The Buddha taught “the understanding of suffering and the ending of suffering.” The Buddha Gautama taught how to achieve true happiness—a blameless bliss and joy that has no external source and is sustainable. He understood this through the teachings of the Four Noble Truths: There is suffering; a cause of suffering, a way to end of suffering, that way is through the Noble Eightfold Path (which develops ethics/mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom).
Those who understand and accept these truths know that the cornerstone to developing ethics, concentration and wisdom is through the practice and development of mindfulness and skillfulness through meditation. The focus is certainly mental, but the physical body does play an essential role in our daily Buddhist practice and application.
If we only concentrate on the mental and spiritual aspects of the practice we miss the essential component of existence: the body.
Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin has studied the brains of Buddhist monks, and found their happiness unmatched. His studies concluded that a person sitting quietly for a half hour a day contemplating loving kindness and compassion will show noticeable changes within two weeks.
“Research is showing pretty convincingly,” said Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky of University of California Riverside, “that happiness is really within us, it is not outside of us. It is in what we do, how we act and how we think.”
The search for happiness externally never creates happiness. The rises in happiness from external experience are always adapted to, whether that external happiness is only for an instant or longer-lasting. For example: The joy of a present may only last a short time before the desire for another present replaces the initial enjoyment of receiving a gift; or the increased quality of life from a new job is quickly adapted to until that new paycheck become part of the normal budget. This is called hedonic adaptation.
In the Journal of Research and Personality, a survey of 147 college alumni looked at happiness and satisfaction. These 147 college alumni stated that they achieved their goals set after college; recording the goals at graduation and 12-months later. Those alumni whose goals were material in nature reported no impact on their level of happiness. In some cases alumni reported increased stress, anger and physical illness. Meanwhile, those alumni who focused on personal growth discovered an increased self-evaluation of happiness personally and with their relationships with others.
So we can look at happiness as something that is internally driven, but what about the physical aspects of creating happiness? Beyond the physical effort of sitting to meditate, does our physical body need to follow the eightfold path?
An article published in Psychological Science states that our physical movements do create mental formations, which makes sense when we acknowledge that 80% of all communication with others is done through non-verbal communication. An arm held out signifies “stay away” and is negative, while an arm motioning in a circular fashion is often seen as “beckoning” and positive. While this is obvious communication with others, it is also conditioning for us.
Our cognitive awareness may not register, but our physical body doesn’t just communicate to the world around us but does contribute to the physical and mental states of who we are—including happiness.
The physical actions of our body not only help create the psychological conditions in our minds, but they also help directly to the cognitive and recognitive factors of our being as well.
The physical act of giving, even reluctantly, creates the psycho-physical state of liberation and euphoria. The actions within the body communicate with the mind.
According to David Meier, founder for the Center for Accelerated Learning, education and learning “is not passive storage of information but the active creation of knowledge.” Kinetic education is profoundly more effective and longer-lasting than just mental cognition.
As a Buddhist, this makes sense. Thought is just one sensory organ out of six. That is only 16.6% of all the input that our consciousness processes. When all senses are working the same goal, 100% of our consciousness is participating in the dhamma.
Think of how physical movement and effort has helped form the cognitive world view around us. We learned to count using our fingers. We learned danger from smells and touch. The nose is our most effective recognitive sensory organ.
According to a study by Art Glenberg, from Arizona State University, children who were taught to read through just the traditional mental aspects of education (e.g. repetition, phonics, etc.) fell behind those children who were taught with the added aspects of physically acting out the scenarios in the books. The entire body was able to process the information easier and with higher effectiveness.
So it is no great surprise to see that Buddhist practice would also become more effectively learned and applied when we purposefully and skillfully add in physical aspects of our beliefs. In addition, we must become aware of how our physical actions are filtering our current mind states so that we can become more mindful.
One of the greatest values of Buddhist meditation is to create distance from our physical form so that we can identify the difference between conditioned physical and mental habits and formations. This detached view offers insight into what is useful and what is not useful in application to our daily life, which we cannot get when we are “knee deep” in the moment. It is occasionally too difficult to notice all the psycho-physical aspects happening in real time.
Nevertheless, they do happen. Just as meditation can give insight with that distanced view, we can make those opportunities to change psycho-physical habits and create conditions where our responses are more positive all the time.
It is through that combination, that happiness can be achieved and sustained.
