A description of mindfulness I hear a lot is, “Being present, in the moment, without judgment.” I guess I struggle with the “without judgment” part, because I judge pain as being a worse state than being deeply happy. I can accept pain, I can embrace with relief that it’s temporary, I can even let go of the desire for the pain to pass quickly – but I’m definitely looking forward to the pain being over and happiness returning. 

Mindfulness is a way to experience feelings like pain and not resist them. I have also used meditation as a “weapon” against bad feelings – literally trying to make stress go away, trying to pray for difficult people so my resentments towards them fade, fitting my pain in the context of the huge suffering of people around the globe so my pain doesn’t seem like it should make me suffer so much. A lot of teachers would say the goal and these methods are wrong. I say it makes me suffer less. 

I talked in Part I of this post about equanimity being the stated goal of meditation. Can a goal of meditation be happiness? Is there room in the vast pantheon of meditative practice for a practice centered on reducing pain and increasing happiness in ways that aren’t necessarily working toward an enlightened neutrality? I don’t know. It’s not a rhetorical question, I am seriously wondering if I’m deluding myself, or if my meditation practice has enough legitimacy to be worth sharing with others. 

You can’t argue with results. Practicing in my way, the positive effects have been dramatic and palpable. I am less stressed. I am more joyful. I am better at sitting with bad feelings. Well, you absolutely can argue with results, and lots of meditation teachers would say these methods are just wrong, and I’ll understand better one day. I may be naive, but I’m also teachable, and these teachers, who are better educated than I am, may absolutely be right.

What keeps me coming back to meditation is the deep-down joy I feel when I do it. It’s the best 20 minutes of my day. I am so happy feeling the miracle of each breath. I am so joyful feeling love for all I have to be grateful for. If I were truly enlightened, I would be neutral to this feeling of joy. Instead, I am sinking my teeth into it like a Hostess cupcake. And when I deliberately combat difficult feelings with meditation, darn it, that works too. I come out less stressed, more calm, and often with genuine insight into where my suffering is coming from – and often with compassion if there’s another individual that’s involved in my bad feelings.

So again, can a goal of meditation be happiness? I’ve read a few different places that meditation is like exercise, something you do regularly to strengthen your ability to handle the emotions of life. We think we all know what we talk about when we talk about exercise, but there’s a huge range of what exercise can be. People exercise to do a hundred different things: Be better professional athletes, reduce heart disease, lose weight, sculpt a beach body, physical therapy, feel the joy of movement, forge a mind/body connection, be better gardeners – there are as many legitimate uses of exercise as there are things exercise helps you be better at. They all have merit when applied to the goals individuals set for themselves.

Meditation occupies a similarly broad landscape. You can meditate to do a hundred different things: Improve focus, cultivate mental health, discover insight, improve work performance, cope with stress, discover enlightenment, reach nirvana – and yes, even increase happiness. If that’s my goal, and meditation is helping me progress toward that goal, it seems to me that it’s a practice that’s working, no matter what you call it.

I guess I’m a little angsty because the meditation teachers I respect the most would probably pat me on the head and say, “Someday, grasshopper, you’ll see how naive you were.” I fully allow that’s a possible outcome! In the meantime, I am so happy with my little joyfulness practice. I feel less stressed, I feel more connected to everything on our miraculous planet, and I feel intoxicated at our bizarre and unique place in the whirling universe.