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Mudita: Rejoicing in Others

Introduction

Hello everyone, and welcome to this Sunday morning talk. This morning, I'm going to talk about muditā brahmavihara^[1]. It's a Pali word for abiding in the divine quality of rejoicing or rejoicement.

The word is often translated into English as "sympathetic joy" or "appreciative joy." I think it gets said very nicely with the single English word: "rejoice." Maybe we're a little shy to use the word rejoice in the Vipassanā^[2] world because it feels a little bit too emotional or excited. But in fact, there is nothing wrong with having some strong energy of delight and joy coursing through us—that is rejoicing. Rejoicing also has a quality of clearly recognizing something, appreciating something, and valuing something. Rejoicing is kind of naming it, or feeling a certain surge of happiness very particularly in relationship to it.

There's a wonderful term in Pali—I probably can't pronounce it well today^[3]—that is more commonly translated as to rejoice and to celebrate wonderful things that happen in the world, to celebrate the goodness of others, their generosity, their success, and the good things that happen to people. To really rejoice and celebrate also has a contagious quality to it that is a little bit different than delight, which can be calmer and more personal.

Muditā: The Gift of Joy

The word muditā—which is often translated as sympathetic joy—comes from the verb modati^[4], which dictionary definitions say is to rejoice, to enjoy oneself with, and to be happy. This is one of the four places to abide, because vihara means a place of abiding, to dwell. So the idea is to dwell in the delight^[5] that we're rejoicing, just as we can dwell in compassion, and we can dwell in loving-kindness or goodwill.

Last week, Jozen Gibson^[6] gave a talk on compassion, and it was wonderful in many ways. I was happy you could meet him; he's a wonderful new teacher. He was setting up the theme of compassion during the 7:00 a.m. sittings that week. Today, maybe inspired by him, I'm going to talk about sympathetic joy, because that's the topic for the 7:00 a.m. sittings for the next week. It's kind of a coincidence that this worked out, but for some people, this is a season for joy, this time of year. So it's nice that in Buddhism we can also focus on this particular wonderful quality.

One of the reasons I like "rejoicing" as a translation for muditā^[7] is that in my mind, I connect it to the topic of generosity. In the sense that when we rejoice or celebrate, we are giving joy. It's a gift of joy. It's one thing to rejoice privately in oneself, to feel delight and happiness, but I think of it just like compassion: it is something that is meant for the world, to share. Goodwill is something to share with the world, so this muditā is something we share with the world. It's something we offer, and to give joy gives a very different feeling for what muditā is than just, say, appreciative joy. But to celebrate and offer joy, to expand joy or spread joy in our delight—maybe it's contagious a little bit to feel and to express this.

It is certainly joy, happiness, well-being, and gladness. There are many words for these qualities of well-being in the teachings of the Buddha. There was a real expectation that this was a very important part of the path. It's a wonderful paradox—maybe it doesn't have to be—that the Buddha's path is a path to the ending of suffering, and along that path, there are joy, happiness, delight, and gladness that are stepping stones. It's part of that path. We address suffering in a very honest way in Buddhism, not so that we can suffer better, but so that we can find our way through it. That way through goes through a phase of all kinds of experiences of joy, happiness, and delight. One of the epithets of the Buddha was "the happy one." We have records from ancient times where people commented on the joyfulness of the Buddhist community, the followers of the Buddha. So joy is an important part of all this.

A Crowded Mind Has No Room for Joy

I think it's a nice principle to understand that a crowded mind has very little room for joy. It's very easy to go through a day, and a life, with a mind crowded with concerns, complaints, troubles, challenges, resentments, jealousies, planning, and rumination. It's easy to get caught up in all our concerns and ride them, review them, revisit them, and churn them out in a kind of a whirlpool of concerns that the thinking mind can have. Some of those concerns are certainly valid. But when we're in the whirlpool of thoughts around those concerns, I don't know how useful it is. When the mind becomes crowded with preoccupations, I don't know how useful that is. It's certainly useful to deliberately and intentionally address our challenges, but to be in the whirlpool of them, I don't think is so good.

The most important thing I want to emphasize here is a crowded mind has no room for joy; it has no room for appreciation. If you go into your kitchen like I did this morning to make breakfast, I had a choice: do I think about the different things that I have to do today and my concerns? Do I spend my time filling my mind with thoughts about a talk on appreciation and joy and rejoicing? Or do I make room in my mind to really be there in the experience of making breakfast, and to appreciate the things that are there, to appreciate just the clarity and the moment of this particular thing?

I have a particular bowl that I eat breakfast from. I know the person who made the bowl, and it was a gift that my wife gave me. It's a beautiful bowl; it was made with one of my favorite colors. It was just right there on the counter, kind of sparkling clean. Just picking it up and touching it, I felt this in-the-moment clarity, delight, appreciation, and a pleasure of just this bowl, that I wouldn't have felt if I'd been busy thinking about my concerns of the day and preoccupied. It turns out there are many more opportunities for appreciation, for delight, for beauty, for well-being, for respect, and for gratitude in our lives than I think most people avail themselves of, because of this crowded mind.

One of the things that gets in the way of appreciation and joy is some idea that we're not supposed to experience those things. Some idea that if we're really serious, we would be preoccupied, angry, concerned, and worrying about things. That we're guilty, the world's going up in flames, and the only thing that we're allowed to do is to be anxious and preoccupied and caught up in it. Or feeling guilty that we're not doing enough, just caught in a swirl of thoughts and ideas.

But to stop, to quiet the mind, to pause, and to notice the details of our life that we can appreciate—the particular things that go on and what's here for us, right in front of us and present. To take the time, if you go shopping, to notice the checkout clerk and appreciate the person. You're not going to let the person know you're doing this, but can you take in the person so they are not just taken for granted, as if they might as well be a robot? Really take in that this is a human being with a background, a history, challenges, and joys. Try to get a fuller sense of the person so that there can be some appreciation. After all, the person is doing a service for you.

So a crowded mind has very little room for joy. A mind that is not crowded with thoughts and ideas has a lot of room for a lot of things. Delight, appreciation, gratitude, and joy is what I want to emphasize today and for this week.

The Open Doors of the Heart

There could also be the protest that it's selfish and self-centered to be involved in joy. There's so much suffering in the world, so we should get serious and maybe suffer ourselves because of it, and not really allow ourselves to feel joy. But on the path to liberation, joy is a beautiful path. It is a path that allows us to really feel and experience suffering much more clearly. As the practice deepens, most people who do this meditation practice become much more sensitized, aware, and open to experience the suffering around them, and also to experience our own suffering in a deeper and fuller way.

What I'd like to propose is that the ability to be open to joy and open to delight is exactly the same ability to be open to suffering in a useful way. It's kind of like it's the same door in our heart, and we want to make sure that door can swing open, that the hinges are well-lubricated and it's easy to open. If you learn to do that for joy, then the door is also learning to do it for suffering. If we're learning to do it for suffering, appreciate how that door is opening: there's non-resistance, non-clinging, non-resentment, non-pushing away. It's just openness to it.

Then, as we go through our lives without the mind being crowded, we have that open-door policy in our hearts. When you see a beautiful bowl that was a gift on your kitchen counter, then there's joy, delight, and happiness in that. When you encounter someone who's suffering, then there's compassion for that. When you're walking down the street and you see someone—maybe you don't know them, but the person greets you—your open door offers a greeting back in goodwill and friendliness.

This ability to have the doors open is what allows for these things to go on. Rather than focusing on needing to be delightful, appreciative, grateful, or compassionate, the mindfulness practice has no need of what we're supposed to be. It has no requirement that you're supposed to be loving or compassionate. What mindfulness is about is noticing where we're stuck, where the door doesn't open, and helping us to relax, open, and release, so the doors of the heart can swing open easily at any time. Then we can talk more seriously about joy and rejoicing.

The Antidote to Conceit

The idea of sympathetic joy, or rejoicing in the well-being and success of others—and for oneself as well—cannot be selfish, because selfishness is a symptom of a closed door. Self-preoccupation is a crowded mind, which is conceited. Muditā is actually seen as an antidote to conceit. It's an antidote to selfishness. It's an antidote to self-preoccupation, because the ability to open up the door and appreciate and delight in other people's success is not an easy thing to do.

It's often been said that this third brahmavihara, sympathetic joy, is the hardest one for people to experience. It seems like it's easy to feel resentful of other people's success, or be jealous and envious of them, or to feel somehow that their success says something about ourselves: "If they're being successful, well, I'm not, and therefore I must be lousy." So it becomes a self-concern again—back to conceit, back to self-preoccupation, back to that crowded whirlpool of thoughts. "Poor me, I'm not really up to it. They're doing really well and I've been left behind." It's so easy to get caught up in self-concern around all this, or ideas that they don't deserve it.

I remember when I was in Burma meditating, there was a group of Americans meditating there. There was one man that showed up the same day as I did, and we had a little bit of conversation very occasionally. Many months into it, there was a woman who had some really deep realization experience—something that people go meditate to experience and to have happen. Something to celebrate. But when this person I knew heard that this woman had this experience, he got upset. He said, "No, it can't be. I knew her back in the United States, and there's no way that she could have done that." He was all upset and angry, resisting the very idea of it, rather than celebrating her good fortune, appreciating it, and rejoicing, "Wow! This is so great. She came here for this and she got what she wanted."

Finding Enduring Happiness

This thing about the doors of the heart being able to open is a very important principle. Many spiritual traditions, not just Buddhism, point out that it's easy to pursue happiness the wrong way. Actively trying to manufacture happiness doesn't really work very well. Nor does putting together the pieces in our life that will make us happy: the right relationship, the right job, the right home, the right anything—"then I'll be happy."

Sometimes people confuse pleasure with happiness. Pleasure is pleasurable, but it often can come along with disappointment, discomfort, and suffering because pleasure is often temporary. Unless the object that's bringing pleasure continues, we'll lose the pleasure, and then we don't have that piece of delight or energy that we were holding on to. Too much focus on pleasure is an alienation from something deep in ourselves, some deeper sense of well-being, something that's more enduring. This is what spirituality is often looking for: a more enduring, deeper feeling of well-being, of happiness and joy that doesn't so much depend on what's going on in the world around us. The conditions of life don't have to be just right so we can be happy, but we have this wellspring of happiness that can be there even if the conditions of life around us are not going so well.

Rather than pursuing happiness directly, there's a movement towards opening the doors, learning this process of not clinging, not holding on, not resisting, not being assertive, grabbing on, or wanting. Being available. Being available when we show up at the kitchen counter for the bowl that's there. Being available as we eat our breakfast to appreciate, "This is pretty special, this food and how it got to us and what we're doing." To have room and openness to notice when someone is celebrating, when someone has success and happiness. Or to notice the things about other people that can be appreciated—the things that take a little bit of time to study, look at, and be present for.

If we're in the whirlpool of thoughts and concerns, we're not really able to take in another person fully. But if we take in another person more fully and enough so we start appreciating people, maybe we can be grateful for people. Or we can start feeling some delight and joy in people. Perhaps even we can rejoice in others just because we know them, just because they are who they are, in addition to whatever success they have.

Rejoicing in the Success of Others

Traditionally, the idea of rejoicing in the good fortune of others is not only for spiritual success—that somehow they become happier, more open, and more loving—but also for any kind of healthy, dharmic^[8] success. Dharmic meaning that it doesn't cause any harm to anybody. It could be that they receive gifts or resources that maybe you don't receive. But rather than feeling like, "Oh, why did they get that and I don't get it? They won and I didn't win," celebrate their winning. Rather than suffering over the loss, think, "Wow, they won! Isn't that fantastic? I happen to lose the race, but how wonderful that they won."

There's a wonderful little teaching that when the sun sets for you, it's rising for someone else. When it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere. If you're playing a game that's about winning, if you lose, guess what? Someone else has won. Rather than looking at everything only from the point of view of "me, myself, and mine"—the impact for me, how it is for me, my comfort, my well-being, my success, and my status—have the doors open. A mind not crowded with self-concern is available to really appreciate and delight in how it is for other people.

Paradoxically, doing this is a phenomenal vehicle for your own happiness. It turns out that doing something like this can bring more happiness than if you celebrated your own win. If you won the game, there is a kind of joy or happiness that comes with winning. But you might look next time you win something or get the benefit from something at the expense of someone else—like they lost the game. I believe there's a more lasting, deeper, more satisfying sense of well-being that you'll benefit from if you really appreciate, rejoice, and celebrate their win. Your loss is maybe incidental; you don't have to be so concerned about whether or not you lost, what it means, or how people see you. Play the game well, but then rejoice in how someone else wins. I suspect that you'll feel better, more at ease, and it will be more enduring to celebrate that win in someone else than to celebrate your own win.

Conclusion

It's a fascinating, wonderful, and profound way to live a life: to have your doors well-lubricated, well able to open, to be at ease, to not cling, and to walk through the world. And then have the heart respond with friendliness when friendliness is called on, compassion when compassion is called on, and rejoicing when rejoicing is called on.

Don't shortchange yourself. Allow yourself to rejoice more often. Allow yourself to have this sympathetic joy, this appreciative joy. Let go more so that you can rejoice, appreciate, and delight in the good fortune of others, in the goodness of others, the beauty of others, the wonderfulness of all beings. May your rejoicing be your gift to the world, the gift of joy that helps other people feel more at ease, safe, and happy, so it's easier for other people to also feel a settled joy, happiness, and well-being.

May all beings be happy, and may we contribute to that happening. Thank you.