Last night I had the opportunity to watch "The Bucket List" with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.
It is a melodramatic dark
comedy about two men who share in common their impending deaths, as well as their impending lives. It is also a film that reminds us to be
grateful for every moment, and to squeeze every moment dry --- for the right reasons.
At one point in the film the question of joy arises. Morgan Freeman's character tells a story of how the ancient Egyptians would ask two questions of the dying as a litmus test for whether or not they would enter into a Blessed Realm upon their death. The first of these questions was, "Have you found joy in your life?", and the second was, "Has your life brought joy to others?".
The first of these questions is rather provocative, because we tend not to think in terms of joy, but, rather, happiness. Happiness is fleeting because it depends upon momentary pleasure; it is, then, about attachment. Joy, however, is more tangible in that it is less attached to experience than it is about the experience of emotion and feeling -- it is about what we hold inside, rather than what we go outside to find. Joy is both more pervasive and enduring than happiness, as it is associated with a sensibility of right action and sense of place.
The second of these questions is more evocative in that it calls into question a sense of our own character; it is not about the doing, but, rather, the being. It does not ask us if we have brought joy to the lives of others --- it asks us has our life brought joy to others? In other words, it asks not what we have done for or to our fellows; it questions the influence of our simple presence.
I suppose the point of this post, and how I came to see it as ancillary to our previous consideration of joy and pain as a crucible for the spirit, is that it provokes us into thinking about how our "going in" goes out.
The first question addresses, for those of us who pursue this course, the most important aspect of our lives --- have we effectively shed the shackles of our material existence and come to a place of balance between that existence and our spiritual selves.
The second question falls within the purview of Integral Psychology, and addresses how the inward journey and the pursuit of joy have affected the people around us (ethnocentricity) and the world at large (geo-centricity). It does this, however, in a way that is devoid of ego. And that is the most provocative piece of all.
The whole thing begs the question of a spiritual materialism -- something that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche addressed on a regular basis -- and what is at the core of both karma yoga and bhakti yoga. How do we get the ego out of the way of getting rid of the ego? Not an easy question to answer --- but, a question that must be roundly considered in the pursuit of a spiritual selfhood.
So, have you found joy in your life? And, has your life, your simple presence, brought joy to those around you? Food for thought on a cold and blustery New England morning by the seashore.
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PS -- the title of the film, "The Bucket List", comes from an exercise not unlike the exercise of the Last Lecture. It asks us to create a list of all the things that we wish to do in our lives before we "kick the bucket".
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