2020-12-25 Brahmavihāras: Appreciative Joy (5 of 5)
IInsight Meditation CenterDec 25, 2020 at 5:16 pm12min
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00:01Gil Fronsdal
So then now we come now to the fifth and final talk on muditā. I like to call it rejoicing or 'rejoicement,' sympathetic joy, or appreciative joy. And with all these Brahmavihāras, with all these four divine abodes of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. I think it's very useful, important to see them as an expression or as a manifestation, or as a consequence of inner freedom.
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00:44Gil Fronsdal
And that, depending an inner freedom is a metaphor for that is an open heart, the doors of the heart are open. If there's a lock on the door, then the heart is not open. And in some ways that protects us. From the sufferings of others. These difficulties of the world - we don't take it in, we keep everything away. But it's at a tremendous cost. Because any, any ways in which the doors of the heart are locked, it also locks it from our capacity for joy and happiness, for love and kindness.
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01:25Gil Fronsdal
And if those doors can be wide open, what we discover is that, Yes, we will take in and experience the suffering of the world. But it'll just flow right through, almost as if what the, what the heart is, it's just a door. And to have that door, right wide open, everything goes through, and in a wonderful way. And we do experience suffering of the world more acutely. But with a door open, it doesn't have to, we don't suffer because of it. We're not a victim of that. What's happening in the world, but we do experience it.
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02:09Gil Fronsdal
But the very ability to experience the suffering of the world more is, is the very way of being that allows us to experience joy and happiness more, that it's just a symptom of the open door. And, and so with an open door wide, and we experience suffering there, we can have compassion. But if we experience the joys of the world, we can feel joy and delight. So in Buddhism, this is very important. Because in Buddhism, our natural capacity for being ethical, being virtuous, living a good life, is very much connected to our capacity to be happy.
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02:56Gil Fronsdal
The more happy we are, in this deep dharmic way, deeper appreciate, you know, a deep way that is not because we won the lottery. But because we're really settled and at home and not in conflict with ourselves. That the more we have this inner happiness, the more natural it is to live an ethical life, to live a life that's wholesome and supportive for the world. So rather than thinking of cultivating happiness, and wellbeing, to be a selfish thing or thing to do, it's really a vehicle in Buddhism, for living a selfless life, for living a life that's beneficial for the world, that supportive for others.
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03:40Gil Fronsdal
And so, cultivating happiness here for oneself, can be seen as a part of the path to living for the welfare and happiness of others. It's also the path for greater and greater freedom. And so muditā is seen as a practice of that's freeing. And so it frees us from being having envy, frees us from having a closed heart, from envy from being jealous. There's a certain kind of freedom from fear that comes with sympathetic joy, with appreciative joy.
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