Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today and tomorrow, I’ll turn to DaRa’s talk on Sympathetic Joy, Mudita<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mudita<\/em> is a way of cultivating joy. It’s sometimes translated as sympathetic joy, appreciative joy, altruistic joy, empathetic joy. It’s a joy that arises when we can resonate with someone’s happiness and success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s a little story that wakes up this quality of joy in me. Before my dog Savanna came to live with me, she lived with a family in the neighborhood. If I would be out walking Reece and he saw Savanna, he would stop mid-track and direct us to go visit Savanna. As we got closer, his tail would wag, and he would zoom from one end of the leash to another. Even after living together now for many years, there still are times when Savanna goes out ahead with my mom and Reece and I come out a bit later. When he spots Savanna, he still wags and zooms. The delight and happiness he expresses fills my heart with joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recalling the interrelated nature of these “iterations of love,” as DaRa called them – metta<\/em>\/goodwill is the foundation. When metta<\/em> meets suffering, compassion is the natural response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When metta<\/em> turns towards what is going well, mudita<\/em> is the natural response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is easy for me to feel this quality of appreciative joy when it comes to dogs or animals in nature.\u00a0When it comes to other people, that’s not always the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that long ago, I heard that someone in Saskatoon won a big lottery jackpot. There was a brief flicker that ran across the mind – geez, what about me – which is really quite ridiculous because I haven’t bought a lotto ticket in a long time… It was really subtle, but there it was – a bit of envy or greed arising out of some craving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is craving that gives rise to jealousy, envy, covetousness, avarice, and greed, in all of its manifestations. Here it is that mudita<\/em>, when practiced and developed, becomes a sublime and boundless state of mind, to be dwelt in as a corrective characteristic for their removal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The opposite of appreciative joy is envy – That’s pretty obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DaRa says the “near enemy” is exuberance. I’ve heard other teachers call this giddiness or exhilaration. It’s a place we’re no longer present with the joy but getting lost in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This appreciative joy is not bereft of discernment. If a person is joyful from some unskillful action that causes harm to themselves or others, metta or compassion may be the better response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as DaRa reminds us: “if people are genuinely happy in their choice of action or lifestyle, we don’t need to impose our standards. If they’re not harming themselves, if they’re not harming others, can we be generous enough to feel joy for them?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a practice today, I invite you to notice the joy others are experiencing, and see how that lands for you. Can you find joy in there joy? Let me know what you discover!<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Dalai Lama apparently said, if we can find joy in others’ joy, we increase our odds of feeling joy by several billion. May it be so!<\/p>\n\n\n\n With joyful wishes, Dear Friends, Today and tomorrow, I’ll turn to DaRa’s talk on Sympathetic Joy, Mudita. Mudita is a way of cultivating joy. It’s sometimes translated as sympathetic joy, appreciative joy, altruistic joy, empathetic joy. It’s a joy that arises when we can resonate with someone’s happiness and success. Here’s a little story that wakes up this quality of joy\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[302],"tags":[237,84,144],"class_list":["post-1331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2022","tag-dara-williams","tag-joy","tag-mudita"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1332,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1331\/revisions\/1332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Andrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"