Recent thoughts

I play chess online. The pandemic got me playing again. Sometimes I lose 3 in a row, and that really upsets me. I can win three in a row, and I interpret that as me being a superior player. But neither really mean anything. It's the worldly winds blowing. However they choose opponents who want to play at that moment, they could easily pick three players who have lost a few, their rankings lowered, and are really stronger than their rankings suggest.

But I think the worldly winds teaching is more than just a coping statement to improve your mood. It also gets it's hook into you, to suggest that maybe deepening your spiritual life through the various means, might also help you to raise above the worldly winds. Not to be more efficient at work or empathetic in relationships. But to seek the spiritual solution to constant disappointments. 

I was watching Mom, a fun TV show that keeps recovery alive for me at times, and pokes fun at the tragedies surrounding substance abuse, and some psychological compensation. One of the characters talked about glücksschmerz, which is the opposite of Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is happiness when a foe suffers. Glücksschmerz is sadness when someone is doing well. When Christy isn't happy for her mother getting married, Tammy says she has some glücksschmerz on her face. I laughed at that. I've cried more than I laugh at the show, but I've become a little wet. 

The true opposite of schadenfreude isn't glücksschmerz, it's mudita. Sympathetic joy. Somehow that concept has helped me to be happy for others. And that has helped me to avoid negative mental states. And avoiding negative mental states helps me to push myself harder in my spiritual practices. 

Ironically, the depressive cast that allows me to imagine I can see dukkha, is also a hindrance in the spiritual life.

I'm reading Dante's inferno, so I'm opening myself up to Christian imagery and ideas, but I think of them in terms of pure lands and hell realms.