The brahmavihārās are said to be helpful for settling irritation, aversion, or resistance to external conditions. Karunā is also the oposite of ‘vihesā’ in wrong intention. Perhaps the perception that they necessitate attachment and that the Buddha did not or could not maintain them is contributing to your perception that it was impossible for him not to be irritated and frustrated.
‘Piya,’ as in the Dhammapada verse, is distinguished from ‘mettā’ in Buddhist psychology.
I’m speaking more from a rebirth perspective. Cultivating a love and attachment to brahmaviharas will always lead back to rebirth, and as per the raft, they’re to be let go off before the final attainment, even if they have their uses for during our final body.
@Vaddha, any chance you can chance an answer re: whether the unconditioned can be known? Would be beneficial to my mind to understand if we have an actual difference on this point. Can the unconditioned be an object of mind or is it just not possible to actually know the unconditioned?
Do you think that when we see khandha’s as they really are, feeling as feeling etc, their nature transforms from personal into impersonal? Do you believe feeling changes?
I believe only our distorted perception is lost and the suffering that comes with this delusion. But one does not transform into some impersonal machinery.
Like the Buddha always says: only suffering ceases.
A view is a view, no matter how correct the contents may seem.
“Pure and bright as this view is, mendicants, if you cherish it, fancy it, treasure it, and treat it as your own, would you be understanding my simile of the teaching as a raft: for crossing over, not for holding on?”
“No, sir.”
MN 38
I believe that the Buddha knew he was free from conditioned things.
I think hatred, gluttony, and jealousy are dependent on a self-sense, while mild irritation or nuisance, as you say, are not necessarily so.
Clearly, the former would not be possible in an arahant.
I mean, this is not a topic I would go to the mat over…just felt it was interesting that even mild vihesas could arise in an awakened one when I first read about the examples in the suttas many years ago.
If a CT scan was done on an arahant, we’d still see a brain and its connections – although this is not to reduce the mind to the brain.
The point is, while the senses and aggregates are present, the brain retains patterns of prior habits and responses, same as the stomach which retains the functionality of secreting digestive chemicals.
So one could envision, with respect to conditionality and causation, that a sense-experience stimulus could cause the brain to “secrete” a stored pattern like a vihesa — without there being any associated identification, attachment, or aversion to it.
In this way, an awakened one is free in the midst of simply experiencing a conditional response.
But again, this is not a major point for me either way.
Again, it sounds like you’re suggesting I should cultivate detachment to detachment, letting it go as the raft it is. Which I said is the best. Glad to see you’re on board!
Also, letting go of detachment, doesn’t imply cultivating attachment (@yeshe.tenley ever with the LEM would agree!). It means not even having anything that is about detachment.
I think you repeatedly miss my point about brahmavihārās being conditioned things and not things eternal to carry over to the other side. As long as we agree on that, it’s all good and enough for me. I do not mean for the current life practice, I mean the eternalist views of equating nibbāna to a transcendental metta. And I fail to see why you keep mentioning the usefulness of Brahmavihārās before parinibbāna when neither I ever contest that nor was it ever my point to begin with. If I hadn’t made myself clear earlier, this would be your queue.
Perhaps @Vaddha is coming around to heretical ideas about what dukkha is and what dukkha is not Brahmavihara are one thing and dukkha is another. The aggregates are one thing and dukkha is another. Conditioned things are one thing and dukkha is another. That’s why we have separate words for all these things. Like that
I thought all things being non-dual, having sepetate words was a product of an unenlightened mind! But I digress and tease.
And I think Vaddha even agrees that brahmavihārās don’t carry over to parinibbāna which makes it harder for me to realise what their point is.
Cultivating a loving, compassionate, sympathetic heart is hard. It is also useful for the practitioner, but it might not be apparent right away. Just as we don’t throw anatta or similar powerful concepts right off the gate to anyone feeling depressed (and I know that more esoteric schools have strict rules on when to start teaching non-dual for example), just so it is hard for some people to cultivate even a hair of good will.
Yet even they are worth our compassion and love, and perhaps the best way to go about it is to first tell them it’s okay to feel bad and it’s okay to seek a way out of suffering.
Brahmavihārās can and should be introduced when they’re ready to recieve that trainin. But they are a tool, not abstract concepts that are to be held as eternal laws. Pāli canon seems to agree with this. This is all my point.
Doesn’t bother at all! We cannot find any true distinctions between the river and the bank if we reductively analyze. All such distinctions disappear in the face of this analysis. However, when we don’t analyze the illusory-like distinctions appear.
Just like the river and the bank we can find no true distinction between dukkha and the aggregates, but when we don’t analyze we can conventionally say that dukkha is one thing and the aggregates another. Same with the four immeasurables.
Your method is, i feel, similar to moving far away from a landscape with cows and horses. As a result all becomes blurred. One cannot even distinguish the cow from the horse anymore at a certain point. But whatever distance you create, that cow does not become a horse and the distinction does also not really disappear. There is still a truly existent distinction between horse and cow. But you seem to believe that you have now found the great evidence that cows and horses are in reality not distinguished because in distancing such distinction disappear??
Your method is in the opposite direction. Oke, it is not about distancing but it is about zooming in. You zoom in. Ofcourse then all distinction that was once there, is vanishing. But a golden coin is still not a silver coin. They are still truly distinctive things, like cow and horse.
“‘[M]endicants, give up these five hindrances, corruptions of the heart that weaken illusory-like true distinctions which ultimately disappear under analysis, and meditate spreading a heart full of illusory-like true distinctions which ultimately disappear under analysis to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. In the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, spread a heart full of illusory-like true distinctions which ultimately disappear under analysis to the whole world—abundant, expansive, limitless …’”
Edited from SN 46.54
I think just like ‘dukkha,’ if we were to replace every word in the canon which we think is an illusory-like true distinction which ultimately disappears under analysis with “ illusory-like true distinction which ultimately disappears under analysis,” it might be difficult to follow.
You’re either defining “truly distinctive” other than I am - which you should be explicit about - or you are just wrong. Under my definition a true distinction would mean in every reference frame, for every observer, the difference between a “cow” and a “horse” would be discernible. This isn’t the case. The God, the human, and the hungry ghost come to different conclusions regarding such. In fact, there are some possible observers for whom “cow” simply isn’t posited. Same with horse.
You are under no obligation to use my definition of course. But if you wish to communicate in good faith and come to some common shared understanding, then you should put forth your own definition and be explicit in why your definition is better for some purpose. Otherwise your continued ripostes in contradiction will be seemingly interpreted as polemical. That may be your intention, but I don’t want to assume it.
I just do not feel it is wise to claim that things do not truly exist when they cannot be found on a quantum level. You use truly exist in the same meaning as exist absolute. But i feel it is more wise to accept that things can truly exist without that they exist in an absolute manner. Does an union not truly exist because it has no core and only consists of layers? I feel this is just all a play with words.
Karunā is also the oposite of ‘vihesā’ in wrong intention. Perhaps the perception that they necessitate attachment and that the Buddha did not or could not maintain them is contributing to your perception that it was impossible for him not to be irritated and frustrated.
Brahmavihara are one thing and dukkha is another. The aggregates are one thing and dukkha is another. Conditioned things are one thing and dukkha is another. That’s why we have separate words for all these things. Like that 
