Envy and jealousy need working with Sympathetic Joy, working with ownership of our own Kamma, working with understanding reality, that we're all not born equal, and these other sorts of wise thoughts, these can help us let go of envy and jealousy. As well, letting go of the "I", the "me," reflecting on the eight worldly dhammas will help greatly. In working on a job, someone else gets the promotion, they get the gain, you get a loss, so to speak. OK? Loss is just part of the eight worldly dhammas. If I'm jealous of that person getting the promotion, getting the new job, that I don't get, I've just had loss that's it, that's all. It's not any big deal, it's just part of life. OK?
Reflecting in wise ways, many different wise ways helps us let go of the envy, the jealousy. If somebody actually has done something very good, have Sympathetic Joy with them, "Oh it's great that they're doing so well." Rather than "eh, I wish they weren't doing so well, it makes me look bad."
It helps to just focus more on us as our own tree, so to speak. We look outside, and we've got all sorts of different trees. We've got mango trees, we've got the yellow-flowering trees, there's the dohn-my-gaow, there's the berry tree, there's the caterpillar tree, (we've made up all sorts of names). And some of them grow fast, some of them grow slow. Some of them get real fat, some of the get real tall, some of them short, some of them have lots of flowers, and some of them have no flowers at all. You know, if we start looking at this a little better, and we let go of the envy, the jealousy, we start looking at "Oh, I'm got my own tree. I've got to start take care of this. The fat tree is going good, too."
Now not only are there different types of trees, but oh, there's one coconut tree that's 60 feet tall, and there's another coconut tree that's only 10 feet tall. And you imagine the thoughts of this 10 foot tall coconut tree, "Ah, I wish I was tall like him, you know, why are they so tall and I'm so short..." and all this sort of stuff. It's totally silly, isn't it? The 10 foot coconut tree is 10 foot, and that's it. It's younger than the 60 foot tree, it hasn't grown as much, it hasn't done as much in its life span, to be equal to the 60 foot tree.
So these are different ways of looking at the fact that "I'm my own tree, I've got to work with myself." Not so much comparing to develop envy and jealousy, rather comparing to have motivation. We see a good quality in someone else, "Can I do that?" We see a quality in someone that's not so good, "Do I do that? I better try and change that one if I do." So we look and compare to a certain extent in order to improve ourselves, not in order to have envy, jealousy and so on.