Sympathetic Joy Meditation

Sympathetic joy, or mudita, is one of the four Buddhist virtues or attitudes known as the brahmaviharas. These virtues also include compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity—the ability to stay calm and balanced in the face of difficulty. When we practice sympathetic joy, which is also called empathetic, altruistic, and appreciative joy, we feel pleasure in the good fortune of others.

Say a coworker gets a promotion or a shiny new Tesla pulls up next to you at an intersection. What’s your reaction? Is there a tiny rumble of discontentment inside? A vague wish that you had the good fortune, or that the other person didn’t have it? We tend to picture happiness as a limited resource, but, like love, it is abundant and infinite. Meditating on sympathetic joy reveals this truth.

“Learn to rejoice in the good fortune of others and your own happiness multiplies—it’s the best cure for envy,” advises Sharon Salzberg, cofounder of the Insight Meditation Center, who teaches modern applications of the brahmaviharas. "As we watch someone else partake of the stockpile of joy, our hearts may sink—we think we’re not going to get our share. But someone else’s pleasure doesn’t cause our unhappiness—we make ourselves unhappy because our negativity isolates us.”

Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn identifies with a broader concept of mudita that recognizes there is no separation between the self and the outside world. Internal and external happiness are one, and appreciating the joy and beauty that surrounds us brings profound contentment.

The Buddha left specific instructions about how to cultivate these four states of mind. The four states coexist in harmony, and they encourage growth in each other. Buddhist teachers often focus on compassion, and indeed, learning to feel the suffering of others is often a necessary building block for celebrating their joy. The Hindu sage Patanjali also taught mudita as a way to liberate the mind from fixed patterns of negativity.

Mudita meditation is like a textbook on reverse psychology: we want to be happy, so we put all of our efforts into wishing other people happiness. It might be the most difficult of all the brahmavihara meditations because it requires deep exploration of our own inner wealth. Focusing on our feelings toward others reveals our own self-perceived deficiencies and judgments. Expect to feel a host of emotions when you do this practice.

The Dalai Lama points out the simple math of mudita: if we feel joy from the successes of others, our “chances for happiness increase by seven billion.” And that’s just the beginning. As the Theravada monk Nyanaponika Thera explains, “The seed of mudita can grow into a strong plant which will blossom forth and find fruition in many other virtues, as a kind of beneficial chain reaction: magnanimity, tolerance, generosity (of both heart and purse), friendliness, and compassion.” Mudita kills the heart’s metaphorical weeds, such as envy, ill will, cold-heartedness, and miserliness. “Unselfish joy can, indeed, act as a powerful agent in releasing dormant forces of good in the human heart.”

Brahmavihara-based meditations are a favorite topic for researchers, in part because they’ve produced some astounding results. Most studies focus on the practice of compassion and loving-kindness, which cause notable neurological changes in the brain. One National Institute of Health study proved that it is equally beneficial to give as it is to receive—the brain’s pleasure reactors react to rewards received by others just as they would if we had received them ourselves. The brains scans of monks who meditate on loving-kindness show off the charts levels of happiness. Since the brahmaviharas are interdependent, focusing on sympathetic joy also shapes the brain. A feeling of interconnectedness grows, and the boundaries between the self and others begin to break down. This leads to a marked decrease in the perception of pain, both physical and emotional.

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The meditation itself can be practiced independently, but like other brahmaviharas, the best teaching experiences of sympathetic joy often come from everyday life. Practice it as often as you can: if a woman grabs the last carton of milk, silently send a wish that her family enjoys it (remembering to never judge yourself if less positive emotions arise first). Real-life applications of sympathetic joy will strengthen the meditation practice, and vice versa.

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Sympathetic joy, as a sitting meditation practice, involves bringing various people to mind and directing a series of phrases to them to encourage their continued happiness. This includes both the people you love, and those you have difficulties with. The emphasis is on observing and sitting with the emotions that arise without judgment, and seeing if you can transform negative feelings into genuine joy. Our step-by-step guided meditation is available on this page.

Everyone can benefit from more gratefulness, increased happiness, and the cultivation of sympathetic joy.

The best-known teachers and authors in this field include:

Sharon Salzberg
(www.sharonsalzberg.com)
Jack Kornfield
(www.jackkornfield.com)
Gina Sharpe
(www.ginasharpe.org)
Thich Nhat Hanh
(www.plumvillage.org/thich-nhat-hanh)
The Dalai Lama
(www.dalailama.com)

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