Though it seems that sometimes my life is comprised of practicing yoga, eating many sandwiches after practicing yoga, and lying on my floor and moaning while recovering from yoga practice, I do have another existence outside of my stretchy shorts. For instance, I lead a fascinating and glamorous literary career. I only mention that because the nature of this particular entry forces me into the unsavory activity of name-dropping. So here we go, with what they disingenuously call “full disclosure.”

Recently, I’ve watched the first few episodes of the new HBO comedy Bored To Death. I know Jonathan Ames, who created the show. Many publications have shared our bylines. Though I wouldn’t consider us close, when you wave imaginary swords together at midnight in the parking lot of a Tampa gas station, some sort of friendship gets forged. We always seem very pleased when we encounter each other, usually on the bill of a reading series, sometimes in the lobby of a random New York building; we’ve had a few times, Ames and I.

I found myself immensely entertained by Bored To Death. I love noir and I love good comedy, and therefore, the show works for me. It’s funny, Jewy, urbane, charming, and a little perverse, just like its creator. But as I watched it, particularly that first night, I also felt envy, that most negative of emotions, bubbling to the surface of my consciousness. I’ve been grinding it out in L.A. for years, hoping against massive, almost impossible odds to get a show on the air. On the rare occasions that someone I know lands a gig, envy threatens to upset the apple cart of my relative placidity. Some Morrissey lyrics come to mind: We hate it when our friends become successful/And if they’re Northern, that makes it even worse/And if we can destroy them/You bet your life we will/Destroy them/If we can hurt them…

The bigger the gig landed, the greater threat posed by envy.

Only yoga can save me.

*****

Envy has created a lot of problems for me in the past. For a while, I spent time publicly destroying other writers’ books while in the grips of an alcohol-soaked, jealous rage. And when I say destroy, I don’t mean, “savage in print,” though most print-based attacks also stem from some sort of envy. I mean that I would actually, physically tear the books apart. One of my favorite targets was Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer, who, immediately upon the book’s publication, became the hot Jewish voice of his generation, a spot that I’d (unrealistically and without merit) been hoping to claim for myself.

If I’d been 18 years old at an open-mic, this behavior would have made some sense, but it was no activity for a reasonably accomplished man in his thirties. Also, not surprisingly, this occurred before I’d discovered yoga. Sutra number 33, in the Desikachar translation, spells out the proper mental framework:

In daily life we see people around who are happier than we are, people who are less happy. Some may be doing praiseworthy things and others causing problems. Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our mind will be very tranquil.

According to the sutras, the real obstacle to human happiness is avidya, or misperception, not seeing things the way they truly are. So now, after years of dedicated yoga practice, I can see, for instance, that while Everything Is Illuminated definitely isn’t one of my favorite books, its creator can still be a well-meaning, talented force for good in the world. Any anger that I once had toward the book, and the author, mostly came from my misperception of it as a threat to my own imagined literary dominance. And thus the impulse to destroy books left my body, and my mind.

I try to remember this every time a friend of mine becomes successful, especially if they’re Northern. So when my former literary agent suddenly emerges as a regular character on The Daily Show and gets cast on one of the most successful TV ad campaigns of all time, I can feel happy for him, because he’s a great guy who deserves all the odd success that comes his way. When a book that I blurb becomes a runaway global bestseller, I can send a hearty congratulatory email to the writer and invite him out for a drink, hoping that he’ll pay. And when Dave Eggers, with whom I acted out a very public psychodrama in the first half of this decade, raises countless dollars for vital causes through writing books of extremely high quality, I can say, very quietly, “good for him” instead of saying, “why not me?” Then I can go back to my busy schedule of playing Civilization on my iphone.

Every day, I struggle against envy, but it’s a struggle worth fighting, because jealousy blackens the mind and the heart. Of all the unproductive emotions in the world, none is worse for the soul, none more toxic to creative output. Envy will burn hot and fast for a short time, but when it flames out, it leaves a confused, miserable husk of a person in its wake. It creates massive avidya and always leads to unhappiness, no matter how powerful it feels at the time. Do your own work, the sutras say, and don’t let other people’s work ripple your waters. Their business, whether you choose to enjoy it or not, has nothing to do with you.

So for Bored To Death, created by the hilarious and lovely Jonathan Ames, I say, mazelfuckingtov! May it live a long, happy, Emmy-filled life. I hope it runs on HBO forever. And if I really want to challenge myself yogically, I’ll try to feel the same way about Entourage.

Bonus Read: Not that You Asked: Roman Polanski Edition

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