Joy doesn’t come easy. Especially in these times when people doom scroll and talk about the end of time. How to live joy in a time like this? Is joy a thing that can even be “put into practice”? You can’t expect joy just to happen like Chicken Little falling out of the sky. Summoning joy is an integral part of yoga and paradoxically, requires a kind of discipline. Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras speaks of cultivating joy (santosha) by way of an inner vow, a commitment second only to cleanliness of body and mind. In times of hopelessness and fear, living joy is more important than ever. Barbara Kingsolver in her collection High Tide in Tucson describes training in joy, “Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.”
The question isn’t simply, where am I going to get my joy today and how is it going to come. People turn to food, sex, movie thrillers and Prozac to bump up their serotonin. But for yogis, joy is not object dependent. No person, substance, or gainful employment will give you lasting joy. Joy comes from clearing the cobwebs from your heart-mind and sensing into the one great source that sustains all things. In time we come to know joy and to know its presence within us. When we realize that the touch of earthly years is wisp-like and dear and that all this will soon be gone, we cherish all that surrounds us.
Embodying joy is radical. It requires courage, risk and maybe a little bit of foolery. It is a thing that cannot be bought, sold or traded, can never be verified or had. To know joy we need only stay loyal to that secret something inside that never lives nor dies.
