Gladness (Buddhism)

This is the state in which the Buddha manifested boundless joy in the liberation of others from suffering. As part of the practice of meditation, it is a positive state in which the meditator has developed gladness in sympathy with the happiness of others. This is a means of overcoming the feeling of pleasure that arises in another's suffering and of removing the feeling of separation from others. The meditator does not at first direct gladness towards those to whom he is antipathetic, to very dear friends, to a neutral person, to an enemy or hostile person or to a member of the opposite sex or to a dead person. A dear friend can, however, be the proximate cause. He becomes versatile in the unspecified pervasion of gladness (five ways), specified pervasion (seven ways) and directional pervasion (10 ways); and eleven advantages arise.

One of the four divine abidings or states described as subjects for meditation in Hinayan Buddhism. As experienced in the sense sphere, one of the formations aggregate (mental coefficients) of Hinayana Buddhism, being listed among the inconstant states, and as general secondary (sometimes present in any profitable or profitable-resultant consciousness).