Hi Isis long time no see, thanks for the sharing :) Free to come
to my jiang tang this sat? Will be playing my taiwan teacher
vcd.
Anyway just found something, excerpts from Dealing with Jealousy
As we have seen, jealousy is the inability to bear someone
else’s achievement in an area that we exaggerate the importance of,
for instance his or her financial success. Envious of it, we wish
that we could achieve it instead. We also have seen the variation
of this, which occurs when someone receives something from someone,
such as love or affection. We wish that we could receive it
instead.
This disturbing emotion derives from two deceptive appearances
that, because of confusion and just not knowing how things exist,
our minds create and project. The first is the dualistic appearance
of (1) a seemingly concrete "me" who inherently deserves to achieve
or receive something, but did not, and (2) a seemingly concrete
"you" who inherently did not deserve to get it. Unconsciously, we
feel that the world owes us something and it is unfair when others
get it instead. We divide the world into two solid categories:
"losers" and "winners," and imagine that people truly exist and are
findable inside the boxes of these seemingly solid true categories.
Then we put ourselves in the solid permanent category of "loser"
and we put the other person in the solid permanent category of
"winner." We might even put everyone in the winners’ box, except
ourselves. Not only do we feel resentment, we feel doomed. This
leads to fixation on the painful thought, "poor me."
Naivety about behavioral cause and effect usually accompanies
jealousy and envy. For example, we do not understand
and even deny that the person who received a promotion or affection
did anything to earn or deserve it. Moreover, we feel that we
should get it without having to do anything to bring it about.
Alternatively, we feel that we did do a lot, but still did not get
the reward. Our minds thus create a second deceptive appearance and
project it. Our confused minds make things appear to happen for no
reason at all, or for only one reason: what we alone did.
We need to deconstruct these two deceptive appearances. Our
cultures might have taught us that the driving principle inherent
in the world of living beings is competition: the drive to win,
survival of the fittest. But that premise might not be true.
Nevertheless, if we have accepted it, we then believe that the
world is inherently divided, by its very nature, into an absolute
dichotomy of winners and losers. Consequently, we perceive the
world in the fixed conceptual categories of winners and losers, and
of course view ourselves with the same conceptual framework.
Although these concepts of winners, losers, and competition may
be useful for describing evolution, we need to realize that they
are only arbitrary mental constructions. "Winner" and "loser" are
only mental labels. They are convenient mental categories used to
describe certain events, such as coming in first in a race, getting
a promotion at work instead of someone else getting it, or losing a
client or student to someone else. We could just as easily divide
people into the categories of "nice persons" and "not nice
persons," depending on how we define "nice."
When we see that all such dualistic sets of categories are
merely mentally constructed, we start to realize that there is
nothing inherent on the side of "me" or "you" that locks us into
solid categories. It is not that we are basically losers,
inherently, and, in thinking of ourselves as losers, we have
finally discovered the truth – the real "me" is a loser. Poor "me."
Rather, we have many other qualities besides losing a client to
someone else, so why dwell on that one as if that were the real
"me."
Furthermore, it is only because of our limited minds and
preoccupation with thinking "poor ‘me’" and "you bastard ‘you,’"
that it seems like success and failure, gain and loss, happen for
no reasons at all, or for irrelevant reasons. That is why we think
that what happened to us was unfair. What happens in the universe,
however, happens because of a huge network of cause and effect. So
many things affect what happens to us and to others, it is beyond
our imaginations to include every factor.
When we deconstruct these two deceptive appearances (winners and
losers, and things happening for no good reason) and stop
projecting them, we relax our feelings of injustice. Beneath our
jealousy is merely awareness of what has been accomplished, what
has happened. We lost a client to someone else and now someone else
has this client. This makes us aware of a goal to achieve. If we do
not begrudge someone else for achieving or receiving it, we can
perhaps learn how the person accomplished the feat. This enables us
to see how to accomplish it ourselves. We only feel jealous because
of overlaying this awareness with dualistic appearances and
concrete identities.
Oh yes, sometime we aggravate the importance. When it is really
"simple" and we just make it complicated.
Hello AEN, I can't make it for the Dharma talk due
to meditation retreat. Thanks very much for
the invitation.