RAINY THURSDAY may 28
Reading Kira Salak’s new novels The White Mary I came upon a term new to me—Mudita.
The character named Sebastian explains to Marika:
“Buddhists consider mudita a ‘God-like’ state.” . . . It’s supposed to be the single hardest thing for a person to feel for another. Even harder than feeling compassion for an enemy.” . . . “When I’m feeling sincerely glad for others, I’m also feeling it for myself. It comes right back.”
It took a long while for this term to get into my vocab over all these years of reading in the spiritual tracts and beat poetry and buddhist lit. But here it is. And so here is the Wikipedia entry too.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mudita is a Buddhist (Pali and Sanskrit: मुदित) word meaning rejoicing in others’ joy. Mudita is sometimes considered to be the opposite of schadenfreude.
The term mudita is usually translated as “sympathetic” or “altruistic” joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being rather than begrudging it. Many Buddhist teachers interpret mudita more broadly as referring to an inner spring of infinite joy that is available to everyone at all times, regardless of circumstances. The more deeply one drinks of this spring, the more secure one becomes in one’s own abundant happiness, and the easier it then becomes to relish the joy of other people as well.
The traditional example of the mind-state of mudita is the attitude of a parent observing a growing child’s accomplishments and successes.
Mudita is also traditionally regarded as the most difficult of the brahmaviharas to cultivate. To show mudita is to celebrate happiness and achievement in others even when we are facing tragedy ourselves.[1]
According to buddhist teacher Ayya Khema showing mudita towards sadistic joy is wrong, there should be compassion instead.
The “far enemies” of mudita are jealousy and envy, two mind-states in obvious opposition. Mudita’s “near enemy,” or quality which superficially resembles mudita but is in fact more subtly in opposition to it, is exhilaration, perceived as a grasping at pleasant experience out of a sense of insufficiency or lack.
Nice. I was trying to find the opposite word of envy and your post was the 10th result on google. I misunderstood envy as “being appreciative of what another has, but wanting it yourself”, but is is really “best defined as a resentful emotion that “occurs when a person lacks another’s (perceived) superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it.”