“Jane is really talented. She really deserves that promotion”. Diana was telling me over a Zoom call about how her friend got promoted at work in her HR agency.
Diana was one of my friends during high school time, and Jane was one of her college mates that she introduced to me later. We used to regularly check on each other, and the pandemic didn’t stop it.
“Well, weren’t you the one who joined the agency before her?” I asked well knowing her. “I thought you were the one with seniority?”
“Well, yeah seniority-wise I was ahead of her. But in reality, she was hard working since her college days, and now at work she’s really committed to her job, while I was slacking off. I’m glad she got it.”. Diana said smiling.
Through the computer screen I observed her face looking for wrinkles of pain or slight eye-rolls of sarcasm.
None! — Just as I had expected. I knew for so long that she rarely envies anyone even if they did better than her. It was one of her key personalities.
Her smile was pure and her intention was true. She was honestly happy for her friend who bypassed her to get a career promotion and a pay rise.
That night, while reminiscing what happened over the day she reminded me of a human quality I had read about over 10 years ago in Middle school.
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25 Centuries ago, rural India was the cradle for dozens of Philosophies. Buddhism founded by Buddha, and Jainism founded by Mahavira were two of the newer branches that were heavily influenced but stood out on its own from Vedic Hinduism.
Around this time when in Greece Socrates was preaching his philosophy based on ethics, in India the Buddha was preaching a doctrine of equality and righteousness while Mahavira was preaching a doctrine of Non-violence.
While these never-met two Indian religious founders disagreed upon several ideologies, there were 4 major human qualities they agreed upon which they called the 4 Divine Abodes (by Buddha) and 4 Meditations (by Mahavira).
One of those 4 was called, Muditha or Pramod
Although differed by the choice of wording, both Buddha and Mahavira expressed a single phenomenon by those two words — Muditha in Buddhist canon and Pramod in Jain Canon.
Altruistic Joy
One of the most common reactions by someone to another human being’s success is often jealousy and that is a destructive feeling.
Muditha or Pramod refers to being honestly happy and being delightful in someone else’s well being, which is the exact opposite of being jealous.
This altruistic joy is often equated to the happiness a parent feels when their child excels, or what a teacher feels when his or her students do well in their exams. It is an honest feeling of happiness that doesn’t have any ‘if’s or ‘but’s in it.
Why does it make you a better friend?
What type of a friend do you want? Do you want a friend who backbites you, and brings obstacles to you when you try to achieve something? Do you want a friend who shows you a good face, but in your absence trash talks you? Do you want a friend who is sarcastic about your life goals?
Or, do you want a friend who is honestly happy when you are achieving good things in life, and is delightful to hear good news about your success?
I’m sure you would choose the last one? Wouldn’t you?
So would the others. They would want a friend of that caliber, because with such people you feel relaxed, open and tranquil. If you show by your words and actions that you aren’t jealous of them, they will feel comfortable around you. So you would become a good friend to them and in turn you win their trust.
The Golden Rule of Philosophy goes, “Treat others the way you want to be treated”. So if you be a good friend who wishes good will on others, the Law of Attraction and Law of Reciprocity will make sure that you will get your fair share of good friends.
In addition, jealousy is a mental burden that disturbs your mental peace. Getting rid of it has a higher chance to make you happy.
But how to do it?
Let’s admit it. It is easy to be jealous. But it’s not that easy to be honestly happy about someone else’s success.
So if you automatically don’t have this quality, there is a cultivation mental exercise to develop this altruistic joy aka Muditha aka Pramod given by these respected teachers 25 centuries ago. Surprisingly both the systems are quite similar.
It is time to cultivate good qualities with a mental exercise
This whole exercise is based on how you would radiate the positive thoughts of altruistic joy from yourself to other people.
As someone who had done this exercise, and been personally benefitted by it, I had realized that in the beginning of the exercise, you need to first calm down and visualize a very close friend to you . The most apt would be someone who may have had some success recently.
With that visualization, mentally say the following, line by line letting your heart reverberate with the resonance of these thoughts. Feel that happiness is radiating from yourself toward your friend.
I’m happy that you’re happy.
May your happiness continue.
May your happiness increase.
May your good fortune shine.
Do this for several minutes until you feel your mind is feeling relaxed.
With time, you will start to feel good about the whole happenstance, and then you can slowly think of someone who is not exactly close to you, but you don’t exactly hate either — more like a neutral person.
If you can develop this good feeling toward such a neutral person, you can then extend this exercise to include your enemies and rivals as well.
Why would you even need to be happy with the success of your enemies or rivals?
Because if you can control your jealousy it would help you reduce the stress in your work life, and we all want a stress free life, don’t we?
It may be hard at the beginning. You may feel this exercise is futile. But keep doing it, and you will soon be able to live stress free in conditions when otherwise would burn your heart with jealousy.
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Diana is still friends with Jane and despite Jane being her immediate senior manager at work, and it had never affected their friendship. In fact, Diana’s spontaneous humility had earned her respect from many of her colleagues and I’m sure she will get a promotion for herself soon as well, despite the pandemic curbing job opportunities to many.
So, if you feel like you don’t have the spontaneous humility and Muditha or Pramod that Diana has, try doing the above mental exercise to cultivate that good quality in you. It will help you in many folds in the social settings.
Good Luck! Now go be a good friend and find some good friends too.
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*Please note that the names are changed due to privacy concerns.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Omar Lopez on Unsplash