The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart
Question: How to overcome the tendency to be envious
towards others?
Than Ajahn: You have to develop muditā. Muditā
means to have joy in other people’s progress. When you see your friends
or people you don’t know achieve success, become richer or become better, you
should be happy with their achievement. You have to look at the
truth. The truth is everyone is different. Different person can achieve
different things in life. Each individual can achieve success slowly or
quickly. This is something you cannot dictate that you should achieve
success more than other people. There’s a tendency that you always think
of yourself. You want to achieve success. When somebody else
achieves success more than you do, you become envious or jealous of other
person’s success. So, you have to look at the truth that everybody has
his own abilities; some can achieve success quickly and some can achieve
success slowly; some can achieve success and some cannot achieve any success;
it’s not for you to become envious of other people.
You should come back and look at yourself and see why you
are not achieving any success. If you’re not achieving any success, then
you should fix it. Don’t try to go fix other people by trying to make
other people’s achievement go back down to your level. So, try to look at
yourself and don’t look at other people. If other people advance, just
congratulate them, be happy with their achievement. If you don’t do so,
then you will feel bad every time you see somebody else do better than
you. You have to see that people have different abilities. If they
can do it, it’s their business. It has nothing to do with you. Tell
yourself that whatever people do, how much is their achievement, it’s their
business, not your business to give them scores or to criticize them. So,
this is basically what you should do: if you see people have happiness, have
advancement in their lives, you should be happy with them.
“Dhamma in English, Mar 15, 2019.”
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Question: We contemplate asubha to reduce our sexual
desire. What should we contemplate on for us to reduce our jealousy i.e.
jealous of others’ successes or wealth, etc.?
Than Ajahn: You contemplate on the law of kamma.
We are all subject to the law of kamma. Kamma is action—what we do and what we
had done. The result of our action arises from what we do now and what we had
done in the past. If someone is better than us, it means that he had done
something better than we did. It’s the law. It’s the truth. There is no point
to be envious or jealous. It won’t change anything. You have to accept that
there are people who are better than you are, there are people who are equal to
you and there are people who are worse off than you. So, when you see that
somebody is better than you, you should also look at somebody who is worse off
than you. This may balance out your perspective about others.
“Dhamma in English, Jun 19, 2018.”
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Question: Could you tell me how to deal with envy and
jealousy? Because sometimes it overwhelms me and consumes my life and I am
unable to get it out of my mind.
Than Ajahn: Don’t compete with other people but
compete with yourself, then there will be no envy and jealousy. Try to compete
with yourself. What you have to compete with is your kilesas (defilements),
which is your greed, hatred and delusion. Don’t compete with other people
because some other people may be smarter or better than you are and some people
are worse off than you. So when you want people to be like you but they happen
to be smarter than you are, then you can be envious.
If you have to compare with other people, then you should
think that we all have different kamma. We did different kamma in the past and
it makes some people smarter than us, some people less smart than us. We just
have to accept the truth of the kamma that people are not the same. If they are
better than us, we should just accept it because this is the truth.
“Dhamma in English, Oct 27, 2016.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com
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