Ok, so I am a jealous person! There, I said it. Whenever it involves someone I love, be it a family member or a very very close friend, I become jealous that someone else might take the place I have in their hearts. This has led me to not like several of my female cousins who are of my age, but the most undisputed, THE most pathetic case of jealousy, is me hating my parents’ flower girl! REASON: She was standing too close to my father in my parents’ wedding picture!
After a life long co-existence with this jealousy of mine, I have become very tired of it. It is such an evil thing, like a plant that spreads too fast. If the seed of jealousy gets itself planted in your brain it spreads its roots and branches faster than a forest fire. It gives no peace of mind, all that it cultivates it suspense, doubt and more jealousy. Like an endless vicious cycle, you dig your own grave deeper. I am so tired now. So I am taking the first step towards entirely getting rid of it. I will acknowledge it: I am jealous, and I am NOT proud of it.
As with every other thing in my life, I decided to turn to Buddhism to get me out of this mess. When I googled away on this matter, I found some really interesting articles.
To begin with, what is jealousy? According to the Buddhist abhidharma text it is:
“a disturbing emotion that confuses on other people’s accomplishments – such as their good qualities, possessions or success – and is the inability to bear their accomplishments, due to excessive attachment to our own gain or to the respect we receive”
The ‘attachment' that the above definition mentions is the undue importance that we, as human beings, have placed on a certain area of our life – be it our looks, the amount of money we have, etc. Sometimes, we measure our sense of self-worth by only looking at this aspect of our lives. Therefore, when someone else has more success in this particular area, we become jealous.
Jealousy also arises because of our insecurity and mistrust. Most of us are unsure of our own self-worth. When people are uncertain about the place that you have, be it your parent’s, sibling’s, friend’s, lover’s heart, jealousy slowly creeps into your mind. It causes one to feel that he or she will abandoned.
Buddhism teaches that the root cause of jealousy lies within this notion of “I” or “me”. The feeling that “I” am special. It makes “me” believe that “I” am the only one good at a particular task, like advising a friend, and therefore when someone does the same thing, I become jealous. It makes “me” feel that I deserve the best in life, and that life should be fair to me and when someone else gets what I want, I feel jealous.
The remedy that Buddhism offers is for everyone to understand this fallacy concerning “I” or “me”. It is important to understand that each and every one of us is equal, this is the teaching of Buddha. Therefore, everyone deserves to be happy, they have the same wish to be happy and successful like “me”. There is nothing “special” about me, we are all made of the same things!
The Buddha teaches that to be a happy person we have to be open-hearted. The heart has the capacity to love everyone. Accept the love from your parents, sisters and brothers, friends, pets. Some people are so closed off to the rest of the world that they only concentrate on the love of one person. If that love disappears, the love you get from everywhere else “does not count”. This is the wrong attitude to have. Just because someone doesn’t love you, it doesn’t mean that there are other people that doesn’t love you. You just have to open your heart and you will experience the ultimate joy of life, love and compassion. This makes you feel less insecure and you slowly begin to see your own self-worth.
Sometimes jealousy comes forth in various disguises. Sometimes when you love someone, but the other person is unaware of it, it is not possible to express your feeling of jealousy in an outward manner. This causes the person feeling jealous to express his or her feelings in maybe anger or sarcastic manner. It is important that all of us identifies exactly when and how this nemesis raises its ugly head.
Some very interesting and quite true commentaries by Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
“Rejoicing is the best remedy for jealousy and envy. Rejoicing does not depend on material or physical actions—it can be done while you are working, eating, or sleeping—it can be done at any time and it is such a simple way to create good karma. If a person has many friends and you feel joyous in your heart, that person is lucky. This result is due to the good karma he created in past lives. Having many possessions and children is the same. Seeing this, you should feel joyous in your heart. You may feel jealous of some couples, of their harmony and enjoyments—but you should think that this result is due to the fact that they created the cause for such experiences in past lives. So why shouldn’t they experience the result of enjoyment now?”
After a life long co-existence with this jealousy of mine, I have become very tired of it. It is such an evil thing, like a plant that spreads too fast. If the seed of jealousy gets itself planted in your brain it spreads its roots and branches faster than a forest fire. It gives no peace of mind, all that it cultivates it suspense, doubt and more jealousy. Like an endless vicious cycle, you dig your own grave deeper. I am so tired now. So I am taking the first step towards entirely getting rid of it. I will acknowledge it: I am jealous, and I am NOT proud of it.
As with every other thing in my life, I decided to turn to Buddhism to get me out of this mess. When I googled away on this matter, I found some really interesting articles.
To begin with, what is jealousy? According to the Buddhist abhidharma text it is:
“a disturbing emotion that confuses on other people’s accomplishments – such as their good qualities, possessions or success – and is the inability to bear their accomplishments, due to excessive attachment to our own gain or to the respect we receive”
The ‘attachment' that the above definition mentions is the undue importance that we, as human beings, have placed on a certain area of our life – be it our looks, the amount of money we have, etc. Sometimes, we measure our sense of self-worth by only looking at this aspect of our lives. Therefore, when someone else has more success in this particular area, we become jealous.
Jealousy also arises because of our insecurity and mistrust. Most of us are unsure of our own self-worth. When people are uncertain about the place that you have, be it your parent’s, sibling’s, friend’s, lover’s heart, jealousy slowly creeps into your mind. It causes one to feel that he or she will abandoned.
Buddhism teaches that the root cause of jealousy lies within this notion of “I” or “me”. The feeling that “I” am special. It makes “me” believe that “I” am the only one good at a particular task, like advising a friend, and therefore when someone does the same thing, I become jealous. It makes “me” feel that I deserve the best in life, and that life should be fair to me and when someone else gets what I want, I feel jealous.
The remedy that Buddhism offers is for everyone to understand this fallacy concerning “I” or “me”. It is important to understand that each and every one of us is equal, this is the teaching of Buddha. Therefore, everyone deserves to be happy, they have the same wish to be happy and successful like “me”. There is nothing “special” about me, we are all made of the same things!
The Buddha teaches that to be a happy person we have to be open-hearted. The heart has the capacity to love everyone. Accept the love from your parents, sisters and brothers, friends, pets. Some people are so closed off to the rest of the world that they only concentrate on the love of one person. If that love disappears, the love you get from everywhere else “does not count”. This is the wrong attitude to have. Just because someone doesn’t love you, it doesn’t mean that there are other people that doesn’t love you. You just have to open your heart and you will experience the ultimate joy of life, love and compassion. This makes you feel less insecure and you slowly begin to see your own self-worth.
Sometimes jealousy comes forth in various disguises. Sometimes when you love someone, but the other person is unaware of it, it is not possible to express your feeling of jealousy in an outward manner. This causes the person feeling jealous to express his or her feelings in maybe anger or sarcastic manner. It is important that all of us identifies exactly when and how this nemesis raises its ugly head.
Some very interesting and quite true commentaries by Lama Zopa Rinpoche:
“Rejoicing is the best remedy for jealousy and envy. Rejoicing does not depend on material or physical actions—it can be done while you are working, eating, or sleeping—it can be done at any time and it is such a simple way to create good karma. If a person has many friends and you feel joyous in your heart, that person is lucky. This result is due to the good karma he created in past lives. Having many possessions and children is the same. Seeing this, you should feel joyous in your heart. You may feel jealous of some couples, of their harmony and enjoyments—but you should think that this result is due to the fact that they created the cause for such experiences in past lives. So why shouldn’t they experience the result of enjoyment now?”
“If we have a good heart, we experience much happiness and relaxation. We have no reason to feel angry or jealous and we have a very happy mind. When we speak, sweet words come out. Even our face is happy and smiling. At night we go to bed with a happy mind and have a very comfortable sleep, without any worries. Otherwise, if we live our life with a very selfish, ungenerous mind, we think about nothing else except me, me, me: "When will I be happy? When will I be free from these problems?" If our attitude is like this, jealousy and anger arise easily, strongly and repeatedly, so we experience much unhappiness in our life, many ups-and-downs. During the day we have a cold heart and at night we even go to bed with a cold heart and unhappy mind”
Western culture, I believe, sometimes provokes and sustains the feelings of jealousy and envy. Their ideals of survival of the fittest, and winner takes it all, causes those influenced by it to become rather competitive. The best athletes are glorified and the richest people in the world are revered. Competitiveness causes people to look at their opponents as people who are below them, who do not deserve the same things as you do, and therefore you try to find and exploit the weaknesses in your opponents. There is also Western romanticism that proclaim that your better half is waiting for you to meet her or him and to live happily ever after. Ignited from a Greek myth by Plato, it is Westerners belief that there is someone out there for every one of us, who will complement us in all ways and with whom we shall share every aspect of our lives. This, they call as true love. This has become synonymous with Western romanticism but has little to do with reality.
The path I have to take for salvation from this jealousy is long and arduous. But I think it’s a path that will lead me to happiness, contentment. It is a path worth walking.
8 comments:
hmm.. nice post.
You know the first and the most important step in controlling jealousy or anger or any negative emotion is to realize that you are having it and admit it. So congrats you've done it!
Next, always keep yourself in check. That is whenever you feel jealousy or anger just know it in your mind that you are feeling jealous/angry. That way your emotions are not in control of you, rather you are still in control of your emotion. (This also prevents you from saying or doing something offensive)
Then take your time and look into yourself to understand why you are jealous of that particular instance.
This is what I do whenever I get angry for something. I think it hepls a lot. When you get used to keeping yourself in check, it just automatically happens, and it's very easy to control your emotions.
It's really a nice post about our feelings. We all as human beings suffer from this ugly feeling.
I always think why I should spoil myself by absorbing the feeling of jealousy. When you realise the immateriality in the feeling of jealousy, it is likely that you totally break free from it.
Yeah I know... This I have done a lot with anger and it helps a lot. But with jealousy, I havent really taken an initiative until now. Thanks for all your advice Sas, I shall keep them in mind! :)
Yeah you are also absolutely spot on Purnima... We just have to realize the absurdity of a feeling like that... But something that is hard is, these feeling arise very quickly, and sometimes its difficult to control you know... But I guess practice makes perfect :)
Any how it is stated that "one who lives by dhamma will be protected by dhamma" this protection is not just securing a person from physical threats but the mind and the soul. This is important as it is the mind that matters alot and it can do more harm to a person or to a community at large if it goes the wrong way.
That is most definitely true Daham! But I tell you, its all uphill for me, handling this jealousy of mine :) But me not giving up! :)
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