The Joy of Dharma

Today I’m going to talk about the joy of dharma. The dharma is the teaching of the Buddha that leads to happiness, peace, enlightenment, and final enlightenment. Joy is a state of mind that feels fulfilling and satisfying.

One way that you can get joy is by understanding the Buddha’s teaching, the way things are, the truth—that brings a lot of joy. When there’s a lot of confusion, you don’t feel joy. But clarity brings joy. Also, when you practice the dharma, and live according to the dharma, that brings a lot of joy.

Most of the joy we think of is mundane. It is based on external conditions, and it’s fleeting. One moment of joy comes, another moment of joy disappears, based on external conditions. You know what joy is and why you want it, but do you know how to get it? Eating ice cream? It’s good to have that also—enjoy it! But there is a lot more to it than that if we want a more sustainable joy to arise. What I’m talking about now is the joy you cultivate in the dharma.

Joy is necessary to fuel our practice. My experience of becoming a Buddhist, then becoming a monk and starting a dharma center in Uganda, all those experiences have been punctuated by joy. Without joy I think I would not be what I am now. It’s like a well that I draw from in order to practice.

Recently, I was leading a retreat, and one of my students said, “I have a problem. I’ve given many people things, but I never get anything back. Is there something wrong with me?” This person is a teacher in our primary school. He said, Whenever I need help, I don’t get any help, but when I give, I give and I give. I’m exhausted. I don’t get anything back! So I said, “Welcome to human life. Next time, try something different. Just give to others without expecting anything in return. When you give to others, experience the joy of giving in that moment. In that very moment, you are rewarded.” I think his frustration was that he was giving so that he would get something back.

After I had just become a monk, I visited some African countries to do volunteer work. One country I went to was Kenya. The monastery and temple where I stayed were close to the university of agriculture. As part of our tradition as monks, we have to collect alms. We walk with our alms bowl, and then wait for somebody to put some food in. Every day, when I would do that, I would meet this security guard at the gate of the university. I was there for two months, and I kept on doing that, walking back and forth past him. One day he stopped me and asked, What are you doing? I said, I’m looking for food. Where are you from? I’m from Uganda. Where do you live? In the United States. Oh, you live in the United States? Can you give me some money? You have a lot of dollars! I said, No, I’m a monk. So it was a disappointing back-and-forth. He said, Let me see in your bowl. He looked, and it was empty. Nobody was giving me any food. He told me, Tomorrow, when you come, I’ll give you some food. So the next day I came to the gate, and he brought out a banana, one banana, and put it in my bowl. I said, Oh, wow. Finally, there’s a local African who understands what I’m doing! Then I left, and when I came back again, he put one more banana in the bowl. And then I said, I’m going to bless you. He closed his eyes. I said, I wish you a long life, happiness, and all that, and once I finished, I said, you can open your eyes. He said, Is that all? I thought you were going to give me money! In other words, his bananas were an investment.

Without joy I think I would not be what I am now. It’s like a well that I draw from in order to practice.

The key is to give without expectation, and that will bring you a lot of joy. If you get something in return, that’s OK, but really you give just for the joy that arises when you are giving. This is very important, to know that joy can arise from giving. Why you give is to feel happy and joyful. That fuel can help us keep going. That’s what I’ve done as a monk, to enjoy the practice itself. Whenever I’m practicing and I have this kind of joy, it helps me a lot.

I remember when I was in Burma, I was again going for my alms round, and it was a two-month retreat. I was struggling with a lot of pain, and the schedule was very tight. We woke up at 3:00 a.m. to practice meditation until about 10:00 in the evening. Other people I saw were not struggling like me. I would sit for maybe an hour and a half. Other people were sitting for four hours at a stretch.

One day, I was going for my alms round and somebody put some food in my alms bowl. She was about 75 years old, and she was walking very slowly, with a cane, crossing the road to give me some rice. When I went back to the cushion, I asked myself, What can I practice to be worthy of receiving this food from this person? And joy arose at that moment. I had tried all kinds of techniques to overcome pain, and they were not working. But the joy that came, I felt it all over in my body and in my mind. The pain just went out the window. I could keep on practicing after one hour, two hours, three hours, just sitting there feeling very light and buoyed.

Joy is very important in your practice.

It’s a marker to a signpost that says awakening. These are the benefits. You keep on refueling your path to practice knowing that you’re on the right track. If the path is gloomy and you’re just plodding, just trying to get through it, that will be difficult. You don’t feel joy until you see the sign to the place you are going. If you find you are going in the opposite direction, you will feel very stressed. I remember once, when I was teaching in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Afterward, somebody was driving me back to the Insight Meditation Society, in Barre. He was using GPS, but we went in the wrong direction for one hour anyway. Then we saw a sign pointing us in the right direction, and joy arose.

In the scriptures, there are two kinds of people who come face-to-face with suffering. The first kind gets caught up in suffering—in other words, they join the Dukkha Club. They get stuck. But the second kind experiences suffering and sees the exit and knows that there is a way out of it. The Buddha said, when somebody does this, their faith and confidence arise, and they experience gladness, pamojja. Then gladness becomes joy, which is piti. The discourse goes on from joy to calmness, from calmness to happiness, and then from happiness to concentration, from concentration to seeing things as they really are. It keeps on going on and on.

One time we were traveling, I think in Rwanda, and the GPS in the car was saying, Keep going straight. But we were going toward the river! We could not go straight. The GPS was telling us to keep going. Do you want to drive into a river because the GPS tells you to? When you have GPS, you can still get lost.

Even when suffering, once we see the path—the way out of suffering—then faith and confidence arise, and we feel joy. Try to find out, whatever suffering you may be experiencing in your life—can you see the light at the end of the tunnel? Can you glimpse a way out of it? Once you really see the path and you realize that you can get out of this, then there is joy.

♦

Adapted from a talk given at New York Insight Meditation Center in January 2026.