Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With wise effort, we want to abandon unhelpful states and cultivate helpful ones. There are many ways to cultivate these beneficial states, including the Brahma Vihara practices of metta (kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (appreciative joy), and upekkha (equanimity). Today, we’ll focus on mudita!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mudita is the capacity to feel happiness or gladness, to delight in someone’s good fortune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jill Shepherd gives a good example to distinguish between metta and mudita. If you’re a dog person like me, and you see a friendly dog, you might notice a little bit of warmth – that’s metta. If you think of a dog who is happily on a car ride – watching the world go by with a big smile – you might notice a sense of delight for that dog’s delight. That’s mudita! *<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Jill describes in her talk, when it comes to us humans, our society often devalues joy. And there is a lot of tough stuff going on in the world, such that we might question if it’s even possible to cultivate joy. But as Jill says, “in terms of my own practice, I’ve come to appreciate that it’s precisely because there’s so much suffering in the world, that I’ve needed to make the effort to turn towards non-suffering, towards gladness or joy, in order to restore myself so that I can face into life’s challenges with greater resilience and strength and skill. … The capacity to cultivate appreciative joy is the antidote to sorrow.” (Right Effort and Mudita or appreciative joy https:\/\/www.dharmaseed.org\/talks\/62247\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n A gratitude practice can also cultivate this sense resourcing. And gratitude shared is a condition for mudita: I have a dharma buddy who sends me daily gratitudes, and I have such happiness for my friend every time I get a text!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I invite you to post a gratitude in the comments below, and come back later to check on the comments to cultivate a little extra mudita today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With appreciation and good wishes, * If you’re looking for a little dog-mudita, here’s a heart-warming story shared by We Rate Dogs this past December: Dear Friends, With wise effort, we want to abandon unhelpful states and cultivate helpful ones. There are many ways to cultivate these beneficial states, including the Brahma Vihara practices of metta (kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (appreciative joy), and upekkha (equanimity). Today, we’ll focus on mudita! Mudita is the capacity to feel happiness or gladness, to delight in someone’s\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":[355],"tags":[161,6,104,84,144,366],"class_list":["post-1958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2024","tag-eightfold-path","tag-gratitude","tag-jill-shepherd","tag-joy","tag-mudita","tag-right-effort"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958","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=1958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1959,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions\/1959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Andrea<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/C1ILXELvJ_5\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"