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Empathetic joy (mudita)

Practice Library

Empathetic joy (mudita)

20 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • Guided Meditation - Rejoicing in Your Own Life and the Good in the World David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded April 19, 2026

    Rejoicing starts with your own life history, with any goodness received from the world and any brought to it, however small. Then someone you care about at a moment of their excitement, their joy felt as your own and breathed in, with the phrase may your good fortune continue. It widens to people who inspire you and to the communities working for those in need, then to anyone you envy or resent, and comes back to you.

  • Practising with Joy: Lightness and Humour on the Buddhist Path David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded April 19, 2026

    The evening opens with gratitude for a precious human life and closes with a longer empathetic joy practice in which we rejoice in good fortune, a loved one's happiness and even people you find difficult. David draws on the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu to show how humility frees us from self-preoccupation, and how joyful effort, reframing, humour and gratitude counter the mind's negativity bias. He shares his own depression and homelessness as reframed hardship.

  • Hope In Difficult Times David Oromith · 36 minutes · recorded September 14, 2025

    In the candle visualisation meditation we draw in the pain of the world as fuel that makes an inner light burn brighter, then breathe out compassion to push back the darkness. David talks about despair as the near enemy of compassion, how fixating on bad news skews our sense of reality, and how seeking out examples of goodness and empathetic joy restores a truer, more hopeful picture of the world.

  • D5S3 - Empathetic Joy, and Delighting in the Good Fortune of Others David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded August 22, 2025

    The third immeasurable, and the most uplifting: being happy with someone rather than only for them, on the understanding that joy is not locked inside one person. David says this one comes to life out in the world, and tells of a low, isolated spell when he could not face going outside but could watch kids playing and a dog running after a ball from his window, and feel delight instead of the miserly mind asking why he did not have that. Questions afterwards on giving within our means, and on sustaining motivation when shamatha is not all or nothing.

  • Comparison is the Thief of Joy David Oromith · 33 minutes · recorded May 11, 2025

    A meditation on mindfulness of breathing, following the Buddha's instructions to know whether each breath is long or short, then to experience the whole body and let it settle and calm. David turns to the saying that comparison is the thief of joy, and shows how both feeling superior and feeling inadequate trap us in the same self-focus, built on partial pictures we mistake for the whole. He offers mudita, empathetic joy in another's happiness, as the way to turn comparison into celebration.

  • Guided Meditation - The Four Immeasurables Woven Together David Oromith · 26 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025

    The four familiar stages, yourself, someone you love, someone you have no strong feelings about and someone hostile, but with an extra move at each one. After wishing them happiness and freedom from suffering, you imagine it has already happened, picture how they would move and speak, and take joy in it. David closes by spreading that closeness to all beings equally.

  • Session 2 - Exploring Bodhicitta David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025

    A guided practice weaves the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and an enemy. David explains how these four give rise to great compassion and then bodhicitta, and reads passages from the Dalai Lama on its benefits for health, relationships and facing an enemy without anger. Questions cover holding all beings in mind by caring for everyone we actually meet. A short closing meditation follows.

  • Session 2 - Practices for Inner Joy David Oromith · 71 minutes · recorded January 19, 2025

    The session opens with a short meditation on gratitude in which we notice where appreciation is felt in the body. David then describes three doorways to joy: living kindly, the calm that meditation brings, and a settled confidence he calls the joy of knowing, alongside practices of empathetic joy, rejoicing and harvesting delight from ordinary moments. Questions cover keeping compassion for others in balance with self-care, and what to do on waking in a low mood. It closes with a guided harvesting joy practice.

  • D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen David Oromith · 88 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

    The session opens with a practice of mudita in which we delight in the good fortune of a friend, a stranger and someone we find difficult. David completes the seven point instruction on cause and effect, from recognising kindness to the great resolve, then explains why self-cherishing is the root of misery and how tonglen exchanges it for others. Questions turn to where kindness tips into people pleasing, and whether karma means we should not intervene in someone else's suffering.

  • Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy (Mudita) David Oromith · 19 minutes · recorded October 8, 2024

    Taking delight in the good fortune of others, starting with someone whose good cheer is infectious, then a loved one, a stranger receiving good news, and the people whose success would normally twist your heart. It turns inward near the end, to rejoicing in your own small kindnesses and in the teachers behind them.

  • Session 4 - Empathetic Joy David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded October 8, 2024

    The session opens with a short settling practice, then the teaching on mudita, empathetic joy: rejoicing in another's happiness rather than only our own. David sets out what gets in its way, comparison, judgment, envy, using Sharon Salzberg's monkey stuck in tar. Questions cover noticing joy in small creatures and unexpected jealousy. In the long guided meditation we extend joy through a joyful friend, a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, closing with rejoicing in our own good qualities.

  • Session 3 - Empathetic Joy & Equanimity David Oromith · 58 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024

    In the guided practice in empathetic joy we rejoice in our own good qualities, a loved one's happiness, and the kindness of strangers. David describes mudita as harder to sustain than it looks, distinguishes it from envy and cynicism, and tells how seeking joy in a local park helped him through depression. He then teaches equanimity, showing how we sort people into loved, neutral and disliked, and how true equanimity extends equal warmth to all three, unlike the flat indifference that mimics it.

  • Guided Meditation - Harvesting Joy, Finding Delight in the Ordinary David Oromith · 10 minutes · recorded November 6, 2023

    The body first, searched for anything pleasant in it, comfort in the seat, clothes against the skin, the soothing rhythm of the breath. The eyes then open at least partly, for whatever is delightful to see, and after that whatever is delightful to hear, birds, wind chimes, or the relative silence. We let awareness roam the five senses, harvesting the small and trivial and multiplying it. It closes on gratitude for this precious human life and a dedication.

  • Week 3: Empathetic Joy (Mudita): Sharing in the joy and happiness of others David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded June 22, 2023

    After checking in on the week's practice of loving kindness and compassion, David turns to mudita, joy at others' happiness, naming its near enemies, envy and cynicism, and using the image of a monkey stuck in tar for how comparison and judgement trap us. He describes noticing joy in daily life and on social media rather than resenting it. Questions move into acceptance and childhood hurt before a closing meditation in which we recall loved ones' joy and everyday kindness seen out in the world.

  • Cultivating Joy David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded April 30, 2023

    We settle into stillness with an open awareness meditation, before turning to a recent moment of real joy, wishing that same happiness for every being and extending empathetic joy to good news witnessed in others. David talks about why Buddhism deliberately cultivates joy rather than only addressing suffering, naming empathetic joy, the practice of wishing pleasure universally shared, and the joy that comes from a settled mind and from wisdom itself.

  • S3 - The Four Immeasurables, and Empathetic Joy Against Loneliness David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded January 26, 2023

    The session opens with a brief meditation on the breath, before David turns to the four immeasurables: loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, practices for countering loneliness and low mood. He works through each, warning that reciting the words is not yet the mind itself, then leads a guided metta meditation in which we extend kindness through a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult. Questions turn to forgiveness, cognitive fusion and using longer exhales to calm the body.

  • Cultivating Wholesome Emotions David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded January 8, 2023

    The session opens with a body scan to settle the room into stillness, before we rest attention on the breath, with counting to hold focus for the twenty minute practice. David talks about deliberately cultivating wholesome states such as love, compassion and joy, not only managing difficult emotions as they arise. Drawing on the Dalai Lama, he explains how love strengthens our immunity to anger, compassion prevents cruelty, and empathetic joy counters jealousy.

  • D4S1 - Blame Everything on One Culprit Lama Alan · 92 minutes · recorded January 1, 2022

    Lama Alan Wallace explains the two week gap, a perforated intestine and six days in hospital, then takes up the third point, transforming adversity into the path. In Buddhaghosa's framework he names despair, apathy and delight in one's own good fortune as near enemies of compassion, impartiality and empathetic joy, and works through the aphorism blame everything on one culprit, with Shantideva on self-grasping as the great demon. In the guided practice we cultivate the four immeasurables as the four greats.

  • Guided Meditation - Empathetic Joy, Rejoicing in Others' Virtues and Your Own Lama Alan · 24 minutes

    Lama Alan Wallace guides the third of the four immeasurables, empathetic joy. You bring to mind someone whose good cheer and well-being you know well, then someone whose kindness, generosity and wisdom visibly benefit others, and with each out-breath you send light from your heart, rejoicing in their happiness and their virtues. You then turn inwards, delighting in your own past joys and your own goodness, before releasing all objects into open knowing.

  • Empathetic Joy Glen Svensson · 78 minutes

    Empathetic joy, mudita, as the corrective to the modern obsessive focus on the negative. Glen Svensson turns cognitive fusion on ourselves to explain low self-esteem and the difference between useful regret and useless guilt, and advises praising a behaviour rather than a person. In the guided practice we rejoice in another's good fortune and virtues, then travel the timeline of our life recalling every kindness received. He closes with the four thoughts that turn the mind.

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