May I be happy….
May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be at peace. May all beings be free from suffering. I learned this loving-kindness practice, meditation, and wish from author and Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg and others. Visualizing myself happy, smiling, for example, can free me from ruminating, worrying, especially right now, in today’s world. We need to feel we can have moments of happiness despite the multiple threats to our world. If we feel we can’t be happy, we might give up and do nothing.
To feel we can be happy we need to feel that we have agency, that we can make changes in ourselves and the world around us.
To feel we can make changes, it’s helpful to feel present right here, right now. When we feel present, we more easily feel joy.
A few days ago, I heard a program on NPR. The program was an interview by Alicia Garceau of Michaeleen Doucleff, author of a new book called Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child’s Brain and Take Back Your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultra Processed Foods. The book applied evidence of how research paid for mainly by gambling industries was utilized by social media platforms and the food industry to addict us to their products.
Doucleff is a science writer and trained biochemist. Several years ago, she wanted to figure out how to reduce her family’s dependence on new tech and ultra processed foods. She found something surprising.
We think of the hormone and neurotransmitter dopamine as the pleasure molecule. What she discovered was dopamine doesn’t give us pleasure; instead, it ties us to what we’re doing. It creates a feeling of wanting. We eat chips and we keep eating them, not because they really satisfy us. They have little to no nutrition. But the more we eat, the more we want. We get caught by wanting.
And when we want, we feel empty. We feel what Buddhist philosopher David Loy describes as lacking; we feel that what we have, what we are is not enough. It’s part of the Buddhist understanding of the cause of suffering or feeling our lives are unsatisfactory. Wanting wants the wanting to never cease. It robs us of joy and agency.
Children intently desire and get focused on their screen time. They get caught up in “the infinite scroll” not because it brings them joy; the screen experience robs them of that. It promises so much, a sense of belonging, community, support. But this is a trick. It’s like a game advertised by a casino that promises us riches but delivers financial loss instead.
Casinos aim to create in the player a continuous, timeless, flow-like state so we more easily feel we have won something when we haven’t. For example, a game might give a player a 15 cent credit toward future plays; but to get this credit they need to wager 20 cents. So, they’re always behind. This state has been called “dark flow.” Doucleff said instead of just dopamine, we have a different body-brain system that makes us like what we want and satisfied when we get it.
But, Doucleff reminds us, we can’t just take screens or gambling machines away. We need to replace them with something legitimately desirable, engaging, and fun. Something that helps us feel satisfaction, or a sense of meaning and legitimate accomplishment. When we speak with someone, we need to dedicate our hearing and seeing to them. When we eat, we need to focus on the taste of each bite. We’re better off when we focus on the quality of experience and those who are participating with us in a moment.
I recently took a Zoom class. Sometimes, I just listened intently. Sometimes, I took notes. Sometimes, I was distracted by a random thought or worry that jumped into the forefront of my mind. One time, I focused more intensely and noticed how distracted I was; and suddenly, the speaker’s eyes looked so full, like he was looking at me alone. Everything in the room where he was standing got bigger. I felt like laughing. And his voice– I could hear not only the sound and meaning of the words but something way beyond what I could describe in words.
When we feel present, we feel powerful, more able to think clearly and less likely to be manipulated. When we get caught up in “dark flow,” in things that rob us of perspective and agency, we feel more isolated, selfish, and doubtful of ourselves; we’re more easily manipulated. I think this is exactly the intent of much of our consumer society. It’s also a painful side effect of DT’s continually creating chaos and shocking our system. We need to not get caught by “dark flow” and continual wanting. We need to somehow live our lives as fully as possible, while doing what we can to save our world and nation.
May we be happy. May we work to reduce suffering in the world.
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