Okay, let's continue with the Wisdom of the Weaver-Sage, also known as Tirukkurrall by Tiruvalluvar.
Today, I'm continuing the study of Tirukkurrall by Tiruvalluvar.
Also, I call it the Wisdom of the Weaver-Sage.
We will continue with chapter 17. Which is a-zhuk-kaa-rra-my (அழுக்காறாமை). It can be translated as “avoidance of Envy” or “not envying” or “No-envy”. This chapter deals with the virtue of non Envy. Envy or jealousy refers to the mental pollution that means pollution in one's heart. The inability to bear the burden of others’ good fortune is envy. Envy is something that should be completely eradicated as it paves the way for other crimes to occur. Envy will destroy the one who harbors it. He will not have a good life. Wealth will go away from him; his friends and folks will also move away from him.
The one with Envy will go without food and clothing. The message of these verses is that jealousy will lead one to darkness. We observe that sometimes the jealous ones are flourishing and the ones who are not jealous are suffering. What to do about it? It seems to be our sage’s answer in the last couple is to indicate that the jealous do not flourish and the non- envious are not stunted in riches or at least he says nobody flourish because of jealousy and nobody who was not jealous was stunted in riches because of being non-jealous. There may be other reasons. This chapter advises us to adopt a non-envying nature.
Not envying:
Envying is one of the four bad qualities to be avoided by mankind (greed, anger and harsh speech being the other three as mentioned in an earlier couplet (couplet number 35)) because envy gives room for all other evils. The Weaver_Sage put Envy ahead of the evils to be avoided. Not envying is an essential virtue for being a proud human being. This chapter teaches how to prevent even evil thoughts resulting from the quality of envying over the Good Fortune of others. Jealousy is the intolerance of fame, knowledge, strength, success, wealth, good fortune, consumption, beauty, pride, courage, health, and so on. Jealousy is the result of being unable to tolerate others having the above good things in life and not having the skills to obtain them for oneself.
Some tend to consider it is alright to be jealous of others’ education, fame, career, etc. But jealousy is different; The competitive attitude of thinking that one should be superior to others is different. Competitive attitude helps one to be motivated. Jealousy leads to destruction. The jealous one is hopeless. He will think negatively that he will lose if others progress. The jealous person will have mental agony over the good of others and will attempt to destroy, extort, or bad-mouth others. He will have no progress. The competitor is not jealous. So he has no shortage of creativity.
So basically in these last two paragraphs what we see is this: it gives a kind of explanatory definition of jealousy. So basically not being able to tolerate others’ success or others’ good fortune is jealousy.
To see others being successful are flourishing and when we do not have the skills and thus we are not able to achieve success we feel jealous. It goes on to say that sometimes in certain things jealousy is okay, but yet the idea is basically wrong; idea is to differentiate; what one should know is that jealousy is different from competitive spirit. The competitive spirit is one where one sees others succeeding and tries to see what kind of skills they have and try to develop those skills or put on the extra effort to win. So it's okay to compete but it's something else to be just jealous and then go about criticising them or bad mouthing them and talking as if they got just by mere luck and they are inferior to oneself.
The Weaver-Sage gives a serious punishment to the lowly one who cannot tolerate others
giving to the needy. He says such a person along with his folks will go without food and clothing. Some people are not charitable enough, but when somebody is charitable to give to another person they cannot stand it. That's another bad thing. So Tiruvalluvar says such a person who cannot tolerate others giving to the needy will go without food and clothing.
The essence of chapter verses
161. To hold no envy in one’s heart is what one should make one's lifelong discipline.
162. Among the profuse precious things a man may acquire, none surpasses a nature free from envy toward all. (Not being envious of anybody is a rich reward; there is nothing that can match it.)
163. He who is jealous instead of joyous of another's wealth does not desire, they say, wealth and virtue of his own. (One who, in his envy, doesn’t appreciate the wealth of others,
is known not to value virtue and his own wealth.)
164. One will not do evil deeds out of jealousy, realizing the misery that comes with going in a jealous way. (Those who know of the ills inflicted by envy, will not do anything evil out of envy.)
The learned people who realize that action out of jealousy will bring one’s downfall. So they will not do anything untoward in jealousy and that the tree they can avoid acting badly income,
Couplet 165. A man's own envy is enough to forge his ruin, even though he has no other enemies. (For destruction to be caused, there is no need for outside enemies; if one has envy in heart, it will suffice to cause one’s downfall).
166. If envies envy on others of their charity, that will affect him without foodand cloth along with his family also in future. There are two ways of interpreting here one is that anybody who's jealous of a charitable person giving charities and donations or gift to a third person, the person who cannot tolerate it is almost cursed by Tiruvalluvar that he will he will lose all his - He will be impoverished. Lack of food and clothing; not only that once he doesn't have these things is all his folks - which is everybody friends everyone - will leave him. This one interpretation; another way to interpret this couplet is the one who's jealous of somebody giving charity giving gift will lose his Essentials like clothing and food. Not only that; even his relatives and friends will also lose because of that because when one is like that people start disliiking anybody who Associates with such a person will also be despised by the people.
167. Fortune's Goddess, intolerant of men who cannot tolerate other's success, Introduces them to her sister Misfortune and goes away. (Good luck desert envies and bad luck occupies him.) So Fortune’s goddess is supposed to be Lakshmi and the goddess or angel of misfortune is Moo-devi is supposed to be the elder sister of Laksmi. So one who cannot tolerate another success then Lakshmi the fortune goddess will get away and not only go away, but also show this person (hand over this person) to misfortune - goddess of misfortune.
Good luck deserts the envious and bad luck occupies him. So one who is envious will find that he gets less and less good luck and more and more bad luck
168. The great sin called jealousy will destroy wealth and push the envious person to those worlds of hellish fire. (Envy is a damned ill that will destroy one’s wealth and consign him to a fiery inferno.) Jealousy is such a bad thing and one who's jealous will go down and down and down and become very poor and very impoverished.
169. The wealth in the hands of a person with envy at heart, and the destitution of a person, devoid of it, are aberrations that need to be analysed.
Sometimes we see people who are jealous seem to be endowed with the good life whereas another person who is having pure minded and has no jealousy at all is
suffering from bad luck or misfortune. So in Couplet 169, he simply says that this is something to be analyzed. Or that It is worth pondering that good men may be poor While the envious in heart prosper.
170. An envious person doesn’t ever attain glory; of those who have no envy, there is none who has fallen from glory. (None prospered on envy as well as none had gone poor being envyless.)
It is not because of envy; having some other good qualities or something else, but not jealousy that brought in Good Fortune. A person who is not jealous was impoverished, has bad luck and so on, that really means that's not because he was not jealous. It is in spite of being non jealous and something else that's going on. So this is a very simple chapter but it's a very important quality. It's nice to see here that one of the base instincts of human beings is to be jealous when one cannot achieve and when somebody is simply achieving something that one wants to achieve.
It will take time to overcome the deficiencies and working hard to achieve something they felt jealous about.
And then there comes other bad qualities like bad mouthing them, making fun of them and so on. It happens everywhere, when a particular section of the society particular community or particular region is flourishing, the not-flourishing due to laziness, due to community laziness or societal laziness or societal bad habits; but they will be making fun of those who are flourishing, you know, the jokes about the particular group of people by another group, another religion, another society, another state. They're just jealous, but they cannot compete with them. So they make fun of them and have some satisfaction. That's what would happen at the individual level or the society level if one is not developing his skills or training but still cannot tolerate others succeeding. This is given as one of the worst habits - one of the four real bad habits or what's called the opposite of Dharma or bad attitudes, bad practices, bad habits etc.
And So we will open for discussion when we meet next time and we'll try to discuss some examples from real life. Also Kural only says we should avoid jealousy, but we should think about how to practice it on a day-to-day basis when we get jealousy or when someone gets jealous. Instead of criticizing them we should analyse and try to see how we can overcome jealousy. Develop the skills to achieve or sometimes we may not need that item or position. We don't have to worry about not getting that, which is not essential. So there are several ways of overcoming jealousy, but it has to come by introspection. You think about it and then do constant practice.
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