The nature of jealousy
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
Last night I had an experience while I was half asleep… I was going to dig, into a great glowing mass, because “I wanted what they had”. It struck me this morning that this was an insight into the nature of jealousy, that it hangs together with the concept of possessing things, desire, my-making, and perceiving in others these things.
As soon as you acknowledge the idea of ownership, that things that you perceive are owned by people, then you embark on the journey of ego expansion through owning more, of becoming somehow greater because all these things are “yours”. You see that things are other people’s but not yours, and then you are inspired by a thought of how wonderful it would be to have them for yourself.
The truth is that there is no such thing as ownership, not even such a thing as ‘I’. The ego clamouring that it wants more, that it wants to be bigger by ‘owning the things outside itself’, that it wants to do whatever it likes despite the impermanence of the world, is just a shadow of desire, and itself casts off further shadows of jealousy and other darknesses. But the reality is that we do not really own things, we just use them for a while.
I find it so beneficial to explore these relationships… it is like by understanding the way they fit together, I can let go of them. For me, these insights and the working out of them are the true gift of the dhamma, freedom from the chains of the mind.
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I see learning the Dhamma coming along in two parts. The knowing and the doing. The ego can like to play tricks that the knowing is actually the doing so it can go on my-making and running the show in disguise. Part of the practice is clearing this obfuscation from every corner of the mind's room. But even now I delight in thinking I know this better than I do this. The mind can be greedy and jealous of the experience of doing and bolsters itself through knowing.
I find this interesting. My experience is that knowing isn’t that important, it is understanding that alters how you view the world, and how you view things changes what you do. This is an organic chain, it is hard to distinguish such a thing as a doer.
You are a hollow bamboo pipe, and existence is the wind blowing through you, producing incidental music…
In a nutshell one could say, the nature of jealousy is craving/Taṇhā....
The desire to have what another person has and aversion because they have it and you don't want them to have it...
Which I guess are the two sides of the (same) coin Taṇhā .... Both have equal (de)value...
Yeah good point. Looking at it, the knowing is almost more like a form of play or indulgence in many cases. Like the simile I came across a while back regarding eating or touch and being aware of the finer understandings of those actions.
We eat for a lot of reasons but when examining eating only for sustenance, it's found a lot of eating is for indulgence. If anyone lost their smell and taste from covid, this was an almost forced perspective. Also like there are various forms of touch. Being able to know how to distinguish them provides ability to understand the distinguishments.
The mind can get a bit confused, jealous, and possessive when trying to reduce the indulgences to the realistic level of sustenance. I suppose the "when trying" in this is the mind still willing. Remnants of an authoritarian upbringing trying to wrestle control from a mind that's been in control since birth. Maybe this is why shame is important in the alternative approach. It's likely as you say @Jeroen, See clearly and know all of what your being does and natural change takes place in the direction of your virtues.
Instead of yanking the kid away from the tv when they complain their eyes hurt and then expecting them to learn not to sit so close next time, lead them to understanding why their eyes hurt and maybe they'll naturally sit further from the tv. The depth required for them to reach understanding depends on where they're currently at with it.
Understanding seems to me like a more sturdy type of knowing but with less mind-interface. Like taking off an augmented reality headset. Or maybe the fruition of knowing rightly. ..More sustained effort required which I think is why I slip back into relying upon knowing after some time. Habit, laziness, forgetfulness, dopamine. Heedlessness really...but it comes from the jealous and possessive mind which thinks it keeps losing it's toys. Fearful because it doesn't understand that it's really not. It thinks it knows it is but if it really understood, there would be no tanha.
A reminder to myself to just be mindful of whether it's really fully understood or only partially understood while thinking it's known. For me that's where I have trouble differentiating.
Do I understand? Or do I just think I know?
Safe bet I don't fully understand and there are more finer details yet to be uncovered.
Is the perception of choice in the tune?
Jealousy is part of the tangle known as fundamental darkness. (Ignorance, arrogance, jealousy, anger, fear, hate....) Fundamental darkness is the ignorance of the totality, of the great worth of all life, of being. It is denying the potential of the self and of others. An aspect of fundamental darkness is the belief that happiness comes from outside oneself.
One step in rising above this Fundamental Darkness is giving oneself permission to be happy.
Allow yourself to be happy. Allow yourself to enable other to be happy. Instead of practicing jealousy, we must practice gratitude. With jealousy, the flower of life withers. But with gratitude, the flower of life blossoms.
Peace to All
I think you may have something there, @lionduck, gratitude seems to work well to make jealousy / envy vanish. It helps to live in gratitude, focus one’s mind on gratitude.
Last night I had a dream, I emerged from darkness and found a crowd of people, a mass of all races but mature folks, coming towards me and I heard the words “We want what you had”.
I have been trying to formulate an answer all morning, and I think what I should have said is “Without you, the universe would be incomplete. Without me, the universe would be incomplete. I am grateful for our being here.”
https://newbuddhist.com/discussion/19668/what-is-the-buddhist-anti-dote-for-jealousy
There definitely seems to be a link with derogation too in my experience.
Yes, that’s part of what understanding the dhamma does. But more important is that it opens the door to practice, so that you can spot your weak points and practice the antidote.
That happens. Luckily a few minutes of meditation seems to be good for restraining hours of normal thought, as long as we are mindfully aware of our limits. We don’t need to practice 24-7.
Have you read about Thich Nhat Hanh’s practice of looking deeply? It’s great for training understanding and following the links in one’s thinking. Maybe read this for starters…
https://www.lionsroar.com/the-practice-of-looking-deeply/