Understanding Jealousy

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For more than two thousand years Buddhist psychology has offered antidotes to the mind's malaise.

Psychotherapy allows patients—even if just for 55 minutes—to feel good-enough.

Consumer-based capitalist societies depend on the human compulsion to desire more-different-better.

During my second graduate program I had the privilege of studying with Robert Thurman, who taught me the Buddhist concept of mudita. If you didn't already know, Professor Thurman, who recently passed, spent much of his scholarly life translating Tibetan Buddhist thought for Western audiences. He presented to our class the concept of mudita as one of the four immeasurables of Buddhist psychology alongside loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity. Professor Thurman explained that mudita is genuine, embodied joy at another person's joy—taking real pleasure in another person's pleasure.

To understand mudita, it's best to start by thinking of its opposite, our use of the German word "Schadenfreude," which means taking pleasure in another person's suffering. I believe "compersion" is the closest English gets to the opposite of Schadenfreude, but the word has been co-opted by the polyamorous community and is most commonly used to mean taking pleasure in witnessing your........

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