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Guided Meditation: Appreciative Joy; Dharmette: Appreciative Joy - Liz Powell

The following talk was given by Liz Powell at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 28, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Appreciative Joy

Good day everyone, and welcome to the morning sitting as we continue our week with these wholesome qualities of mind known as the divine abodes, or Brahmavihāras¹. We are building on a foundation of mettā², or goodwill and loving-kindness. Yesterday we were focused on how goodwill that meets suffering responds with compassion and caring, and today we'll focus on how goodwill that meets happiness responds with appreciative joy, also called sympathetic joy. In other words, we're happy for the good fortune of others, and we want to see their happiness continue.

The mind that can be happy at others' happiness, and not caught up in jealousy or competition, is a mind that can come to freedom from dissatisfaction, stress, and suffering. This is a mental state, by the way, that's really different from complacency. It's not just that we're okay; we're actually feeling happy, and there's an availability of peace with respect to the way life works. Sometimes people are happy, sometimes they're unhappy, sometimes we have ups, sometimes we have downs. Appreciative joy does not mean that we give up any motivation to help those who are not so fortunate. It means we see how life has this disparity—human culture creates disparities—and we have compassion for the way that affects people. We see how privilege operates, and we're able to use whatever gifts that come our way, not just for our own pleasure, but to support wholesome action in the world, whether that action is very local where you live or has a bigger reach.

So, sympathetic joy is this beautiful quality and skill that has strength, and it's also able to offer strength to others.

With that, we'll begin our formal meditation.

Taking time to find the posture that supports you. Perhaps take some longer, deeper breaths, and release any obvious tension or anything extra. As you take these deliberate breaths, bringing energy into the body with the in-breath and releasing with the out-breath. Notice what's arising in awareness right now. In the mind, the heart, what's arising in the body? Taking some time to bring any ease or softening that's available to any area of preoccupation, any area of difficulty.

Perhaps allowing yourself to feel the presence of aliveness, vitality, energy in the body. You might feel it in the breathing in and out, or in the warmth and coolness of different areas of the body. You might feel pulsing or vibration in the body. Noticing any good feelings in any area of the body, the heart center. Even if some areas are uncomfortable, there may be other areas that feel good, that feel some ease. Perhaps sending yourself the silent wish: "May the vitality of this body continue."

Allowing yourself to feel any positive physical, emotional, or mental feelings that are present. Noticing states of heart and mind that accompany various sensations in the body. Appreciating any supportive emotions or thoughts. The presence of any happiness, or joy, or contentment. Appreciating all that arises, whether difficult or joyful. It's all information that awareness is allowing us to see as it arises, as it stays for a while, as it passes.

This morning, for those who would like, I'll offer a guided practice of appreciative joy. You can feel free to participate, or if this does not fit where your practice is this morning, letting the sound of my voice fade into the background and continuing with what you need in your practice today.

We can experiment with feeling appreciative joy for a good friend, or someone for whom some aspect of life is going well right now. When you're ready, bringing this person to mind, and imagining their face glowing with happiness, and seeing them on the receiving end of good fortune. Perhaps silently receiving or repeating phrases of appreciative joy in the mind. I'll offer some, and you may have some that spontaneously occur to you as well:

• I'm happy that you're happy.
• I take joy in your good fortune.
• May your happiness continue and grow.
• May you grow in happiness, peace, and freedom.

Continuing on your own with the phrases that speak to you, or simply feeling the heart filling with appreciative joy, and perhaps metaphorically sending that to the person whose happiness you are appreciating.

May your happiness continue and grow. May you grow in happiness, peace, and freedom.

Dharmette: Appreciative Joy

Muditā³ is the Pali⁴ word for appreciative joy, and it's sometimes translated as empathetic joy or sympathetic joy. It's what goodwill or mettā feels when it encounters happiness. It wants the happiness of others and oneself to continue. Perhaps it's easiest to feel for yourself, or the people that you love or like.

Interestingly, if we fear deprivation, or we've unconsciously harbored some idea that there's a limited supply of happiness in such a way that if it goes to someone else or people we don't like, there will be less for us, sometimes people feel competitive about good fortune or even feel envy when someone else receives something that they want for themselves. But of course, we can always contemplate: does another person's happiness diminish yours? What ideas or attitudes might underlie that? What experiences might be behind that? At another time when you are happy, how would it be for you to know that others resented you or begrudged your happiness? It would be pretty uncomfortable.

So, there's no need to judge ourselves or others in this practice. We can take into account that we ourselves, and people who have some wisdom, have at some time or other behaved unskillfully, and that people have been harmed by that. Also, that people who have harmed others—including anytime we may have done some harm—at other times have been good to someone else.

A lot of this is about separating unskillful behavior from the person themselves, and realizing how big a role conditioning plays in unskillful behavior. That can help us realize that appreciative joy for someone else's happiness really gets to the root of their potential as a human being. We can think about them as an innocent baby to whom events then happened. We can send wishes for continued happiness to their inner potential, in a way, to grow into a skillful, kind person. And sending that to ourselves as well: this person with this potential, sending that person appreciative joy, just as we would want to receive sympathetic joy when things go well for ourselves, despite the fact that we're imperfect. Perhaps including the wish that someday we and others will be freed from suffering towards genuine, sustainable happiness in the Dharma.

We may struggle with the realization that some have been born into privilege or currently enjoy some good fortune, while others are deprived of resources for even the most basic needs—water, food, shelter, love. In light of this, it's really helpful to remember equanimity: a balanced mind and a wise view. That wise view includes the recognition that actions have consequences. All human actions have consequences. So there are consequences from inequity, and the correction of it is probably not happening anywhere near as quickly as we want. But equanimity, together with sympathetic joy, compassion, and goodwill or loving-kindness, can help us remain constructive while we're aware of the imbalance between those who have happy circumstances and those who don't.

Appreciative joy has this wonderful quality, as do all the Brahmavihāras, of helping us see that happiness creates more happiness. Each of these Brahmavihāras foster an increase in themselves in the world. If we offer kindness, kindness is more likely to be offered in return. If we offer compassion, that's likely to grow around us. And happiness becomes more abundant when we celebrate good fortune when it comes along.

When any of these Brahmavihāras, including appreciative joy, feel difficult to access, it's always useful and skillful to wish that we could send wishes of one of these qualities. For example, "May I open to the happiness I see in others." That's a wish to have access to appreciative joy. We can balance any reactivity with our capacity to think wise thoughts. For example: "I know that things that people get through crime or malfeasance don't last. I see that human life is short. I see that sooner or later suffering and sorrow come to everyone." And most importantly: "May I not begrudge a few passing moments of happiness in this life; it's not as abundant as we wish it were sometimes."

This practice of appreciative joy is, of course, supported by these other Brahmavihāras. Maybe you felt that when there's kindness and goodwill, happiness grows. When there's compassion and care for others, happiness is then a possibility again. Each one strengthens and supports the others.

I want to read you an excerpt from an essay by a monastic, Nyanaponika Thera⁵. He was someone who lived in the last century, a German-born Theravada Buddhist monk and scholar. After he ordained in Sri Lanka, he later became the co-founder of the Buddhist Publication Society. He authored a ton of books and articles, and he mentored and taught a whole generation of Western Buddhist leaders—for example, Bhikkhu Bodhi⁶. Many of us who have read many of the suttas⁷ translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi will appreciate how important that is, since he's done so many translations on which those of us who speak English now depend for our information about the original Buddhist suttas, or as close to them as we can get.

So, Nyanaponika Thera wrote:

"Compassion prevents love and sympathetic joy from forgetting that, while we are enjoying or giving temporary and limited happiness, there still exist at that time the most dreadful states of suffering in the world. It reminds them that our happiness coexists with measureless misery, perhaps at the next doorstep. It is a reminder to love and sympathetic joy that there is more suffering in the world than we are able to help mitigate; and that, after the effect of such mitigation has vanished, sorrow and pain are sure to arise anew, until suffering is uprooted entirely at the attainment of Nibbana⁸.

"So this is one of the roles of compassion. Compassion does not allow that love and sympathetic joy shut themselves off against the wide world by confining themselves to just one narrow sector. Compassion prevents love and sympathetic joy from turning into states of self-satisfied complacency within some jealously guarded, petty kind of happiness. Compassion stirs and urges love to widen its sphere; it stirs and urges sympathetic joy to search for fresh nourishment, not be complacent and stuck in one moment. It helps both of them to grow into truly boundless states."

(Like the mettā that I read to you earlier this week was encouraging boundless loving-kindness.)

"Sympathetic joy holds compassion back from being overwhelmed at the sight of the world's suffering, from being absorbed by it to the exclusion of everything else. It keeps us from falling into constant grief. Sympathetic joy relieves tension of mind, soothes the painful burning of the compassionate heart. It keeps compassion away from melancholic brooding without purpose, from a futile sentimentality that merely weakens and consumes the strength of mind and heart. Sympathetic joy develops compassion into active sympathy.

"Sympathetic joy gives to equanimity the mild serenity that softens its stern appearance. It is the divine smile on the face of the Buddha; a smile that persists in spite of his deep knowledge of the world's suffering, a smile that gives solace and hope, fearlessness and confidence. 'Wide open are the doors to deliverance,' it says."

So that's what Nyanaponika Thera reminded us of, and that is how these qualities balance one another.

As you practice appreciative joy, you'll probably notice—maybe you just noticed—that it has an energizing capacity. It can lighten our hearts, and that's skillful to keep in mind when you find your heart sinking into sadness at the suffering in the world, into grief. Sympathetic joy benefits tremendously from continual grounding in mindfulness, and that's the way that it won't veer into giddiness or over-excitation, which isn't really the aim of this practice. It can be a calm kind of appreciation or joy, and it doesn't need excitement to flourish.

I hope for those of you who are enjoying these practices, that you perhaps use today to touch into appreciative joy. Noticing happiness around you, noticing happiness inside you, and being able to take a few moments to feel that and enjoy that.

It's been wonderful sharing this with you this morning, and I wish you a very joyful day. See you tomorrow.