Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘I’m often accused of emphasizing the difficulties in practice. The accusation is true. Believe me, the difficulties are there. If we don’t recognize them and why they arise, we tend to fool ourselves. Still, the ultimate reality—not only in sitting, but also in our lives—is joy. By joy I don’t mean happiness; they’re not the same. Happiness has an opposite; joy does not. As long as we seek happiness, we’re going to have unhappiness, because we always swing from one pole to the other.

From time to time, we do experience joy. It can arise accidentally or in the course of our sitting or elsewhere in our lives. For a while after sesshin, we may experience joy. Over years of practice, our experience of joy deepens—if, that is, we understand practice and are willing to do it. Most people are not.

Joy isn’t something we have to find. Joy is who we are if we’re not preoccupied with something else. When we try to find joy, we are simply adding a thought—and an unhelpful one, at that—onto the basic fact of what we are. We don’t need to go looking for joy.’ (A Sane Life)