Keeping company with contentment

American author and teacher Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in India and elsewhere, and established meditation centres in the US.

I recently came across an interesting article by Jack Kornfield, an American author and teacher. Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in India and elsewhere, and established meditation centres in the US. Kornfield is the author of several books that, no doubt, make for serious reading, but the passage I mentioned at the start is humorous. 

Gently parodying Rudyard Kipling’s idealistic poem If, Kornfield writes: ‘If you can sit quietly after difficult news; if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm; if you can see your neighbours travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy; if you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate; if you can fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill; if you can always find contentment just where you are; you are probably a dog.’ 

The last part is unexpected, and we smile as the writer intends us to do. Actually, though, Kornfield makes an important point, even in this light-hearted piece of prose, as he does in his philosophical discourses. In the opening lines, he seems to advocate a stoic approach to life, wherein one accepts whatever comes one’s way with commendable composure. Realising, perhaps, that most human beings are incapable of such extraordinary equanimity, he goes on to speak of something within our reach: a state of serene satisfaction.

Not that it comes easily to us. I recall my birthdays in decades past; they were marked by craving rather than contentment. I wanted everything that I saw in the stores, and no matter what I received, there was always a bigger doll or finer dress. Such acquisitiveness is not the prerogative of children or, for that matter, confined to a special season. Higher grades at school, grander jobs, faster promotions and more luxurious lifestyles are just a few of our regular, recurrent desires. 

In the Bible, we find a letter addressed to a young man from his spiritual mentor. ‘Godliness with contentment is great gain,’ writes St Paul. He then urges Timothy to be satisfied with ‘food and clothing’. That may sound extreme, and not all of us may be inclined to lead quite so frugal an existence. We would certainly benefit, however, from keeping company with contentment.