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Brahmavihāras: Loving-Kindness (1 of 5)

On this Monday, we start a new theme for the week—a theme that will continue for a few weeks. It is what's called in Pali the Brahmavihāras^[1], sometimes known as the Divine Abodes. A different word is also used to describe them, which is the Immeasurables—the Immeasurable Abodes or dwellings. These are four qualities of social attitudes, or four different flavors of caring for the world and caring for ourselves.

To give some background: In ancient India, the earliest records we have of religion began with the idea that there are gods, and these gods influence the events of the world. People believed they needed to make sacrifices and offerings to the gods so they would treat them favorably, ensuring crops would grow, cows would flourish, and whatever else was needed would happen.

Over time, perhaps a couple of centuries before the Buddha, the idea emerged that the external world—the cosmos, the divine world of the gods—was to be found inside oneself. There was an internalization where the very things found outside were also found within. This inward-looking internalization of religious practice is perhaps where meditation began.

The Buddha was part of this internalization movement in ancient India. In earlier traditions, the divine was something looked for within, eventually coalescing in some areas of India around a primary god named Brahma. Rather than focusing externally on this concept of a divinity, the Buddha pointed out that we can experience the attitudes, the qualities, the abidings, and the life of this Brahma within ourselves. We can dwell like Brahma; we could be like this great god if we dwelled in the four Brahmavihāras. Vihāra means "dwellings" or "abodes," so these are the four abodes of Brahma. The dwellings where Brahma lives are loving-kindness, good will, compassion, appreciative joy, and a certain kind of social attitude called equanimity.

These are fairly well known in our Vipassana scene as mettā^[2], karuṇā^[3], muditā^[4], and upekkhā^[5]. It was quite a movement, this ancient Indian movement of internalizing and finding the qualities of the divine within oneself. Some people will translate Brahmavihāras into English as the "Divine Abodes" rather than the abidings of the god Brahma. Calling something divine and discovering that it can be found inside oneself is a powerful concept.

In the iconography of Buddhism, you will find statues of Brahma with four faces pointing in four different directions. Each of these four faces represents one of the Brahmavihāras. The one in the front, looking out into the world, is that of good will and kindness. To the right, I believe, is compassion. To the back is appreciative joy, and to the left is equanimity. In a way, these represent the four faces we can bring to the world. Depending on the circumstances, this is the way we can gaze and look upon the world.

But we might also consider that while these are the ways we look at the world, deep inside the body of Brahma, there is something deeper than loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. There is something that animates us into action. This is what I talked about last spring, called anukampā^[6], which I translate as "care." It is a basic caring for the world and for others. This tender love and tender care is the seed or the source for the other four.

When we drop really deep inside and get very quiet, still, calm, and relaxed, there is a kind of sensitivity, a vibration, a warmth, a glow, or a tenderness. It is not quite compassion, loving-kindness, appreciative joy, or equanimity, but it has qualities related to all of them. It is quieter and tender, and almost doesn't want a label or a word. It is often seen as love because we have no other English word for it, but it could also be experienced differently—even as a sense of coziness.

This deeper sense of care is discovered as we meditate, get quieter, leave things at the door, and really allow ourselves to settle. In this internalization movement, when we get most quiet and are no longer concerned with our thoughts about the day, our relationships, or our concerns about the future and past, it is as if our natural capacity to care is revealed.

A wonderful image for this came to me some weeks ago while I was hiking in the nearby hills at a nature preserve. I looked out over some wide grasslands and oak woodlands. A good number of deer live there. The rules of the preserve dictate that people are supposed to walk only on the trails, while the deer, of course, can walk anywhere. Over the decades, these deer have grown quite used to people. They must have understood that people stay on the trails, so they come relatively close, just grazing and living there, feeling pretty safe and comfortable.

The last time I was there, I saw one deer grooming and cleaning the neck of another deer with its teeth. I realized that while deer can lick some parts of their own bodies, they can't really clean their own necks or the tops of their heads. They can't just rub the tops of their heads like cats do. If they want to clean their necks or the tops of their heads, they have to do it for each other. Watching these fellow mammals—these herd animals that care for each other in different ways through basic cleaning and tending—I thought about how this is such a basic, almost instinctual, mammalian^[7] activity inside of us.

I associate this very much with the image of a mother or parent taking care of a very young child or a little baby. The tenderness, gentleness, dedication, devotion, and love present for caring for something so vulnerable that needs our attention reflects this innate capacity. Sometimes it is covered over, and it is experienced very uniquely and differently by each person. I like the word "care." Depending on the circumstance, this care manifests as or morphs into good will, compassion, appreciative joy, or equanimity.

This fundamental care is supported by inner stability, mindfulness, awareness, and the capacity to recognize what takes us away from it. We learn what gets us caught up and what disconnects us from this deeper place of subtleness, sensitivity, openness, and deep safety inside. In meditation, we discover a place that is not harmed by anything—a place of deep safety that is intimately connected to this deep place of warmth, care, and tenderness.

Good will (mettā) is the feeling of wanting people to be happy; it is how we meet the happiness of the world. Compassion is how we meet the unhappiness and suffering of the world, wishing that suffering to go away and empathizing with it. Appreciative joy is celebrating the good fortune that people have. Equanimity is the feeling of love when we can't really do anything to change a situation. Sometimes people's fortune is not so good and unfortunate things happen. We can still care for and love them, but there is a degree of not getting upset, agitated, or reactive to the misfortune of the world. It is having this beautiful, loving care supported and protected by a certain kind of balance and non-reactivity.

That is going to be the topic over this next period of time. For the rest of this week, we'll talk more about loving-kindness and mettā. I hope that as we do this series, you really think of these topics as pointing to the home base, the supportive base for mindfulness practice and meditation itself. Thank you.

Announcements

I have one announcement. Now that the coronavirus has become a surge, many places have stay-at-home orders. Here in California, 85 percent of the population is under stay-at-home orders, and people are staying at home even more than they have been. I wanted to know what we could do here at IMC to support people through this.

This week, I am teaching an online retreat. At 4:00 p.m. California time today, Wednesday, and Friday, I am giving a retreat dharma talk. It has a slightly different flavor than the weekly talks, but I will broadcast those talks live here on the YouTube channel. If you are sheltering at home and would like to have a little more contact with the dharma, you are welcome to join us at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

If you want to be supported more by the retreat we're doing (there are about 140 people participating), you might want to consider meditating on your own for half an hour or so before the 4:00 p.m. talk. For those of you who will come, I look forward to being with you this afternoon, and I look forward to coming back here tomorrow morning. Thank you.