This Wake Up Call is about comparing mind. Comparing gets in the way of joy. Yet comparing is ubiquitous in the law. Plus it's one or the other - we can be joyful or we can cultivate (or default to) a comparing mind. But we can't do both. So the question for this episode is, how do we let joy win?
This Wake Up Call is about comparing mind. Comparing gets in the way of joy. Yet comparing is ubiquitous in the law. Plus it's one or the other - we can be joyful or we can cultivate (or default to) a comparing mind. But we can't do both. So the question for this episode is, how do we let joy win?
We’ve started unpacking sympathetic joy, the third of the four Brahmaviharas, or wholesome states of mind. These “wholesome states” are the states of mind and heart that, frankly, help us to feel good. They include lovingkindness, compassion, equanimity, and the one we’re unpacking now, sympathetic joy.
In terms of the exploration of this state of mind, and as is so often the case learning the building blocks of mindfulness, the exploration includes, or even focuses on, the reasons why we tend, or trend, not towards sympathetic joy, but away. In other words, the exploration looks at what gets in the way.
For example, when we first start learning present moment awareness, we learn to pay attention to the opposite: the wandering mind. We learn ways of relating to the wandering mind that are kind and nonjudgmental. Our focus is on developing a benevolent approach to the wandering mind, and between that focus and also the love we bring to the exploration, we relax, we practice, and the mind can become more steady.
Similarly, when we’re looking at sympathetic joy, it’s good to understand it for what it is – taking joy in the joy of others – but also in relationship to the impediments that make it difficult. And then to bring a lot of kindness and benevolence to the ways we incline in the opposite direction from sympathetic joy, if we start to notice those. Then we can practice without feeling like when we’re not practicing, or when we're not getting it right, we’re doing something wrong. Because we’re not. It’s a practice.
It’s also good to notice the opposite states because moment to moment, the mind can’t hold opposite views. You can see if that's true for you by checking it out in your practice.
Think back to sometime in the last few days or weeks when something simple but frustrating happened like someone was being rude on Zoom or via email. Recall feeling frustrated with them, if you did. And then imagine someone chatting to you during that Zoom and saying, about the rude person, “That poor kid, she was just fired.” What happens? Does your frustration turns to compassion? If so, maybe you can see how in a breath, one state of mind is gone and another takes its place. And while you may go back and forth, the point is, we’re practicing the more wholesome states so they become more habitual. And so that over time, they begin to crowd out the less wholesome ones.
When we explore the impediments to sympathetic joy, we want to do that with kindness, and even with a sense of humor, as in, OH, there’s jealousy again, hello. Because then we can recognize those impediments and make a choice shift to sympathetic joy, and maybe - just maybe - over time - we can essentially banish those opposite states, and at the same time, condition the mind and heart to incline in the direction of the more wholesome states.
"Comparing mind" is today’s opposite state, and it’s a good one to play with. I don’t know about you but I’m personally very intimately familiar with comparing mind. I’ve been practicing mindfulness for decades, but I so often find myself comparing myself to others, in big ways and also in the most subtle ways.
Yesterday, I was overhearing my daughter’s professor leading a meditation before beginning her class on the DSM5 (she’s in a masters program in psychology), and I loved the meditation…and immediately my mind started comparing that meditation to the ways I usually lead meditation. I was thinking, hmm, her voice sounds like that, I wonder how my voice sounds, I don’t think I offer that suggestion, her suggestion is better, my idea here is better, and so on.
And then I realized I was more or less blocking myself from appreciating the meditation, and also from having joy for the professor – the joy I’m guessing she was having, because I know I have it, too – of leading a beautiful meditation. Once I noticed, I could switch, but I needed to see what was happening, and then I could be happy for her, and think, ahh, how lovely it must be to offer that to your students, how lovely that must feel, I’m so happy you get to do that.
And then only an hour or so later, I saw my neighbor and she was on her way to go skiing and she looked very fit and I immediately thought, “Oh, Judi, why did you eat all those chocolate chip cookies last night?” Instead of thinking how wonderful it is that my neighbor is so fit, and that she must be happy about that, and that I’m happy for her.
So now think about how this plays out in our profession, where we’re always competing with one another by the very nature of our work and the very nature of the culture. Someone is making partner or getting tenure and I’m not there yet, and I’m comparing, measuring myself against someone else’s achievements, instead of being happy for them. I lose a case and someone else wins and I do the same thing, and it’s hard to be happy for them. It’s exhausting.
It’s like looking at life, and the law, as a zero-sum game, when they’re not. There’s plenty of joy to go around. And anyway, the storms of life are always just blowing us this way and that, and sure, we’re steering as best we can, but the winds are still blowing. I love to think of that using the classical mindfulness formulation of the Eight Worldly Winds: pleasure & pain, gain & loss, praise & blame, fame & disrepute. This is how life is, isn’t it? Moment to moment, day to day, these are the winds of life.
Sympathetic joy is not about comparing whether my life is mainly on the left side of the column, in pleasure, gain, praise, or fame all the time. It’s not going to be. I’m going to get blown around – we all are. And it’s not about comparing whether I’m experiencing as much pleasure or praise as anyone else.
It’s about relaxing into whatever is happening, overriding the tendency to compare, and doing that by affirmatively, really summoning sympathetic joy when someone else is experiencing gain or fame even if I’m not. And just being flat-out happy for them, getting happy for them. And seeing how that feels – how it kind of comes back around: being, and expressing joy for someone else, brings more joy into the moment, which means, interestingly, there’s more joy for me, too, and around it goes.
This is something to play with and to see if it’s true. Meaning, is it true for you that you can’t hold two opposites at once, so that when you summon sympathetic joy, you pop out of comparing mind? And also, when you call up some joy for someone else, do you also feel better? And also, if you practice this for a few weeks, does it become more durable? Does your mind/heart more reliably incline towards joy for others almost more automatically?