“Contentment is one of the key cornerstones of joy.”
~Christine Feldman
“How wonderful you are in your being.
I delight that you are here.
I take joy in your good fortune.
May your happiness continue.”
~16th C. Singhalese blessing
“May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.”
~ John O’Donohue
Dear Friends,
Joy at the success and good fortune of others is an inconstant thing. It might be easy for us to be happy for a friend’s child who received the football scholarship when we have no school tuition to pay, but if I am struggling to send my children school and I don’t have a job that pays well while my relative buys a vacation home, feeling some joy at their good fortune is harder and sometimes unavailable.
This ability to feel joy at the success of others is a very old attribute. It is called mudita in Pali and comes through the Vedic tradition that preceded the Buddha. It is the third brahmavihara. The name evokes Brahma, the exalted god who contains only love. Vihara means abode or dwelling. The brahmaviharas are the best homes or highest dwelling places of the heart and mind. They are also called the immeasurable as the Buddha directed the monastics to boundlessly radiate these qualities to all beings without discrimination. The four qualities are part of our birthright; they are not foreign to us but may be occluded by the three poisons of coveting, ill will, and wrong understanding. We may need some reminders that these qualities are waiting and available for us to develop.
The first quality is metta (maître/Sanskrit) which is universal friendliness, the second is karuna, compassion which includes the ability to remove suffering, and the third, mudita, is joy at other’s good fortune, and lastly upekka, equanimity or solidity. The least understood and least popular of these virtues is the third, mudita.
Pema Chodron, an American nun in the Shambala tradition says that mudita is the hardest brahmavihara to practice. In the face of overwhelming success of her friends she candidly wishes they would not “shine so brightly.” Being in the shadow of someone else’s success can test our commitment to the quality of our consciousness. It’s hard to be happy for others who seem to have so much more when we don’t have our basic needs met. And even when we do have our needs met, when we hear about someone else getting something we would like, it stirs the fire of envy and jealousy.
There are a few ways to look at this, one is that when there is contraction of the heart and smallness at another’s happiness it is because we mistakenly believe that there is a finite amount of happiness and if someone else has it—that’s the happiness we won’t have. We take their success personally. I am unbothered by the success of others in areas I have no interest in. Folks can become marathon runners or archeologist who gain fame and recognition without arousing any envy in me, but when they do something that edges into my territory—their child gets into the school my child was rejected from or they get the job I applied for—the reaction is pain, not happiness because I believe that the thing out there is actually mine and the success rightfully belongs to me.
Buddhist scholar and translator Bhikkhu Bhodi writes “’ Envy arises because we identify things as ‘I,’ because we perpetually seek to establish a personal identity for ourselves internally and to project that identity outward for others to recognize and accept.’” The remedy for this type of egoic drive is the understanding of non-self, and in the case of jealousy and envy, it is difficult not to be a self–and an especially cranky one.
The Buddha tells us that when we notice our thought taking us to an unhappy place, we should stop thinking those thoughts. “If, as one pursues a certain type of idea cognizable by the intellect, unskillful mental qualities increase, and skillful mental qualities decline, that sort of idea cognizable by the intellect is not to be pursued.” (DN 21). But how do we actually do this not pursuing? How do we drop the notion that success, prosperity, and accolades should belong to me?
This negative emotion of ill will and craving is a signal. Jealousy is information that we have left our own experience and are comparing ourselves with someone else. Founder of Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg said, “If you want to make life miserable for yourself, compare yourself to other people.” He gives the salient example of comparing your lifetime achievements to Mozart’s at age 12. We do not tend to rejoice for others when they are too fabulous or when we feel we are not enough.
There’s the Sanskrit word, Santoshta which means contentment. Thich Nhat Hanh translates this as “I have enough.” It is also the reminder that I am enough as I am. When we can dwell in the beauty of contentment with our own goodness and our gifts, we do not need to turn our eyes to the world for validation of our worth. We can begin by offering ourselves loving kindness in the form of metta, compassionate touch, or holding ourselves with empathy and understanding. I find the phrases, “May I know my worth,” and “May I delight in my goodness,” remind me what I do have instead of what I am lacking. When we can fill ourselves up with joy in our own lives, we are less likely to be swept away by jealousy and desire for what others have—no matter how good it looks from the outside.
Thich Nhat Hahn asks, “How can we feel joy for another person when we do not feel joy for ourselves?” The lack of joy for another can alert us that our own joy reserve is running low. A practice for creating more joy in our lives is simply to train ourselves to notice the good and to stop. Be fully present for a sunset, the scent of lilacs at night, a kind word or a smile from a friend. Wherever we find small joys we can train ourselves to pay attention to these everyday moments of happiness. We can actively note how our body feels when we experience joy and happiness, what our senses register. We can bathe in joy instead of dismissing it in search of new obstacles to our happiness. When we make time for joy, it accrues in our life. Noticing the good, we tune to the richness we have overlooked. Joy comes in small drops, filling us up with contentment that spills over and offers itself to others—even those who get what we did not.
May we all trust our light,
Celia
