Sunday Morning Meditation May 10th

Teachings

This week, for our discussion, I wanted to turn to this famous saying: ‘Comparison is the thief of joy’ that comes from Roosevelt and I believe that Mark Twain has a very similar version.

And so this idea of comparison, comparing oneself is, as you know, a common thing to do. It’s natural. We’re always unconsciously scanning our environment and we’re making snap judgments about the things that we come into contact with.

And that can include, of course, measuring ourselves against others: whether it is at work, measuring ourselves in terms of

how our colleagues are doing; whether it’s our friends; members of our family (I think it’s quite common amongst siblings, it seems); or it’s other practitioners, maybe other meditation practitioners- Buddhist practitioners. We look at the teachers or we look at masters of the past, or examples of different practitioners.

Even our own community, our own Sangha, and we see how knowledgeable maybe they seem or how, how far along they seem.

Or just strangers online: it’s a huge part of online culture, this comparing and judging. It has been a huge thing in magazines

and print media for the longest time, right? Here’s an image presented that’s highly curated and highly edited, and, as we know, it’s caused huge problems in our society: this trying to measure up to an impossible standard or some image that’s being presented.

And so whenever we do this, whether we do it in a subtle form or a more extreme form, we are undermining our own peace of mind.

We’re undermining our own happiness. Because comparing often will inflate our ego and arouse the sense of deluded pride: one of the six primary mental afflictions in which we feel ‘better than’.

We go, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do it like that’, or, ‘I would’ve done better’,

‘I would’ve done something different’. And we put them ‘down there’ and us ‘up here’. Now we create some distance, we create some separation, some division, some sense of superiority, which can then lead to contempt, right? Feeling that the person is, is beneath you, beneath your consideration, maybe even despising them. So it’s clear how that one’s not good, right? When it inflates the ego, it creates that sort of deluded mind, which only really is

going to cause us more problems.

But equally, as you weigh up the other person: their pretty life online; your siblings achievements; or another colleague and the praise that they’re getting. And the popular friend who everybody seems to like; the knowledgeable practitioner and so on, you look at them and you see those things, and then you find yourself lacking. That deflates us and we get feelings of inadequacy: something’s wrong, something’s missing. ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m not doing enough’, ‘I’m not trying enough, ‘I should be doing more’, ‘I should be trying out’, ‘I should push myself’.

Or maybe the sense of, ‘Well, it’s just not fair’. Maybe they like them more, right? Or, they’ve just had better opportunities than me.

It’s lucky for some, you know, it must be good, but not, not for me.

And so again we feel some sort of separation. We feel maybe they’re just naturally good looking, they’re naturally gifted, and I’m not, and so on.

And so there’s this sense of ‘I’m no good’. So what helpful function is that one serving? It’s not really being very helpful.

And so whether it’s either feeling superior or feeling inadequate: both of which don’t really give very good results.

And from the Buddhist perspective, both reactions are trapping us in an obsessive self focus. A self cherishing which centres around our ego, our sense of self, right? Having that sense of that self being important, having huge importance.

And we often think of that in terms of a pride thing: self cherishing means you think you’re better than everyone.

But it’s also there when we have moments of low self-esteem, when we’re feeling a huge sense of inadequacy, because we’re still focusing on a sense of self. We’re still hurt because we’re focusing on a sense of self and obsessing over a sense of self.

And so the thing is with this, this comparison, is it often leads to an incorrect picture, doesn’t it? It’s an incorrect conclusion, actually.

It’s not true that you are ‘better than’ or ‘worse than’, because what would that even mean? It’s based on snap judgments and false assumptions. We embellish a lot of details.

We never really see the full picture. For one, there are far too many variables involved. The reason why one person may be doing worse or better in our eyes: you may have had vastly different upbringings; you’ll have had different opportunities;you’ll have different physical and mental capabilities; different inclinations;

different karma; different interests. So to compare the end result, it doesn’t really make sense.

It’s like, say you had a baking competition. Say, great British bake off, right? And imagine, instead of giving everyone all the same ingredients at the same time, equal access to everything, you gave one person not enough ingredients, somebody else gave them too much, someone you gave really good quality, somebody else, you give really poor quality. Somebody else gets all kinds of different ingredients for a different cake. Some somebody gets loads of time, somebody else gets no time at all. One person’s being shouted at the whole time, somebody else is left alone. For one person the oven is 20 degrees hotter: loads of different variables.

And then you get the cakes at the end and you say, okay, now we’re gonna measure how good or bad you are at baking.

It’s not gonna be a fair judgment, is it? Because all the tools and all the resources and everything they had was completely different.

And so to compare the cake at the end, and use that as your measuring tool doesn’t make sense.You’re not taking into account the reality.

And so in the same way we judge and we compare based on the snapshot that we see, that bit of behaviour, right?

The way somebody holds themselves, the way they speak. Maybe the picture that we see online. We forget, it’s far more vast than that: the behaviour that we see, the picture, it may not actually be an accurate representation, we don’t know what’s sitting behind it.

And are things ever as perfect as they appear, right?

For example, on social media or print media, magazines and so on, they’re also just a snapshot. They’re highly curated. They’re highly edited. Often they don’t reflect or they don’t offer a full picture.

Social media is just a highlight reel, isn’t it? People showing off what they want to show off, what they want you to see.

It doesn’t often show how underneath, maybe, they’re struggling with this and they’re struggling with that. Maybe they’ve got financial trouble or mental health worries that are going on.

They don’t often display those sides of themselves.

And so if you consume all of this and you think, well, everybody else is having a wonderful life and I’m not.

Even if somebody is genuinely thriving- say somebody is really doing well, they’re having success and they’re having joy in their life: that’s a wonderful thing. Their success is not a comment on you or a reflection on your shortcomings. It’s not about you.

And so life doesn’t necessarily need to be a competition where only a few can win. So this sort of external validation: checking how I am measuring up to other people, is always going to leave us feeling a little bit fragile.

If our sense of worth relies on being better than others, for example, then happiness will always be perpetually out of reach

because you’re always going to find somebody who seems better.

And there’s always going to be a sort of competitive nature to it, right? You’re always gonna be working against other people rather than alongside them, rather than raising each other up, supporting one another, you’re going to feel in competition with them.

And so it’s far better to validate ourselves from within to appreciate who we are. The qualities and skills that we see, independent of what we’re perceiving from anyone else, and to focus there, to look back at where you’ve been.

We can do that. We can compare back to where we’ve been: the progress that we’re making, right? Stay in our own lane, perhaps focus on practice.

There’s a zen saying that a flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it; it just blooms. And so, can we just flourish and focus in that way without necessarily comparing ourselves to the flower next to us? And to, you know, instead of comparison, instead of comparing ourselves, feeling either superior or seeing ourselves as lacking, instead of feeling inadequate at somebody else’s joy, we could cultivate ‘mudita’, empathetic joy, right?

You see somebody doing well, you see somebody’s picture of their holiday. Rather than feeling miserable or jealous, we could say ‘How wonderful!’.

When you see somebody’s success, rather than feeling any sense of jealousy or making it about us, we can just say, ‘How wonderful that is’. And not just feeling happy for them, but imagine what that joy must be like for them. And then feeling that joy, sharing that joy.

How beautiful it is that there is this kind of joy in the world. Because honestly, as as we know ourselves, there are so many negative and unhappy feelings that that come part and parcel of being human and being in this world, that if somebody’s having some joy or success, I just think that’s amazing and I’m so glad it’s a thing to celebrate, for all of us to celebrate.

And so we can celebrate in that way, or we can (a wonderful way to think actually) extend it out. We could wish, ‘May all beings know such happiness’. You see somebody happy and you say,

‘May all beings have that kind of happiness; may no one ever be parted from this kind of joy’.

And so we train ourselves to turn our mind towards these more uplifting, loving, encouraging ways of thinking. And as you do that consciously over and over, you train your mind and you become naturally more that way in the future.

And it’s such a beautiful way to be; to attend to other sentient beings and their successes and their joys. And when, on the other hand, someone shares something that we might normally judge as trivial or self-centred, then rather than judging or feeling superior, we can approach with love and understanding instead. We don’t know the whole picture. It doesn’t make me any better or worse. It’s simply a different way; it’s a different path, but they’re still deserving of happiness and still deserving of freedom from suffering just as I am.

So this ‘comparison is the thief of joy’, this is my

interpretation, my thoughts. And it was sparked by a quote that I came across this morning. It was unattributed: it said unknown, but it sparked this topic.

And the quote was ‘Every minute you spend wishing you had someone else’s life is a minute spent wasting yours’.

And I quite liked that.