..:* WISDOM *:..

Take delight in the good fortune of others to create more happiness for yourself.

“We hate it when our friends are successful” sang Morrissey, the songwriter and former lead singer of The Smiths. Although “hate” may be overstating the issue, the dark and not-so-secret fact remains that, rather than rejoice in a friend’s good fortune, we often feel envy and jealousy. We even take guilty delight in another’s misfortune. Your pleasure in reading about Jennifer Aniston’s relationship troubles or Lindsay Lohan’s run-ins with the law notwithstanding, this isn’t a modern phenomenon. More than two thousand years ago, both Patanjali and the Buddha taught the practice of mudita as an antidote to the feeling that your happiness is threatened or diminished by the happiness of others. Mudita, the third of the brahmaviharas, or yogic teachings on love, is the ability to take active delight in other’s good fortune or good deeds.

In Yoga Sutra I. 33, Patanjali advises us to take delight in the virtue of others as a way to develop and maintain calmness of mind. You’ve probably experienced how painful envy can be, and how much it affects your mental well-being. Your feelings of envy don’t diminish the happiness of those you are jealous of, but they do diminish your own serenity.

The Dali Lama speaks of mudita as a kind of “enlightened self-interest.” As he puts it, there are so many people in this world that it’s simply reasonable to make their happiness as important as your own; if you can be happy when good things happen to others, your opportunities for delight are increased six billion to one!