Story: Mahatma Buddha, King and Beggar (Source: Internet)
One day a king invited the Buddha and his monks for lunch. On their way to the palace, they passed a beggar in the street. The beggar smiled enthusiastically as they passed by, praising the king for his success and the palace’s beauty.
The king served everyone a wonderful meal with many courses when they arrived at the palace. After the meal, as was the tradition, the Buddha offered a dedication prayer for the incredible feast.
The king, expecting the prayer to be dedicated to his incredible generosity, was shocked and taken aback when the Buddha dedicated the prayer to the beggar outside the palace.
Also surprised, the other monks asked the Buddha why he had not honoured the king, who had been such a generous host to them.
The Buddha explained that it took much more character and virtue for the beggar—who had nothing—to be genuinely happy for the king’s success.
The king—who was wealthy beyond comparison—was only filled with greater pride at his ability to host such an extravagant meal.
Moral of the Story:
This story illustrates the Buddhist concept of mudita—translated as “sympathetic joy” or “rejoicing in the good fortune of others.” Mudita is considered to be one of the most important qualities that someone can develop in their lifetime. It is also recognized as something that takes great practice over time to develop as a habit and character trait.
“A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” –attributed to King Solomon 2700 years ago (Proverbs 14:30)
What is Jealousy?
- Some people look better than us.
- Some score better marks than us.
- Some have more money with us.
- Some can speak much better than us.
- Some are more popular than us.
And the same is true with us too. When we outperform others, we feel superior and consider it to be a sign of success! Similarly, when others are one step ahead of us, we get demoralized and defeated.
It means when someone is better than us, we feel jealous as we think that they are better than us. The extent of jealousy has gone to the extent that how can number of people gathered at the cremation ceremony is more at my friend’s place than mine!
When we feel jealous, often we blame others for our negative thinking. We justify ourselves that others are responsible for my state of mind as it is because of their success that I am feeling low!
Generally, this process of feeling jealous starts very early in our childhood. Although we may not realize it, the seed of jealousy germinates when we feel that my parents love our sibling more or that my best friend has become a class monitor. Somewhere we start linking success when someone is performing better than others.
Why People Feel Jealous?
As said earlier, from early childhood, we link competition with others and getting ahead as a mark of success. The more we do as a parent, teachers or relatives, the more we are engraining the Sanskar of always being in competition and getting ahead of others as a sign of winner.
Like if a child gets 5th position in the class although he targeted 1st, does it mean that the student who came 1st is successful? When we think so, we also think that the child who secured the 5th position is a failure! This leads to the feeling of competition and jealousy.
What we do not realise is that by continuously doing it again and again, we are engraving a message in the child that being good is not enough. To be successful, you need to be better than others! Only having good Sanskar is not enough, like,
- If you are honest, it is not success.
- If you speak the truth, it is not success.
- If you have self-confidence, it is not success.
- If you accept your mistake, it is not a success.
Having a Value of honesty, trustworthiness and self-confidence is not considered as a signature of success.
How often we have analysed that whenever we are feeling jealous of others, we lose our mental stability, we start feeling inferior to others and we do not do things to the best of our capability but only to go ahead of others.
Possible Solution:
Does it mean that we should not improve, we should not achieve the next level or we should not grow? The answer is NO. We need to improve; we have to reach the next level and we will grow further But Not in comparison to others but as per my capacity.
We do need to take inspiration from others. We should learn better practices from others. When we focus on our existing capacity and challenge ourselves further to the next level, we are competing with ourselves and at that time there is no jealousy. In this state of mind, we can supersede our achievements beyond our imagination.
There is a very popular quote, “Everything is fair in love and war’. It may have been said for a particular context but we should not justify our actions based on this quote.
Captain Cool MS Dhoni is a wonderful example in front of us who has helped the Indian cricket team to succeed in the worst situations by not thinking about what others are doing but what best our team can do in this situation and believing in our capabilities. He has always played fairly and never used any crooked techniques to win a game.
In the recent Olympic games at Paris 2024, in one of the long-distance running competitions, when one of the participants who was almost on the verge of winning the race, ‘stopped’ assuming that he had crossed the final line, the athlete behind him pushed him to cross the final mark ahead of him. When reporters asked if he could have won the Gold medal, his response astonished everyone. In the press conference, he said that the Kenyan athlete deserved to win. If I had managed to win somehow, it would never be my win.
The above incident is a reflection of a person’s mindset that he wanted to win but not by any wrong means. When we always think good about others, when we want people to be successful in life, we are creating an atmosphere of happiness and joy inside us where jealousy has no space.
In summary, we should develop an understanding that success is for who we are and not only for what we have achieved.