On joyously seeing a long absent friend, permeate this joy.
- The friend is not the cause of the joy — the friend is a situation that lets what was already inside you surface. This holds for all emotions: anger, sadness, happiness. Others are occasions, not sources; whatever happens, happens to you.
- Instruction: the moment joy arises, immediately move attention from the external trigger (the friend) to the inner feeling. Let the friend recede to the periphery; you stay centered in the joy. Then ‘permeate’ — do not merely observe: merge into the feeling and let it spread through the whole body.
- Works for negative emotions too: when anger or sadness arises, center on the emotion itself (not the person who sparked it) and let awareness fill it. The person is peripheral; the wound is yours.
- The diagnostic criterion: if awareness deepens and expands an emotion, it is positive/real (virtue); if awareness dissolves it, it is negative/unreal (sin). ‘That which cannot remain in awareness is sin; that which grows in awareness is virtue.’ An inner realization, not a social code.
- Darkness disappears when light enters — not because darkness was real, but because it was only the absence of light. Hatred, anger, violence dissolve in awareness. Love, joy, ecstasy are revealed by awareness, as the books and walls are revealed when the lamp is lit.