Hey you guys,
So we’ve done metta (loving-kindness) meditation before, but have you heard of muditā (sympathetic joy)? This is a slightly different, but also highly skilful attitude to cultivate within ourselves.
Though not an English word, schadenfreude – the pleasure felt when learning of someone else’s failure – has been picked up by the English language and is commonly known and used by many English speakers (even if they don’t know German).
But why is it we haven’t also adopted a word to explain its opposite; the feeling we feel when we are happy at someone one else’s good fortune? We don’t have a word for this in English.
The polyamory community came up with the word compersion to try to give a name to the feeling they believe would be admirable to develop when learning of your romantic partner having other romantic partners. But this word may have too much affiliation with sex and communities that not everyone agrees with to become widespread. And its meaning is too limited in scope to fill the void in the English language we would like covered.
However, the Pali word muditā, better captures what we ideally would like to develop within us – a replacement for envy, jealousy and resentment, and instead a joy when others succeed, even if it has no effect on you.
This practice is very similar to metta.