~ Finding Happiness in the Lives of Others ~
“Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else’s success or good fortune.
Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.”
- Sharon Salzberg
Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.”
- Sharon Salzberg
What does it mean to find happiness in the lives of others?
Let’s start by exploring the Buddhist concept of sympathetic joy. It can be a difficult notion to grasp because it is not a familiar or distinct concept in the dominant western culture. But in Asian cultures, it is much more accepted and established.
But it is really quite simple. Sympathetic joy is taking pleasure in the positive things in someone else’s life. It is joy is the joy we feel when we reflect on other people’s happiness, or their positive qualities or their achievements. It’s the idea that we can be happy just because someone else is happy or doing well.
Sympathetic joy takes us out of ourselves and our self-centered ways of thinking and puts our attention on others. Displacing thoughts of “I’, “me” and “mine”, it helps us to break free of self-absorption and unlocks warm feelings towards everyone and everything.
Sympathetic joy is similar to compassion. Compassion is when we feel the suffering of others and sympathetic joy is when we feel the happiness of others. Their joy becomes ours.
Here’s an example: When he was very young, my son used to play tee-ball – a version of baseball for 4-6 year olds. Whenever any of the pint-sized players scored a run, everyone erupted in cheers. Parents, coaches and even the other kids. It did not matter which team scored. Everyone rejoiced in the runner’s accomplishment. His or her achievement became theirs. In the same way, we can take pleasure in others’ happiness.
Although sympathetic joy is about happiness, it does not deny suffering, sadness, or any other painful feeling. It’s not about avoiding unpleasant or difficult emotions. Rather, sympathetic joy enlarges our hearts so we can hold everything with more love and kindness.
It challenges our deepest assumptions about how we can relate to others. In particular, it weakens the desire to compete with others or to see ourselves as somehow better than or superior to others. Moreover it helps us to see that, in many respects, we are all the same.
With sympathetic joy, we can appreciate that everyone wants to be happy, safe and healthy. And everyone wants to be free from pain, illness and suffering. By seeing our common humanity, it opens up our hearts and our minds. And by taking joy in the lives of others, we naturally and dramatically increase the likelihood of experiencing authentic joy in our own lives.
With sympathetic joy, the story of self softens and diminishes and is replaced with the realization of interdependence and connection.
With sympathetic joy, we recognize that we exist as part of a whole, not as separate individuals. And in this way, it is the antidote to selfishness, greed, hatred, envy, and jealousy.
In my experience, sympathetic joy both depends on and cultivates, three positive states of mind.
First, it depends on and cultivates a sense of inner abundance. It understands that joy, happiness, love and all other positive mind states are limitless. And that paradoxically, the more we give them away to others, the more we have.
Sympathetic joy recognizes that taking joy in others’ joy doesn’t mean that we will have less joy ourselves. Quite the opposite; it sees that feeling joy for others doesn’t deplete the joy we might have in our own lives, it actually increases it. We don’t need to hoard happiness.
As the Buddha said, “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”.
This is, of course, contrary to the belief that there is only a limited amount of joy, happiness and love in the world and that we need to keep it to ourselves or limit who we give it to – our friends, families and children.
As Sharon Salzberg says “Sympathetic joy is a practice. It takes time and effort to free ourselves of the scarcity story that most of us have learned along the way, the idea that happiness is a competition, and that someone else is grabbing all the joy.”
In this way, sympathetic joy is a generosity practice that arises from an intention to benefit others. And the irony is that the more we want to benefit others, the more we ourselves will benefit. It’s a win-win situation.
The second mind state that depends on and is cultivated by sympathetic joy is the ability to see happiness and joy in the lives of others.
This can be difficult because we are such a problem oriented and negative society. But if you can’t see or experience happiness, then it’s not easy to feel sympathetic joy.
However, if we can notice and delight in life, then our capacity for it will grow. The more we are aware of life, the more opportunities we have to practice. With sympathetic joy, there is an openness to all of life’s experiences, as well as a curiosity and a gratitude.
The third mind state is having a clear intention to practice sympathetic joy. Only when we understand its benefits for ourselves and others will we have a strong desire to practice it.
And only when we have a strong desire, will we actually do it. So having an intention is necessary.
I’ll conclude with another quote from Sharon Salzberg:
“The Dalai Lama points out that there are so many other people in this world, it simply makes sense to make their happiness equivalent to our own because then, he says, our chance of delight ‘are enhanced six billion to one. Those are very good odds.’”
For more about finding happiness in the lives of others, watch the video here.
Let’s start by exploring the Buddhist concept of sympathetic joy. It can be a difficult notion to grasp because it is not a familiar or distinct concept in the dominant western culture. But in Asian cultures, it is much more accepted and established.
But it is really quite simple. Sympathetic joy is taking pleasure in the positive things in someone else’s life. It is joy is the joy we feel when we reflect on other people’s happiness, or their positive qualities or their achievements. It’s the idea that we can be happy just because someone else is happy or doing well.
Sympathetic joy takes us out of ourselves and our self-centered ways of thinking and puts our attention on others. Displacing thoughts of “I’, “me” and “mine”, it helps us to break free of self-absorption and unlocks warm feelings towards everyone and everything.
Sympathetic joy is similar to compassion. Compassion is when we feel the suffering of others and sympathetic joy is when we feel the happiness of others. Their joy becomes ours.
Here’s an example: When he was very young, my son used to play tee-ball – a version of baseball for 4-6 year olds. Whenever any of the pint-sized players scored a run, everyone erupted in cheers. Parents, coaches and even the other kids. It did not matter which team scored. Everyone rejoiced in the runner’s accomplishment. His or her achievement became theirs. In the same way, we can take pleasure in others’ happiness.
Although sympathetic joy is about happiness, it does not deny suffering, sadness, or any other painful feeling. It’s not about avoiding unpleasant or difficult emotions. Rather, sympathetic joy enlarges our hearts so we can hold everything with more love and kindness.
It challenges our deepest assumptions about how we can relate to others. In particular, it weakens the desire to compete with others or to see ourselves as somehow better than or superior to others. Moreover it helps us to see that, in many respects, we are all the same.
With sympathetic joy, we can appreciate that everyone wants to be happy, safe and healthy. And everyone wants to be free from pain, illness and suffering. By seeing our common humanity, it opens up our hearts and our minds. And by taking joy in the lives of others, we naturally and dramatically increase the likelihood of experiencing authentic joy in our own lives.
With sympathetic joy, the story of self softens and diminishes and is replaced with the realization of interdependence and connection.
With sympathetic joy, we recognize that we exist as part of a whole, not as separate individuals. And in this way, it is the antidote to selfishness, greed, hatred, envy, and jealousy.
In my experience, sympathetic joy both depends on and cultivates, three positive states of mind.
First, it depends on and cultivates a sense of inner abundance. It understands that joy, happiness, love and all other positive mind states are limitless. And that paradoxically, the more we give them away to others, the more we have.
Sympathetic joy recognizes that taking joy in others’ joy doesn’t mean that we will have less joy ourselves. Quite the opposite; it sees that feeling joy for others doesn’t deplete the joy we might have in our own lives, it actually increases it. We don’t need to hoard happiness.
As the Buddha said, “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared”.
This is, of course, contrary to the belief that there is only a limited amount of joy, happiness and love in the world and that we need to keep it to ourselves or limit who we give it to – our friends, families and children.
As Sharon Salzberg says “Sympathetic joy is a practice. It takes time and effort to free ourselves of the scarcity story that most of us have learned along the way, the idea that happiness is a competition, and that someone else is grabbing all the joy.”
In this way, sympathetic joy is a generosity practice that arises from an intention to benefit others. And the irony is that the more we want to benefit others, the more we ourselves will benefit. It’s a win-win situation.
The second mind state that depends on and is cultivated by sympathetic joy is the ability to see happiness and joy in the lives of others.
This can be difficult because we are such a problem oriented and negative society. But if you can’t see or experience happiness, then it’s not easy to feel sympathetic joy.
However, if we can notice and delight in life, then our capacity for it will grow. The more we are aware of life, the more opportunities we have to practice. With sympathetic joy, there is an openness to all of life’s experiences, as well as a curiosity and a gratitude.
The third mind state is having a clear intention to practice sympathetic joy. Only when we understand its benefits for ourselves and others will we have a strong desire to practice it.
And only when we have a strong desire, will we actually do it. So having an intention is necessary.
I’ll conclude with another quote from Sharon Salzberg:
“The Dalai Lama points out that there are so many other people in this world, it simply makes sense to make their happiness equivalent to our own because then, he says, our chance of delight ‘are enhanced six billion to one. Those are very good odds.’”
For more about finding happiness in the lives of others, watch the video here.
