Psalms 31:7 Meaning I Will Be Glad and Rejoice

Dukkha: Suffering Dukkha is the pressure that runs through any life. Affliction arrives here in the plural, adversities, one narrowing after another: strength failing, neighbors crossing the street to avoid a man they once knew. Saying it out loud is already movement, since trouble kept hidden works like a splinter under the skin, while trouble looked at can start to close.

Saraṇa: Refuge Saraṇa is the shelter a person turns toward. This song opens by running to the Lord as a rock and a fortress, and the gladness that comes seven lines later is still spoken from inside that shelter. Refuge works like a roof in a storm: the rain keeps falling, and you are no longer standing in it.

Mettā: Loving kindness Mettā is the wish that a being be well. The loving kindness rejoiced in here arrives steady and unearned, the same warmth held toward someone whose plans have come apart and whose friends have drawn back. Training in it starts by turning that wish toward oneself, which is exactly the discovery of a man in trouble who finds he is still cared for.

Buddhānussati: Recollection of the awakened one Buddhānussati is calling to mind the qualities of one worth trusting. Soldiers afraid on open ground were told to bring their teacher to mind, and the fear standing their hair on end would settle. The same motion runs through "you have known my soul in adversities": hemmed in on all sides, he turns his attention to a kindness that has already seen him, and his chest loosens.

Pīti: Joy Pīti is the gladness that lifts the body. "I will be glad and rejoice" comes while the adversities are still in the present tense, before any of it has lifted. Joy of this kind follows where attention rests rather than how the circumstances have turned out, the way a warm room can be felt through the window before you have reached the door.