I think maybe every one of us goes through this question. This is where we actually have to think of what the word "fun" means. The person thinks they're not having as much fun, what does the word "fun" really mean? What is happiness, actually? What does the word happiness mean? What is the word joy? What does the word joy mean? It is important to look at these words to think more deeply as to what they actually are.
Now for a lot of you here, maybe all of you, when you were five years old you had a little tricycle or scooter, some little thing that you would zoom around the house in. Now imagine you are five years old and it is almost your sixth birthday. You are zooming around the house on your little tricycle and an older cousin is visiting that day. The cousin comes up to you and says, "pretty soon we're going to take away that tricycle!" and starts laughing. Ok, what would you do? Would you freak out, would you hug your tricycle like mad, would you start crying, would you run to mummy or daddy and yell and scream that your cousin is going to take away your tricycle? Yes, you would. And that would be very normal because that tricycle is happiness, that tricycle is fun, that tricycle is your joy.
Now what happened to you on your sixth birthday, if not soon afterwards. You might have been given a bicycle. Did you want the tricycle? Did you tell your parents, "No thanks for the bicycle, I would rather keep the tricycle"? I don't think so. There are not many kids who will ever do that, right?
So all of a sudden what we called fun changed. It changed to something different, and probably it changed again when you were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen or whenever you got a license. You got to drive a car. What we think of as fun changes. It's important to think about the fact that what you used to call fun in the past isn't really fun anymore, because you can't go back, for a lot of that you just can't go back.
Now, if you are not having happiness in your meditation practice that's another issue. If you are not reflecting on your good Kamma, it wouldn't be correct to say that the practice doesn't give happiness, because we have taught you reflections which bring happiness. If you are not developing Sympathetic Joy meditation, again you need to practice that more to get more joy from the practice. If you are not doing the things that we have already taught in order to get joy, then you have to do them. If you want a different type of joy, if you want the joy that comes from the practice then you simply have to do the practice properly. So with that you can ask us more questions in the interviews.
But when we think of fun and joy and happiness, we're just going to trade off, we're going to get something better. If you are doing the practice right, you're going to get something better. Then you let go of the old type of joy with ease, you let go because you just don't want it anymore, just like letting go of the tricycle.