(Authentic) Smiling (Practice)

On Thursday January 6th, 2022 I held an event concurrently on Insight Timer Live and the Wisdom app called “(Authentic) Smiling (Practice)” with the description:

Revel in the power of real life smiles discussed virtually (for 15 minutes or longer perhaps). I invite participants to share smiles and experiences as I relate a somewhat brief formal practice of smiling on near daily walks a couple of years ago.

My original notes are more or less as follows:

Experimental experience

• disclaimer: some of this is not for all
• Andrea Fella dharma talk years ago
• if winter now file away
• different now
• use for future reference and/or reflection on the past
• visited places where masks seldom worn to consistent and persistent
• places around here where no one wears, recommended and required and these change from time to time
• public spaces where masks aren’t required
• lots of joy and wellbeing at that point in practice
• pushing limits
• my practice of brute force amping up of smiling at everybody, or saying hi to everybody. Sometime not in alignment with mood, circumstances, environment
• intense. deliberately drawing attention to one’s self to solicit a response — difficult for introvert and avoidant types
• responses: friendly, smiles back, stop and chat, rejections, subtle hostility, indifference, etc.
• opposite and same sex — attractions and nodding
• then using discernment of who to smilie to

(Lack of) authenticity when smiling

• authentic sending and receiving — at least observed in others or with pets/animals, children
• perceptions of fake and forced vs authentic from me and others. doubt
• on fence about “fake it until you make it”
• miss America using vaseline on teeth
• genuine niceness — which might be at various levels — and kindness
• from the head or heart?

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I don’t know karate, but I know craaaazy

From “The Payback” by James Brown

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Ideas for practice

• how much real danger vs negativity bias around certain things that happened around unknowns
• imagine this practice and compare to reality
• Tara Brach — inner smile, heart, hips, etc.
• strangers — on walks, public transport, restaurants, grocery stores, zoom, all and select
• receiving practice: who would and wouldn’t you want to simile at you? How would you take it? What about getting unexpected smiles?
• emotions, thoughts, state of mind and felt bodily experience in self and others before, during, after and for how long — their durations o
• warmth, joy, rejection, suspicion, judgement, what do they want, how’s there life, why can’t I smile back, human kindness, suffering and compassion
• notice ups and downs of responses and their durations before next smile
• discerning who to smile too: confidence, conviction, invite allowance, make resolve for smiling to occur naturally more often
• feeling smile related parts of body

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Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)

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Extras not on audio:

“Watching all these near death experience interviews has started to affect me. So many of these people talk about loving light from a source that seems to keep encouraging them to love themselves and others (everybody has their own version of that). The qualities and characteristics of what I use to do my job in helping people have all become more magnified since I’ve been trying to see where it is in my own life. So I’ve been looking at random people and asking myself how I could love that person. Or smiling at people I normally wouldn’t has been interesting. I’m trying to get to a point where I can feel the same way about random people as I do about animals. That’s been really interesting dissecting why that is and finding some interesting connections between honesty and forgiveness. And how all this leads to self-assuredness, groundedness and not taking things personally. Thought I would share my shift in perspective. It’s sort of what we’ve always known but just maybe experiencing/feeling it more profoundly or in a different way? Seems sort of hokey but it’s happening. The real challenge are people that are actively aggressive and/or arrogant/abusive…”

text from a friend

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Smiling in Abhidhamma:

26. Hasituppada is a citta peculiar to Arahats. Smiling is caused by a pleasurable feeling. There are thirteen classes of consciousness by which one may smile according to the type of the person. An ordinary worldling (puthujjana) may laugh with either one of the four types of cittas rooted in attachment, accompanied by pleasure, or one of the four kusala cittas, accompanied by pleasure.

Sotapannas, Sakadagamis, and Anagamis may smile with one of the two akusala cittas, disconnected with false view, accompanied by pleasure, or with one of the four kusala cittas.

Arahats and Pacceka Buddhas may smile with one of the four sobhana kiriya cittas or hasituppada.

Samma Sambuddhas smile with one of the two sobhana kiriya cittas, accompanied by wisdom and pleasure.

There is nothing but mere mirth in the hasituppada consciousness.

The Compendium of Philosophy states: “There are six classes of laughter recognized in Buddhist works: (1) sita: – a smile manifesting itself in expression and countenance; (2) hasita: – a smile consisting in the slight movements of the lips just enough to reveal the tips of the teeth; (3) vihasita: – laughter giving out a light sound; (4) upahasita: – laughter accompanied by the movement of the head, shoulders, and arms; (5) apahasita: – laughter accompanied by the shedding of tears; and (6) atihasita: – an outburst of laughter accompanied by the forward and backward movements of the entire body from head to foot. Laughter is thus a form of bodily expression (kaya-viññatti), which may or may not be accompanied by vocal expression (vaci-viññatti). Of these, the first two classes are indulged in by cultured persons, the next two by the average man, and the last two by the lower classes of being.

Note 26 referencing “(18) Smile-producing consciousness, accompanied by pleasure” from 18 Types Of Rootless Consciousness (Functional Consciousness without Roots) in CHAPTER I — DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Citta-sangaha-vibhago) of “A Manual of Abhidhamma” by Narada Maha Thera https://www.budsas.org/ebud/abhisgho/abhis01.htm

Smiling consciousness cannot arise without a body. Buddhas and Pacceka Buddhas who experience such classes of consciousness are not born outside the human plane.

Note 103 in
CHAPTER III – MISCELLANEOUS SECTION of A Manual of Abhidhamma” by Narada Maha Thera https://www.budsas.org/ebud/abhisgho/abhis03.htm

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The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:

Introduction

easiest way

[Music]

homeless and welcome this is josh dipple

from integrating presence

and today’s event i’ve taught entitled

authentic smiling practice

and the description is

revel in the power of real life smiles

discussed virtually for 15 minutes or

longer perhaps

i invite participants to share smiles

experiences

as i relate to somewhat brief formal

practice of smiling on near daily walks

a couple years ago

so first off you know my standard

disclaimer um the things i’m going to

mention here

um

some or maybe even all of this isn’t

right for everybody so you have to use

your own discernment you can use this as

a reference point for your own

consideration of things

that may occur to you to try or things

you’ve heard other teachers talk about

so i’ll be talking about my experience

like i said

and then

authenticity part of this

and then i’ll be giving some practice

ideas too

so i first heard i was inspired about

this or heard about this

oh it’s been several years ago and i

couldn’t find the talk that i heard it

by from a quick search but it was andrea

fella it’s the name of the teacher who

did this years ago and she was just

talking about her experiences of

smiling in everyday life and breaking it

down from a dharma perspective

so if it’s winter now and where you live

you might want to file this file this

away for a different time and you know

kind of the most obvious thing around

this um maybe for some this time we’re

in is that smiling is different now if

you go out in public

so you can use this for future reference

or reflections on the past if can’t

practice this in everyday life as much

right now so i visited places

that ran the gamut from

people that aren’t wearing masks hardly

at all during this whole entire thing

kind of more in rural areas in missouri

maybe in other places too where there’s

constant and persistent wearing of mass

just about pretty much everywhere and

you know there’s places just around this

metropolitan area of st louis where it

varies too from nowhere wearing a mask

to

if it’s recommended and required so

those two things are slightly different

and these change from time to time even

within places

and around certain people so well one

thing you can do though is if you’re

still in public spaces like i did this

on my walks

a lot of public spaces obviously don’t

have mask requirements from my own

Personal Experience

personal experience this is a few years

ago before all this started and i always

experienced a lot of joy and well-being

at this part in my practice so this

really

was it was kind of inspiring for me and

there was a desire and encouragement to

do this and along with my

tendency to push limits um so kind of

testing things

doing experiments in in public

you know still following rules and walls

and whatnot

and

so what i would do is i would just

part of it anyway was just a brute force

amping up of smiling at everybody so i

would go on daily walks would walk

around a park which is probably about

it’s a block but it encompasses

other blocks around it oh i don’t know

maybe

five ten blocks

took about a half an hour to walk around

and you did this during a time when it

wasn’t too busy or too light and it was

just starting with this intent

constantly bringing to mind i’m going to

smile at everybody i meet whether

whether they look like they just had the

worst day ever or they want to sit and

tell you their life story for hours and

hours

and so right away

the responses i get you can imagine

right

sometimes it wasn’t in alignment with my

mood more than likely it was i was in a

pretty decent state starting off so

where my mood was in alignment with

smiling but you know sometimes the

circumstances and environment really

didn’t call for this but i went ahead

with it anyways an experiment

part of it was smiling at everybody and

there was another portion when i would

just say hi or hello or greet everyone

that walked by

and okay this was

this is intense especially for someone

who’s pretty much been an introvert most

of their lives and what you’re doing is

you’re deliberately drawing attention

to yourself to solicit a response right

so this is really interesting for me

anyway and then also it’s it’s difficult

for avoidant types too right if you’re

got a tendency to avoid things

just in personality or in general in

life it can be

a challenge as well

to do something like this

so the responses i got were everything

from friendly smiles back

people some people would even stop and

chat for a little bit

but then there was also rejections kind

of subtle hostility

and a lot of indifference you know

that’s kind of commonplace in life is

indifferent that’s okay

and then noticing just with the opposite

and same sex so

it was interesting to smile at someone

we’re attracted to right and uh and then

maybe that intensity level was higher

when we got a smile or when i got a

smile back or whoever’s practicing

practicing this maybe it’s you get a

higher we get a higher

uh level of

i don’t know oxytocin boost or

the rejection’s higher when we feel

attracted to someone’s smile and it’s

kind of indifference or even

rejection or whatnot

and then with the the with the same sex

it was like okay you’re smiling too i’m

smiling to a guy

that i’ve never met before you know it’s

really weird so what i would do at that

point would be like kind of give a nod

with a smile not the smile and then this

eventually turned into

you know getting these

responses

so much intense so

there would be sometimes when it was

still kind of reeling from the responses

that i got from the smile and then

somebody would come up right away and

then i would have to kind of

shelve that response or reaction or what

was processing and then just put that

aside real quick and then smile again to

the next person and sometimes it just

kept building and building but other

times there were stretches when i would

walk by and you know nothing would

happen so the response i got from the

other person from me smiling at them it

dissipated so it wasn’t as intense

so it depended on the frequency of

people stopping by

and so eventually this turned into using

discernment and this is the wiser thing

if somebody’s looking like they’re down

on their luck and having a horrible day

sometimes smiling at them can actually

help but other times they could just

make it worse or you can have somebody

that’s completely stoic it’s going to be

a you know flat line response pretty

much no matter what it’s going to be

hard to get

some kind of benefit to them or benefit

back from them with smiling so sometimes

it might not be worth the energy to

bother them so you can kind of intuit

when to smile who to smile to under what

circumstances that that’s the the wiser

thing that came out of this for me

Authenticity

okay so now the authenticity part

of sending and receiving

this notion of authenticity when i’m

going into this practice formally it’s

not really as authentic as it really

could be

it doesn’t really apply to that as much

i wouldn’t think

now

many of us i’m guessing can

discern

when something’s authentic and when it’s

not

maybe some of us would like to be more

authentic than we are right now

but we’ve all pretty much

can discern when something’s authentic

or not right and at least if we haven’t

we can discern it in others

if we can’t really feel like we’re being

authentic then we could

we know it when we see it right and then

even if you think you can’t we can look

at

interactions with small children and

pets

pets aren’t really gonna lie for the

kind of love they draw forth and give it

seems pretty authentic

now

you get perceptions

of like i was saying earlier fake

enforced authenticity i mean sorry fake

and for forced

versus authentic

either from myself or others

this is an interesting thing too um

how much was i reading into

what’s really fake and forced and what’s

really authentic for me and others

that brought up a lot of doubt are they

real are they being authentic or is this

the level of authenticity that they have

access to in this moment

it’s probably

the wiser thing i picked up on

some people are just

fake all the time some people are fake

fake enforced under certain

circumstances

certain conditions and causes

so it’s really hard to

challenging for me to

determine a lot of times you know the

level of authenticity

depending on so many different things

and so

doubt would creep in a little bit on

that when i didn’t realize that there’s

so much going into authenticity or can

and there’s different gradations of it

so i’m kind of on the fence about this

fake it tell you make it thing i can see

it both sides

where if you don’t try it at all you

know how are you going to

change or

become more authentic

on the other hand it’s just like well

does more fakery

encourage support

condition and bring about more uh fakery

i don’t know i can see it both ways

depending on certain things you know

even in these beauty pageants or i don’t

know if they’re called beauty pageants

anymore like miss america i don’t know

Niceness

if it’s still the same way but years ago

i heard these stories where they put

vaseline on their teeth so that they

could smile either easier right

and this goes into

also genuine niceness at various levels

and kindness so

i think we all pretty much know what

kindness means it’s just kind of like

dignity giving dignity honor and respect

this is basic human kindness which i

feel is kind of the only rule in life

but when we get into niceness to me if

if that’s being genuine that’s just

icing on the cake of kindness but then

we have this inverted kind of niceness

like

okay kind of a condescending i’m just

going to be polite but i don’t really

mean it

really kind of insidious reversal

inversion thing

to the point where people get turned off

by niceness because of that but i would

say you can tell if it’s authentic and

genuine or not right

okay and then another big thing

if you’re smiling and people is that

coming from the head or the heart

usually this is it doesn’t come from the

head unless you’re

kind of like the practice i was talking

about where it’s kind of a it’s a formal

more of a formal experiment or practice

where you just have to do it all the

time just to see what it is but usually

when we smile in everyday life it comes

from the heart right

okay so now i guess i’ll transition into

ideas for practice

Practice

first off when we’re considering

something like this people

maybe get turned off by something like

that it’s totally understandable i would

say

how much of this

actually comes from real danger

when we’re considering not doing

something like this

how much real danger is involved how

much real danger can be sensed

uh versus how much of this is negativity

bias

around certain things that have happened

to us

in the past

where unknowns have been

come into play so usually when

something’s unknown

then

we don’t have any reference point for

anything and then we we look at oh these

because of negativity bias we these

certain things negat negatively

dangerous things have happened to me in

the past when there’s been unknowns

around and so we don’t focus on the good

things that have come around unknowns

too

but then also you know we can sense into

real danger sometimes so we can imagine

this practice if we haven’t done before

and then we can compare it to reality so

we can kind of think about what

might this be like

and just use our imagination to

experience results but then

we can use that as a reference point for

the actual reality of what happens when

we do this

tara brock is a kind of a famous

psychologist and dharma teacher and she

talks about this inner smile so this is

kind of a formal practice you can do in

sitting imagine imaginary smile from the

heart from the hips in the head and you

can just notice the effect on that areas

of this for practice are

strangers you can do it on walks public

transportation maybe even restaurants

where you sit down

grocery stores maybe even zoom

you can mix and match these

but we can do a receiving practice too

so the questions

who would and wouldn’t you want to smile

at and who wouldn’t wouldn’t you want to

smile at you

and how would you take this and so what

about getting unexpected smiles

and then of course we can notice

smiling either to others or receiving

our emotions

the thoughts

the state of mind and the felt bodily

experience

in ourselves and others

before during and after

smiling or receiving a smile whatever

that experience is kind of like how long

does it last how long does it stick

around

so some of the things that i experienced

is

kind of a warmth and a joy

but also like i said rejection suspicion

judgment or thinking maybe people are

thinking well what do they want why are

they smiling at me

like

certain things like maybe they’re

thinking or i’m thinking well why can’t

i smile back why can’t they smile back

uh human kindness you know maybe some

people will reflect on human kindness

then of course suffering and compassion

so we see responses from people

that will elicit even more kindness or

compassion for what they’re going

through if they kind of scowl or ignore

or reject or whatever so that can be

compassion for ourselves and them too

and for everybody who’s had that

experience

we can notice the ups and downs

of responses in their durations before

the next smile

i’ve mentioned that before just kind of

notice all these ups and downs of what

happens and how long they last

when discerning who to smile to

maybe we don’t have to go to the extreme

i mentioned about smiling to everybody

but can we have the confidence and

conviction

and invite allowance

and make a resolve for smiling to occur

naturally naturally more often

and then of course there’s

can do this in a formal sitting practice

too it’s actually just feeling the

smile-related parts of the body so into

the muscles around the jaw

maybe there’s

a relaxation or

tenseness around the muscles of the eye

lips

cheeks sometimes the forehead gets going

inside the jaw muscles here too

and i appreciate you all being here and

may you be blessed with the lovely

smiling uplifting joyful day evening

afternoon good night wherever you may be