Joy Story

Yoga teaches us that happiness is always available to us, no matter what our circumstances. Here's a hint for how to tap into it: Look within.

By Sally Kempton

Jon's life was changed by the teaching that joy is found within. At the time he heard it, Jon was a journalist whose favorite form of humor was cynical irony, and he had an ingrained distrust of words like joy and bliss. If you had asked him, "Have you ever been happy?" he would have called to mind a few great high school basketball games and maybe a rave he'd gone to, tripping on ecstasy, in 1993. Then he probably would have shrugged the question off, saying something edgy, like, "Only idiots are happy."

But one day, in the yoga class he'd signed up for because his doctor told him it would be good for stress, the teacher described a posture by saying that it brought forth the innate bliss in the heart. "Innate bliss?" Jon thought. "Not in my heart." Then the teacher started to read from the writings of an Indian guru: "What we are looking for in everything is joy, ecstasy. But ecstasy is within you. Look for it in your own heart."

Since he was stuck in the posture with little else to do, Jon decided to bring his reporter's investigative skills to bear on the idea. He turned his attention around, with the intention to look inside and see if what the teacher had said had any possible basis in reality. He aimed his attention into the place where he thought his heart was and even tried to visualize the pumping muscle in his chest.

To Jon's surprise, something shifted. He felt a little current, a trickle of good feeling. The feeling then expanded into radiating warmth. Suddenly, he was ecstatic. And even more interesting, he knew exactly what ecstasy was, even though he'd never experienced it before (not counting the drug-induced kind). It turns out that joy is something that even the most hardened pessimist can recognize when he sees it.

The Joyful Truth

There are certain core teachings that can forever shift the way you see the world. "Joy is within you" is one of them. Even if you hear it in purely psychophysical terms, if you really hear it, it's going to help you recognize one of the most empowering truths there is: It is actually possible to feel happy regardless of how the world is treating you, or how horrible your childhood was, or the fact that all of your friends are more successful than you are. You can even, this teaching implies, be happy when you’re failing at something or when you're sick.

But as with all the great truths, your understanding of what "Joy is inside you" means is crucial. If you don't understand it deeply, you're likely to mistake superficial good feeling for joy. You might also attach your joy to the circumstances that triggered it, like that evening of chanting with Krishna Das, or the weekends when you get to hang out with a particular teacher, or romantic moments with your partner, or even time spent jogging or playing basketball. Then you become addicted to those particular actions, people, or situations. Or you might make the mistake I made for years and become a sort of bliss fascist, expecting yourself to be in a "good" state all the time and subtly beating yourself up when you aren't.

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