THE JOYS OF CONTENTMENT

Jessica Wilker I The topic of tonight’s talk is contentment. To start with though, I will speak about happiness. Happiness literally always comes first, as it is at the top of most people’s whish-list and has a much higher prestige than contentment. Happiness is spectacular and vibrant, it makes our heart beat faster, our eyes shine and it gives us lots of energy. Contentment, on the other hand, is perceived as a bit tepid and colourless. It is more prosaic and even if we feel comfortable being content, we certainly don’t reach seventh heaven.

Contentment even has some bad press: to be content is seen to be lazy and complacent, it apparently stops people from getting on and improving. In fact our consumer society actively discourages us to be content: we’re pushed to want more and better things and never to be content with what we have. The highly competitive marketplace doesn’t encourage people to be content with something less than perfect. This colours the way we treat ourselves: we put ourselves under pressure with unrealistic demands, to have the ideal figure, for example, to always look young, to have no weaknesses and to make no mistakes. So instead of feeling at peace with ourselves and with what we have and what we can do, we’re discontented.

II In spite of happiness being seen as the bees knees and contentment suffering from prejudices, in reality the story is a very different one. Contentment is actually much more reliable than happiness. With it we can feel good, even if our luck has run out; we can experience joy, even if we don’t get what we want. Contentment gives us the strength to make the best of everything and it protects us from bitterness and despair. What we have is enough, and we feel at peace with our lot. To put it succinctly: happiness is a fine marmalade, but contentment is a citrus grove.

In view of these facts I think it is high time to polish its image. So let me show you the benefits of contentment. The best way to do this is by clearing away the illusions about happiness. We might think of happiness as the saviour from unhappiness, but, I have to warn you, the truth is disappointing. Even if we find happiness, it will not free us from suffering. Even if we have what we want, even if we gain that which makes us happy - money, success, love – it will not protect us from pain and disappointments. This is not an easy truth to swallow and for many of us the illusions about happiness are very strong and ingrained. Over and over we look to happiness as the way out of suffering, thereby fooling ourselves all the way. Let me illustrate such foolishness with a little story: One evening a fool walks up and down underneath a street lamp, searching the ground. Someone comes up to him and asks. “ Are you looking for something?” “Yes, says the fool, “I lost my keys.” “Were did you lose them?” “Over there, in the corner.” “But why are you searching here?” “Stupid question”, says the fool, “over there it’s dark and I can’t see anything.”

1 In the light and glamour of happiness we do not find the end of suffering – it is foolish to think so. Happiness doesn’t ban pain, doesn’t make it disappear. Even if we get what we want, happiness can’t be guaranteed, as it is impermanent like everything else in this world. It’s foolish to pin our expectations and hopes on it, foolish to use all our resources to find it.

We could use our energy much wiser and more fruitfully by letting our illusions go. It will be more successful to give up trying to manipulate life. We will fare better acknowledging the fact that life throws all sort of things at us and in this takes no notice of our likes and dislikes. It is a better strategy to adapt ourselves to life, instead of trying to adapt life to our wishes, or, as the Indian master Shantideva formulates this strategy: “If you want to protect your feet from the stones and the thorns, you do not have to cover the whole of the Himalayan mountains with leather, it’s enough if you make yourself a pair of shoes.“

III One could say that finding contentment is like making a pair of shoes. Or, in other words: if we want to be content, we have to adapt ourselves to the way it is. When we stop depending on given circumstances for our happiness and instead change our attitude towards them – then we will find contentment.

We all know the phenomenon of being able to see a glass half full or half empty. Contentment is the ability to see the glass half full. Let me give you a few examples to bring the point home: Imagine you had decided to paint your kitchen. You bought the paint, covered the surfaces and started to paint. At the end of the day you would have managed half the room. How satisfied you were with this result, would depend on the expectations you have had. If you expected to have the job finished in one day, you would be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you had thought: it takes as long as it takes, you could put the paintbrushes away feeling satisfied. Depending on the standard you had applied, you would judge the result as satisfactory or not.

Another example: Imagine you’d have curly hair which would annoy you as you judge it to be too unruly and wild. In that case you would be dissatisfied with your curls and perhaps artificially straighten them. Imagine on the other hand that you would have straight hair, which would annoy you, as you find it boring. In this case you would also be dissatisfied and perhaps have your hair permed. But if you would like your hair the way it is, you could look into the mirror without annoyance and be content. Your own judgments and preferences therefore influence your contentment or discontentment. And that is the point. We ourselves judge what happens to us to be satisfactory and nice or disappointing. Our own ideals, wishes, needs and hopes colour the way we see a situation. Therefore it is our inner attitudes to the outer circumstances that enable contentment to arise.

This is good news – as it gives us power. The power to feel good even if life treats us badly, the power to enjoy life even if it deals us a blow. I once watched a powerful documentary on TV about a woman who had been in a train crash. She had suffered head injuries and had to have an arm amputated. In the interview she said: “I feel I have been very lucky, I am still alive. Of course it is not always easy with just one arm, but I have learnt to live with it and have become quite apt at holding things.” She laughed and demonstrated how she can hold a pencil in her armpit. She then continued to tell that she had to give up her job because of the strong headaches, but thought that was not as

2 important as the fact that she was alive. “I am thankful for all I have,” she said, “and for every day I am allowed to stay in this world.” For me this example demonstrates how great our influence is and thinking of this woman helped me many a time to stop complaining when something didn’t go my way.

IV The changing of our view is the magic trick which brings contentment. Do you want to know how the trick works? Well, all one has to do is to wave a wand over a ugly thing, abracadabra and hey presto: the thing is still ugly, but we feel less disgusted by it. The magic of the wand doesn’t lie in changing the circumstances – bad luck stays bad luck, loss stays loss, nobody can make the sun shine if it rains. Our power lies instead in choosing such attitudes which enable contentment, and in avoiding such expectations, demands and hopes which don’t.

Now this magic trick might sound easy, but I can assure you that it does take some effort to change our habitual ways of looking at things. It is not that easy to find a positive aspect in a negative situation. Nor not to be worried about failures or mistakes. But – and of that I can assure you as well, if you decide to tackle your views and practise changing them, it will get easier and easier.

On the practical level I have identified four different mindsets which enable us to perform a desired change of view.

Mindfulness One needs to recognize when a change is necessary and for this, one needs mindfulness. It is only through mindfulness that we become properly aware of our dissatisfactions, that we can recognize our nagging and criticizing, our moaning and lamenting as expressions of our discontent.

Mindfulness allows us to stay in the here and now - which is exactly the place we have to start from when we want to change something. Everything new comes into existence right here, where the old ceases to be. So frustration ends exactly where satisfaction starts, and the end of discontentment is right there where contentment begins.

Distance To be able to decide which point of view would be more appropriate, one needs to be able to see different viewpoints, otherwise one cannot recognize the one which brings contentment. This means one has to find some distance from one’s own point of view.

To distance ourselves from our own opinions and ways of thinking is quite a challenge. To face this task it helps when we recognize that everything has various sides to it – a back and a front, an inside and an outside, a top and a bottom. My side and your side. There are always a dozen different ways of looking at something. The Buddhist nun Ayya Khema gave a nice example to demonstrate this point. “Four friends go for a walk in a wood. One is a botanist, and he gets all exited about the rare flora growing in this wood and he takes lots of notes. The other is a forester and all he thinks about is that the wood is dry and the undergrowth would need some burning to avoid a big fire. The third one is nature conservationist and he sees the untouchedness of the wood and immediately thinks of ways to preserve it. The last one is farmer and he thinks of the trees which would need to be felled to give good grazing land.

3 So all four have, according to their interests, a very different view of this wood, and all four think theirs is the right one. And in fact all four have good points to make – the undergrowth needs to be burnt, the wood needs to be preserved and to fell tress would give good grazing land. “ (From: Ayya Khema Be an island)

The conclusion we can draw from this example is that other people’s viewpoints are as justified as ours. In fact ours is just another viewpoint amongst many others. We have to realize that we are not the centre of the universe, we are not the most important thing on earth whose view is the ultimate one.

And there is another conclusion we can draw: even though every viewpoint – mine and yours – is justified, they are still just fragments of the whole. No viewpoint is able to represent the whole truth. In the end a viewpoint is only a viewpoint. Acknowledging this can make it easier for us to let go of our own viewpoint. It can help us to open our mind. We can recognize that sticking to the way we see things is too narrow, too small and that it keeps our mind imprisoned. We can see the danger of ingrained and habitual ways of thinking and judging, the danger of old views keeping us at the same place – like a stuck record.

Let me give you some practical tips on how to get out of ingrained ways of thinking, how to find distance and to see a situation as a whole.

For the first exercise I suggest works as follows: If there is something you don’t approve of – be it a thing, a person, a situation - try to describe it as neutrally as possible. Leave away all expressions which are coloured by your wishes and expectations, for example, words like: too much, not enough, never, always etc. Try to be as true to reality as possible. For example: Instead of saying. “My husband always watches TV and has never time for me”, say: “Yesterday my husband watched TV when I would have liked to talk to him.“

To loosen one’s hold on one’s own viewpoints the following exercise is useful: Find the viewpoint which is opposite to your own. Take it and defend it. For example: your viewpoint is: My effort is not good enough, because bla bla bla…. Now you say: My effort is good enough, because … and you start defending this opposite position.

Accepting Once one has opened one’s mind and has let in other points of view, an important step has been made. But next to this intellectual effort the heart needs to be involved as well. It is not enough to acknowledge another point of view with gritted teeth and then immediately judge it as stupid, even trying to suppress it. As long as the heart is filled with aversion and anger, contentment is far away. Only a peaceful heart can be content.

In a discontented state one feels aggravated, one doesn’t like things, one sees them as needy of improvement, one opposes and rejects them. In a contented state, on the other hand, things are allowed to be as they are. Respect, patience and tolerance set the tone. Hate and anger are absent, peace and goodwill reigns.

The way from discontentment to contentment is for the heart to practice acceptance. But how? Is accepting the world as it is the same as loving it? Or does it mean bearing and suffering it? Neither. Accepting simply means not opposing the facts, taking everything we encounter as part of life. Whatever we meet, that is what our life consists of. Rain and sun, success

4 and failure, health and illness – its all part of it, this whole mixture of joy and sorrow. We shouldn’t be choosey, filtering out what we like and excluding everything else. It’s better not to take sides, instead we should stay neutral and treat everything as equal.

It doesn’t mean we have to be blind when we take things as they come and accept even the unpleasant ones. We don’t have to pretend that bad things are good. Accepting only means that we do not add more unpleasantness to the already existing one, that we, in other words, exercise damage control. Damage control means an honest acknowledgment of the unpleasant factors without immediately going into battle. If we or others make a mistake, we take note of it and then let it go. We don’t keep prodding the wound. Instead we treat it with understanding and tolerance, we forgive and forget and so let the wound heal.

Exercising damage control through accepting also means that we don’t dramatize unpleasant things and turn ourselves into a battlefield. We don’t get uptight by mishaps, making a mountain out of a molehill. Isn’t it a sad sight when people get angry if a bus is late, a queue isn’t moving, or someone has forgotten to do something? They complain and argue and get their blood pressure up - for nothing – the mishap has happened, all the excitement and critique wont change this. I think we should not waste our precious time with futile anger about nothings.

It is much better to accept whatever bad has happened and to turn towards tempering our anger and soothing our pains. Otherwise we are as silly as someone who has been called an idiot and who thinks a thousand times how annoying and unfair that was – and who then really becomes an idiot for a thousand times.

If Damage control is one side of accepting, then on the other one is the affair of the heart. By accepting, the heart tries to dissolve anger and to keep a reign on self righteousness. It is willing to show good will towards everything, even towards unpleasantness. It practices, in other words, metta.

Loving kindness is one of the most powerful means to overcome hatred, to stand up to jealousy, anger, mistrust and adversity. Kindness alone has the power to embrace everything unpleasant and bad, and to dissolve it with its goodness. So in the end it is the benevolent heart which allows living together in peace and harmony. And by bringing peace to the world, we bring peace to ourselves.

Seeing the positive side Once we are mindful of our discontent, have gained distance from our own viewpoint, have accepted and made peace with the facts, we are now free to change our view: to replace the one which lead to dissatisfaction with one that brings contentment.

The task of changing our view is a pleasant one, as we are asked to look at everthing which is nice, pleasing, healing and which does us good, to focus, with other words, on the positive.

This pleasant task builds on the assumption that everything can be of worth when used wisely. Its intention is to make the best out of any situation.

5 Which isn’t the same as wanting the best. It is not the greed for the best of everything which should fuel our efforts. The task of making the best of what we have means looking at situations as the raw material, out of which one can build contentment.

How, in practical terms, can we build contentment? By facing the world with positive eyes: we look at the joyful and at the pleasant, we concentrate on the useful and helpful, we focus on the potential possibilities which lie in a situation. We discover that which enables us and gives us something, rather than counting what is missing and what is wrong. We concentrate on what others give us and where they help us, rather than focusing on where they disappoint us. We acknowledge what we have achieved and were we have strength, instead of harping on about our failures and criticizing our weaknesses. We focus on the advantages, rather than on the disadvantages of things.

And when we do that, when we focus on the positive side of things, joy arises. Joy doesn’t only come when we get what we want – no – joy is a spontaneous reaction to the good and the beautiful in the world. It is a feeling which warms our heart and brings contentment.

Equally heart warming is the experience of being thankful for all the positive things and valuing them. As soon as we really value something our judgments become fairer. We have balanced out the negative with the positive. Where there was criticism there is now appraisal. Where something was missing, there is now enough. Where we complained, we can now praise. Where we were disappointed, we are now reconciled.

Looking at the positive side does not mean putting on rose tinted glasses. Rest assured: one stays firmly grounded in reality. To see the positive side just means we look at things untainted by selfish views and desires, free from illusions. We measure things not with impossible standards, but with realistic ones. So the contentment which arises from seeing the positive is firmly grounded in a right view and the heart is truly peaceful.

On this positive note I end my talk – hoping that I have been able to demonstrate to you how rewarding and satisfying the experience of contentment can be.

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