We're really talking about happiness. When you were 5 years old, for most, if not all of you, you might have had a little tricycle, or a little scooter and "zoom zoom" around the house you went. Was it ultimate happiness? You might not be able to remember it, but you go watch another 5-year-old zooming around the house, this is happiness for this little person!
Now imagine, I'm scooting around the house on my tricycle, and I have a cousin who's 8 years old. He comes up to me, and says "Pretty soon, we're going to take away the tricycle, hahaha!" He starts laughing. Would I freak out? Would I grab my tricycle and run to Mommy and Daddy, crying my head off? Yeah, I probably would. "He's going to take away my tricycle! (sobbing..)". Then, when I was 6 years old, for my birthday, what did I get? A bicycle! Do you think I wanted the tricycle any more? No way! The bicycle was now happiness.
Ah, interesting, what we call happiness at one moment stops being happiness at another moment.
Whatever happiness you have right now, it might not be what you call happiness in one year, 5 years, 10 years from now. What we actually call happiness is important to examine. The happiness that is what we consider supreme, the highest happiness, is going to be what's coming from inside joy resulting from your spiritual development.
Now imagine this one. You're going to breakfast. You're at the back of the line, and you start thinking to yourself, "I'd like to have some pineapple, it was so delicious yesterday". Your mind starts thinking of all the "happiness" the pineapple will bring you. This is the big upper for the day, in retreat, you know, food is, isn't it? "Pineapple" equals "happiness". So your mind's thinking of all this happiness you're going to have from having some pineapple. Still waiting in line, you get closer to the table, and as you just get up to the table, you look up at the fruit and, "Somebody's taking four pieces of pineapple!" Where does your happiness go? All this aversion comes up, but you can't say anything. It's a silent retreat! That person is taking YOUR pineapple. What are you going to do? Are you going to be upset because you lost your happiness? Are you going to get angry and take the pineapple from the other person's plate? Of course not.
Or, can you see the aversion come, observe it, note it, realize that you're creating your own pain, realize that that person is obviously a very greedy person. Anyone who takes four pieces of pineapple here, with a sign that says, "one piece only please", anyone who ignores that sign and takes four pieces anyway, can you imagine how they live their life? Is this not a mental problem that is going to interfere with their life, and their relationships?
So we open our heart for this person. If they're so greedy here, they're going to do that in their normal life. We're standing there, then, we started having aversion towards a person taking "our" pineapple. We start observing the aversion, and we see what it's doing to us. We start to relax, we start to open our heart for this person, and then, all of a sudden, we're standing there, we have no aversion, we have Compassion/Lovingkindness for this other person. And then we realize what we've just done, "I did it. I did it! I let go of my aversion. And I developed my Compassion/Lovingkindness."
What sort of happiness is that? Have you ever felt this sort of happiness? I hope so. You're meditators for at least a year, or more, every one of you. Some of you for 10 or 15 years. Have you witnessed when you let go of aversion? That's the kind of happiness we really want, when we see our spiritual practice unfolding, and we do it right.
This has to do with our own experience, our own spiritual growth, and then looking straight at it. Then we get spiritual joy, Sympathetic Joy. So that's where happiness is quite different than when dependent on the sense doors. That's where we want to go.