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Joy is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we abandon all unpleasant things. 喜是法明門、一切不喜事故. This week we take up the third of the four brama viharas, sympathetic joy (Skt. mudita). This is the joy we feel with others when something goes well for them. (Compassion was feeling others’ suffering with them.) How much better it would be for us if we could be happy with others in their joy rather than feeling envious: how come him or her and not me? Why not increase our own happiness by partaking in the joy of others? The classical image of sympathetic joy is the joy of a parent when the child grows, develops and prospers. Parents feel very connected to their children, so they’re pleased for them when they learn to walk and talk, do well in school, get a date for the prom, or get a good job. So how do we cultivate or create the conditions for this sympathetic joy? We need look no farther than Dogen’s famous teaching that to study the self is to forget the self. If we practice and loosen the grip of this idea that there is a fixed and unchanging self nature that persists through time and that we need to defend, we are naturally able to feel others’ joy. It’s interesting how all the brahma viharas we’ve talked about over the last few weeks are not about ourselves. Benevolence is about wishing others well. Compassion is feeling others’ suffering with them. Sympathetic joy is feeling others’ happiness with them. All of these things which are the result of our getting ourselves out of the way are supposed to lead us to a heavenly realm. If we simply keep running after what we want, we create suffering. If we let go of self and focus on others, we receive everything we need and end up in heaven! There’s another relationship between compassion and sympathetic joy. Sympathetic joy keeps compassion from becoming condescention: I’m helping you because I have something you need. I’m helping you out of your suffering and so you can achieve some better state. Instead, I share your suffering with you and on that basis I do what I can to relieve that suffering, and I share your joy when things have gotten better. It’s a subtle difference. What if we could gain happiness for ourselves by noticing and entering into the joy we find around us every day? We don’t need to thrust ourselves into someone else’s conversation or activity, or ask them for anything. When we see a family or a couple who are happy just to be together, well, good for them! When someone wins a contest, gets a good grade or finishes a project, good for them! This isn’t a selfish joy; I’m not acquiring happiness at the expense of someone else or because someone else has let me in on it. I don’t have to have a personal relationship with what’s happening. I can simply recognize that the universe is doing what the universe does, and joy arises naturally. The happiness of others can my happiness. Why not? Where is the actual barrier? What’s keeping me from sharing in that joy? Why shouldn’t I smile when I see child playing with puppy or young person giving up a seat on bus for an older person? It’s not like there’s a limited about of joy in the world and I’m stealing it from someone else. The brahma viharas also called the four immeasurables, after all. It’s like lighting a candle from another candle. It’s not like there’s a limited amount of flame, and now we’re cutting it in half to light another candle. If anything, there’s now twice as much! Now, this is not an exercise in avoiding suffering, covering it over with hearts and flowers and marshmallow creme. It’s not about being inauthentic or hypocritical. Sympathetic joy can lighten spirits, but doesn’t erase suffering. As Buddha said, life is characterized by suffering. The way to deal with it is to see where it comes from and our relationship with it, then try to reshape that relationship. Sympathetic joy is also not advocating that we become frivolous and superficial and try to surround ourselves only with YouTube videos of funny cats. Looking for and taking in the happiness around us is not a means of avoidance, and it won’t become that if we’re not letting go of wisdom. Wisdom is about seeing the whole catastrophe, joy and suffering, and not looking away from either one. Forgetting the self makes it less possible to get stuck in avoidance because we’re not in this for ourselves. We’re not cultivating sympathetic joy so that we can get some personal reward. Daniel Zelinski is a philosophy professor at Missouri State and he has written: Dogen’s ideally nonattached individual is a humble agent in the world whose perceived sense of a pervasive interconnected unity of all things through Buddha-nature instills a sympathetic connection to others within him or her, which in turn results in his or her projects and actions expressing both respect and compassion. (1) Cultivating sympathetic joy is both a means of forgetting the self and a manifestation of forgetting the self. They reinforce each other. The envy and jealousy and resentment I mentioned a moment ago is based in the delusion that somehow we aren’t enough as we are, that somehow this self is insufficient or something is lacking. If we are buddha-nature, there’s nothing we need to acquire and we don’t need to be insecure about ourselves. We just need to learn how to see through our delusions, get out of our own way and move through the world skillfully with wisdom and compassion. That’s what the bodhisattva does. Can you imagine Manjusri and Avalokitesvara being envious of each other every time someone made an offering or built a shrine? No, because they know that something good happening for one of them doesn’t take anything away from the other. As human beings, we don’t like to acknowledge envy. It’s not good that he got that promotion -- not because I’m envious, of course, but because he doesn’t have the right skills. We’re going to find a way to justify our resistance. I was once asked to officiate at an important ceremony. When my friend found out, her response was, You're doing it? Well, of course, the reason I wasn’t asked was because the organizers must have already known that I wasn’t available that day. Ouch! However, this reaction wasn’t meant to hurt me, and clearly wasn’t about me at all. Jack Kornfield says: The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of, the same as, or less than another... (2) It is (or should be) fairly easy to enter into sympathetic joy with our friends and family and people we like. What about people we don’t like so much? Can we be happy for someone who has something good going on in her life when we don’t like what’s happening? We’re not talking about condoning bad behavior, or cheering on someone who’s getting some reward for causing harm. We’re talking about struggling when something good and wholesome is happening for someone we don’t like. Here’s something written by a member of a prison sangha in Maryland. I’ve been constantly been told by other inmates to treat the staff like they are the enemy. This us vs. them never sat right with me and when you look at the Buddhist teachings you will see that there is really is no us vs. them. I found that when I’ve treated people (whoever they are) with kindness, I have been usually treated the same in return. When a corrections officer or another inmate treats me cruelly I remind myself that they are suffering and trying to attain happiness just the same as everyone else. So, they act out and it really has nothing to do with you, but their own drama. Putting our ego on hold can be challenging, but it can be done. I have found it helpful to simply take a step back and take a few silent breaths. Remember, we are trying to attain enlightenment for the benefit for all. (3) Goodness, where are you ever going to be that’s more of a challenge to sympathetic joy than in prison? Here’s the thing: we might as well enter into sympathetic joy, because not doing it isn’t going to change the situation. You’re not going to get revenge on somebody by withholding joy. Carrying resentment rather than sympathetic joy is the ego trying not to die. If I let go of my resentment I might disappear; I need to maintain this fiction that I’m better than you or more deserving than you, or at least separate from you. Otherwise, I might cease to be. Instead, we can aspire to be like Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or some other selfless beings we may know. We can try not to overlook the various sources of joy that we can enter into every day. If we’re really trying to live like bodhisattvas and help all beings, than we need to be encouraging people. Even someone who’s really deluded can probably take even a small skillful action or make even a small change toward wholesomeness. The bodhisattva response to that success is not “Well, it’s about time you shaped up! I told you you should stop doing this or start doing that. It’s all well and good that you’ve taken this small step, but you’ve still got a long way to go, so don’t slack off!” It’s not kind, and not helpful, and not entering into sympathetic joy. Instead, look for the opportunity to recognize and celebrate wholesome action. It doesn’t mean you’re letting this person off the hook for other harmful stuff. It does mean you’re building a trust relationship and not perpetuating the delusion of separation. A rising tide floats all boats. His success is my success. At minimum, there’s just that tiny bit less suffering in the world for everyone. It’s said that cultivating sympathetic joy is the hardest of all the brahma viharas. It’s just so easy to say, I deserve happiness more than he does or she does. However, we have to remember: we don’t know about all of our own causes and conditions, let alone someone else’s. We’ve done both wholesome and unwholesome things; so has that person. Karma says that there are actions that lead to pleasure and actions that lead to pain. We don’t need to worry about who deserves what; the universe will sort that out, and not in a personal way. If we’re awarding sympathetic joy, or compassion, based on people’s purity, what are we doing? First, who are we to judge? How can we know all the streams of causes and conditions at work here? Second, if there is no one outside of Buddha’s way, there is no one who falls outside of our practice of the brahma viharas and there is no one from whom we’re really separate. Instead, we cultivate an attitude of wishing everyone well, suffering with those who suffer and feeling joy with those who feel joy. If we do that, where is boundary between self and other? It’s a really powerful way to experience that nonseparation. Here’s the other thing about karma: what we do now sets up the causes and conditions for what arises in the next moment. Do we go into that moment filled with resentment and envy, or do we go into it wishing people well? And what comes out of that choice? What happens if I’m constantly judging and envying what others have, and then something good happens to me? Will others have sympathetic joy for me, or just their own resentment? What dynamic have I set in motion there? When we talked about compassion, we talked about feeling the suffering of others without being overwhelmed by it. Sympathetic joy provides some balance and optimism. Yes, there’s suffering, but there is also joy. It keeps us from being consumed by pain and grief. If we collapse under the weight of compassion, it’s hard to do anything to actually help. We need the balance of entering into the happiness of others as well as their suffering. Nyanaponika Thera was a German Theravadan monk who died about 25 years ago. He wrote this about sympathetic joy: It is the divine smile on the face of the Enlightened One, a smile that persists in spite of his deep knowledge of the world’s suffering, a smile that gives solace and hope, fearlessness and confidence: “Wide open are the doors to deliverance,” thus it speaks. Questions for reflection and discussion
Notes
(1) Queen, C. (2003). Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 60. (2) Kornfield, J. (2009). A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. United States: Random House Publishing Group. (3) O’Connor, T. (2012). Buddhas Behind Bars. United States: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Comments are closed.
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About the text The Ippyakuhachi Homyomon, or 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination, appears as the 11th fascicle of the 12 fascicle version of Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo. Dogen didn't compile the list himself; it's mostly a long quote from another text called the Sutra of Collected Past Deeds of the Buddha. Dogen wrote a final paragraph recommending that we investigate these gates thoroughly. Hoko has been talking about the gates one by one since 2016. She provides material here that can be used by weekly dharma discussion groups as well as for individual study. The 108 Gates of Dharma Illumination
[1] Right belief [2] Pure mind [3] Delight [4] Love and cheerfulness The three forms of behavior [5] Right conduct of the actions of the body [6] Pure conduct of the actions of the mouth [7] Pure conduct of the actions of the mind The six kinds of mindfulness [8] Mindfulness of Buddha [9] Mindfulness of Dharma [10] Mindfulness of Sangha [11] Mindfulness of generosity [12] Mindfulness of precepts [13] Mindfulness of the heavens The four Brahmaviharas [14] Benevolence [15] Compassion [16] Joy [17] Abandonment The four dharma seals [18] Reflection on inconstancy [19] Reflection on suffering [20] Reflection on there being no self [21] Reflection on stillness [22] Repentance [23] Humility [24] Veracity [25] Truth [26] Dharma conduct [27] The Three Devotions [28] Recognition of kindness [29] Repayment of kindness [30] No self-deception [31] To work for living beings [32] To work for the Dharma [33] Awareness of time [34] Inhibition of self-conceit [35] The nonarising of ill-will [36] Being without hindrances [37] Belief and understanding [38] Reflection on impurity [39] Not to quarrel [40] Not being foolish [41] Enjoyment of the meaning of the Dharma [42] Love of Dharma illumination [43] Pursuit of abundant knowledge [44] Right means [45] Knowledge of names and forms [46] The view to expiate causes [47] The mind without enmity and intimacy [48] Hidden expedient means [49] Equality of all elements [50] The sense organs [51] Realization of nonappearance The elements of bodhi: The four abodes of mindfulness [52] The body as an abode of mindfulness [53] Feeling as an abode of mindfulness [54] Mind as an abode of mindfulness [55] The Dharma as an abode of mindfulness [56] The four right exertions [57] The four bases of mystical power The five faculties [58] The faculty of belief [59] The faculty of effort [60] The faculty of mindfulness [61] The faculty of balance [62] The faculty of wisdom The five powers [63] The power of belief [64] The power of effort [65] The power of mindfulness [66] The power of balance [67] The power of wisdom [68] Mindfulness, as a part of the state of truth [69] Examination of Dharma, as a part of the state of truth [70] Effort, as a part of the state of truth [71] Enjoyment, as a part of the state of truth [72] Entrustment as a part of the state of truth [73] The balanced state, as a part of the state of truth [74] Abandonment, as a part of the state of truth The Eightfold Path [75] Right view [76] Right discrimination [77] Right speech [78] Right action [79] Right livelihood [80] Right practice [81] Right mindfulness [82] Right balanced state [83] The bodhi-mind [84] Reliance [85] Right belief [86] Development The six paramitas [87] The dāna pāramitā [88] The precepts pāramitā [89] The forbearance pāramitā. [90] The diligence pāramitā [91] The dhyāna pāramitā [92] The wisdom pāramitā [93] Expedient means [94] The four elements of sociability [95] To teach and guide living beings [96] Acceptance of the right Dharma [97] Accretion of happiness [98] The practice of the balanced state of dhyāna [99] Stillness [100] The wisdom view [101] Entry into the state of unrestricted speech [102] Entry into all conduct [103] Accomplishment of the state of dhāraṇī [104] Attainment of the state of unrestricted speech [105] Endurance of obedient following [106] Attainment of realization of the Dharma of nonappearance [107] The state beyond regressing and straying [108] The wisdom that leads us from one state to another state and, somehow, one more: [109] The state in which water is sprinkled on the head Archives
October 2024
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