Sympathetic Joy
Photo by Mi Pham
In this talk, Zuisei speaks on the third of the Four Immeasurables— sympathetic joy. Cultivating sympathetic joy asks us to feel joy with and for others, and to recognize the interconnected nature of our happiness.
“There are times when being glad at someone else’s happiness requires that we do more than just have the wish for their happiness. It requires that we act to bring about their happiness, bring about their joy. Because when even a single atom, quark, of [a] cell gets affected— everything is.”
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Sympathetic Joy
I have been trying to think of the Earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like? What is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me. It is most like a single cell.
I want to speak today about Boundless Joy. And it's the last talk that I give on the Four Immeasurables, although the last of the Four Immeasurables is Equanimity, on which the other three rest. But I gave a talk on equanimity at the temple last month, and it was just a few days after the election. And so I was trying to decide, you know, do I talk about boundless joy, or do I talk about unshakeable equanimity? And I thought, well, given the circumstances, I'll choose the fractionally less difficult of the two. And so I was left with sympathetic joy.
And this may be, in fact, the most difficult of the Divine abidings for immeasurables, but also, you know, as Khandro Rinpoche has said, perhaps the most profound. The ability to be happy at your own happiness, but especially at others, at others' happiness and well-being. And there's many different translations of the four immeasurables. For this one, the one that I usually use is: May you never be separated from boundless joy and rejoice at your own and others' happiness. And it's a very simple, very simple wish, and yet incredibly profound, and extremely challenging.
We spend our lives striving, working at being happy, and yet very few of us truly are. And even fewer of us can truly say that we are happy at others' happiness, at their well-being, at their success. Buddhaghosa speaks of the cultivation of the four immeasurables as breaking down the barriers. And that is really the long and the short of it: to actively work to break down the barriers, and at the same time actively work to see there are no barriers. There never were any barriers, except the ones we build in our minds. And that is why that joy can be boundless. In a sense, it is built into the definition, into that seeing of no barrier.
But, you know, before we can even be able to feel joy at somebody else's joy, we have to be able to feel it for ourselves. We have to have the experience of gladness. And it's not a small thing, given that we, in general, so enthusiastically focus on what we lack. The cultivation of joy is the renunciation of our sorrow, of our self-serving anger, of our resentment, our jealousy, our envy. And there's so many reasons that we give ourselves to not feel joy or to not express it if we do feel it. Some of it may be a personality, a melancholy disposition. And whether this is, and melancholy is kind of this pervasive feeling of sadness, often without apparent cause.
And I was reflecting on the difference. Certainly, when I feel it in myself, sadness, in a sense, is very pure. And it's a very kind of crisp and clear emotion, that if you allow yourself to feel it fully, it rises and it passes. Melancholy tends to permeate your being, perhaps because it is not so defined. I mean, perhaps now we would call it depression. Though I'm not sure if they're the same. Melancholy seems not quite so clinical. And whether it's genes, or environment, or conditioning, or perhaps you've experienced, you've seen things that then become a kind of burden that you carry with you. And that burden doesn't necessarily go away with time. Some burdens don't.
We are connected. It’s seeing, seeing that connection, not forgetting that, remembering when we do forget, reminding one another.
Hopefully, with practice, you learn to carry them more lightly. But they don't necessarily go away, especially if they're deeply embedded in our karma, in our way of seeing the world, in a way of understanding ourselves. And so some of them leave traces. But after many years, and many years of studying this, I guess, in myself, now I know that I do, in fact, have a choice: whether to pick up these traces and turn them into roads, turn them into highways with my mind, or not. Either to let them be, and let time, in a sense, erode some of their sharpness, their sharp edges, or to use them, to use them as catalysts of transformation, showing me how to act, how to live, how to see myself, in a sense, more skillfully, but perhaps more importantly, more wholly.
Many historians say that Lincoln suffered from melancholy throughout his life. And, you know, some argue that it was that fact that gave him his great passion to secure justice, one writer called it. I take comfort in such a thought myself. Maybe you've learned that expressing joy is dangerous. Somebody will resent it. Somebody will be envious. Maybe it will be taken away. There's something very vulnerable, very exposed about that full expression of joy. So, you learn to keep it close and quiet, protected. Maybe the way you see life, your outlook on life, is a little tight. So how something, the forms, how something looks, a job well done, becomes the thing, and the most important thing is to get there.
And the sense of perfectionism, and certainly of self-control, is very much rewarded in our culture. So, it's not so easy to let go of it, until you start to feel how exhausting it really is, how draining it is. The shadow side of discipline, I feel, is fear. Fear that things will fall apart, but more fundamentally, fear of disappearing, fear of extinction. And so there is a wisdom to it. You know, if you have grown up or lived in the midst of chaos, having the ability to have some sense of control of yourself, if not of the environment, it's not just a good idea, it's a matter of survival. And so to have respect, deep respect actually, for some of these very deep patterns, that perhaps at a certain point stopped serving us so well. But they served us; they certainly served us for the time that we needed them.
Thank you. And, you know, when they do, in a sense, outlive their usefulness, what happens is, it becomes very tight, it becomes very confining. It's like living in a very tight box. There's not a lot of room. There's not a lot of room for loving-kindness, for compassion, for joy, for equanimity. And that, too, you know, with practice, you experience that, you sense that. You know, for a while, and if it's worked for you, this sense of self-control or self-mastery feels good, and it's rewarded. It gets you places. You get things done. You attain things, perhaps.
Shunsen Sensei was speaking about this yesterday. And then, at a certain point, you realize that it's that very thing that is actually getting in your way. It is that very fear that is not allowing you to be fully free. In the 70s, Thich Nhat Hanh went to the San Francisco Zen Center. They asked him, after a few days that he spent with them, if he had any advice for them, you know, for their practice. And he says, yes, you get up too early, and your practice is too grim. And he said, so get up a little later, and smile a little more.
The Edge Between Discipline and Ease
I had a dream a couple of weeks ago, and I very rarely remember my dreams, and they very rarely bear repeating when I do. But this one was interesting. I dreamt that we were in the Zen Do, and it was full, and it felt like it was a Sunday, so it was a full crowd. And there was, here on the south side, a large group, a Korean tour group. And there were, I don't know, 30, 40 of them, you know, full with, you know, the guy, the tour guide with the umbrella, and he has the microphone, and everybody's wearing their earphones. And they're doing kyunhyeon.
And at one point, and I'm doing kyunhyeon on this side, and at one point, the tour guide announces, everyone on the upside go to the Zen Do hallway. And I'm thinking to myself, well, how do they know if they're on the upside? Like, what if you're on the downside? But I guess they knew what he meant. Oh, and then that reminded me, you know, there was one time somebody, we were talking about the line, calling the line to Dokesan, and somebody said, what if we call the line, the Dokesan line is open for those whose practice, whose virtue and practice deserves it? And then everyone just stays frozen in their suit, and one bold or arrogant soul just falls to the back of the Zendo. But I guess the group knew what the guy was talking about, the guide, and so they all go to the Zendo hallway, which kind of became like the Malakirtis Hut, because they're all there, 30 or 40 of them, and people are still walking hand in hand, going back and forth, and I decide, well, I better go and see if they need help.
So I go to the back of the Zendo, and there's an older, very dignified gentleman sitting on the bench. And so I go over and I sit down next to him, and he turns to me and he says, you know, so-and-so was getting a new kidney, and that's why we were late. And the tour guide who was standing right there didn't like it. And so he starts to say, well, you know, but that's still, that's no excuse. And I think, well, I should say something. They say, well, you know, getting a new kidney is a big thing. It's kind of a big deal. And the tour guide was like, no. And I remember so clearly his expression especially. It was like, no, that is not an excuse. And then I woke up.
And afterwards, I thought, you know, my subconscious lacks all subtlety, it seems. But I thought of how, obviously, not to that extent, but how much time I spent in, but that's no excuse. Actually, too much time in my life here. Too much time. And, you know, saying that to myself, but saying that to you, too. And how not generous that is. And at the same time, you know, we do have to run the place, and there is the practice of harmony. But when it becomes about something else, right, so in that moment, it is no longer about people and taking care of them. It's really just about keeping the forms the way they've always been. And how easy that can be in a community like this, and, you know, really any organization, how easy that can kind of take over, because in a sense, it's safer. I don't need to think, just tell me what to do. Tell me where to stand, where to turn, when to turn, and then I don't have to think about it. I don't have to be awake.
I think that joy lives perfectly, perfectly balanced on that edge between discipline and ease. Because discipline, no discipline whatsoever also doesn't lead to joy. I mean, if you've spent all day in bed, or just watching TV, I mean, maybe you took pleasure from it, but you'd be hard-pressed to call that joyful.
Or did you ever, as a child, imagine your own death, and then visualized your funeral, and took some kind of perverse joy in imagining your parents and how sad they would be, and how sorry they would be that they hadn't understood you, they'd ignored you, you know, they had punished you. I think that's actually a pretty common childhood fantasy.
And this is a very, I feel, very kind of primal sense of aloneness. No one understands me. No one understands my suffering. No one can possibly share it. And it's true, in fact, no one will ever have my experience. So no one will ever be fully able to share it, or perhaps even understand it.
But this is a little different. There's a moment in which that turns, and the focus moves from what it is that you are, in fact, experiencing and need to deal with, to really just me. You know, this sense of me alone in the universe, not in a good way. And it becomes self-sustaining and self-confining. Again, there's very little room for joy.
Obstacles and the Enemy of Joy
And then there's hatred, aversion, and what somebody called recently going on a rampage. In your mind, there is anger, there is jealousy, envy. You know, and in fact, the far enemy of joy is envy. And it was interesting to me that it is the far enemy. I would have thought that it would be the near enemy of joy. But the Sutras say the far enemy of joy is envy, and the near enemy is aversion, or boredom. Isn't that interesting? Boredom. Or also dishonesty, or hypocrisy.
All those times, all those moments in which we leave ourselves, in a way, through boredom, or aversion, or dishonesty. We choose to leave this moment, and therefore, how could we experience it? With joy, or with anything else?
And envy and jealousy, you know, they're very similar, but envy is just the plain desire to have what someone else has. While jealousy implies a sense of possessiveness, of suspicion, covetousness. In other way, you know, when you look at them, you realize, well, they're based on a sense of lack. And on that fear, fear of losing what I have, fear of not getting what I want. That again is so pervasive, it's so powerful. And it's such a hair trigger. You know, in a moment, you feel you're top of the world, and then somebody says something, or doesn't say something. Your teacher looks at you just a particular way, all of a sudden, you're doubting everything.
And what do we do? So often, we just, we bolster ourselves up, you know, very quickly. We accrue, we, you know, we, the mind is so quick also, and it's so uncomfortable to be in that place, that we'll look to anything that we can to bring back that sense of, no, I'm okay. It's actually okay. And it's so fragile, of course, and it's so fickle, and so interesting, we're so reluctant, often, or so resistant to being told what to do by others. And in a sense, so often, we're just handing somebody else our power. How strange that we, in some ways, are so willing, so willing to do that. And how difficult to truly stand on your own two feet, stand on your own ground, to not be shaken with every little passing breeze.
So, you know, there's many sense, and in one sense, there's many obstacles to joy. And the sutras mostly deal with, not exclusively, but deal with what you could call the mind obstacles. But of course, there's also what's happening in your environment. I mean, maybe your circumstances are such that joy is very difficult to access and to maintain. And yet, throughout the history of humanity, there's always been those who, in what we would call unimaginable circumstances, are able, are able to stay close to this sense of joy, which I really think is their ability to stay connected to their humanity and others' humanity, their sense of dignity.
A wise woman, I know, said to me recently, you know, there are certain people who are just able to orient towards the light. Regardless of what their circumstances are, they're able to stay oriented towards the light. And then, of course, there is the spiritual path, whose, I don't know if it's its aim, but, or perhaps the function of it is to blow open that very tight box. To realize that this vast, complex organism that seems so often made up of so many different disparate, conflicting parts is, as Lewis Thomas said, in The Lives of a Cell that I quoted, most like a single cell.
If we could see that, really, the rest would take care of itself. Because it is this realization that makes it not only possible, but natural. Natural. Effortless to be happy at someone else's happiness. Because you know that their happiness is indivisible from yours. It's like being happy that your hand works well, works perfectly. It is part of you. And you know that. You don't have to question that. You don't have to check. You know that.
And conversely, it's what shows us that when one of us is made to suffer, all of us suffer. Therefore, the world that we have, there is no partitioning off of those atoms of the cell.
True Joy and Its Challenges
Buddhaghosa says in The Path of Purification, the Visuddhimagga, sympathetic joy is characterized as a gladdening produced by others’ success. Its function resides in being unenvious. It is manifested as the elimination of aversion or boredom, and its proximate cause is seeing beings, and then in parentheses it says success: seeing beings, success. And I thought, well, you could read this as seeing beings and their success, or seeing beings, success. In other words, the success is seeing beings, truly seeing them.
I was rereading the other day Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, and something struck me, and she tells this story that when she was a kid, she's a writer and a poet, and so she said she was always good with words and images, but she wasn't so good at math. And her teacher was very frustrated with her, and one day she called her to the front of the class and stood her in front of the blackboard and asked her to do some problem, which Norris couldn't do. And the teacher basically humiliated her and went up and did the problem herself, and then said, “See, it is as easy as 2 plus 2 always equals 4.”
And Norris says that without thinking, just out of the depth of her being, what came out of her was that can’t be true. And her teacher laughed at her, and all the kids laughed at her, and she said she went back to her seat, and she knew that was true. It can’t always be true that 2 plus 2 is 4. And she said, well, afterwards, she realized in base 3, 2 plus 2 is 11.
There’s a proof going around on the internet that shows that 2 plus 2 is 5. If you have two quarters plus two quarters of a circle, let’s say, you have one whole. So, you know, there are many circumstances in which it could be said that 2 plus 2 is not 4. And, you know, being a poet, she wasn’t interested in the literalness of numbers. In fact, she said, you know, I just wrote off math right then and there, because it’s like, what else is there to it?
And to me, it was really, it was being interested in the mystery in those instances in which 2 plus 2 was not 4. And it made me think of this seeing beings, because I think that’s what’s required. We can’t stay on this surface. We can’t write off everything that doesn’t fit our paradigm, because then we’ll write off most things. And we do. To be willing to dive into the mystery. What is behind? What is under? What is around a thing? What is a thing, anyway? What makes me, me, or you, who you are? What makes a person? What kind of thing is that? And of course, this kind of seeing, questioning, challenging is the stuff of the spiritual path.
Sympathetic joy, says Buddhaghosa, succeeds when it causes aversion to subside, and it fails when it produces merriment. And you know, when you read The Path of Purification, you don’t get an immediate hit that Buddhaghosa was such a merry guy. I remember somebody asked Dido once in Amando, you know, “Do you think Dogen ever danced?” And Dido said, “Probably not.” Probably Buddhaghosa didn’t dance much either. But, you know, I think here he’s saying, it’s not just, “Don’t worry, be happy.” It’s not, you know, “Let’s just party now, because this is what we have, and we’ll worry about the consequences later.”
Give them the gift of fearlessness by being fearless yourself. Just be human.
It’s not just about merriment for merriment’s sake. I think he’s saying, you know, the true joy—well, he is saying, and he says it quite directly—it is the cessation of that aversion, of that boredom, of that envy and jealousy and ill will. It is to truly be glad at someone else’s gladness and your own. So it is very much a reversal of our patterns, of our habits, of a shifting of the momentum of our karma.
And that is why it is challenging, and that is why practice takes time. Because some of them, some of our habits, they are just on the surface; they are like just tracks in sand. With a little bit of work, a little bit of attention, you can shift, create a new track, or realize you don’t need a track. But some of them go deep. Some of them go deep.
And in those moments when we ask ourselves, or when we say, you know, “I have been practicing X number of years, therefore I should not need to still be dealing with this,” says who? Whose timeline is this? We would like to be rid of it, but if it’s uncomfortable, sure, if it gets in our way, of course. But it doesn’t quite work that way. Some of them run deep.
And it’s interesting, he doesn’t really speak about how to practice joy specifically. In general, he’s speaking about, for all of them, the four immeasurables, what to do when you have difficulty cultivating them, when you are met with the obstacle of anger, or envy, or dislike of someone, et cetera. But I was reflecting myself in a moment of, whether it’s anger, or self-pity, or it’s jealousy, or envy, to bring to mind an instant, something simple so that you can remember it and bring it to mind, of gratitude, of love for someone, for something.
Your wish that, even if you don’t feel it in this moment, your aspiration that all beings be happy, in fact, just as the Buddhist said, and I didn’t bring it here, but something like, you know, “What is dearest to me is me, myself.” That is true for you, too. So why wouldn’t I take care of yourself, just as I take care of mine? He doesn’t quite say it like that, but he’s basically saying, of course, of course when you hold most dearest you, that is true for everyone. So don’t harm another’s self, their most cherished possession. You.
Rented, Occupied, Shared
To turn to any of the other four immeasurables, to loving-kindness, to compassion, to equanimity. So much of what we are doing this week is sitting so deeply and long, or longer than usual, in the stillness and the silence, so we can see. It’s not just so that we can see our minds, but what happens is we can see, in fact, that when a storm is breaking, that if you’re able to ride it, it passes. It passes.
I was saying to someone, the image that I often have is of a lake with a clear surface. But that’s the natural state of our minds. And that if it’s thundering, or you yourself are just pelting the surface of the water with stones, if you stop, the water will return to its clarity, to its calm, to that stillness. When the storm passes, which it will, sooner or later, it will. That’s what it returns to. And in fact, remember, if it’s the second or the third jhāna, these deep meditation states, the Buddha describes, that’s the image that he gives for it. It’s that of a lake without outflow, he says. And so the water just naturally, effortlessly, again, rises, as water will when it’s contained.
Item, a good case can be made for our non-existence as entities. We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared, rented, occupied. And one of the commentaries in the Gateless Gate says, if you’re enlightened, you will then know that coming out of one husk and getting into another is like a traveler lodging at an inn. And I’ve always liked that line, like a traveler lodging at an inn. You know, this body is on loan for the time being. It’s not mine, it’s not myself. It’s important to care for it. Shantideva says it, actually. Teachers throughout history have said, care for the body. Buddhist teachers have said that. Not all spiritual teachers have, but care for the body, so you can continue to benefit all beings. But don’t let it become the thing. Don’t obsess over it. It’s not the goal, the end. If you make it the goal, the end, you will be disappointed. Inevitably, you will be disappointed.
There is in Rome a crypt, a Capuchin crypt. And the Capuchins are an offshoot of the Franciscans. And the Cappuccino, the name of the coffee, is because of their hood, the white hood of foam. They have a brown robe. I’ve always thought we should have hoods in our robes. And in the 1600s, the Pope, who was a Cappuccino himself, they were moving to a small friary in Rome, and they brought 3,700 bodies. And they exhumed them, and they brought them over, and did a series of crypts that they decorated with the bones of their dead friars.
And so, one is the crypt of the skulls, the crypt of the pelvises, the crypt of the leg bones and the thigh bones. And they’re very, very intricate designs. And it’s the walls, often it’s the back and the ceiling. There are these chandeliers even. And you have them really close. When you’re standing, you feel it right here. The chandeliers are made of vertebrae. And they install this, and then for the next 200 years, whenever a friar died, one who had been in the cemetery for at least 30 years, they would exhume him and add him to the decorations. And I’d never seen anything quite like it before, although I’d seen the mummies in Mexico. And that’s intense enough.
But they themselves said, this isn’t meant to be macabre. It is meant to be a reminder of the fleetingness, of the fragility of human life, like the skull malice multiplied. And they have a sign that says, “What you are now, we used to be. What we are now, you will be.” This body is shared. It’s rented. It’s occupied. And there was something so, in a sense, comforting, in a weird sense comforting about it, being in this space. The crypts are small, so you really feel surrounded by these monks who are lending their lives to a kind of a new life, and to a very poignant wake-up call.
This body is shared and rented and occupied. Now, that’s true of this body, and it’s true of this body. And occupancy is increasing day by day, which makes it ever more pressing that we find a way, that we find a way, not just to get along, but to see that this is, in fact, one body.
The Work of Being Human
Thank you. Now, another way to bring about joy is to give something. To give material things, to give fearlessness, to give the Dharma. And the giving of material things is the easiest. All of us can, in some way, give something to someone. And that giving gives joy to the giver, as well as the receiver.
But I’ve been reading also recently, you know, just how to respond if I was in the street, if I was in the subway, if I was, you know, how to respond in the presence of an act of hatred. And because I really, if that ever happens, if I happen to be a witness, I don’t want to just be standing by and say nothing. And, you know, the literature really says the same thing. You get close. You get close to the victim. And you talk to them about anything. Talk to them about movies, talk to them about your family, ask them questions. You just be with them and ignore the perpetrator. So you don’t have to be confrontive, you don’t have to be a hero. You’re really just with them. The one who is being actively dismissed, erased, see them. Give them the gift of fearlessness by being fearless yourself. Just be human. Right?
So this isn’t heroic. Actually, it is heroic. But in a very simple, in a very ordinary way, in a very human way. And afterwards, once it’s over, turn to them again: do you need anything? Would you like a glass of water? Do you need to make a phone call? Can I walk with you anywhere? Just be human.
I was listening the other day to the Commonwealth Club, and they were interviewing Thomas Friedman, who has a new book, and he was basically just arguing that things are moving so fast, technology is moving so fast that we can’t keep up. And that one of the grave consequences is just a kind of disintegration of our political system, for example. So he was just talking about that. And he was saying, if you need optimism, just stand on your head. He said, because the world looks so much better from the bottom up than from the top down. That bottom is us, the little people. The little people who every now and then wake up together. That’s happened in Egypt, for example. Of course it happened here, Occupy. They wake up together and realize, we have tremendous power, actually. And one of the ways to use this technology is to mobilize. The power to assemble, to protest, to resist, to challenge. And there are so many groups that are doing that, and that are gearing themselves to do that for this year, to meet whatever it is that we will have to meet, and that are doing so creatively, beautifully, and effectively.
There’s a group that’s called Beautiful Trouble, and they use art, especially. There are groups that use humor. So there are times when being glad at somebody’s gladness requires a little more than the wish, just the wish that they be happy. It requires that we act to bring about their happiness, their joy.
This is James Baldwin. It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance. The acceptance totally without rancor of life as it is, and people as they are. In the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power, that one must never in one’s own life accept these injustices as commonplace, but must fight them with all of one’s strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart, and it now has been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. That’s the key, to keep our own hearts free of hatred and despair, to keep ourselves oriented towards the light.
And I keep thinking that we don’t know the ways in which we will be asked to respond this coming year, the years that will follow. But I think it’s pretty clear that we will have to respond, that not responding is no longer an option. It actually never was, but it’s clearer than ever. I believe, you know, that fundamentally, what is required of us is that we be fully human, which means staying deeply, deeply connected to ourselves and to each other. Well, I mean, actually, we are connected. You don’t have to stay connected. We are connected. It’s seeing, seeing that connection, not forgetting that, remembering when we do forget, reminding one another. It is not dismissing or ignoring or hurrying past our shadows or someone else’s shadows. The beliefs that we don’t understand, don’t like, can’t abide by. Because, you know, the consequences of dismissals like this are pretty clear, I would say, and they’re everywhere.
And to realize that these rifts that we create are actually impossible. Impossible in a body that is of a piece, in a body that is whole. And that does not, at its core, or at its surface, or on the sides, or anywhere else, actually admit division. That is not how this works. And the fact is that we can do that. We can realize this, this wholeness. All of us can do that. That’s why we’re sitting here. Sitting together, celebrating the Buddha’s enlightenment. The original turner towards the light. Who founded a tradition based on enlightenment, and the realization of that light nature. That is our inheritance as human beings. To see that that light is, in fact, our life. That that is what it means to be human. And believing it is nice, but we don’t have to, because it’s true, whether we believe it or not. But better to just see it. Just see it. Better to live it. To live out of it. Better to keep striving to be fully human. The true person that Master Linji so often spoke of. Realizing that we are most like a single cell.
And then, you know, when we leave here on Sunday, and we move into the world, the rest of the world, that we bring loving-kindness, that we bring compassion, that we bring sympathetic joy and equanimity. That, as the Buddha instructed when he was speaking of these, that we let them permeate the ten quarters, which is everywhere. Whether in a moment we feel it or not, whether it seems like the person in front of us is worthy of it or not, they’re not conditional. That’s why they are divine abidings. That’s why they are immeasurable. They are not conditional. They do not depend on our mood or the circumstances. And if we can do that, even this much, then we’ll be truly joyful, truly joyful at our own happiness and at others’ happiness.
Sympathetic Joy, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.