Speaker 1: At a certain point, many people experience something strange they
Speaker 1: didn't see coming. Things that once delighted them, activities that
Speaker 1: once filled them with enthusiasm and pleasure, suddenly.
Speaker 2: Seem to lose their savor.
Speaker 1: The music doesn't move them any more, the food doesn't
Speaker 1: taste as it used to, the company of friends feels hollow.
Speaker 1: Even the pursuits they once considered their greatest passions, reading,
Speaker 1: walking in nature, creating things, all of it becomes somehow flat, colorless,
Speaker 1: without the spark that once made life feel worth living.
Speaker 1: And naturally, when this happens, people become frightened. They think
Speaker 1: something has gone terribly wrong. They believe they've become depressed,
Speaker 1: that they're ill, that there's some chemical imbalance in their
Speaker 1: brain that needs correcting. Or they think they've simply become cynical, jaded,
Speaker 1: that life has worn them down and they've lost their
Speaker 1: capacity for joy. And they ask themselves, with genuine desperation,
Speaker 1: what's happened to me? Why can't I feel anything any more?
Speaker 1: But what if I told you that this last of joy,
Speaker 1: this apparent flatness of experience, is not necessarily a problem
Speaker 1: at all. What if this state that seems like death
Speaker 1: is actually a kind of birth. What if the disappearance
Speaker 1: of joy as you knew it is simply making room
Speaker 1: for something else, something you haven't yet recognized, because you're
Speaker 1: still looking for the old feelings, the old excitements, the
Speaker 1: old ways of being moved. Let me explain what I mean.
Speaker 1: You see, most of what we call joy or pleasure
Speaker 1: in ordinary life is really a kind of relief. It's
Speaker 1: the satisfaction of a want, the filling of a lack,
Speaker 1: the scratching of an itch. You're hungry and then you eat,
Speaker 1: and there's pleasure in that. But notice the pleasure depends
Speaker 1: on the hunger. Without the hunger, the eating is just mechanical.
Speaker 1: You're lonely and then someone pays attention to you, and
Speaker 1: there's joy in that. But the joy depends on the loneliness.
Speaker 1: Without the sense of lack, the attention doesn't move you.
Speaker 1: This is what the Buddha was pointing out when he
Speaker 1: said that life is suffering, or more accurately, that life
Speaker 1: is unsatisfactoriness. Not that everything is miserable, but that this
Speaker 1: constant cycle of wanting and getting, of lacking and filling,
Speaker 1: of itching and scratching is inherently unstable. It's based on
Speaker 1: a sense of incompleteness, of something missing, of not being
Speaker 1: quite enough as you are.
Speaker 2: And so we spend our lives chasing these.
Speaker 1: Little moments of relief, these brief satisfactions when a want
Speaker 1: is filled.
Speaker 2: We call this happiness, we call this joy.
Speaker 1: But it's really just the temporary cessation of discomfort. It's
Speaker 1: like someone hitting you on the head with a hammer
Speaker 1: and then stopping and you feel relieved, and you call
Speaker 1: that relief pleasure. But the question nobody asks is why
Speaker 1: were you being hit with a hammer in the first place. Now,
Speaker 1: what happens to some people, and this is what's happening
Speaker 1: to you if you're experiencing this loss of joy, is
Speaker 1: that they begin to see through this game. They begin
Speaker 1: to recognize that all these pleasures they've been chasing are
Speaker 1: really just escapes from discomfort. And once you see this,
Speaker 1: once you really understand it, the old joys don't work anymore.
Speaker 1: The scratching doesn't satisfy the itch because you've realized that
Speaker 1: you're creating the itch in order to enjoy the scratching.
Speaker 1: It's like a drug addict who takes a drug to
Speaker 1: feel good, but the drug itself creates.
Speaker 2: The need for more of the drug.
Speaker 1: The relief the addict gets from taking the drug is
Speaker 1: really just the temporary cessation of the withdrawal symptoms caused
Speaker 1: by the drug itself. Once you see this pattern, the
Speaker 1: whole thing collapses. The pleasure loses its appeal because you've
Speaker 1: seen through it. This is what's happened to you. You've
Speaker 1: seen through the game of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
Speaker 1: You've recognized, perhaps not intellectually, but in your bones, that
Speaker 1: all these joys you were pursuing were really just elaborate
Speaker 1: ways of running away from yourself, from the present moment,
Speaker 1: from what simply is. And so now you're left in
Speaker 1: this strain state. The old pleasures don't work, the old
Speaker 1: excitements don't excite. You've lost your capacity to be distracted,
Speaker 1: to be taken out of yourself by experiences and sensations.
Speaker 1: And this feels like death. It feels like something essential
Speaker 1: has been taken from you, like you've become a ghost,
Speaker 1: going through the motions of life but not really living it.
Speaker 1: But here's what you must understand. This state is not
Speaker 1: an end. It's a transition. It's the space between the
Speaker 1: old way of experiencing life and a new way that
Speaker 1: you haven't discovered yet. You're in the gap, and the
Speaker 1: gap is terrifying because there's nothing to hold on to.
Speaker 1: The old structures have collapsed, but the new hasn't yet emerged.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an analogy. Imagine you've been living
Speaker 1: your whole life in a room lit by candles. The
Speaker 1: candlelight creates all these interesting shadows on the walls, dancing
Speaker 1: shapes that fascinate you. You spend your time watching the shadows,
Speaker 1: being entertained by them, finding meaning in their patterns. This
Speaker 1: is like the ordinary joys of life. They're real enough
Speaker 1: in their way, but they're really just flickering shadows created
Speaker 1: by the limited light source. Now what happens if someone
Speaker 1: opens the door and bright daylight streams in. At first,
Speaker 1: the light is so bright it's almost painful. You can't
Speaker 1: see anything clearly. Everything is washed out, and all those
Speaker 1: fascinating shadows that kept you entertained they've disappeared, vanished in
Speaker 1: the bright light. And you might think this is terrible.
Speaker 1: I've lost all the interesting patterns. Everything's become bland and featureless.
Speaker 1: But you're not seeing clearly yet. Your eyes haven't adjusted
Speaker 1: to the daylight. Once they do, you'll realize that you
Speaker 1: haven't lost anything, you've gained everything. You're seeing reality directly now,
Speaker 1: not just its shadows. And this direct seeing is so
Speaker 1: much richer, so much more real than the shadow play
Speaker 1: you were watching before.
Speaker 2: But it's a.
Speaker 1: Different of richness. It doesn't have the same quality as
Speaker 1: the shadows. It's not entertainment, it's something else entirely. This
Speaker 1: is what's happening when nothing brings you joy anymore. The
Speaker 1: old shadow play has stopped working, but you haven't yet
Speaker 1: learned to see in the daylight. You're in that transitional
Speaker 1: period where the old is gone, but the new isn't
Speaker 1: yet clear. And this period can last quite a while.
Speaker 1: It's not something you can rush. Your eyes must adjust
Speaker 1: at their own pace.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The usual response to this state is to try desperately
Speaker 1: to get the old joys back. People throw themselves into
Speaker 1: new hobbies, new relationships, new experiences, hoping to rekindle that spark.
Speaker 1: Or they turn to stronger stimulations, louder music, more intense sensations,
Speaker 1: more dramatic experiences. Like someone whose taste buds have become dulled,
Speaker 1: trying hotter and hotter spices to feel something anything. But
Speaker 1: this doesn't work loo In fact, it makes things worse,
Speaker 1: because what's really needed is not more stimulation, but less.
Speaker 1: What's needed is to stop running, stop seeking, stop trying
Speaker 1: to fill the emptiness with experiences and sensations. What's needed
Speaker 1: is to simply be with what is, without trying to
Speaker 1: make it into something else. And here's the extraordinary thing
Speaker 1: that happens when you do this. When you stop trying
Speaker 1: to manufacture joy, you discover that there's something present that
Speaker 1: was always there, but that you never noticed because you
Speaker 1: were too busy chasing after pleasures.
Speaker 2: It's not exactly joy in the old sense. It's more like.
Speaker 1: An okayness, a fundamental sense that everything is all right
Speaker 1: exactly as it is. Not that everything is perfect or pleasurable,
Speaker 1: but that it's complete. It's enough, it doesn't need anything
Speaker 1: added to it. The old joys were based on contrast,
Speaker 1: good times versus bad times, pleasure versus pain, excitement versus boredom.
Speaker 1: But this new state, this okness, doesn't depend on contrast.
Speaker 1: It's there all the time, whether things are going well
Speaker 1: or poorly, whether you're comfortable or uncomfortable, whether you're experiencing
Speaker 1: pleasure or pain, It's like discovering that you've been living
Speaker 1: in a house your whole life, rushing from room to
Speaker 1: room looking for something, and then suddenly realizing that what
Speaker 1: you were looking for was the house itself. It was there,
Speaker 1: all alarm, you were standing in it. You are it,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't see it because you were too busy searching.
Speaker 1: Now I must warn you about something. When I described
Speaker 1: this state as an okness or a fundamental sense that
Speaker 1: everything is all right, you might think this sounds rather dull.
Speaker 1: You might think, is that all there is? Just being
Speaker 1: okay with things? That doesn't sound very exciting.
Speaker 2: And you're right.
Speaker 1: It's not exciting in the way the old pleasures were exciting.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have that quality of peauk experience, of highs
Speaker 1: and lows, of drama and intensity. But here's what you
Speaker 1: must understand. Excitement is exhausting. Drama is exhausting. The constant
Speaker 1: pursuit of pique experiences is exhausting. You can't live at
Speaker 1: that pitch all the time. What happens is that you
Speaker 1: have these brief moments of intensity and then long periods
Speaker 1: of deflation while you wait for the next high. The
Speaker 1: lows get lower and lower, and you need stronger and
Speaker 1: stronger stimuli to achieve the same highs. This is the
Speaker 1: addict's pattern, and most people are addicted to experience, to sensation,
Speaker 1: to the drama of their own lives. They're constantly generating
Speaker 1: problems so they can solve them, creating tensions so they
Speaker 1: can release them, stirring up emotions so they can feel alive, and.
Speaker 2: They call this joy, but it's really just agitation.
Speaker 1: What you've lost when nothing brings you joy any more,
Speaker 1: is your addiction to this pattern. And like any addict
Speaker 1: going through withdraw you feel terrible. You feel empty, flat, dead.
Speaker 1: But what you're really experiencing is the absence of agitation.
Speaker 1: And at first, the absence of agitation feels like death,
Speaker 1: because you've been agitated for so long that you've forgotten
Speaker 1: what it's like to simply be at rest. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you about a man I knew once. He was
Speaker 1: tremendously energetic, always doing something, always pursuing some new project
Speaker 1: or pleasure. He traveled constantly, collected experiences like some people
Speaker 1: collect stamps. Was always reading, always learning, always seeking out
Speaker 1: new sensations, and he.
Speaker 2: Was proud of this. He thought he was really living
Speaker 2: squeezing every drop out of life. Then something happened.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what, perhaps just the accumulation of years,
Speaker 1: and he lost his enthusiasm. All those activities that had
Speaker 1: seemed so important suddenly seemed pointless. Travel bored him, books
Speaker 1: couldn't hold his attention. Food all tasted the same, and
Speaker 1: he became quite depressed about this. He thought his life
Speaker 1: was over, that he'd become old and worn out. But then,
Speaker 1: after some time in this state, something shifted. He told
Speaker 1: me that one day he was sitting in his garden,
Speaker 1: doing nothing in particular, just sitting there, and he suddenly
Speaker 1: realized that he was completely content, not excited, not entertained,
Speaker 1: just simply content, present here. And he understood that all
Speaker 1: his previous rushing around had been a kind of running away.
Speaker 1: He'd been afraid of this simple being here, so he'd
Speaker 1: filled his life with constant activity and stimulation to avoid it.
Speaker 2: And now that all the.
Speaker 1: Activity had dropped away, he'd discovered what he'd been running from.
Speaker 1: Just this, this moment, this breath, this being alive, and
Speaker 1: it was enough, more than enough, It was everything, But
Speaker 1: it wasn't exciting or dramatic, so his mind had dismissed
Speaker 1: it as nothing, as emptiness as death. Only when he
Speaker 1: stopped demanding that life be exciting did he discover that
Speaker 1: life is extraordinary in its ordinariness. This is what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to point you toward. When nothing brings you joy
Speaker 1: anymore in the old way, you are being invited to
Speaker 1: discover a different quality of experience, not the ups and
Speaker 1: downs of pleasure and pain, but something more subtle, more constant,
Speaker 1: more fundamental. But you can't force this discovery. You can't
Speaker 1: make it happen. In fact, trying to make it happen
Speaker 1: is exactly what prevents it. It's like trying to fall asleep.
Speaker 1: The harder you try, the more wakeful you become. You
Speaker 1: have to give up trying. You have to surrender to
Speaker 1: not knowing, to not feeling, to this apparent emptiness. And
Speaker 1: this is perhaps the most difficult thing anyone can be
Speaker 1: asked to do. Because we're so afraid of emptiness. We
Speaker 1: think emptiness is death, is meaninglessness, is the absence of life.
Speaker 1: But actually emptiness is potential. It's the space in which
Speaker 1: something new can emerge, as long as you are full
Speaker 1: of seeking and striving and trying to recapture old joys.
Speaker 1: There's no room for anything new. You must become empty,
Speaker 1: not empty in a negative sense, but empty, like a
Speaker 1: bowl is empty, empty so it can receive empty, so
Speaker 1: it can be filled, but not filled with the old things,
Speaker 1: filled with something.
Speaker 2: You don't yet have a name for now. I know
Speaker 2: this is not what you wanted to hear. You wanted
Speaker 2: me to tell you how to.
Speaker 1: Get your joy back, how to feel things again the
Speaker 1: way you used to. But I can't tell you that
Speaker 1: because what you're experiencing is not a problem to be solved.
Speaker 1: It's a transition to be gone through, like a caterpillar
Speaker 1: dissolving in the cocoon before it becomes a butterfly. The
Speaker 1: caterpillar is finished, it can't go back to being a
Speaker 1: happy caterpillar. But it's not yet a butterfly. It's just mush.
Speaker 1: And if the mush could think, it would probably be
Speaker 1: quite distressed about its condition. You're the mush right now,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you this is not a mistake. This
Speaker 1: is the process. Stay with it, don't try to escape
Speaker 1: from it. Don't try to manufacture fake joys to fill
Speaker 1: the emptiness. Just be with what is, Be with the flatness,
Speaker 1: the colorlessness, the apparent meaninglessness. Let it be exactly as
Speaker 1: it is, without trying to fix it or understand it
Speaker 1: or make it into something else. And gradually, not according
Speaker 1: to your timetable, but in its own time, something will shift,
Speaker 1: not back to the old way, but forward into something new,
Speaker 1: A new way of experiencing life that doesn't depend on contrast,
Speaker 1: that doesn't require stimulation, that finds sufficiency in the bare
Speaker 1: fact of existing. This is what the mystics have always
Speaker 1: pointed to. Not some ecstatic state of constant bliss that's
Speaker 1: just another form of the old seeking, but a deep
Speaker 1: okayness that persists through all states, pleasant and unpleasant alike,
Speaker 1: a recognition that you are in the deepest sense or right,
Speaker 1: not because everything in your life is going well, but
Speaker 1: because your life, your existence, is fundamentally complete.
Speaker 2: Exactly as it is.
Speaker 1: The old joys were like trying to improve a sunset
Speaker 1: by throwing more colors at it. The new recognition is
Speaker 1: that the sunset is already perfect, doesn't need improvement, doesn't
Speaker 1: need anything added to it or taken away from it.
Speaker 1: It's complete in itself, and so are you, and so
Speaker 1: is this moment, and so is your life. Even in
Speaker 1: this seemingly joyless state. But I must emphasize again, you
Speaker 1: cannot make this recognition happen. You cannot achieve this state.
Speaker 1: Any effort to get there pushes it away, because effort
Speaker 1: implies that something is lacking, that you're not already complete.
Speaker 1: The recognition can only come when you stop trying, when
Speaker 1: you give up, when you surrender completely to what is.
Speaker 1: And even then it may not come, or it may
Speaker 1: come and go, or it may come in such a
Speaker 1: subtle way that you don't even notice it at first.
Speaker 1: It's not dramatic, it's not exciting. It doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: you thought enlightenment would feel. It's more like coming home,
Speaker 1: like taking off tight shoes, like exhaling after holding your
Speaker 1: breath too long. So what do you do in the
Speaker 1: meantime while you're in this state where nothing brings joy?
Speaker 1: You do what needs to be done. You brush your teeth,
Speaker 1: you eat your meals, you go about your daily business.
Speaker 1: But you do it without the expectation that these activities should.
Speaker 2: Make you happy.
Speaker 1: You do them simply because they're what's here to be done,
Speaker 1: not with resignation or bitterness, but with a kind of
Speaker 1: neutral acceptance. And you watch you observe this state you're
Speaker 1: in without judging it, without trying to change it. You
Speaker 1: become interested in it, curious about it, not in a
Speaker 1: clinical way, but with the kind of interest you might
Speaker 1: have in watching clouds move across the sky, just watching,
Speaker 1: without needing the clouds to be different than they are.
Speaker 1: And most importantly, you stop comparing. Stop comparing your current
Speaker 1: state with how you used to feel. Stop comparing yourself
Speaker 1: with people who seem to be having a good time,
Speaker 1: Stop comparing this moment with some imagined future moment when
Speaker 1: everything will be better. Just be here now with What
Speaker 1: is This is not resignation, it's not giving up.
Speaker 2: It's actually the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's fully showing up for your life as it actually is,
Speaker 1: rather than constantly.
Speaker 2: Wishing it were different.
Speaker 1: And paradoxically, it's only when you stop wishing things were
Speaker 1: different that anything.
Speaker 2: Can truly change.
Speaker 1: Because what's blocking the new experience, the new way of
Speaker 1: being is your insistence that things should be like they
Speaker 1: were before, your nostalgia for the old joys, your memory
Speaker 1: of how things used to feel, your expectation that life
Speaker 1: should return to that familiar pattern. All of this is
Speaker 1: preventing you from seeing what's actually here. Now, let me
Speaker 1: give you one final thought. Perhaps the reason nothing brings
Speaker 1: you joy any more is that you've outgrown joy as
Speaker 1: you knew it. Perhaps you've become too big for those
Speaker 1: small pleasures, too deep for those shallow satisfactions, not because
Speaker 1: you're better than other people, but simply because your consciousness
Speaker 1: has expanded and the old containers can no longer hold
Speaker 1: what you've become. A child is delighted by candy, a
Speaker 1: young person is thrilled by romance and adventure. A mature
Speaker 1: person finds satisfaction in accomplishment and recognition.
Speaker 2: But there comes a point for some people when all.
Speaker 1: Of these things are seen through, when they're recognized as temporary, conditional,
Speaker 1: ultimately unsatisfying. And then what Then You are thrown back
Speaker 1: on existence itself, on the bare fact of being alive,
Speaker 1: or being conscious of being here. And this can seem
Speaker 1: like nothing at all compared to the excitement of candy
Speaker 1: and romance and accomplishment. But actually it's everything. It's the
Speaker 1: ground from which all those other things arose. It's what
Speaker 1: was there before you learned to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Speaker 1: It's what remains when all the seeking stops, and it's
Speaker 1: not nothing. It's not emptiness in the negative sense. It's fullness,
Speaker 1: its wholeness, it's completion. But it's so simple, so ordinary,
Speaker 1: so undramatic, that the mind overlooks it constantly, always seeking
Speaker 1: something more exciting, more stimulating, more special. What you're being
Speaker 1: asked to discover is that there is nothing more special
Speaker 1: than this, this moment, this breath, this simple fact of
Speaker 1: being alive. Not because it makes you feel good, not
Speaker 1: because it's pleasurable, but because it's real. It's what is,
Speaker 1: and what is is enough. It's always been enough. You
Speaker 1: just forgot for a while. So when nothing brings you
Speaker 1: joy anymore, don't despair. You haven't lost your capacity for feeling.
Speaker 1: You've lost your addiction to a particular kind of feeling.
Speaker 1: And in that loss, there's an opening, a possibility, a
Speaker 1: doorway into a different way of being human. Walk through
Speaker 1: that doorway, not by trying to walk through it, but
Speaker 1: by standing still and discovering that you're already on the
Speaker 1: other side. You've always been on the other side, you
Speaker 1: just didn't notice because you were too busy seeking. Now
Speaker 1: you have nothing to seek, and that's not a loss.
Speaker 1: That's the greatest gift you could receive