Don’t Seek Others’ Pain as the Limbs of Your Happiness
Which is to say, “Don’t seek others’ pain as a way to get happiness for yourself.” We are
glad when the troublemakers in our lives get hit by a truck or go bankrupt, or anything of
that nature. I have a few people in my life who fall into this category, and I’m amazed at
how happy I am when one of them writes me a letter and tells me that things are going
badly. Conversely, I feel haunted by distaste when I hear that things are going well for
them. There’s still the memory of how they hurt me, and I wish they would just continue to
go downhill and drop dead, painfully. That’s how we seek others’ pain as the limbs of our
own happiness.
From Start Where You Are : A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chodron,