In the Buddhist tradition, there's something called the Brahma-Vaharas, and the word Brahma-Vahara

means divine abode, and they speak to the qualities of the awakened heart-mind when we really

come home to who we are, the qualities that naturally shine forth, and the divine abodes

include loving-kindness, that quality of care, when we see what's beautiful, what we

appreciate. The Brahma-Vaharas include compassion, which is that tenderness when we recognize

suffering. The third Brahma-Vahara is joy, and joy is both opening to the suffering

and the beauty, the joys and the sorrows, and joy is what we're going to be talking

about tonight, and it's a continuation from last week, but knowing this crowd, I know

some of you are here, some of you aren't, so it won't, doesn't depend on being here

last week. So there is a phrase that we use a lot, it's a Dallas phrase, which is the

10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows, and that being a full human being is having a heart

that has the courage and presence to really open to the whole realm, Zorba the Greek

called it the whole catastrophe, remember? So this open-live presence, this inclusiveness

is joy, joy is an expansive feeling, and it's not kind of an artificial ballooning

out, it's that openness that comes when we're just not pushing away any part of life.

So in Pali the word is Mudita, which is joy in awakening the life within, and it's also

joy in the awakening of others. When we're feeling joy, there's this sense of really

celebrating life and celebrating the beauty in all being, seeing it and loving it. So this

is Andrugy, he says, no, that joy is rare, more difficult, and more beautiful in sadness.

Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

Now let me, I just want to speak to the word obligation, because it's not a should,

a traditional sense of thou shalt feel joyful. That's a set up for trouble. It's like

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