Jealousy

[Annicca]

Is there any meditation technique to overcome jealousy??

[daverupa]

I don't often quote the later Digha Nikaya...

Then Sakka, having delighted in & expressed his approval of the Blessed One's words, asked him a further question: "But what, dear sir, is the cause of envy & stinginess, what is their origination, what gives them birth, what is their source? When what exists do they come into being? When what doesn't exist do they not?"

"Envy & stinginess have dear-&-not-dear as their cause, have dear-&-not-dear as their origination, have dear-&-not-dear as what gives them birth, have dear-&-not-dear as their source. When dear-&-not-dear exist, they come into being. When dear-&-not-dear are not, they don't."

"But what, dear sir, is the cause of dear-&-not-dear, what is their origination, what gives them birth, what is their source? When what exists do they come into being? When what doesn't exist do they not?"

"Dear-&-not-dear have desire as their cause, have desire as their origination, have desire as what gives them birth, have desire as their source. When desire exists, they come into being. When desire is not, they don't."

So it's a fundamental problem, envy and jealousy - I would recommend exploring mudita-bhavana in this case - mudita is "sympathetic joy" in many translations, and it's one of the brahmaviharas which is oft overlooked.

[Annicca]

What is mudita-bhavana then? Is it similar to metta=bhavana? I fin jealousy arises owing to not rejoicing the achievements of other people and it generally turn into fury. Especially it is hard to control when a circumstance is presented. Sometimes, you can reason to yourself and you might calm down, but as the circumstance appears again, the same jealousy appears. The impact becomes greater and greater as the circumstances are presented repeatedly. How to control the mind under the circumstance? Are there any concrete techniques?

[DarwidHalim]

Yes.

Just look at it barely and naked. Don't modify it, don't reject it, and don't accept it.

We look at that not with the hope to get rid of it as soon as possible.

We look at it because we want to know what is the exact behavior of this animal called jealousy. What is its true nature?

If you modify your jealousy, you will miss your raw data.

If you modify your jealousy, what you get is the modified data, which is no longer genuine. It is already fake. With this kind of data, you will not be able to see through the true face of jealousy, because what you see is no longer the original jealousy. It is already another version of jealousy with so many modification.

Only look into the original jealousy you can see through the true face and the true nature of that jealousy.

When you look at it, you will see that this jealousy comes out due to causes and condition. Because it comes from causes and condition, it is just like a mountain eruption. When the condition and cause is match, the mountain will just explode.

No body can prevent the thing to occur, when the cause and condition just ripe, not even a Buddha.

So, everything is just a business of dependent origination. Just like that.

If mountain eruption doesn't affect you, why jealously affect you? Since both of them are just a business of cause and effect?

Initially, you may not be able to let thing happen freely without being affected by it. But when you keep trying and if your awareness is sharp, you will for sure be able to let it just happen, without ever being affected by it.

Just like mountain eruption. Want to erupt, just erupt since the cause and condition is there. Same thing, sunce we already put so many karmic seed, when the causes and conditions are there, you cannot avoid for the jealosy to pop up.

It will just pop up like mushrooms.

Again, it is just a business of dependent origination.

Nothing personal!

[Annicca]

When you look at it, you will see that this jealousy comes out due to causes and condition. Because it comes from causes and condition, it is just like a mountain eruption. When the condition and cause is match, the mountain will just explode.

I looked at it, but was defeated by this monster. I try to analyze the causes and conditions for its rising, but feel helpless and resentment grows.

[David2]

When you look at it, you will see that this jealousy comes out due to causes and condition. Because it comes from causes and condition, it is just like a mountain eruption. When the condition and cause is match, the mountain will just explode.

I looked at it, but was defeated by this monster. I try to analyze the causes and conditions for its rising, but feel helpless and resentment grows.

Do not analyse, just observe. Either the jealousy or the helplessness/resentment towards it.
Thinking about causes and conditions does always tend to make it worse.

[Spiny O'Norman]

I looked at it, but was defeated by this monster. I try to analyze the causes and conditions for its rising, but feel helpless and resentment grows.

I've found that although practices like metta-bahavana are helpful in a general way, it can be very difficult to analyse feelings like this objectively when you're stuck in the middle of them. Short-term it might be just a case of mindfully and patiently accepting that the feeling will arise, and remembering that it will eventually cease.

Spiny

[daverupa]

The impact becomes greater and greater as the circumstances are presented repeatedly.

So, one problem here is the conceptualization about how jealousy builds and builds; that you see each occasion as "the same jealousy" is one of the reasons it can start to build up in your mind, but mindfully notice that each occasion of jealousy is just this occasion - the increased fury is because your mind is, after the initial jealousy-contact, taking that perception and using your memory of the past to increase and aggrandize that feeling, making it larger than the particular present-moment contact which gave rise to the chain reaction. This process is called papanca-sanna-sankha.

Instead, make sure that the past and the future are not considered, and remain focused on the present moment in order to practice awareness; do not attend to thoughts of the past, and if thoughts of the past arise, do away with them, set them aside, replace them with clear attention - feelings rise, persist, and fall. Perceptions arise, persist, and fall.

This, indeed, is the concrete skill that will attenuate and eliminate jealousy, and other such emotions.

[santa100]

Contemplation on the 3 Marks of Impermanence, Non-Self, and Suffering might help. Regardless of how much one is blessed with wealth, health, status, beauty, intelligence, etc.. everyone are subjected to old age, sickness, and eventual death. And while still living, no one is immuned from being in union with what/who is displeasing, separation from what/who is pleasing, not getting what one wants, and the 5 aggregates subject to clinging. So there's no point in wasting time and energy for jealousy if both the King and the Beggar have to face the same ultimate reality right?

[DarwidHalim]

Yes, that technique (just look at it barely and naked) is very tough. It is the most ordinary and simple technique, but at the same time is also the most difficult technique to master.

You need to build up the energy of do nothing, which can only come from mediation initially.

Once you have enough ability, your post meditation will then become the 24/7 meditation as well.

If you don't have don't that power of do nothing, just observe, temporarily you should rely on antidotes, such as oh don't be jealous, there is no point to be jealous, this is samsara, or this and that.

However, antidote althoght it is useful, they are fake. Antidotes are just temporal medicine. Your jealousy can decrease or cute for a while, but next month or next week, it will pop up again. When it pop up, you won't have the sense of lightness. It feel very heavy and that jealousy seems overpower you.

However, we have no choice. Just use the antidote you know. While using that antidote, you need to do a meditation to built up the power, so you can just see things as what it is. This is the best, because it directly build up insight. Day by day it will just get stronger and stronger. When te jealousy pop up, you will feel very light. Like mountain eruption, you feel light.

So, what can you do? Temporary, just rely on antidotes. In the mean while, meditation is the only way.

[Annicca]

So, one problem here is the conceptualization about how jealousy builds and builds; that you see each occasion as "the same jealousy" is one of the reasons it can start to build up in your mind, but mindfully notice that each occasion of jealousy is just this occasion - the increased fury is because your mind is, after the initial jealousy-contact, taking that perception and using your memory of the past to increase and aggrandize that feeling, making it larger than the particular present-moment contact which gave rise to the chain reaction. This process is called papanca-sanna-sankha.

Instead, make sure that the past and the future are not considered, and remain focused on the present moment in order to practice awareness; do not attend to thoughts of the past, and if thoughts of the past arise, do away with them, set them aside, replace them with clear attention - feelings rise, persist, and fall. Perceptions arise, persist, and fall.

Yeah, "conceptualization" is the word. We often associate the circumstances with concepts and these concepts ruin our peace of mind.


I find jealousy comes from comparison. Is there a way to stop comparing?

So, what can you do? Temporary, just rely on antidotes. In the mean while, meditation is the only way.

I think there is always clear steps and techniques on desire and anger, very few people talk about "jealousy". However, jealousy happens all the time. We are constantly comparing ourselves with others.

Always.

At all times....

[daverupa]

I find jealousy comes from comparison. Is there a way to stop comparing?

Basically, in order to stop making comparisons one to the next, you have to stop making comparisons one to the next. It seems ridiculous ("of course I want to do that, it's just not that easy..."), but there is a gritty satisfaction in making comparisons (even ones that result in negative emotional states, as it all props up self-view), and it is this satisfaction which is the gratification there. The danger, of course, is the anguish with which you're familiar. So what is the escape?

One method is to focus attention on the commonality (santa100 referred to this), which is that we are all subject to sickness, aging, and death; here is the sixth verse from the Dhammapada:

There are those who do not realize
that one day we all must die.
But those who do realize this
settle their quarrels.

---

Another selection, from AN 6.49:

"When a monk is an arahant, with his fermentations ended — one who has reached fulfillment, done the task, laid down the burden, attained the true goal, totally destroyed the fetter of becoming, and is released through right gnosis — the thought doesn't occur to him that 'There is someone better than me,' or 'There is someone equal to me,' or 'There is someone worse than me.'"

---

There isn't a method for dealing with jealousy apart from the method for dealing with any dukkha, of which jealousy is simply one sort of iteration (which is further demarcated by local details). The problem may seem complex and intractable, but at its root the cause is the same across the board; the benefit of the Dhamma is that it goes beyond particulars and addresses the underlying maladaptive functioning itself. This takes time and energy, but a gradual improvement can be discerned quite early on.

[Sam Vara]

There is a difference between envy and jealousy, although the words are sometimes used interchangeably. The Buddha deal with jealousy here:

"Suppose that a man is in love with a woman, his mind ensnared with fierce desire, fierce passion. He sees her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing. What do you think, monks: As he sees her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing, would sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair arise in him?"

"Yes, lord. Why is that? Because he is in love with her, his mind ensnared with fierce desire, fierce passion..."

"Now suppose the thought were to occur to him, 'I am in love with this woman, my mind ensnared with fierce desire, fierce passion. When I see her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing, then sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair arise within me. Why don't I abandon my desire & passion for that woman?' So he abandons his desire & passion for that woman, and afterwards sees her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing. What do you think, monks: As he sees her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing, would sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair arise in him?"

"No, lord. Why is that? He is dispassionate toward that woman..."

"In the same way, the monk, when not loaded down, does not load himself down with pain, nor does he reject pleasure that accords with the Dhamma, although he is not infatuated with that pleasure. He discerns that 'When I exert a [physical, verbal, or mental] fabrication against this cause of stress, then from the fabrication of exertion there is dispassion. When I look on with equanimity at that cause of stress, then from the development of equanimity there is dispassion.' So he exerts a fabrication against the cause of stress where there comes dispassion from the fabrication of exertion, and develops equanimity with regard to the cause of stress where there comes dispassion from the development of equanimity. Thus the stress where there comes dispassion from the fabrication of exertion is exhausted & the stress where there comes dispassion from the development of equanimity is exhausted.

which is in the Devadaha Sutta:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html

Envy is simpler, and there seems to be more in the Suttas about it.

There is no satisfying sensual desires, even with the rain of gold coins. For sensual pleasures give little satisfaction and much pain. Having understood this, the wise man finds no delight even in heavenly pleasures. The disciple of the Supreme Buddha delights in the destruction of craving.

This from the Dhammapada, for example, and the antidote would seem to be the cultivation of dispassion by focusing on the unwholesome aspects of the object of desire.

[Annicca]

So the way to overcome this kind of envy:

"Now suppose the thought were to occur to him, 'I am in love with this woman, my mind ensnared with fierce desire, fierce passion. When I see her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing, then sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair arise within me. Why don't I abandon my desire & passion for that woman?' So he abandons his desire & passion for that woman, and afterwards sees her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing. What do you think, monks: As he sees her standing with another man, chatting, joking, & laughing, would sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair arise in him?"

is it the same as the jealousy mentioned above?

Both have something in common: by comparing what one does not have with what the target we are jealous has.

[Sam Vara]

Annicca:

is it the same as the jealousy mentioned above?

Both have something in common: by comparing what one does not have with what the target we are jealous has.

Well, getting rid of desire rids one of both envy and jealousy, along with a lot of other forms of suffering. But the mechanisms of envy and jealousy are a bit different, and it is helpful to look clearly at what it is about the situation that is causing suffering.

You might also consider the following (from the Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah, Talks on daily life practice)

...when someone would come to Ajahn Chah with a tale of woe, of how her husband was drinking and the rice crop looked bad this year, his first response would often be "Can you endure it?"

[reflection]

As said, but worth repeating, mudita (sympathetic joy) is a good way to reduce jealousy. Just like metta reduces ill will, this is like a natural counter. The two states can't be in the mind in the same time because they are the opposite. Just like you can't have love and hate at the same time towards the same person, you can't have sympathetic joy and jealousy towards the same person at the same time.

When we practice compassion, we imagine a person and their suffering and hope them to be free of it. Later on we expand this feeling to others. Practicing mudita is a bit similar, but instead we imagine them in a very happy situation or state and are happy for them. I'm sure if you google for "sympathetic joy meditation" you'll find some better descriptions and maybe even guided meditations.

You can also consider asking a monk/teacher for this.

With metta,
Reflection