Root For The Other Team

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Sympathetic Joy

The practices of many spiritual traditions contain antidotes for those emotions that block our ability to feel compassion. Take jealousy, for instance, the green-eyed monster which ever hopes the other person will be diminished, imagining this will free up proportionately more for itself. In Buddhism, the supreme medicine for envy is said to be mudita or "sympathetic joy," which calls on us to feel happy about other people's success. This is easy enough with those we love; but what about those with whom we feel competitive-whose loss would be our gain?

I once witnessed an exchange between a Tibetan lama and a questioner on this subject. "Rinpoche," said a pleasant middle-aged man in a checked sport shirt, "I adore my son and I want him to be happy. He's a linebacker for his high school football team, and I find myself rooting for him to just cream the opposing quarterback. Is there anything wrong with that?"

"Of course not," the lama replied equably. "You love your son, and you want his happiness, and he's happy when he beats the other team. This is only natural."

There was an audible sigh of relief in the room: the spiritual path may be challenging, but it's not unreasonable.

The man smiled. "Thank you, Rinpoche," he said, making a quick little folding gesture with his hands.

The lama laughed sharply. "I was only joking!" he said. "Actually, this is not at all the right attitude. In fact," he said, glancing at the man mischievously, "a good practice for you would be to root for the other team. See them winning, see them happy, see their parents overjoyed. That is more the bodhisattva way."

Try it for yourself sometime: Root for the other team. But isn't this the mortal sin of "low self-esteem" or a lack of "competitive spirit?" Not exactly; it's more like metaphysical jujitsu. Rooting for someone else's happiness, we tune to a different wavelength. We feel more beneficent; less deprived, more capable of giving. The focus on another person's satisfaction becomes a lodestone that paradoxically draws us closer to our own. (Isn't most envy just our own potential disowned? Aren't we jealous of what we ourselves might become?) When we take another's viewpoint, we may suddenly feel there's twice as much to go around; not more money or fame or square footage, but what underlies the whole pursuit--more love.

This is reprinted from Field Notes on the Compassionate life by Marc Ian Barasch (published by Rodale.)

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