Joyful Effort in Meditation

What if finding joy in meditation could transform your entire mindfulness practice? Discover the profound impact of joyful effort, or virya, as we explore how approaching meditation with a sense of joy and skillful effort can lead to greater happiness, clarity, and balance. In this episode, we emphasize the importance of setting the right intention—cultivating joy rather than simply aiming for efficiency or productivity.

Reflect on the difference a consistent meditation practice makes in your life by comparing your feelings on days you meditate versus days you skip it. Recognize that the positive qualities you experience are the fruits of your joyful effort, and feel proud of your dedication. We'll guide you through a meditation exercise designed to reignite your passion for the practice, encouraging you to embrace bliss and ecstasy. Accompanied by soothing music, continue your journey toward effortless joy and enhanced mindfulness.

Music: Master Minded - 'Opening Up'

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Chapters

• 0:03 The Power of Joyful Effort
• 8:57 Cultivating Joy Through Meditation

Transcript

Don Thompson here with another podcast for you. And today I'm going to talk about what we might call joyful effort, and specifically how joyful effort can reflect itself or be part of meditation. And I'm keying off of the work of Shawn Fargo here, so I have to give a shout out to Shawn for his efforts because he has provided some guidance here for us, which is which is a great thing. So the key thing with mindfulness is that it is a skill that really has to be practiced with effort. And before we can simply be mindful, we need to be joyful about that mindfulness. We need to apply effort to it. But the type of effort is important, the type of effort that we apply. So the effort should be skillful, but again joyful. And if meditation doesn't lead to joy, then it seems to me that there's not a whole lot of purpose in it, at least for human beings. If it makes us happier, if it leads us toward happiness. I think meditation is a good thing. You could say, well it helps us to relax. It helps us to concentrate. It helps us to focus and a lot of different things. But in essence, all of these things lead us toward, I think, happiness, ideally. And, you know, I think it's important not to look at meditation too much as, uh, a sort of a tool for efficiency. You know, let's say, for example, a tool to make us better at work. A tool to help us to be more effective at what we're doing so that we can make more money. 

Now, while these may be side effects of meditation, I don't think they should be the focus. In other words, it kind of comes back to intention. And I think a good intention for meditation is that we want to be joyful. We want to be happy and joyful. Effort in Sanskrit is called Virya. And when we approach meditation with Virya, with joyful effort, we find that it's easier. It's an easier thing to do and to bring. That kind of joyfulness to meditation is, in fact a primary reason for meditation. In other words, we practice the goal of area as the path. It becomes the path. And we do that by remembering why we are meditating. Sometimes we might sit ourselves down on the cushion and say, Oh God, here it goes again. It's an effort. It's a it's a task. It's a chore. It's something we got to check off with the list of things to do. Like, you know, brushing our teeth. 

Well, you know, it shouldn't be that way. Really? We need to rethink it. If it's devolved to that level, if it's missing the area. So why? We want to practice joyful effort is, is that if we practice joyful effort, if we can find the happiness and the bliss. In meditation. That opens up a whole set of consequences that are sort of outside of the scope, he might say, of the rational mind, in that we can see things that are evoked through, by, and for this joy. And because meditation can bring us happiness, clarity, stability, and a feeling of balance and a feeling of peace in mind. It can bring us this joy. And we could approach it with a sense of joyful effort, because we know we're going to get something good out of it. And, you know, maybe there'll be some other benefits as a result. But my take on it is, you know, if you if you find your intention to be a little bit skewed in your meditation, you know, try to recalibrate why you're meditating, try to meditate. With a sense of joyful ever trying to meditate with an intention of bettering your own sense of happiness so that you can better other people's sense of happiness. 

I mean, it really is, in essence, it becomes, also about other people, about influencing and having an impact on other people. And if you have joyful effort, you can you can do that. You can get good at meditation. If you get good at it. It's not an effort. Joyful effort doesn't even have to be mentioned because it is joyful effort. You can skip this, uh, podcast. You can move right on to the next one, or go back and revisit some other one, because you've already reached this joyful effort. And when you become good at something you enjoy, you want to do it. You. You find its effortlessness. Is part of the action effortlessness becomes the meditation itself. So let's go ahead and step through a meditation here. Uh, regarding joyful effort, if you have joyful effort in your meditation, that's all better. That's wonderful. It'll it'll be very easy for you to go through this exercise. And I'm not trying to be, uh, you know, sarcastic. I've just tried to say, uh, this is a good thing, and you will find this meditation and be quite easy if you have, found this, this, this joyful effort. I found it, but I have to say that sometimes I lose it. 

So if I'm to be honest. And so maybe that's why I wanted to. To do this, uh, talk is to re inspire my own sense of joyful effort. I know that I have experienced in meditation extreme levels of ecstasy and glisten and ecstatic, transcendent, you know, experience joyful effort. I've experienced that other times that it's been a slog. You know, I'm not in God. Things aren't going well. So I think that if we can find our, uh, you know, intention, refined our intention and, and go back to this place of joyful effort, this space of joyful effort, that's a good thing. So for the meditation, I invite you to sit comfortably in a quiet place and just, you know, relax and settle into your meditative posture. You can stand if you'd like, but sitting is probably a good thing. You can close your eyes and turn your attention inward. You can breathe slowly and steadily in and out through your nose. You can think for a moment, why? Why am I meditating? What's the reason? What are the benefits that I hope to receive? So just spend some time thinking about that a little bit. 

We'll step through the meditation. But of course, after I finish talking, you can continue to contemplate this if you need to, if you'd like to. So as you contemplate this, you know, you want to recognize and contemplate all the benefits you've already received from meditation. And you want to try and recall how good did you feel when you meditate? Well, when you meditate well, how good it feels. And you can compare those to how you feel on the days when you don't meditate, when you skip it. So you can ponder this. You know, this comparison between the days you do meditate and the days you don't meditate in, and just recognize the benefits that you're receiving from meditation and you can silently name all the positive qualities you feel in your mind right here and right now. You can note all these positive qualities, and you can also note that they are not appearing accidentally, that the result of your effort, of your joyful effort. So just take note of this effort that you're applying to your meditation, the effort that you're applying right now right here. I just feel really good about that because you should, you know, you should feel really good about this effort that you're applying right now to rest in the awareness of meditation, the joy, the effortless joy of meditation. So I invite you to sit and rest in this joy. For as long as you like I'll continue to play the music for a little bit longer. Um, I'll bring up the music again, and you can just finish off the meditation and continue for as long as you'd like. Thanks a lot. Talk to you soon. Bye bye