Workshop: Zen and the Ethics of Joy

There is a saying in the Zen Buddhist tradition: a broken heart is an open heart. It neatly describes the Buddha’s first noble truth, usually rendered as ‘life is suffering’.  To affirm that ‘a broken heart is an open heart’ turns the first noble truth from a metaphysical statement – a given, a dogma even – into a task, an ennobling task. It turns the statement into a form of practice, rather than a mere belief. To be willing to feel the full force of the heart breaking – be it in relation to personal loss or separation, or the ever-present reality of pain on a collective and global scale – is to embark on a path of active acceptance. In Zen we say that this is an act of faith – a trust without an object, a deep trust in life itself. There are equivalents in other traditions: in…