I’m sitting in a corner coffee shop in Manhattan on this freezing clear day, struck as one is by the unstoppable (except by COVID) 24-hour activity on just one of the (so I read) 12,000 intersections of this city. Everyone is going somewhere, doing something. There’s constant movement in every direction – by foot, by taxi, by bicycle, by paw, overground, underground. Where is everyone actually going and what are they actually doing? There’s no way of knowing from the outside because all we can see is their bodies, not the contents of their intentions that will determine where they actually end up. They could be headed briskly toward happiness or strolling toward suffering, even as their footsteps overlap the same gum-strewn pavement of 7th Avenue. For example, are we being driven forward today by jealousy or rejoicing?
Carrying on from this article: Overcoming the obstacles to rejoicing.
Rejoicing is the direct antidote to jealousy and envy, which are painful emotions and useless states of mind. Rejoicing undermines any limited insecure sense of self who has a chip on their shoulder. Rejoicing makes us feel happy, like watching those chimps jump up and down with relief. And even when just sitting in a café or lolling around on a couch, we can be creating truckloads of merit, winning a percentage of others’ good karma, and sowing umpteen good seeds in the garden of our mind, even if we don’t feel like doing much of anything else. I think rejoicing can lead to startling results; it’s an instant merit hit. Plus, because we’re creating the causes for the same good deeds or good fortune as the person we’re happy for, it is a win win – happiness now, even greater happiness later.
Ever feel passed over or under-appreciated?
Have you ever felt that you have been continually passed over?! You’re not alone. Shantideva explains that human beings are continually jockeying for position like racehorses, vying to get ahead. We typically divide people into those to whom we feel superior (and develop pride), those to whom we feel inferior (jealousy), and those to whom we feel moreorless equal (competitiveness).
Sangha communities can be no exception — now we have all those great meditators, efficient managers, or popular teachers to feel bad next to. Why can’t I be in a position like theirs so that I can help lots of people? Why am I being passed over? Even people we love can be the objects of our envy if our insecurity has the upper hand – in which case we don’t like ourselves for feeling bitter, making it even worse. 
Fact is, it doesn’t even matter whether we are an anonymous toilet cleaner or adored by millions – there is always someone superior to us if we have that mindset.
It’s worth remembering that when people are doing better than us – for example, they have more help, more success, or fewer obstacles – they created the causes for this, perhaps lifetimes ago. With the wisdom of karma, these appearances could encourage us to rejoice and create those causes ourselves. There is no world outside of our mind. What we sow in the garden of our mind, we alone shall reap. Therefore, we can use whatever unpleasantness is appearing in our karmically created world to remind us to uproot this poison ivy, as it were, with patience and purification, and sow the seeds for the roses we’d like by rejoicing and other virtues.
If you want something, rejoice in someone who’s got it!
If we want to, as explained here, we can start by thinking of all the things we are already doing right (pre-empting dismay about all the things we never get round to!) There is always more we could be doing until all beings are freed, and there are always going to be other people doing better than us until we attain enlightenment; so we need to think about this in a constructive rather than discouraging way.
By the way, if you do feel underappreciated, it might be worth pointing out that people probably aren’t sitting around deliberately undermining us as much as we may think they are. They’re usually thinking or talking about tons of other – to them – more interesting or pressing things. And even if they don’t “see” us, or see us wrongly, it is because they can only see their own versions of us, which are reflections of their minds and karma. Our stewing in resentment or envy can never alter that. What can? First, not feeling so upset about it, and second, changing our karma.
It is a hard habit to break, I was thinking today, when someone criticized me out of the blue – the habit of thinking the world is objective. It is a step in the right direction to believe that our world depends on our interpretations, but we need to go the whole way to understanding and believing that there is no world behind our interpretations – there is nothing actually there to be interpreted. Our interpretations amount to our world.
Quick bit of market research: how can we change others’ perceptions or projections of us?! Answers in the comments! This is not a trick question but worth contemplating given that caring what people think about us is nearly half of the eight worldly concerns. We are pretty attached to being acknowledged and appreciated, for a start, and we really don’t like it when people criticize us (unfairly or not) or don’t notice us. But, as Atisha said:
Words of fame and praise serve only to beguile us, so blow them away as you would blow your nose.
Venerable Geshe-la would blow his nose quite often after giving yet another brilliant teaching, and I’d sometimes wonder if this was why.
Gotta get ahead
Do we need to be competitive or even cutthroat to get ahead? Sometimes it seems that way in our modern society, in many walks of life. But is that true? For every successful cutthroat politician, for example, there are many more ambitious politicians stewing and grumbling in the wings. There is no guarantee that external scheming will help us get ahead. This is because we receive what we have created the causes for. As Venerable Atisha helpfully says:
If the things you desire do not come, it is due to karma created long ago, therefore keep a happy and relaxed mind.
In any event, a more interesting question is where are we actually getting ahead to? Empty bottles await us — where will we be when people are remembering us?
I would love to hear your comments!
I hope you’ve enjoyed these rejoicing articles! Thanks for reading them. The final one is here: One nice way to meditate on rejoicing.
19 Comments
How can we change others’ perceptions or projections of us?!
Reflecting on my relationship with my mom, i tryed to change the Perception or projection of my mom of me but it didn’t work.. Finally, it wasn’t about changing her view, it was about accepting our karmic tendencies and cultural differences with each other and accepting their karmic appearance of us, and seeing how far we’ve both changed. We’re both equally a Mirror of dharma for each other. So ultimately, it’s really about cherishing the person for where they are at and where we are at.. I’m learning to go with the flow, target then going against the grain.
Back to Rejoicing — I feel jealousy are such miserly and covetous stress of minds… what a waste of time to be jealous and zero benefit!! It’s only makes us angry and I can feel the person’s energy, tight and avoidance,!
I’d rather spend my precious soon to be gone mental energy being CONTENT with what I have and imagining what I can create, the other thing I like to do is offer mandalas to my guru, the buddhas and wish for renunciation and bodhichitta and offer my inner wealth to everyone. I kind of do a taking and giving thing imagine to take on their suffering and offer my practice of dharma to them.. bc at the end of this life that’s all that matters, is our inner realizations..
Thank you for sharing your love and experience of dharma with us! So beautiful! 💕
I love this comment. Thank you for sharing.
before this I saw a post of complaints on another’s lack of compassion…. I thought to myself, mirror of dharma. How would this person EVER see compassion in the ‘other’ if not using their eyes of compassion? Then this post appears and I feel in my heart, “Be the change you seek” and am further reminded of patient acceptance of things appearing ‘as the way they are’. I know there is connection in these concepts and the above post, I’m just not sure if I am connecting the pieces correctly 🙂 in meditation this came to me…. compassion for another’s karma…. sometimes I witness others behaving in ways that seem ‘not like them’, perhaps their karma is at play in those instances… compassion for karma – thank you
Patient acceptance underlies almost all our other practices, I think.
Yes, developing compassion for people by understanding how they are experiencing the effects of their karma is very important.
We could try not caring what others think of us. Isn’t thinking that way just attachment to reputation? It’s so counter culture in our world not to care what others think.
Thanks for this reminder about rejoicing!!
Yes, I was kind of getting at that — if we see the futility of trying to force others to change their perceptions of us, we can just accept their perceptions.
You mentioned karmic seeds being planted and then harvested lifetimes later. Does it sometimes happen more quickly? My husband used to go fishing a lot. He would catch fish and then remove the hook and release them back into the water. His own removable dental bridge has become loose in recent years. Often, when he eats, the bridge slips and snags his cheek almost exactly like a fish hook. We both think it might be karmic results from hooking all those poor fish and then letting them go.
Yup, it could be also karma from fishing in previous lives — he had a tendency to fish in this life because he did it in past lives. Good idea to purify all that before it ripens even more dramatically.
I was going through a box in my deceased uncles office and found a wooden plaque shaped like an acorn. Written on it:
“Don’t worry if your work is small
And your rewards are few.
Remember that the mighty oak
Was once a nut like you.”
I can decide which of my 30-something year old sons would benefit the most from hanging this on there office wall.
I’m smiling and rejoicing in your excellent effort to spread dharma.
Warren
Haha, that’s great! Funny and meaningful at the same time.
I was attending a Vajrayogini retreat and stayed on premises at the Temple for the first time. It was so exciting and the teachings and meditations were amazing! If I wasn’t receiving lineage
teachings from the Ganden Oral instructions I was meditating on a cushion in front the Dharma Protector
to let the day’s activities sink in. I love to try to follow the teacher’s instructions in preparation for the next day. Immersing myself in Dharma for four days was a beautiful experience.
On the third day, I started to notice ordinary thoughts of the room, the fellow practitioners and how annoying certain things were. I tried rejoicing in how wonderful this event was for the other practitioners and this helped a little but little annoyances kept creeping in. Than an amazing thing happened.
I was reminded by something one of my teachers had said, “ tantra teachings were sutra teachings in Technicolor!”
That’s right, I thought “ I am in Keajra with Dakas and Dakinis getting teachings from Vajrayogini and my whole mood changed and the sour puss me never returned for the remainder of the retreat! Is this change of perspective a sort of rejoicing?
I will work on rejoicing as your post reminded me I can gain merit relaxing on my couch and enjoy the practice in rejoicing the good fortune of others!
Yes, I think it is a kind of rejoicing.
Sutra is Tantra in technicolor 😆😍 I see what you did there.
You asked: “how can we change others’ perceptions or projections of us?!” My first response was “We can’t” but then I realized that we can, through the karma we are creating moment to moment. We have the karma to be perceived or projected in whatever way this is happening, real time. Because this is related to our karma this is the only way for us to change other people’s appearances to their minds, methinks. We can very seldom affect the karma that is ripening ‘presently’ in someone’s mind, and we need to be patient, accepting that we will be impacting future relationships, in this life and future lives, by accumulating merit and purifying negativity.
Not sure we can change anyone else’s karma. We can purify our own negativity and purify negative karma from the past.
We can provide a good example and clarify obstructions and purity karma with our compassion.
Not 100% sure on this.
I think the point they’re making is that by purifying our karma, we purify our relationship with that person so they can see us differently.
Very true, 100 percent agree, thank you.
Thanks Luna for another insightful and relevant article/comment about practical dharma, which Geshe Kelsang emphasized so much. You said ” And even if they don’t “see” us, or see us wrongly, it is because they can only see their own versions of us, which are reflections of their minds and karma.”. This reminded me of my early days in Toronto when, after receiving my first teachings from Gen Tharchin on emptiness I had my first practical application of that teaching. I was walking down a main street in Toronto and I was aware for the first time that if ten people passed me on the sidewalk they would see ten different people. (I realized that before receiving those teachings from Tharchin I used to think that those ten people passed one person (Me)… the me that I would see. This was a most practical paradigm shift for me!
How can we change others’ perceptions of us? These are in order of increasing fun:
1. We could try cross-dressing, unless that’s normal for us, in which case, try not cross-dressing.
2. We could try being patient and kind.
3. Cut loose from how we’ve always been, assume a new personality, and really act differently.
4. Since we don’t know their minds anyway, we could just decide/impute their perception of us differently. “I thought they didn’t like me, but actually, they really like me, and are just hiding it.”
This is pretty good! Thank you.
I was thinking, for the first one, how people often do try to change or hang onto their appearance to keep other people interested. And I am not sure how effective that is.