Question: Do you know about the green-eyed monster? The green-eyed monster is nothing but the jealousy that arises within our hearts. So today we’re going to talk about how to deal with jealousy that arises within our minds.
Jealousy is one of the most hardest experiences and emotions that we have to go through in our life. It is very hard to admit. And also it is very hard to remove from our hearts. So how can we deal with this jealousy? First of all, let us see why we feel jealousy. We often feel jealousy when we hear or when we see that someone is better than us.
Someone is more capable than us. Someone is more smarter and genuine than us. Then we start to compare ourselves with that person, and we start to feel jealousy. So what is the reason for this jealousy? When we explore the emotion of jealousy, we can find the selfishness or self-centeredness is deeply rooted within this closeness.
That is why we feel jealous all the time. So selfishness means that if someone is thinking only about that person, and if he is thinking that he is the greatest person of all, so chances are very high for that person to feel jealousy on people who are better than that person. So how can we deal with this and how can we stop this zealousness?
There are a few things that you can do, right? The first thing that you should do is to admit that you are in jealous of that person. And most of the time when we feel jealous, we refuse to admit that we are jealous of that person. We hide our emotions and we make excuses for our own evil emotions. So what you have to do is be humble and admit that I am jealous of that person.
Okay. Then only you can identify the real emotion and a real state of your mind. So the first thing that you have to do is to admit that you are jealous of that person. The second thing that you have to do is to realize that we all are different from one to another. For an example, there are four elements in this world the water element. The Earth element. Air element. And the fire element. These are the four elements that prevail in this world. So if I asked you, which one is the best element out of these four? What is the answer of yours? You may say that we cannot compare these four elements because these elements are unique from one to another. They serve differently to this world.
So we cannot compare. We cannot say which one is the better, better one. The same goes for our human lives. We are different from one to another. They are no same and identical people in this world. Even the identical twins are different from emotions and feelings. So that is why we should not compare ourselves with others. Right? We all are different.And also you have to realize there is a person always in this world who is better than you, right?
You can be the best in the world sometimes. But remember, there will be always a person who has the potential to beat you instead of competing with others in the society. Let’s try to compete with ourselves, right? Let’s try to battle with ourselves and let’s try to improve ourselves and bring the better version of ourselves daily. Right?
So that is what we have to do. Your competition should not be with the people who are around you, but your competition should be with the person who is inside yourself. Right. Try to bring the better version of yourself every single day when you are competing with yourself. There is no competition with others in the society and you will never feel jealous of them. Right?
And also, this is a special practice that our great teacher Supreme taught us to do when whenever you feel jealous. What is that? It is one of the most coolest practices in Buddhism. It is called MUDITHA. It means appreciating with joyfulness or in another word, the sympathetic joyfulness. When you practice moody to you will have the ability to wish the well-being of the people around you.
Whether he or she is better than you or lower than you. You can have the ability to wish the well-being and the development and the success of the people. Right. That these are the thoughts of Muditha. So how can we practice these thoughts of Muditha? There are a few simple things that you can do, right? Try these out every single day, whenever you get up from bed in the morning.
Right. Just don’t rush into distractions quickly. Just sit on the bed, close your eyes, and wish the well-being and development, and success of all the beings in this world equally. Right. You can close your eyes and think, May all beings in this world be well and happy. May they be successful in their life. May they be developed with the successes.
When you think and when you mean these emotions from your heart, you can do all of them all the time within you. And when you are going to this society and when you see the people who are better than you, who are more capable than you, then automatically the thoughts of Muditha will come to you and it will take control of your emotions.
Right? So never let that green-eyed monster of jealousy to take control over your mind instead of that. Let’s practice the Muditha and let’s wish the well-being of the people right. So be a big fan of watching people and being happy by seeing they are growing up day in their life and by seeing they are becoming successful in their life. Because at the end of our life, we all have to leave this world and we take nothing from this world, Right?
So that is why we need to collect more good deeds and practice more good emotions within our hearts. Okay, So never be jealous at people because there is nothing good that we can gain from by mere being jealous on other people. Right. So practice Muditha to appreciate it and be happy by seeing the people growing up in their life. Then you become happy by seeing the success of others. You can be happy about yourself.
