If mudita, the emotion of delight taken in the observation of another’s pleasure, seeks anything for the person who feels it, it seeks for others to continue to feel pleasure, so that the witnessing of it may continue.
In this respect, the emotional opposite of mudita is greed. Greed is incapable of feeling pleasure unless it is possessed for oneself. A wonderful object or experience held by another cannot be enjoyed by a person feeling greedy. Only when the greedy seize the property of others do they enjoy a flash of pleasure.
Greed isn’t sadistic, but it is deficient in empathy. A person overwhelmed by greed either does not understand the feelings of others, or discounts them as insignificant in comparison to the drive of obtain the object of desire.
While the emotion of mudita feels satisfied in the moment, greed can never have enough, because it is a feeling born out of alienation. The greedy instinct senses that worth is external, that nothing can be worth having unless it is not yet possessed. Thus, greed is perpetually grabbing at, and yet never truly grasping, what it hungers for.
