This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Evening, everybody. Can you hear okay? Ah, it's great to be here. It's always a happy moment for me to be... talking to you in the evening at Tassajara. I'm really happy I'm still alive. I'm really happy about that. And I'm having a good time this week in our workshop. And my trips to Tassajara are always a real delight for me because it's such a great place here, a special place. and a place that's particularly important to me. Like everybody else here in the room, I also had a mother.

[01:08]

But Tassajara is my mother, too. Tassajara gave birth to my life in a way maybe just as significant as the birth that my mother gave me. So, tasahara means a lot to me. So thanks to everybody here who is contributing money and effort, sweat and toil, to keep this place alive. It seems to be really alive and really well, so I'm happy about that. It's always good to see that every summer. So tonight I want to talk about the Buddhist practice of joy called mudita. This word, mudita, means joy, but specifically the kind of joy that we feel when other people are feeling joy and it makes us joyful.

[02:15]

So it's a little different from our usual conceptions of joy. Because it's a form of joy that is essentially, in a sense, unselfish. And often what we mean by joy is something for ourselves. But this is joy that comes to us exactly because it's another's joy. As everybody here, I'm sure, is aware, the goal of Buddhist practice, the point of Buddhist practice, is to transform our lives, to expand our lives, to go beyond the narrow-minded self-centeredness and self-protectiveness that seems so basic to our psychology and yet causes so much trouble and so much pain.

[03:20]

So it becomes of crucial importance that we train ourselves, train our hearts, train our minds in unselfishness, which means we have to train ourselves in having a good, a positive feeling for others as a kind of default feeling instead of the opposite. We usually have wariness and paranoia about others. It turns out, if you really look at it closely, that there's no way you could actually have a kind, positive regard for yourself if you're wary of others. And if you can't have a kind and positive regard for yourself, there's no way you can be a happy human being. You're going to be a little bit nuts and a little bit making trouble. So these two things actually go together. There's no way to... have a good regard for others without kindliness toward yourself, and there's no way to be kindly toward yourself exclusively without being kindly to others.

[04:32]

So, one of the chief causes of our unhappiness and of all the suffering and confusion of the world is this sense of isolation that we all have. This very limited... sense of what our lives are. It's very limited self-definition. Very limited way we think of what it means to be ourselves. So we really have to open up. I think we do. Everybody does. We really have to open up. We really have to expand our sense of self so that it includes others. The way it is now, our sense of self exactly excludes others. That's the nature of it. So we really have to open that up, be more inclusive. So the Buddha regarded this process of self-expansion not as some extra religious spin on our lives, but he regarded it as the natural

[05:52]

way our mind works. So it's not a dogma to be pinned on top of our attitudes and our minds. It's a way of releasing our minds to what they already are and already want to be. So that even though at first to practice altruistic motivations and ways of being and looking at the world might seem a little unnatural or weird or not what we're really thinking or feeling. In the end, I think, one comes to feel that these things are perfectly natural. So that's the context for this practice of joy, unselfish joy. It's part of this big picture. of opening up our hearts, opening up ourselves, expanding into a bigger world.

[06:57]

Working on our underlying attitudes and our psychological prejudices in relation to others is an important aspect of the path. Because if we think That awakening is my awakening. If we think that enlightenment is my enlightenment that's going to transform my mind over here exclusively, I think our practice is going to be out of whack. And it won't work out. Mudita specifically means a feeling joy when others feel joy, being happy when others are happy, taking delight when others feel delight.

[08:05]

Now, this is not an esoteric thing. Everybody has felt this. Everybody knows what this is like. you're a parent, you become happy when your child is happy. You're going along, you're maybe in a sour mood, and all of a sudden your child is feeling delight, and a smile comes on your lips and you feel delighted. So we all know about that. Now, a cynical person might say, well, yes, the parent is delighted when the child is delighted because the parent identifies with the child, or the parent, when the child is delighted, it's kind of evidence for the parent's good genes or good parenting. So it's actually selfish. But if a child is walking by and becomes delighted because it sees a balloon bobbing on the end of a string and the parent takes delight in this, this has nothing to do with good parenting or genes or anything else.

[09:15]

It's just a moment of delight that brings joy to the parent. But it doesn't have to be a parent, right? You could be walking by on the street and see that same child in that same balloon and maybe you, if you're kind of noticing, you might feel the same thing. You might feel delight and joy to see that child delighted by the balloon. I'm sure everybody here knows what I'm talking about. If not, it's really sad. that you've never experienced a moment of looking at somebody else. A child is a good example, because usually a children's delight brings delight to us. But I think we all must have been, that we've all experienced a moment of mudita spontaneously. So it's not something mysterious or esoteric. We all know what it is. The only trouble with it is it's kind of rare. It doesn't happen all that often.

[10:15]

The thing about feeling happy when someone else is happy is it's a particularly wonderful feeling. Maybe you have noticed this. It's actually better than being happy for your own private reasons. Because if you're happy for your own private reasons, you might feel a little bit paranoid or guilty about that. Like, I'm happy because... I got this great job. I'm really happy about it. Of course, I might lose it. Or I know that Harry wanted it. So now I'm a little worried about Harry and also maybe a little guilty because actually Harry deserved it. But if you take delight in somebody else's delight, it doesn't have that extra quality of paranoia and guilt.

[11:19]

It's a smoother, quieter, simpler form of happiness. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's just like it's pure. The altruism makes it pure. It doesn't activate all the schizophrenic shakiness of our usual point of view. So mudita in that way is really great, but unfortunately it's kind of rare. One doesn't often experience it. So the practice of mudita would be to intentionally cultivate this feeling in our living, to be lurking around looking for mudita-worthy possibilities, which are actually there a lot, but one doesn't notice. unless one says to oneself, I'm now going to intentionally practice mudita, and I'm going to look for those moments in which I can do that.

[12:24]

One of the main themes in Buddhist practice and in Buddhist thought is self. There's a lot of talking about self in Buddhist thought. The conditioned self, the suffering self, the non-self, the true self, the Buddha nature, a lot of terminology, a lot of discussion about the self, the emptiness of the self, letting go of the self, on and on. And one of the most famous sayings of Dogen is about the self. I'm sure you all know this saying, to study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things.

[13:31]

And you could take these words as a profound teaching on mudita. In this is what happens when we undertake the effort to practice. Maybe we start out, before we come to practice, feeling, even if we're quite powerful, we start out feeling a little shaky, a little scared inside because we're all pretty small and vulnerable people who have plenty of wounds and plenty of wants and needs You know, we all need love and lots of other good things that we usually don't get. So we come to study. We think maybe spiritual practice will help give me a better sense of security, a better sense of what I could find some satisfaction in living.

[14:43]

So we do that. undertake Buddhist practice. We study Buddhism. Studying Buddhism is studying the self. We sit down and breathe and look at the flow of thoughts and impressions coming in and out of the mind. Slow down. Become aware of the process of perception and feeling. And as that process goes on, the self becomes a lot more porous a lot more flexible and a lot less vulnerable than it was before and it becomes clear to us through our experience in this process that the boundary between self and other is not as fixed as we thought in fact

[15:48]

begin to notice, this boundary that defines me over here, absolutely different from you over there, is mostly a matter of thought and concept and attitude more than any actual distinction that's findable. this distinction between me and you is, of course, practical. I mean, I don't want you messing around with my bank account, and you don't want me messing around with yours. So it's practical. It's useful. And it's real in some way, but it's conventionally real, not ultimately real. And one comes to feel this as a felt experience. To study Buddhism is to study the self.

[16:52]

To study the self is to forget the self. So Buddhist practice really does help us to forget the self, to see past the self. We do become a whole lot less stuck on ourselves through the process of practice. So now we're much more open, in fact, to others, to others' feelings, to others' needs, to others' pain, and to others' joy. So, open to others' pain, we practice compassion. Open to others' joy, we practice mudita. So before, the possibilities of mudita were limited to this person here.

[17:54]

Now, I have increased my possibilities for joy by a factor of six billion. I could be happy when any one of the six billion of us on the planet is happy. So I have much more chance for happiness. anytime somebody gets married or has a really healthy strong body or eats something really tasty or wins a ball game or buys a nice new blouse that looks really nice on them or remodels their kitchen or gets a new car, we have a chance to be happy.

[19:01]

We can feel joy for their joy. And in this process, we don't need to be so hemmed in by our logical, moralistic thinking. Even if we believe that there's way too much consumerism, that blouses manufactured in sweatshop factories abroad should not be sold in the West, in America, even if we think that there's already way too many cars and everybody should ride a bike, or that marriage is actually a disguised form of oppression and that the world is so overpopulated that a birth is a dubious event.

[20:04]

Even if we think all those things, this should not prevent us from taking joy in the joy that other people feel when those things happen. Because the point is not that we approve of the reasons why people feel delight and joy. It is not required that we approve of them all and figure out that it's a good thing that caused them joy. The only thing that's necessary is that we feel the joy and take delight in the delight. So we don't have to approve. The point is that we all have a reservoir of simple happiness to be alive, which we've totally forgotten about. We're completely out of touch with because we have so many problems. Who thinks about how great it is to be alive? Thanks to being alive, you have all these problems. But you don't think about how it is that it's a wonderful thing to be alive.

[21:12]

Mudita gets you in touch with that. The reservoir is there to be tapped. And when you intentionally practice mudita, you open up the floodgates and it's right there. Your happiness is activated. And when you think about it, isn't it illogical that something like an emotion, like the feeling of joy, which after all, like what is that? You can't find it anywhere. An emotion has no shape. It has no color. It has no form. It's weightless. What kind of a thing is an emotion? And why would we think that an emotion must remain trapped inside of the skin bag of a body? Why would we think that? Actually, emotions are very shareable. And they're contagious.

[22:15]

Sometimes a whole bunch of people at the same time feel joy. And you feel it. You walk into the room and you feel joy or sorrow. Because emotions are not limited by the body. A few years ago, you know, in the January of 2009, I guess it was, was a beautiful day. when our president was inaugurated. Remember what a wonderful day that was? Millions of people all over the world on that day felt tremendous joy. I was feeling joyful. I had just lost a close friend. It was a devastating loss. But nevertheless, on that day, I felt joyful. And it was a joyful occasion. I was not being inaugurated as president, thank God.

[23:19]

And I never met Barack Obama and I probably never will. And yet I felt real joy at that moment as did so many others. I didn't even think that the world would change that much necessarily after Barack Obama became president even though I have great admiration for him but that didn't in any way dampen the joy that I felt on that occasion and this is a wonderful thing when millions of people at the same moment feel a joyful feeling it's a historical occasion and there's nothing like it so to practice mudita is is not so complicated The main thing is you have to remember to do it. This is the hardest part always in spiritual practice. It's no trick. Spiritual practice is not that hard. Zen practice is pretty easy.

[24:23]

The hard part is just remembering to do it. Remembering to continue to keep your mind and heart on the being. That's the hard part. So the same with the practice of mudita. You just have to remind yourself all the time. Every time you go to sleep at night, remind yourself. Oh, I'm practicing mudita. Every time you wake up in the morning, you remind yourself, this is a day for practicing mudita. So that when these little mudita moments pop up, you'll remember that they're there to be made use of. Maybe in your sitting practice, you can reflect on the beauty and importance of practicing mudita, and you can encourage yourself and remind yourself in sitting and then if you keep that thought in your mind during the day when you're walking around on the street you keep your eye peeled for mudita possibilities and all of a sudden you see a young couple

[25:35]

walking down the street arm in arm and they seem to be completely in love with one another and you just are completely moved by that isn't that great there's so much joy in seeing them and you focus on that moment and you cherish it and you say to yourself This joy is my joy. Their joy is not limited by their skin. It exudes from them. And it affects me too. I am joyful to see them. We have a little, a new grandson. He was visiting us lately with his parents. And he was a mudita machine. You couldn't, like, get around the feeling of joy when he was in the room.

[26:39]

Every now and then, yes, he cried and he wasn't joyful, but most of the time he had so much delight that you couldn't help it. So children are very good. So, you know, sign up to babysit for anybody you remotely know who has a child. and explain to them, well, you know, I'm practicing mudita and I really need this child. Please, go somewhere. Let me have the child. So these opportunities are actually much more frequent than you think. It's like... You know, when you learn the name of a flower, and then you go on a walk, and everywhere you look, you see that flower.

[27:41]

Do you ever have that experience? Before that, you were on the same walk a hundred times, you never saw the flower. Now, all of a sudden, now that you know the name, and you're thinking about the flower, it's everywhere. Well, it's like that. The chances for mudita are everywhere. And the better you get at this, the more you see it. Sometimes things that are not so obviously productive of joy produce joy in you because your mudita muscle becomes quite flexible and strong and you see it more and more and more. There's a way, too, of practicing mudita very directly on your meditation cushion, cultivating the feeling. And there's lots of ways of doing it, but one good way is to sit and imagine that there's a person that you know, somebody you know, who is a very positive, joyful, easeful, delightful person.

[28:44]

And so you pretend that they're sitting there. You visualize them sitting there across from you. And then you feel the happiness exuding. from their body and you breathe it in, you take it in and you feel their joy. You become inspired by their joy. And you can think of other people who are happy and joyful and you can breathe in their joy and cultivate the feeling of joy imaginatively in that way. And then you can extend that feeling to other people And you can even feel the joy all over the world. Every day, all over the world, people are thrilled and happy. Every day, you know, people are born and wonderful things are happening to people.

[29:50]

And you can recall that everywhere in the world and breathe that in and be inspired by that. So you can do that on your cushion with your imagination. This practice of mudita is something that really means a lot to me because a long time ago I figured out, I thought to myself, boy, I really could use some cheering up. And I need to practice mudita. This would be really important for me. So I focused on it very strongly. And all the things that I'm telling you is what I did. And it was amazing the effect it had on my life. It was actually one of the most revolutionary things that ever happened in my life. It really changed me. It's a great thing when you can be genuinely happy because someone else is happy.

[31:01]

And one of the great things about it is that when you are really happy, when someone else is happy, it makes them more happy. Have you noticed that? If you're really happy and you tell somebody how happy you are and they become happy from that, you become more happy. Have you noticed? It's contagious. Yeah, so then what happens is the practice of mudita, then all of a sudden you have more friends. Yeah. Because of the practice of mudita. And the friends you already have, your friendship deepens. Because of the practice of mudita. Because as we know, friendship in the human world is mixed in with all sorts of other not so pleasant emotions. But friendship where the happiness of the friend is my happiness, this really increases and deepens, makes the friendship that much more poignant. So mudita will do wonders for your relationships.

[32:07]

There's a teaching about mudita which says that mudita has a far enemy and a near enemy. The near enemy means something that is very sneakily looks a lot like mudita. And you think it's mudita, but it's not. And the near enemy of mudita is frivolity. That you go around becoming like a joy junkie. You all the time want to be joyful and happy and you think that everything is joyful and jolly and happy. That's not mudita, that's just being silly and frivolous. Because you're so focused on joy and happiness that you are avoiding life's more difficult moments.

[33:20]

You know, loss, impermanence, tragedy. So it's really important to note that in Buddhism, Joy and love and so on are part of this bigger picture. They're not really goals in and of themselves. If you're hooked on joy and happiness and therefore you're unable to bear or appreciate sorrow or hatred, your joy and happiness are actually real shaky. They're based on a false ideology of joy and happiness. And they won't serve you in the end. In the end, life will sink your boat of joy and happiness. So, when we're practicing mudita, we throw ourselves into practicing mudita.

[34:23]

We don't hold back. But that doesn't mean that when the time comes... experience loss, impermanence, suffering and so on, we don't open ourselves to those things as well. And you don't have to spend very much time at a Buddhist center to know that those things are also part of the path and are much discussed in the Buddhist teachings. The far enemy of mudita is Envy. Jealousy. Not taking delight in others' delight, but the opposite, resenting it. Because we all feel, I think, how insufficient we are, we're very prone to these feelings of envy and jealousy, I think.

[35:30]

since in my deepest heart I realize that I am not smart enough or good enough or virtuous enough or likable enough or successful enough when it turns out that you are very successful and very likable and very smart that does not make me happy In fact, I'm pissed off. I don't like it. In fact, I actually find it hard to accept that you are that way. And I find sneaky little ways of denying it. So you tell me,

[36:34]

You've just been named the Poet Laureate of Marin County. Well, that's nice, but how come you're not the Poet Laureate of California? Tiddly little Marin County Poet Laureate? Come on. Oh, you are the Poet Laureate of California. State poet laureates really don't count for much. How come you're not the poet laureate of the United States of America? Oh, you are the poet laureate of the United States of America. That's very nice. This is a role that conventional poets occupy. a challenging avant-garde poet like myself would never be named Poet Laureate.

[37:45]

So when you actually tell me that you're Poet Laureate of the state of California, being a good Buddhist, of course I say, oh, that is just so nice. I'm so, it's so wonderful. I always knew your work was that way. So when I tell you that, you know I'm saying nice words. You understand that I don't mean it in my heart. And now you're a little less impressed with yourself that you're the poet laureate of the state of California than you were when you excitedly told me you were. Now it's taken the edge off your happiness. And that's good. See?

[38:53]

That's good. Because I'm a little resentful about this. So now I'm successful in reducing your happiness and also successful in perpetuating my own misery and narrow-mindedness. This is very funny, of course. It's a joke. But not really. I mean, aren't we like that? Have you ever done something like that, said something like that? In fact, I think there's a kind of epidemic of this sort of thing. in our world. And because of this, it actually becomes a little difficult for all of us to feel our joy and happiness. You don't really want to tell your friends about it for fear that they will not be happy for you.

[40:01]

They'll be envious. Maybe they won't, but you're not sure. better not say anything, or if you do say something, don't show the full measure of your joy, and don't even feel it. And I think that this is not unusual. So little by little, we all become, we collude together to all become a little bit more cynical, which kind of erodes our spirit and makes us a little bit more despairing. a little bit more sour about the prospects for our lives. And then, feeling that way, when we confront a troubled world with all the social problems that we have, we have no buoyancy.

[41:02]

We have no resiliency. We have no capacity to meet challenges. They overwhelm us. and we run away, distract ourselves. The French essayist, wonderfully realistic and cynical French essayist, Michel Montaigne, who I really like to read, he wrote, there's something altogether not displeasing in the misfortunes of our friends. In the last decade or so, the German word schadenfreude has become a very popular word. Schadenfreude, which means taking delight in the misfortunes of others.

[42:06]

It's very current, the word, in our society, because that attitude is actually very current. And when you think about it, a lot of our best and most successful TV comedies are kind of based on that idea of all the terrible things that happen to people that are really funny. So I think this whole attitude, this cynical attitude, a joy-dampening attitude, is a really big part of our... cultural moment. And it's the opposite of mudita. So if we're going to practice mudita, we actually have to be honest about our resentment and our envy. We can't just elide over it and pretend that we're joyful if we're not. We have to really confront these feelings in ourselves and look at them.

[43:13]

They're not going to disappear in a minute just because we decided we're going to practice mudita. So we have to look within ourselves and be honest about these feelings and then continue step by step to practice mudita. Resentment does reduce drop by drop by drop. and joy does increase drop by drop by drop if we stay with it. One of the Buddhist practices for reducing resentment is to talk yourself out of it, which seems to us like so counterintuitive. Like, this is a free country, and I think the way I think. And nobody else is going to tell me how to think. The Constitution guarantees that I can think the way I think and speak what I want to speak.

[44:17]

And nobody else is going to tell me what to think. But this is a stupid idea, really. Because nobody thinks independently. We all think the way we're conditioned to think. And if the way we're conditioned to think creates a miserable life for ourselves, why would we want to have the freedom to continue to think in that way? Who needs that freedom? Why not begin to cultivate a different way of thinking that produces a better life? So we have to talk to ourselves and identify our resentment and notice where it comes from and notice how unprofitable it is and study it and look at it and think about it and let it go. and continue the practice of mudita. So, it is a good idea to reduce your cynicism, to reduce your envy and resentment and jealousy and your self-focus.

[45:33]

That's a really good idea. It's good for you. It's good for everyone who knows you. And one great way of doing that is to practice mudita. Mudita will give you a lot more happiness. It will greatly expand your sense of life's possibilities. So you really should give it a try. Probably, anyway, it won't hurt you. It doesn't take all that much time. You don't burn any fossil fuels while you're doing it. It doesn't cost anything. So think about it. See if you can tomorrow find a moment of joy in someone else's joy. So I'm done talking.

[46:40]

Maybe we can take just a moment to breathe together and then the bell will ring. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[47:44]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[47:52]

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