A thought

Intelligence is not happiness;

Cultivation of intelligence creates a mind that never ceases to search for more knowledge.

Success is not happiness;

To arrive at success, the mind must be developed as to never be satisfied with past achievements, or the way things are in the present.

Wealth is not happiness;

To gain wealth, the mind must be trained to always seek more, and to worry about what has been earned.

Pleasure is not happiness;

To achieve pleasant feelings, the mind must be trained to be satisfied only with certain things, and to yearn when those things are not present.

Skill is not happiness;

Developing a skill requires a mind that constantly seeks improvement over what currently is.

Seeking happiness through any of these paths develops a mind that clings to the past, is unsatisfied with the present, and is anxious for a better future.

Happiness is love for all beings at all times;

Happiness is relinquishment of gain;

Happiness is compassion and generosity;

Happiness is satisfaction with reality, with the present moment;

Happiness is freedom from the self -- the delusion that there is something to gain, or something to lose.

Freedom is to fully experience the present, fully satisfied with what is;

Nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to do,

All in a world filled with people we love.

Truly Rational?

More of a musing, but the other day I reflected that thoughts have a powerful ability to present themselves as 100% rational to our minds. There's this special feeling (that usually goes unnoticed) that causes any thought that arises in my mind to feel as though it were fully and thoroughly rational (as well as 100% true).

It can be a hard thing to catch sight of, but I had a moment where I was doing walking meditation, and I heard someone else walking nearby. My immediate thought was "Oh, I'll stop walking for a moment and stand over here so they don't see me." Which of course was fully rational. Until I paused to reflect -- "Wait, why does it matter if someone sees me? Was that truly a rational thought? Or was it founded in self-consciousness and in a desire to present a particular image of myself to others?"

Definitely the latter.

The End of Hate

This is a topic very dear to me, and one that I've been contemplating quite a bit lately.

A few weeks ago, in the course of practicing so diligently to improve myself and eliminate ego, anger, and greed, I had a pretty bad lapse. Stress had been building at work, and I had gone quite some time without a break (no weekends). I got mad at a computer program I was dealing with, and the anger erupted into full blown rage, going went well beyond the computer. I got mad at some of my closest friends, and if they weren't so forgiving, I could have damaged our relationships forever.

Over the next few days (and during the meditation retreat), I made a resolution, but haven't made it public until now:

I will never get angry again.

I don't see this as something easy -- I see it as something extraordinarily challenging. But it's a challenge worth taking on. A deeper explanation follows

What exactly do I aim to change?

Specifically, I aim for the elimination of ill-will (which is at the root of anger/hatred). Ill-will towards people, objects, or anything else. Even thoughts of anger or enmity towards others will not be tolerated. Cutting it off at the root level (thoughts) would prevent thoughts from developing into words, or into actions. Still, I must be watchful over my overt actions to prevent reinforcing the thoughts in my mind that are the source of anger.

Why eliminate anger?

Angry/hateful thoughts are a direct cause of suffering for myself and for others. Their impact on others is rather straightforward -- I get angry at someone, or wish them ill, and the actions that follow cause them pain. The negative effect of hateful thoughts on myself is more subtle. For one, anger is not a state of happiness. If I could chose between feeling angry and feeling calm and happy at each successive moment, I would always chose the latter. But more importantly (for someone who claims to be on the path :) ), is that anger/hatred are a direct hindrance to development of a peaceful, loving mind. They narrow the mind in a way that makes concentration and mindfulness difficult. They reinforce negative thoughts, ensuring that they arise again in the future. And they strengthen rather than diminish the division between self and other. The last one is particularly important for progress; the more that the division between self and other blurs, the easier it is to see things in a much wiser way.

I think that now is a good point to strive for this goal, as I witnessed during the retreat how wonderful life can be when I'm fully present, free from anger and agitation, and exuding love towards the world.

How can I eliminate anger?

Practically speaking, this is a great challenge (that I wrote about before, here). It often feels as though we aren't in control of our emotions, particularly our reactions to things. "How could I stop myself from being angry?!"

The key here is to use an ever-strengthening sense of mindfulness. First, I need to be mindful of my general state of mind as much as possible (hungry, tired, angry, agitated, nervous, happy, relaxed, excited, etc.). Then I need to be extraordinarily vigilant about even the slightest negative thought. If I think "I don't like that person," I need to quickly catch that thought in the act and observe it with neutrality. With some patience, it simply fades on its own. Note how the approach is not to try to "zap" it away once I find it. It's merely to observe. Through observation comes the gradual change whereby the negative emotion stops feeling like "truth" and starts feeling like "just another thought"

There are a couple more approaches. One is to emphasize developing a feeling of love, particularly when I notice hate/anger arising. Recalling that we're all in the same boat (born with the same tendencies that cause us to suffer), I can be compassionate and understanding of anyone who causes me irritation, and quickly switch to feeling love towards them.

Another, which I developed during my recent retreat, is to become deeply mindful of the present moment whenever a negative feeling arises. If I notice hate towards someone or something, I ground myself in the present moment by stopping what I'm doing and fully noting the various sensations occurring in my body at that point in time (and then moving on to the mental functions). This has proven particularly effective, especially for catching and dissolving desire. When the present moment feels completely "full, complete, and wonderful," there is a much lesser need for things external to myself to be any particular way.

Yet another is the old adage, "take a deep breath." One very valuable technique I learned from Zen master Paul Haller, was this: "Breathing in, accepting [all that is in the present moment]. Breathing out, letting go." Repeat.

So, there are plenty of tools to make use of. The challenge will be the diligence to push through with it, no matter what comes up. I've already seen in the past week, that this will be tough.

The details of my promise

As for the specifics, I promise the following:

• Never to get in a rage
• Never to get angry
• Never to say the f-word (with the exception of quoting people or song lyrics). It's my belief that it is closely tied to a state of anger or negativity
• To avoid saying anything founded on ill-will towards another person
• To avoid thinking hateful thoughts towards another person

This is actually where you come in. I think this is a rather audacious goal, and would be quite difficult to achieve by myself. I really need the support of those who spend time with me to catch me when my own net of mindfulness fails. If you ever catch me doing any of these things, please say to me "Hey Jeff, don't forget your promise to yourself!"

I promise I won't get angry at you :)

Talent - blessing or curse?

When I was young, I always thought of talent as something to be treasured. Especially when I began working on startups, I admired those with talent, and strove to develop skills and abilities I did not have. I often thought about my talented friends who graduated from excellent universities [an insecurity of mine that took a long time to live down], and was jealous of their abilities.

"If only I could remember stuff like __", "If only I could write code like __", "If only I had the musical ability of __". I told myself that if I had all those things, I'd be master of my domain, and able to quickly find happiness.

But as with many things, I was wrong.

As I've developed happiness, I've discovered that it has a lot more to do with attitude and mental habits than with an ability to exercise control over my environment. Even if I do accomplish a goal (using talent that is beyond the common person), the satisfaction that I derive from that accomplishment is short-lived. Satisfaction is not cumulative -- it arises, and then falls away as quickly as it arose.

However, changing attitudes certainly affects happiness. As an example, I began to shift my attitude from "the world is out to get me" to "I love and respect all beings", I noticed that when I sat in public places, I felt happy and secure. It felt as though I was surrounded by friends, and not strangers to be feared. This is a happiness that lasts (at least for the amount of time I'm able to maintain such an attitude).

But going back to talent, is it a blessing, or a curse?

When you have a particular talent (say, "intelligence"), as you accomplish things using that talent, you generally get complimented on it. "Wow Jeff, you're smart!" "Jeff, you're going to win the nobel prize!" -- these were things I often heard in high school. As a result, I began to build an identity around that talent. I thought: "I'm so smart. I can do anything. I'm better than other people at figuring stuff out. I'm one of the smartest!"

But over the years, life taught me a lesson (the hard way), that 1) I'm nowhere near the smartest person out there (in part because intelligence is measured in so many different ways, and in part because I may have been a smart person at my high school, but in the pool of the entire world, I'm pretty low on the overall rank), and 2) that using my intelligence to accomplish things never brought me satisfaction. This was because as soon as I accomplished something, my internal assessment of my talents would rise, and I would hold myself to ever higher standards: "A person of my talent could accomplish even more!"

Talent is a curse, because it builds identities that we cannot live up to. I was indeed "smart" in high school. But the ambitions that I (and others) set up for me were completely unrealistic. The years following high school (where I accomplished little and found little satisfaction) were difficult because that raw potential never panned out. How could it have, when the expectations were so high?

I've seen so many of my friends suffer because they hold on to an identity built around a talent. I've seen people chase jobs they hate because they're talented at them, and want to be perceived as talented. I've seen others hold off on taking a job (including myself) because they believed they were so talented, that they should be offered the perfect job that was on their level. I've seen others push in areas for years and years because they held on to the view that sooner or later, their talent would be recognized, and then they'd be happy.

But as we've all seen in our own lives (time and time again), satisfaction is fleeting. You can't live in the past forever -- the human mind moves on. We can't find lasting satisfaction through achievement. We can only find it by changing our attitudes and minds to be satisfied with reality -- the ever-changing present moment.

Part-Time Masters in Happiness

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)

Workaholism, Exhaustion, and Escape

The last couple of weeks have been particularly intense with work. I've gotten sucked into the fray -- it's quite an exciting time, but the quantity of work that needs to be done only seems to increase. My day-to-day has become: wake up, go to work immediately, work, working lunch, work, working dinner, work, sleep. Even on Sunday I was up until 2am making changes to the iPhone app. While exciting, I recently felt myself approaching a limit, and noticed that my ability to control my mood (and generally stay happy and calm) was eroding. Thoughts of work began to take a larger and larger share of all my thoughts, and began creeping into my dreams.

Yesterday I hit the exhaustion point. Not enough sleep, compounded with too much activity made for a particularly dreary day. Even meditation didn't help, since I was too tired to maintain focus for more than a few seconds. I slogged along just waiting for the day to end.

I slept a fair amount last night, but not enough to completely clear my exhaustion. I'm still quite tired. This morning it began again; compulsive thoughts about work creeping in, non-stop thoughts towards "getting things done" and complete lack of calm and happiness. But I had enough rest that meditation was at least possible. After just 45 minutes of sitting, I had completely cleared that feeling from my mind. I was completely free, with a deep happiness that persisted-- one that didn't depend on something work-related (no need for success, completion of projects, hitting deadlines, etc). Simply happy and full of love for everyone.

The trick was 1 - get enough sleep, but 2 - to focus on setting everything down for a moment.

I had all these thoughts about work swirling around in my head, and every time I tried to settle my attention on the breath, it went straight back to thinking about something work related. The key was to tell myself "don't worry -- you'll get back to it as soon as you're done. Just put it down for a moment, and pick it up when it's time to go back in. Trust yourself. You'll take care of it when you're done here". I had to do that several times, but I was eventually able to put everything down, and simply observe my breath. From then on, things were much easier, and I wasn't pulled back into the whirlwind of thoughts. I could focus on developing feelings of love towards others, and on observing various mental and physical phenomena. I stood up after 50 minutes, peaceful and happy. Almost unbelievable given my mental state when I started.

Replacing hate with love

One of the lofty ideals promoted by both atheists and religious people alike is loving all of our fellow humans (or even further, all sentient beings). Jesus is perhaps the most well-known proponent of love (in the west), but even anti-establishment/anti-religious figures like John Lenon extol the virtues of Love.

The thing is, it can be really hard to put this ideal into practice. It's easy to love the people that are close to us, that are kind to us, and that love us back. It's easy to love our friends and family members. But what about the other 99.99% of the world's people? And what about the people we hate? Feelings of love rarely flow naturally towards strangers, or even less likely, enemies. It's not only hard to see a reason why we should love those people, but it's hard to do it, even if we decide it's worthwhile.

(As a note, the "love" I'm describing refers to the loving feelings towards another that are void of desire. A good example might be the love you have for your parents/siblings/grandparents/kids/etc. The love for a partner is a bit more complex, but if you're able to separate the feeling of desire from the feeling of selfless love, the latter is what I'm referring to)

As for the merits of loving all beings, I'll keep it brief.

• It will make you happy.
• It will make life easier.
• It makes the world a better place for everyone.

Expressing love (whether externally, or just developed as a "feeling" internally) is directly connected with a feeling of peaceful happiness. Personally, I experience deep happiness when I think about how much I love all people. When I'm in such a mindset, it feels like I'm at a party that all of my closest friends were invited to (except that most of the people are strangers). Life is easy when underneath all the back and forth of our day-to-day dealings, you recognize that you have a deep love for whoever you're interacting with.

And obviously, if everyone acted this way, the world would be a better place. Sorry for my somewhat 8th-grade-level analysis. I'm really really tired right now, but my love for you all drove me to stay up and write this :)

Also note that we need to separate the person from his/her actions. All beings are worthy of our love, even those that seem horrible or that hurt us intentionally. If you're capable of seeing through a person's actions, you'll see that they're another person, just like you. They have needs and emotions that drive them to act in particular ways. Perhaps they're careless, or even act with malicious intent. It's ok to recognize that those actions they take are detrimental to the happiness of others. But don't condemn the person. Doing so will stop short of the ideal of universal love, and will harbor feelings of hatred within your mind. It's very difficult to feel the depth of happiness that results from loving all people if you harbor even the slightest feeling of ill will towards others.

Ok, so that was some pretty lofty stuff; time for something practical.

Recently, I noticed that although I generally feel positively towards all people, I'm not capable of loving all people in all situations, all the time. There are times when I get irritated with others. There are times when I want people to go away. There are times when I get angry at others. These are all momentary instances of hatred (or ill will) towards another being. The ideal that I strive for is elimination of even those moments. But it's a tough task.

I've approached the situation as follows:

• I try to maintain a constant mindfulness of my feelings (especially my feelings toward others) at all times. "How do I feel towards that person?" "How about now?" It requires a real honesty with yourself. It's ok for me to feel irritated/angry/annoyed. I just make sure to note it
• Every time I feel even the slightest irritation towards another person, I try to catch it. "Aha, I'm irritated at him" "Oh, I'm feeling dislike towards her". The key is not to assume it's a binary thing (I like him/I dislike him), but to recognize that our feelings change from moment to moment. Sometimes we might like someone, and sometimes we might be angry with him. Even with my fiancee (whom I love very much), I sometimes find myself feeling ill will towards her. It's not that I don't love her -- it's simply that I'm feeling ill will at that very moment. Nothing more serious than a passing feeling.
• Once I've caught myself in the act of hate, I observe it. "What does it feel like?" "Is there a physical sensation associated with it?" "What is my mood? Is it linked?"
• Upon observation, the hatred softens. I immediately grab a foothold, and start trying to generate feelings of love towards the other person. (I draw a lot on loving-kindness meditation practice -- it really helps). I remember how much I love someone else, and then apply that feeling immediately to the person I'm feeling irritated towards. I try to grow that love as much as possible.
• Love wins out. I then repeat every time I can. Development is slow, but steady.

Note that this entire process from start to finish happens within the span of a couple of seconds, with very little visible change in my exterior. But it is indeed happening. And each time it happens, so my love grows, as does my intolerance for even the slightest sliver of hate.

Persistence is the key to change