During my second graduate program I had the privilege of studying with Robert Thurman, who taught me the Buddhist concept of mudita. If you didn’t already know, Professor Thurman, who recently passed, spent much of his scholarly life translating Tibetan Buddhist thought for Western audiences. He presented to our class the concept of mudita as one of the four immeasurables of Buddhist psychology alongside loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity. Professor Thurman explained that mudita is genuine, embodied joy at another person’s joy—taking real pleasure in another person’s pleasure.
To understand mudita, it’s best to start by thinking of its opposite, our use of the German word “Schadenfreude,” which means taking pleasure in another person’s suffering. I believe “compersion” is the closest English gets to the opposite of Schadenfreude, but the word has been co-opted by the polyamorous community and is most commonly used to mean taking pleasure in witnessing your lover be satisfied by another lover. Thus, as psychotherapists we may wish to steer clear of compersion. English does not have another term for taking unadulterated pleasure in another person’s pleasure or success, so I use mudita.
Here is why mudita might be our clinical superpower: Consumer-based capitalist societies exploit the human compulsion to desire more-different-better. Nothing is ever “good-enough” for long—when we become vice president we start eyeing the presidency, when we buy a three bedroom house we imagine our next house with a pool, when we fly first-class we start eyeing private. Capitalism is driven by the thought “I’ll be happy when I attain [the next better thing],” and there’s always a next—premium, first class, upper class, gold card, platinum card, black card. We are all clawing our way up ladders of subtle elitism whenever we shop for anything.
I used the word “unadulterated” above because subconsciously there is often jealousy or envy when people hear about the success of others; again, this is the motor that drives our society—the propensity to continuously want more-better-different, to be satisfied only briefly. We are all aware that our minds function analogously to hedonic treadmills; once a desire is sated it is soon replaced by another desire.
In addition, many people subconsciously and consciously perceive the world as a zero-sum game, a finite pie that means if someone else takes a slice then there’s one less for them. We’re all familiar with hoarding and the growing disparity of resources allocated to a minority of humans while others suffer.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the subconscious effects of social media and why it’s so entrancing for people who desire more-better-different. TikTok and Instagram obviously supply an infinite flow of more-better-different things and experiences for our minds to desire. Our minds watch beautiful, glitzy, smiling people, and assume (incorrectly) that they are happy, then yearn to attain (buy) whatever these people are wearing or doing, assuming (again incorrectly) that it is what they are wearing or doing that is causing any putative happiness. And obviously legacy advertising also equates self-worth and happiness with acquisition and attainment of this elusive more-better-different so this is not a recent phenomenon.
Under these tacit societal arrangements, most people harbor clandestine, frequently disavowed jealousy toward the successes of friends, colleagues, and even strangers encountered IRL and online, an envy rarely spoken because it is culturally unacceptable to admit, and seldom examined because examining it would require confronting the absurd subconscious assumptions mentioned above.
Meanwhile Buddhist psychology has offered antidotes to the mind’s malaise for over two thousand years. Leading psychotherapists understand how the mind operates and know that authentic happiness depends on being able to be genuinely happy for other people. This is one of the reasons why giving causes greater happiness than hoarding.
Our unadulterated happiness for our patients’ wins is different from the tinge of jealousy and envy our patients may feel from their friends and acquaintances and even loved ones. Thus, mudita is our superpower. We know that our own happiness depends on our ability to forego envy and jealousy and thus we rejoice wholly and authentically with our patients about their successes… allowing them—even if just for 55 minutes—to feel good-enough.