Thich Nhat Hanh, "The Four Immeasurable Minds" #18 Winter 1997; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly
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| So what are the four? |
During the lifetime of the Buddha, those of the Brahminical faith prayed that after death they would go to heaven to dwell eternally with Brahma, the universal God.
One day a Brahmin man asked the Buddha, "What can I do to be sure that I will be with Brahma after I die?"
The Buddha replied, "As Brahma is the source of love, to dwell with him you must practice the Brahma-viharas: love, compassion, joy, and equanimity."
A vihara is an "abode" or a "dwelling place." Love in Sanskrit is maitri (friendliness), in Pali metta.
Compassion is karuna in both languages. Altruistic joy is mudita. Equanimity is upeksha in Sanskrit and upekkha in Pali. The Brahma-viharas are four elements of true love.
They are called immeasurables because if we practice them, they will grow every day until they embrace the whole world in all directions. We will become happier and those around us will become happier.
The Buddha respected people's desire to practice their own spiritual tradition, so he answered the Brahmin's question in a way that encouraged him to do so.
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| No Mud, No Lotus (Thich Nhat Hanh) |
According to Nagarjuna, the 2nd-century Buddhist philosopher, practicing the Immeasurable Mind of Love extinguishes anger in the hearts of living beings.
Practicing the Immeasurable Mind of Compassion extinguishes all sorrows and anxieties in the hearts of living beings.
Practicing the Immeasurable Mind of Altruistic Joy extinguishes sadness and joylessness in the hearts of living beings.
Practicing the Immeasurable Mind of Equanimity extinguishes hatred, aversion, and attachment in the hearts of living beings.
If we learn ways to practice love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, we will know how to heal the illnesses of anger, sorrow, insecurity, sadness, hatred, loneliness, and unhealthy attachments.
In the Anguttara Nikaya (The Numerical Discourses), the Buddha teaches: "If a mind of anger arises, the bhikkhu (monastic) can practice the meditation on love, compassion, or equanimity for the person who has brought about the feeling of anger."
Some sutra commentators say that the Brahma-viharas are not the highest teaching of the Buddha, that they cannot put an end to suffering and afflictions. This is not correct.
One time the Buddha said to his beloved attendant Ananda, "Teach these Four Immeasurable Minds to the young monastics, and they will feel secure, strong, and joyful, without afflictions of body or mind. For the whole of their lives, they will be well equipped to practice the pure way of a monastic."
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On another occasion, a group of the Buddha's disciples visited the monastery of a nearby sect, and the monastics there asked, "We have heard that your teacher Gautama teaches the Four Immeasurable Minds of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Our master teaches this also. What is the difference?"
The Buddha's disciples did not know how to respond. When they returned to their monastery, the Buddha told them: "Whoever practices the Four Immeasurable Minds together with the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path will arrive deeply at enlightenment."
Love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are the very nature of an enlightened person. They are the four aspects of true love within us and within everyone and everything.
The first aspect of true love is maitri, friendliness, the intention and capacity to offer joy and happiness. To develop that capacity, we have to practice looking and listening deeply so that we know what to do and what not to do to make others happy....
We rejoice when we see others happy, and we rejoice in our own well-being as well. How can we feel joy for another person when we do not feel joy for ourselves? Joy is for everyone.
The fourth element of true love is upeksha, which means equanimity, nonattachment, nondiscrimination, even-mindedness, or letting go. Upe means "over," and ksh means "to look."
We climb the mountain to be able to look over the whole situation, not bound by one side or the other. If our love has attachment, discrimination, prejudice, or clinging in it, it is not true love.
People who do not understand Buddhism sometimes think upeksha means indifference, but true equanimity is neither cold nor indifferent.
If we have more than one child, they are all our children. Upeksha does not mean that we don't love. We love in a way that all our children receive our love, without discrimination.
Upeksha has the mark called samatajnana, "the wisdom of equality," the ability to see everyone as equal, not discriminating between ourselves and others.
In a conflict, even though we are deeply concerned, we remain impartial, able to love and to understand both sides. We shed all discrimination and prejudice and remove all boundaries between ourselves and others.
As long as we see ourselves as the one who loves and the other as the one who is loved, as long as we value ourselves more than others or see others as different from us, we do not have true equanimity.
We have to put ourselves "into the other person's skin" and become one with that person if we want to understand and truly love that person. When that happens, there is no "self' and no "other."
Without upeksha, our love may become possessive. A summer breeze can be very refreshing, but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely for ourselves, the breeze will die.
Our beloved is the same. That person is like a cloud, a breeze, a flower. If we imprison it in a tin can, it will die. Yet many people do just this. They rob their loved one of liberty until one can no longer be oneself.
They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying. We say we love the person, but if we do not understand that person's aspirations, needs, difficulties, one is in a prison called love.
True love allows us to preserve our freedom and the freedom of our beloved. That is upeksha.
For love to be true love, it must contain compassion, joy, and equanimity in it.
For compassion to be true compassion, it has to have love, joy, and equanimity in it.
True joy has to contain love, compassion, and equanimity. And true equanimity has to have love, compassion, and joy in it.
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| At one with everything, where is there to go? |
This is the interbeing nature of the Four Immeasurable Minds. When the Buddha told the Brahmin man to practice the Four Immeasurable Minds, he was offering all of us a very important teaching.
But we must look deeply and practice them for ourselves to bring these four aspects of love into our own lives and into the lives we love.
This Dharma talk is from Teachings on Love, published by Parallax Press. More
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