Sympathetic joy is the term used in Buddhism to refer to the happiness we feel when others experience success. The precise opposite expression would be Schadenfreude, a German word that indicates pleasure at another’s failure. Most of us have probably felt both, and most of us recognize that the former is an elevated and noble sensation, while the latter is base. Sadly, unexamined human nature is more inclined toward schadenfreude than sympathetic joy.
The good news is that one can easily train the mind to abandon its selfish tendency to favor its own happiness over that of others. I’ve written lately about the value of sorrow, and I’ve tried to make clear that bereavement and disappointment are unavoidably painful, but can even so be experienced as beautiful. One reason grief carries such a rich seasoning of grace is that it is universal. We all know the pain of losing something or someone we love. This sense of shared experience can be the seed of sympathetic joy.
On a recent meditation retreat, I several times visited a shrine where visitors have placed mementos of the people and pets they’ve lost. The altar is adorned with images, poetry, dog collars, amulets, and other tokens of love and memory. Almost every time I stood before this sacred accumulation of sorrow, my eyes brimmed with tears. It’s not that I ever knew the young woman with lovely large eyes smiling from a faux-antique print, who died earlier this year at age 24. I never met Alex, whose snare drum rested with a poem written on it by someone he left behind. The perky Chihuahua in a photo next to its cedar box of ashes looked a bit like my own dog, Emily, but other than that had no connection to my life’s narrative. So why was I so sad?
I was mournful because the pain expressed by these sacred offerings is universal. It is the bereavement I know well from losing my thirty-seven-year-old mother in first grade. It is the complicated mourning I experienced when my alcoholic father died in 2003. It is the grief I remember from the time my Pomeranian was killed by a large dog on a beach in San Francisco at 6:00 in the morning. It is familiar and shared by us all. It is tragic, but it is also the kernel of life’s beauty.
By recognizing the universality of emotional experience, we can begin to cultivate sympathetic joy. We soon find that it’s not a grudging acceptance of another’s high spirits, but a kind of benign theft. We discover that the ecstasy felt by our fellows can be brought into our own heart. There is no loss to the other party, and a great gain in our own treasure.
On a hike a few days ago, I passed a young couple glowing with the pleasure of early love. The girl smiled broadly at the sight of a soaring red-tailed hawk, and her boyfriend’s face shone with the pride of an infatuated lover. I hate to admit that not long ago my reaction might have been envy. A man in his fifties knows that such passion will never again come his way. Even were he to initiate a new love affair in later life, and even if he took a mate three decades his junior, it would never recreate that joy of youth. But because of my recent meditation and work on expanding my heart, I felt nothing but absolute delight. I recognized that happiness is still exquisite, even if it’s not ‘mine’ in the narrow sense of the word. This couple’s good fortune was not only something I could appreciate from afar, it was actually pleasure that I intimately shared as a member of this grand human consciousness.
When we recognize the universality of life, loss, and love, we become larger beings. Our hearts swell to encompass so much more than our own little stories. We become vessels for the entire human drama, and we understand the eternal nature of life.
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