“Happiness is letting go of what you think
your life is supposed to look like and
celebrating it for everything that it is.”
Mandy Hall
In Buddhist philosophy, there are four key states of mind that anybody needs to occupy to be happy and to reach enlightenment, and of these four mudită is generally considered to be the hardest, but also the most important.
To show joy is to celebrate happiness and achievement in others even when we are facing tragedy ourselves. Mudită is when you bask in the reflected joy of somebody else’s happiness. It’s the parent who smiles when they hear their children laughing in the next room. It’s when you jump with joy at a friends promotion. It’s when you smile and are grateful when your friend tells you that they are cancer free.
Mudită is a kind of joyous empathy that delights in the vicarious happiness of another person.
Buddhism says that we should bring more mudită to our interactions with all other people — in fact, all living things more broadly. And the philosopher Buddhaghosa laid out a method to do so.
Buddhaghosa says that we shouldn’t start with somebody that we love, because that is too easy. Nor should we start with somebody that we resent, because that is too hard. Instead, find somebody who is cheerful. Find the person who is a half full, optimistic kind of sort, and be around them a lot more. Let their cheerfulness wash over you, because it is contagious. Let their easy laugh and happy gratitude in, and so too will you become that way. From here, you should find a neutral person, and then the person you resent, until finally you are finding happiness in the joy of somebody you don’t even like.
Mudită is a blessing, because it allows us to experience more joy than ever before. We can experience the joy in our own individual lives, but we can also experience everywhere and in everyone’s lives more Mudită.
Shine On
