The Four Sublime States - Sympathetic Joy ( Mudita)

Sympathetic Joy (Mudita)

Not only to compassion, but also to joy with others open your heart!

Small, indeed, is the share of happiness and joy allotted to beings! Whenever a little happiness comes to them, then you may rejoice that at least one ray of joy has pierced through the darkness of their lives, and dispelled the gray and gloomy mist that enwraps their hearts.

Your life will gain in joy by sharing the happiness of others as if it were yours. Did you never observe how in moments of happiness men's features change and become bright with joy? Did you never notice how joy rouses men to noble aspirations and deeds, exceeding their normal capacity? Did not such experience fill your own heart with joyful bliss? It is in your power to increase such experience of sympathetic joy, by producing happiness in others, by bringing them joy and solace.

Let us teach real joy to men! Many have unlearned it. Life, though full of woe, holds also sources of happiness and joy, unknown to most. Let us teach people to seek and to find real joy within themselves and to rejoice with the joy of others! Let us teach them to unfold their joy to ever sublimer heights!

Noble and sublime joy is not foreign to the Teaching of the Enlightened One. Wrongly the Buddha's Teaching is sometimes considered to be a doctrine diffusing melancholy. Far from it: the Dhamma leads step by step to an ever purer and loftier happiness.

Noble and sublime joy is a helper on the path to the extinction of suffering. Not he who is depressed by grief, but one possessed of joy finds that serene calmness leading to a contemplative state of mind. And only a mind serene and collected is able to gain the liberating wisdom.

Sympathetic joy means a sublime nobility of heart and intellect which knows, understands and is ready to help.

Sympathetic joy that is strength and gives strength: this is the highest joy.

How does one feels sympathetic joy towards others when oneself cannot find the joy in being alive within oneself? 

In putting the practice of sympathetic joy to action the mind has to become quiet when in dealing with others otherwise it is almost impossible for it to happen. Sympathetic joy happens in relationship to others, your wife, your son your daughter, you brothers and sisters, cousins nieces and nephews, your neighbors and friends throughout the Internet connections all over the world; sympathetic joy means loving what others are doing, being and manifesting who they are. With a busy mind this is never easy as the busy mind likes to over indulge and mess up this virtue with analysis, judgement, comparisons and so forth, a busy mind cannot allow for others to be joyful so long as it is busy.

My son said to me, "Dad you always think you are right and everyone else is wrong, you do not allow me to talk. You talk of one small thing an you drag on to a whole range of issues..."I was hit by a loaded gun and fell flat on my butt not knowing what to feel. For once my son spoke up for himself which was great even if it was to lay it good on his father. So I said thank you and I am very happy that can speak for yourself, God bless your heart i feel free from my worry that you still have not grown up. What he said woke me up to the fact that i and my sons have drifted into our own adult hood and that my care for their well being is becoming irrelevant. In other words i cannot do much to help them anymore or that they do not need my help anymore or so they think. I will just have to keep an open mind.

God created man with two ears and one mouth, speak less and listen more was my lesson to be learned.

To be happy along with the rest of humanity in this day and age is a great miracle in itself for humanity id going through some heavy duty crap all over the Planet. But to be in sympathetic joy along with your children, your parents, friends and relatives, your co-workers is not a far fetched practice to adopt for the benefit of the well being of others. Listening with sympathetic ears is another strong practice for those who care to listen to the cries of suffering in the universe and the sound of a ukalilli or a mandolin floating gently in the airwaves of your mind. The Heart is a lonely hunter, it is often said and it does not have to be when your mind is silent the heart id filled with the vibes from around the universe, all you have to do is open you heart and allow for it to happen. When the heart is able to listen without any interruption or redefining or interpretation, judgement and so forth of the mind, no veils or disguises or any hidden agendas, then the healing of the soul happens.