work to reach a point where I felt confident in declaring I had earned my Masters in Happiness. It has completely changed my life. Wouldn't a part-time pursuit of true happiness be worth your effort?
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get started on my PhD
:)
(meditating at my real graduation)
Congrats Jeff, time very well spent!
ReplyDeletefor me, happiness is knowing my true self. coming to terms with who i am, my limitations, and my goals. it is an honest, bare-knuckles assessment of what it means to be me. i cannot say that i've reached enlightenment, but i can say that i am on the path.
ReplyDeleteJeff, I'm a friend of Brian Jones, and he directed me to your blog. Very inspirational! I'm a struggling meditator myself, but recently started a new meditation blog project myself. http://mushinproject.wordpress.com/ The project is about the effects of meditation on martial art performance. I am hoping to source inspiration from your journey! Looking forward to your future blog posts!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jeremy!
ReplyDelete@db -- i love it.
kristen, that's great! (and say hi to brian he's also great, and an inspiration to me as an incredibly compassionate person). I don't have much experience in visualization meditations, but I'm definitely sure of their efficacy. Your experience kind of reminded me of one that I had while on that meditation retreat. I was completely at ease (after about 5 days of almost non-stop meditation/mindfulness), and extraordinarily mindful of my body. Something just clicked as I was washing the dishes, and I could feel everything so directly, and recognize everything that was happening in the present (without verbalizing it in my head). The result was an incredible outpouring of joy. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, and it came as I washed the dishes :)