Mortal Sin #4: Envy

"Comparison is the Thief of Joy"

I agree with Teddy (Roosevelt), to whom this quote is attributed. When you're looking at someone else's blessings and craving them, you're not looking at your own and appreciating them. When you're assuming their hardships are nonexistent while yours are ever multiplying, your mind's eye is looking at a fun house mirror. Not fun, and not an accurate mirror.

American rabbi and author Hyman Schachtel said:

"Happiness is not having what you want, it's wanting what you have."

I envied, and I still do. I can feel others' envy, and I shake my head. If they only knew. I have much to envy and be envied for. But what, really, is the point of focusing on what others have and you do not, or what they don't have to deal with and you do? Does that way of thinking serve your interests?

In Craving Happiness, You Rob Yourself of It

Craving is what Buddhists call "attachment," which, as the teaching goes, only leads to suffering. Envy is a so-called mortal sin. I don't believe in Hell, except that which is on Earth, but if you give in to envy, are you really living your own life? Or are those green tendrils curling around your brain like that fictional cordyceps, trying to hijack your very thoughts, until all you can do is want?

I Don't Want to Look at the World Through Shit-Colored Glasses

I know the shit is there (I can smell it), but I control what glasses I put on. To be perfectlly honest, I don't even want the clear glasses. I want to wear Pollyanna’s plastic glasses that are shaped like hearts and tinted rose. I know what I see isn't exactly the truth, but isn't it beautiful? Wouldn't it be nice to really live in that world? It doesn't even cost $5.98; these rose-colored glasses are free. The only catch is that they’re as heavy as 25 lb barbells, and you have to do many reps a day, many days a year, before you can carry them comfortably.

And in the end, all muscles atrophy. (And baby, that's show business entropy for you.)

A beautiful and shapely white woman blessed with three children (La Carga, by Jaume Plensa)

How do you stop envying? In Catholicism, you're encouraged to practice gratitude. Practice. Practice makes perfect. Reading this blog is all well and good, but it's more important to follow Hindu Monk Swami Sivananda's advice:

"An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of theory."

When the "I want" pops into your head, you can redirect your inner toddler by changing it to "I have." This AI summary of Buddhist teaching may be useful:

✧˖° Buddhists recommend letting go of craving through a gradual process of mindful awareness, ethical living, and insight—not by suppressing desire, but by understanding its nature and effects. Here’s how it works:

1. Mindfulness: Practicing moment-to-moment awareness helps you see craving arise — noticing sensations, emotions, and thoughts without immediately reacting. This observation weakens craving’s power.

2. Meditation: Meditation, especially insight meditation, helps uncover how desires and attachments lead to suffering. Over time, this insight naturally reduces grasping.

3. Wisdom: By understanding the impermanent and unsatisfactory nature of all things, craving loses its appeal — because one sees there’s nothing permanent to cling to.

4. Ethical conduct: Living ethically — through compassion, generosity, and non-harming — counters the self-centered impulses that fuel craving.

5. The Middle Way: The Buddha rejected both indulgence and self-denial, teaching instead a balanced path that avoids extremes. Letting go isn’t repression — it’s freedom from being controlled by wanting.

Ultimately, Buddhists don’t “kill” desire; they transform it — from craving and clinging to wholesome aspiration, compassion, and clarity. ✧˖°

</end AI summary>

Let's Practice

Notice how you feel when someone triggers your envy. Maybe they're holding hands with their boyfriend when you're single and lonely, or complaining about property taxes while you're reduced to searching for coins in your couch cushions to pay your electric bill. That's mindfulness. Insight meditation brings you to understanding that everything is impermanent. Maybe that boyfriend's phone is just now downloading messages from his affair partner. Maybe the couch cushions are the rock bottom that leads you to finding and getting your dream job.

Look at La Carga again, and see the third child, shadowed by the mountain of her mother's burdens...Impermanence may break a mother's heart beyond repair. Wisdom is seeing your own children alive and thriving, despite what life has thrown at your family. Ethical conduct: Stop complaining publicly about your property taxes. Read the room. Stop expecting sympathy. Sympathy is given, not taken. The Middle Way: I can only say how I interpret this. For me, I accept that I will envy. I also expect my brain to do its due diligence and balance that with gratitude. The jilted girlfriend can eventually be happy she got to experience love, something not everyone can say. A person looking for change in their couch may be someday able to appreciate his experience with frugality.

The Futility of Envy: A Taoist Parable

Once there was an old farmer who had a single horse to plow his fields. Fortunately, the horse was strong and healthy. Unfortunately, one day it ran away into the hills. The neighbors came to say, “What bad luck!”The farmer simply replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

Fortunately, a week later, the horse returned — and brought with it a whole herd of wild horses! The neighbors exclaimed, “What good luck!”The farmer said, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

Unfortunately, the farmer’s son tried to tame one of the wild horses, was thrown off, and broke his leg.“Oh, that’s terrible!” cried the neighbors. “Maybe so, maybe not,” said the farmer.

Soon after, soldiers came through the village, conscripting all the young men for war. Unfortunately, every able-bodied boy had to go — except the farmer’s son, whose broken leg spared him. The neighbors said, “You’re so lucky!” And again, the farmer said, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

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