absolute joy

This week I read an article in the New York Times about what the rich can learn from the poor about money management.  It sparked an important insight about joy.

The article looked at a mistake people often make when calculating whether or not saving money is worth the effort needed to take advantage of the savings. People were asked if they would travel half an hour to save 30% on a 45$ purchase. Then asked if they would travel the same distance to to save 5% on a 400$ purchase.  More people would make the trip to save 30% (10$) than they would to save 5%(20$), even though the 5% is actually more dollars saved. It's a wrong choice because more money has more spending power than less money. The actual dollar amount that you save is the absolute value, not the relative value.

This got me thinking about the goals of meditation. What is the point really, this constant work towards parsing absolute reality from relative reality? Absolute reality is like negative space. It's the background, it's the indivisible is-ness of things, it's the emptiness, it's the 0 on a time line.  It's not something that exists in comparison to something else. Relative reality is all that arises from this background.

In absolute reality there is more "absence" of self-created suffering, because suffering needs things, sensations, thoughts, images to compare to to other sensations, thoughts, images, to stay alive.

Absolute joy, in this conceptual map, is the joy that we feel when we are conscious, and able to sustain our consciousness of absolute reality. But it's not an abstract concept because it's where we make the leap, psychically, to that place. Or perhaps as close to that place as we are able to be in this feeling, thinking, imagining mind of ours.

To dwell, to make a real home, in this absolute reality is to have easy access to absolute joy. And that is, of course, the most precious resource that we can have.  People want money because they want joy.  But money is only a tool, it is not joy in itself. It is not absolute. Were the economy to explode in your country all those absolute dollars in your bank account would be cold comfort.

The economy can't do much about absolute reality.  And so it can't do much about absolute joy.

To achieve enlightenment it to not only see that, but to feel it, to feel it at the core of your being, to make it the ground up which your entire life is built.

It's to know that  happiness is the only absolute value that really counts. And it's to strive to have as much of it for yourself, and for others, as you can.