Don't be jealous.

Adelie penguins - photo by George Pellissier

          Adelie penguins breed and raise their young in Antarctica. To protect their eggs from the run-off when ice melts, their elevated nests are built from stones. Males with the best-looking nests are more likely to attract a mate, but unfortunately, they share space with a half million other Adelies. Good stones are highly prized and sought after, and because the nests are so close, the rocks in one penguin's nest are sometimes stolen by another. It may seem odd to compare thievery with envy, but isn't that what it is about - an attempt to steal someone's joy about their good fortune by our negative attitude or corrosive words? "Don't be jealous" is an encouragement to notice that hollow, grasping feeling when it arises within us, not to shame ourselves, but to wake us up. We can remember how good it feels to have someone genuinely share our happiness, the gift of doubling our joy. Where jealousy is accompanied by strong resentment, we can try a twist on loving-kindness (metta or maitri) meditation. We send out kind wishes for each person (beginning with those we feel benevolent toward and moving on to difficult people): "May your joy never decrease; may your good fortune continue." 

The practice of developing happiness for others confronts the patterns that bind us to these painful states and helps us loosen their grip. It opens the door to realizing that the happiness of others doesn't take anything away from us but can instead be our own happiness. ~ Sharon Salzberg

For more information on the fifty-seventh slogan, go here.

Slogan Fifty-seven

Don’t be jealous.

            Jealousy makes us prickly, irritable and full of resentment. It constricts our hearts and causes us to become more self-absorbed. We feel sure we’ve gotten a raw deal, that we are more deserving than another person. Whether we should have received a reward or commendation is not the issue; the reaction it produces in us is what is important. When we’ve become caught in this emotional trap, Norman Fischer recommends we respond with “sympathetic joy.” Can we imagine how we would feel in this person’s shoes? When we celebrate their happiness as if it were our own, we cultivate loving-kindness and weed out jealousy.

Photo: A cactus leans away from a begonia flower.

            My grandmother, who was born in 1896, wore a girdle her entire adult life. Even with the advent of pantyhose, she adamantly refused to give up her girdle. Though she wore it to shape her body, I couldn’t imagine wearing something so tight and constrictive even for a well-formed figure. In a sense, envy can squeeze my mind and heart into an unnatural shape too. It changes my perception and encourages me label myself and others as either “superior” or “inferior.” My thinking becomes rigid instead of flexible, and I begin to see the “haves” as unfriendly competitors. Any possibility of cooperative effort gets squashed. Instead of constructively using an unmet goal as motivation to work toward something, envy transforms it into a troubling emotion – a resentful feeling that sees the person who has what is desired as undeserving of it. Such jealousy affects me in a negative way that may not be readily apparent. The last line from one of Rumi’s poems offers a glimpse: “Jealousy won’t let me scatter the perfume to the wind.” Envy keeps my compassion hermetically sealed, preventing it from benefiting anyone, even myself.