The quality of sympathetic joy or joy in the happiness of others is known as mudita in the Pali language. Sympathetic joy is what happens when we actually feel happy for the happiness of others. Rather than witnessing someone’s success or good fortune and falling sway to the voice that so often arises within us, which says, “Ooh, I wish […]
Joy is an intentional practice. So often our minds are running on autopilot when it comes to happiness, with all-too-familiar story lines. Have you ever thought, “I’ll feel good when I get that new cute fall jacket or finally get this work project done” or “I’ll be happy when I have a certain amount of money in my bank account” […]
Often when someone is getting something we want, or they have something we can’t or don’t have, jealousy pops up for us. Here, the practice of joyfulness is really useful, because instead of creating jealousy, and covetousness, where we wish we had the thing, or relationship, or job they had, whatever it is, we can deliberately generate joyfulness. We can […]
In 2015, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu traveled to Dharamsala, India to celebrate His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s eightieth birthday. The two spiritual leaders and self-described “mischievous brothers” spent a week discussing a single burning question: how do we find joy in the face of suffering? Their conversations, jokes, and wisdom were compiled into The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness […]
Joy is a radical act. That’s not how people usually think about joy, which is neither considered radical nor an action. Joy, as we typically understand it, is passive and reactive; it’s caused by something else. A new promotion, a “yes” to a marriage proposal, or a sudden fortune makes us feel joy. Then with time, that joy fades into […]
From 1984 to 2015, Inquiring Mind was a semiannual print journal dedicated to the transmission of Buddhadharma to the West. The archive contains all thirty-one years of Inquiring Mind interviews, essays, poetry, art, and more–now hosted by the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies. Please consider a donation to help with the ongoing expenses to keep the site running. The following […]
Compassion is big these days. Amazon boasts more than 8,000 book titles related to the topic. Forbes and the Harvard Business Review have published articles telling CEOs about the benefits of running their companies more compassionately. Secularized compassion meditation programs are being implemented in schools in an effort to stop bullying. Everywhere we look, it seems as though compassion is having […]
Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, a highly esteemed author, translator, and beloved teacher widely regarded as one of the great Nyingma scholars of the present day, died on December 29, 2023, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 86 years old. At the time of his death, Tulku Thondup was living in an apartment overlooking the Charles River that had long been a magnet […]
What the practice of compassion provides is so much wisdom and depth in our lives, [as well as the possibility for] so much inner connection. I see this happening to myself and others all the time: we hear so much bad news going on around us, and we get caught up in that bad news, repeating it in our minds. […]
One of the dangers of the illusion of self is that it lays the foundation for moral egoism. Moral egoism is the idea that my own narrow self-interest is prima facie motivating and justifying. In other words, if I do something and explain that I did it because it made me happy, that by itself constitutes at least a basic […]
