Sympathetic joy

It’s funny, I don’t talk about mindfulness that much with my inner circle of friends. Maybe they would say different but it’s rare that I espouse the benefits of mindfulness, or wave the flag. Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of friends who I work with or practice with in which I do talk about the practice with. However, my closest circle of girlfriends, and indeed my family, have typically known very little of what I do. That is- until this blog. Maybe now they have a better picture.

Therefore, it’s understandable that when mindfulness or any of the concepts that surround it arise in conversation with friends, my heart sings a little. It’s like finding a few Werther’s Originals in my pocket that I get to share with those who I love best.

This past weekend was Summer Solstice and I was lucky enough to spend the day walking through the Wicklow hills with two of my closest friends. As you can imagine, we covered a lot of ground- both on land and in conversation. At one point, we were sharing our summer and autumn plans with each other and one of my friends was telling us about a number of amazing adventures on her horizon. To which I exclaimed, “Wow- sympathetic joy!”

They both turned to me and asked me, “What in the world is sympathetic joy?”

This is where  things got exciting for me. I got to share with them a little nugget of wisdom that I have learned and try to practice. I got to share the proverbial sweet.

Sympathetic joy is one of what the Buddhists call the Four Immeasurables. The Four Immeasurables are Loving Kindness (Metta), Compassion (Karuna), Equanimity (Upekkha) and Sympathetic Joy (Mudita). According to Buddhist teachings, by putting these traits into practice, people can develop a sense of connectivity with all living things, which promotes peace and harmony in both their own and other people’s lives. They are frequently developed through meditation techniques, in which practitioners concentrate on each attribute one after the other, first extending it to themselves, then to those they love, and finally to all living things. In my case, I was given the opportunity to practice sympathetic joy on the side of a mountain!

Through the practice of sympathetic joy, one can develop the quality of rejoicing and taking joy in the good fortune of others. This is opposite to jealousy or envy which separates people from one another. Sympathetic joy encourages and facilitates connection and the shared experience of happiness.

Hearing my friend’s plans produced in me a sense of excitement for her. And in my expression of sympathetic joy, we all felt that excitement. We also continued to call on sympathetic joy and name it any time one of us shared something good that was happening in our lives. This extended beyond the walk and into our What’s App conversation the next day. As one of us shared a picture of a sunrise, the other called sympathetic joy. I cannot tell you how much pleasure I feel knowing that we are all sharing the good in our lives with one another. It is like delight on steroids! Or in this case, delight x3 as there are three of us having this conversation.

This week, I plan on sharing this concept of sympathetic joy with the Sanctuary’s online community at the meditation sit that I host on Tuesday mornings at 10am. If you would like to nurture some joy with us, why not join via Zoom? You can access the link below. Can you imagine the shared joy that we can create together?

-Jane

Click here to join me at the Sanctuary’s online meditation session on Tuesday

Click below to listen to a meditation on cultivating joy: