Mudita is one of the four brahma-viharas, or boundless qualities found in Buddhist teachings, which corresponds to feeling joy without a self center. Often, people refer to it as sympathetic joy which refers to being able to share the feeling of joy that others exude. Perhaps it's fitting to explore this idea since many of the holiday carols talk about joy in different spiritual contexts and traditions. When we sing such songs, do we feel the authentic joy that the song evokes, or is it sometimes artificial? How do we get to feel a joy that is not necessarily "ours" or corresponding to our own experience?
I was at a restaurant earlier this evening and I overheard a conversation across from me where a couple were announcing to their friend that they were expecting a baby soon. The other was so struck with joy, and to my embarrassment (perhaps due to my proximity), I was in a situation where I felt I should feel their joy but in fact did not. It made me wonder, what is it about joy that it only infects those who know the joyful person? Is it possible for strangers to also feel or share in the joy of those who are in happy moments? When I talk about this, however, I am not talking about sympathy, where I felt the same feeling as the other due to a similar experience, or envy, where I feel the longing to have or do what others have or do. Rather, there is almost a kind of suspension of the self, or ego, that tends to evaluate the feelings of others in terms of whether or not they relate to me in any way. To give an example of the previous experience: had I been practicing intentional "mudita", I would have been able to celebrate the others' success, even though I am not particularly interested in having children myself. In order to do that, I would have to bracket my own personal sense of likes and dislikes, and simply celebrate what the other has been able to find joyful for themselves, regardless of the nature or content of that joy.
In the article "Unselfish Joy: A Neglected Virtue" (1971), Natasha Jackson identifies mudita as a kind of "appreciation"of the other, citing Buddhist scholar Edward Conze as one of the first to suggest that mudita is a prerequisite to loving kindness and compassion (to of the other brahma viharas). Jackson notes, "mudita tacitly implies looking for the good in others and learning to recognize and admire what good there is." Rather than being a "blanket" emotion that a person might automatically bestow upon others, mudita thus needs to be practiced with a felt appreciation for individuals and the kinds of good that they possess already. In fact, I find that this is quite different from loving kindness (metta) where the focus is on spreading a well wishing upon all sentient beings.
With this appreciation comes a sense of optimism about the capacity of human beings in general. I think that this appreciation is a counter-balance to the misconception that Buddhism might be life-denying or nihilistic, as well as the general sense shared by some religions that human beings are in a fallen state and are in need of redemption by something that is outside of themselves. It also counterbalances the sense that Buddhism emphasizes relief from suffering without being able to positively appraise or share one's happy or good conditions. What's also the case is that when we accept each other unconditionally and are able to celebrate each others' high points and successes, then we are capable of reversing our tendencies to compare ourselves or think that success only happens to some people. If I can intentionally let go of the anxiety that success and happiness is taken away from me when it is seen in others, this can reduce the tendency to compare or even to inflate the ideals of success to the point of feeling jealous or somehow inadequate.
As I am reading about mudita, I almost get the sense that genuine joy in others requires working on the anxiety of "not finding happiness" ourselves. We tend to think of happiness as some kind of "thing" that needs to be pursued or even "grabbed" and grasped. It might take the form of something tangible, like a special position or a published paper in a journal. It might also come from a sense of validation or a confirmation that I have "done enough" to satisfy my inner requirements as a person. If I am really able to see through these self-validation schemes (sometimes referred to as "conditional self-acceptance- see Ellis, 2001), I don't attach to them and yet I can celebrate them in others without anxiety. In order to make room for celebrating the joy found in others, one often needs to paradoxically stop attaching to this kind of temporary, conditional joy. Otherwise, the celebration of such joy will come with a sense of pain or inadequacy, or even a reminder that I may not have "done enough" to achieve similar joy in my life.
If the joy of successes (getting a promotion, becoming educated, marrying etc.) are temporary, why celebrate them at all? To me, our successes represent the culmination of the efforts to work on certain things we care about in our life, which we value as something that uplifts others. Not everything that we find joyful is necessarily belonging to this category (such as the joy of eating candy, or the joy of robbing a bank). But I think that what we perhaps celebrate is the ability for people to work on things that matter to them which can benefit the community in turn. But I agree with Ellis that we should not take this to mean that our value as people should be based on what we have "achieved". Although human potentials can be celebrated, it's perhaps a mistake to think that we should value others only by what they do or by the results they have achieved. It seems that in order for mudita to be genuine, one must feel confident that celebrating the joys of others does not relate to human worth in general. What we are essentially doing is validating the happiness of others as essential aspects to their growth.
Ellis, Albert (2001). Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings and Behaviors. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books
Jackson, Natalie (1971). "Unselfish Joy: A Neglected Virtue". From https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/wheel170.html#intro
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