Knocking 'em out of the park Gabriel!
Do you mean that in some contexts it would mean “not rationed out in measures” and in the more exalted context boundless/“unable to be measured”?
Regarding one sense of measure/limit, I encountered a difficult phrase in MN99 “pamāṇakataṃ kammaṃ” and have a topic here discussing it.
In another context the word pamāṇa (Skt. pramāṇa) is used as epistemology; the various means of knowing including: pratyakśa (direct experience), anumāṇa (inference/logic), āgama (reliable testimony), etc…
Yea, I think most find it kind of shocking that Brahmā is never mentioned in the vedas. Of course, Brahman is one of the most important concepts in the Upaniṣads but there it means something like the supreme reality.
The root of all the Brahmā, Brahma, Brahman, etc. words is ‘bṛh’ which means “swell, expand, grow, enlarge”. That definition seems very obviously linked to the ‘boundless’, ‘measureless’, ‘grown great’ qualities of the well-developed mettā (and friends) meditations.
I’m still not entirely familiar with all the various usages of these bṛh-derived words in the cosmology. Sometimes Sakka is the highest god and is apparently related to the Vedic Indra. Sometimes the highest god is Brahmā/Mahābrahmā (same as Sahampati?). There also seems to be a class of deities called brahmas.
According to the sanskrit dictionary these are the grammatical cases:
brahma - neuter singular
brahmā - masculine singular
brahman - masculine vocative singular (vocating or calling out)
SN56.11 has another cosmological hierarchy (ascending order):
- earth-dwelling devas
- devas of the realm of the Four Great Kings
- Tavatiṃsa devas
- Yama devas
- Tusita devas
- Nimmanarati devas
- Paranimmitavasavatti devas
- devas of Brahma’s company
lol
Mettā et alli meditations, as you mentioned are very much to do with space and directionality in the suttas (4 directions/quarters, above, below, across, everywhere). That is a quality of the practice that really stands out to me, no other meditations have a relationship to directionality in that way. Sure, the arūpa attainments are boundless but they start at that level, this cetovimutti builds up to that.
So something that has really surprised me in my research on mettā is that nobody as far as I can find teaches in this directional/spatial way.