Defining the Brahmaviharas from Pali

Q & A
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Hello

I’m working on a zine/reflection about the brahmaviharas and wanted to define them earlier on, trying to avoid the common issue of defining a pali word with a single English word that can sometimes lead to confusion (as happens with samadhi and concentration)

Could the resident pali knowers please provide their insight and understanding so I can provide an accurate understanding to the non-scholars who usually read my stuff? Maybe examples of how each one is seen and practiced in the suttas (or your own examples!)?

  1. Metta - Loving kindness, good will, love, friendliness, a good and wholesome vibe, it’s without condition (as in it’s not a “you do this and then I’m kind to you” it’s “I will be kind independent of your behavior”)
  2. Karuna - Compassion, wishing for others to be free of suffering, wanting one’s own or other’s pain to end, wanting the best for others
  3. Mudita - Sympathetic joy, rejoicing in the joy and goodness of others, (maybe compare to how compersion is used in polyamory)
  4. Upekkha - Equanimity, seeing with balanced understanding about the way things are? A kind of “yes that’s expected” attitude? (This is my weakest understanding)

Many thanks

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The Sublime Attitudes chant from the daily chanting is a great starting point for understanding them:
sublime attitudes.PDF (46.8 KB)

For more advanced Pāḷi Sutta references, please see The Comprehensive Index

I think equanimity is more a matter of letting go. “To each his own…”

It’s required to keep the rest balanced and wise. As you said for metta: “I will be kind independent of your behavior” Sometimes this requires actively recalling karma and having faith in it. Or if our karuṇā gets to the point where we’re suffering with them, that’s not helpful to anyone. Equanimity helps us detach and be objective. Impartial. Fair. Unbiased. Reliable. You can see how this is also a positive quality (even in its neutrality).

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For metta, I like benevolence.
Definition:
disposition to do good; desire to do good to others; goodwill; charitableness
an act of kindness; a charitable gift

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I practice the Brahmaviharas with the guidance given in the Kalama Sutta
https://suttacentral.net/an3.65

Translation from Portuguese

“Now Kalamas, one who is a noble disciple — thus devoid of covetousness, devoid of ill will, undeluded, mindful and fully aware — abides with a heart full of loving-kindness, pervading the first quarter with a mind imbued with loving-kindness, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; thus above, below, around, and everywhere, for everyone as well as for himself, he pervades the whole world with a mind imbued with loving-kindness, abundant, transcendent, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill will.

Acesso ao Insight - Budismo Theravada - III65

Here are some Suttas that talk about how Brahma Vihara Metta is important…

Itivuttaka 22 - Metta Sutta
Itivuttaka: The Group of Ones

Itivuttaka 27 - Mettabhavana Sutta
Itivuttaka: The Group of Ones

Metta (Mettanisamsa) Sutta: Good Will
Metta (Mettanisamsa) Sutta: Good Will

Satti Sutta: The Spear
Satti Sutta: The Spear

and this is a beautiful image that seems to show someone practicing the BrahmasViharas…

expansao
expansao1118×893 108 KB

I hope this helped…

:anjal:

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Single words rarely have exactly the same meaning or connotations across languages, so to me it makes more sense to be descriptive, i.e. “here are the English words translators use for metta”, which gives the general idea of its meaning.

SN 55.7: The thing that is disliked by me is also disliked by others. Since I dislike this thing, how can I inflict it on someone else?’

MN 10: And so they meditate observing an aspect of feelings internally, externally, and both internally and externally.

IMO, metta comes from the understanding that other beings’ experience of pleasure and pain is as real as one’s own. I also think this is an outcome of practicing the feelings-satipatthana (reading ‘internally’ as one’s own and ‘externally’ as other beings’).

Edit: Like, it’s worth contemplating and exploring this idea with the mind. Really let the mind dwell on the implications.

If we can see in our own minds how much we crave happiness and how much we want to avoid pain – and we understand that this is just as true and real inside the minds of other beings – it is easy to bring up metta, karuna, and mudita.

Like, the experience of pleasure and pain is such a fundamental aspect of existence that we all have in common with each other, and with all living beings. At the end of the day, if we cut away all the bullshit, may all beings truly be well and happy, that’s what really matters anyway, that’s what’s worth wishing for, if anything.

:green_heart: :orange_heart: :purple_heart: :yellow_heart: :hearts: :star2: :dizzy: :sparkles: :star: :smiley:

Edit2: A little exercise (please feel free to share in the zine if you want to) is the happiness button.

Imagine a button (I imagine one of those big red buttons that you can press with your whole hand) that if you press it, it would cause some random person to feel happiness (in a way which wouldn’t interfere negatively into their life). Would you press it? Why? What’s going on in the mind as you see yourself pressing the button?

It is worth contemplating even why would you want another being to be happy…:slight_smile: what’s up with that?

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One thing I’m noticing from the chant is how metta expresses a kind of preventative and future looking thing while in contrast Karuna is responding to things already arisen. May you be free from vs freed from. Interesting to me that Mudita is translated in relation to happiness already arisen, contrasting to Metta’s forward wishing.

I had a moment recently that felt like equanimity was called for. I was at the grocery store and the person behind me in line laid down their stuff and I had the thought “heart attack waiting to happen” and then thought “ah, a place for equanimity”. Would part of equanimity be a kind of non-judgemental attitude? It seems the chant emphasizing kamma leads to a sort of “I don’t need to enforce anything on this person, whatever happens is gunna be on them I don’t have to bring the hammer down myself”

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In my opinion Karuna(Compassion) is similar to sympathetic Joy in the sense that you feel the suffering of others as your own. It’s not pity - i.e “Oh he is suffering, how sad it is”. It’s different from Metta that you don’t wish suffering to end because of good will, you wish suffering to end because you feel the suffering and pain.

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In his beautiful book Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation, Bhikkhu Analayo writes:

A simile that provides help for understanding the nature of compassion occurs in a discourse in the Aṅguttara-nikāya and its Madhyama-āgama parallel, which take up ways of overcoming resentment. The simile in question describes a situation that arouses feelings of compassion to illustrate the attitude one should cultivate towards someone who is immersed in unwholesomeness. Here is my translation of the simile in the Madhyama-āgama version:

"It is just like a person who is on an extended journey along a long road. Becoming sick halfway he is exhausted and suffering extremely. He is alone and without a companion. The village behind is far away and he has not yet reached the village ahead.

Suppose a person comes and, standing to one side, sees that this traveller on an extended journey along a long road has become sick halfway, is exhausted and suffering extremely. He is alone and without a companion. The village behind is far away and he has not yet reached the village ahead. [The second person thinks:] “If he were to get an attendant, emerge from being in the wilderness far away and reach a village or town, and were to be given excellent medicine and be fed with nourishing and delicious food, be well cared for, then in this way this person’s sickness would certainly subside.”

So that person has extremely compassionate, sympathetic, and kind thoughts in the mind towards this sick person.”

This simile shows that an essential component of compassion is the concern for others to be relieved from suffering and affliction. Although this is hardly surprising, a subtle but important point to be noted here is that the simile does not qualify the act of seeing the actual suffering as compassion. Rather, compassion is concerned with the other being free from affliction. The way the simile proceeds makes this quite clear, where the vision of the sick person being cared for, or even actually caring for this person, is what corresponds to the “extremely compassionate, sympathetic, and kind thoughts” of the person who has come by.

Drawing a clear distinction between the realization that others are suffering and the wish for them to be free from suffering is important, since mentally dwelling on the actual suffering would be contemplation of dukkha. Such contemplation offers a basis for the meditative cultivation of compassion. The cultivation of compassion itself, however, finds its expression in the wish for the other to be free from dukkha. In this way, the mind takes the vision of freedom from affliction as its object. Such an object can generate a positive, at times even a joyful state of mind, instead of resulting in sadness.

This is vital in so far as the meditative cultivation of compassion can only lead to deeper concentration if it is undertaken with a positive or even joyful mind. From a practical perspective this means that one’s cultivation of compassion needs to steer clear of sadness. This is not easy, since what causes the arising of compassion can naturally lead to being afflicted oneself by sadness. Therefore it is important to monitor closely one’s own response to the affliction of others. This should ideally proceed from the opening of the heart that is genuinely receptive to the pain and suffering of others, to the positive mental condition of being filled with the wish for others to be free from affliction and suffering.

Understood in this way, compassion does not mean to commiserate to the extent of suffering along with the other.

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Yeah for sure. I mean, you’re still discerning, you see cause and effect, but you know their karma is their’s and you know your place.

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Another method I used to practice the BrahmaViharas was to set aside 10 minutes in my daily practice for them.

For example, on Sunday, in my daily meditation I would set aside 10 minutes to practice metta, as stated in the Kalama Sutta.

On Monday I would do the same with Karuna.

On Tuesday I would do the same with Mudita.

And I would follow this pattern.

:anjal:

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The four immeasurables (Brahma-vihārā ) appear very similar to the practice of ‘right thought’ (sammā saṅkappa ), one stage of the eightfold path, i.e. thought of detachment (nekkhamma saṅkappa ), thought of non-malice (abyāpāda saṅkappa ), and thought of non-harming (avihiṃsā saṅkappa ).

All four immeasurables contain the word abyāpāda (abyāpajjha ), which also is part of sammā saṅkappa .

So, thought of detachment (nekkhamma saṅkappa ), thought of non-malice (abyāpāda saṅkappa ), and thought of non-harming (avihiṃsā saṅkappa ) are essential for the practice of brahmaviharas.

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I associate “thought” with discursive thinking. Would “intention of detachment,” “intention of non-malice,” and “intention of non-harming” be better translations than “thought …,” especially for a lay audience who’s had little exposure to these concepts?

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Good suggestion: intention for thought. It is all about the individual to direct his/her mind into particular direction or focus (awareness).

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Upekkha in Brahmavihara as : a mind quality, attitude of equanimity as one have firm faith, understanding of Law of Kamma.

( IMHO this BrahmaVihara is still Lokiya - subjected to samsara existence - those practicing this will ended up at Brahma realm, after that one might wander around Samsara again and again).

but as your understanding, practice and realization of Dhamma deepen, (Panna developed further) ,
Buddha encourages us to practice higher form of Upekkha Equanimity. (Lokutara) ?

By understanding, realization about the nature of internal or external, Pancakhandas, 6 based of senses (internal), external has characteristics of ;

Saṅkhataṁ (Anicca)
oḷārikaṁ (Dukkha)
paṭiccasamuppannaṁ. (Anatta)

thus Equanimity arises.

Quote :IndriyaBhavanasutta MN152

Kathañcānanda, ariyassa vinaye anuttarā indriyabhāvanā hoti? Idhānanda, bhikkhuno cakkhunā rūpaṁ disvā uppajjati manāpaṁ, uppajjati amanāpaṁ, uppajjati manāpāmanāpaṁ. So evaṁ pajānāti: ‘uppannaṁ kho me idaṁ manāpaṁ, uppannaṁ amanāpaṁ, uppannaṁ manāpāmanāpaṁ. Tañca kho saṅkhataṁ oḷārikaṁ paṭiccasamuppannaṁ. Etaṁ santaṁ etaṁ paṇītaṁ yadidaṁ—upekkhā’ti. Tassa taṁ uppannaṁ manāpaṁ uppannaṁ amanāpaṁ uppannaṁ manāpāmanāpaṁ nirujjhati; upekkhā saṇṭhāti.

And how, Ānanda, is there the supreme development of the faculties in the training of the Noble One? When a mendicant sees a sight with their eyes, in them arises what is agreeable, what is disagreeable, and what is both agreeable and disagreeable. They understand: ‘What is agreeable, what is disagreeable, and what is both agreeable and disagreeable have arisen in me. That’s conditioned, crude, and dependently originated. But this is peaceful and sublime, namely equanimity.’ Then the agreeable, the disagreeable, and the both agreeable and disagreeable that arose in them cease, and equanimity becomes stabilized. …

Read detailed more at MN 152

And how are they a practicing trainee? This is at least a stream-enterer; they still react to sense experiences that are agreeable or disagreeable, but they understand that they lead to suffering and train themselves to be freed…
Kathañcānanda, sekho hoti pāṭipado?
When a mendicant sees a sight with their eyes, the agreeable, the disagreeable, and the both agreeable and disagreeable arise in them.
Idhānanda, bhikkhuno cakkhunā rūpaṁ disvā uppajjati manāpaṁ, uppajjati amanāpaṁ, uppajjati manāpāmanāpaṁ.
They are horrified, repelled, and disgusted by that.
So tena uppannena manāpena uppannena amanāpena uppannena manāpāmanāpena aṭṭīyati harāyati jigucchati.
When they hear a sound with their ears …
Sotena saddaṁ sutvā …pe…
When they smell an odor with their nose …
ghānena gandhaṁ ghāyitvā …
When they taste a flavor with their tongue …
jivhāya rasaṁ sāyitvā …
When they feel a touch with their body …
kāyena phoṭṭhabbaṁ phusitvā …
When they know a thought with their mind, the agreeable, the disagreeable, and the both agreeable and disagreeable arise in them.
manasā dhammaṁ viññāya uppajjati manāpaṁ, uppajjati amanāpaṁ, uppajjati manāpāmanāpaṁ.
They are horrified, repelled, and disgusted by that.
So tena uppannena manāpena uppannena amanāpena uppannena manāpāmanāpena aṭṭīyati harāyati jigucchati.
That’s how they are a practicing trainee.
Evaṁ kho, ānanda, sekho hoti pāṭipado.

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  1. Metta - Love -as one loves what is beautiful in life, what is best of who we hold dear.
  2. Karuna - Sympathy - as one feels for the Palestinian child and their people (the not-beautiful).
  3. Mudita - Joy - as one recognises what is common to the beautiful and the ugly alike in life.
  4. Upekkha - Balance - as one with a balanced mind does not incline to either the beautiful or the ugly. (or if you’d rather to any of the 3 directions of love, sympathy or joy)

Basically.

Upekkha is the hardest one because it is more or less the Buddhist virtue par excellence, much harder to define than nibanna IMO.

but balance, equipiose, tranquility, etc, the ideal state of mind once

  1. love (the highest selfish emotion) ,
  2. the higher and more virtuous sympathy (really this is just love minus the selfish parts) ,
  3. and the sublime and transcendent joy of seeing the humanity in every speck of dust
  4. have all been fully understood, the balanced mind does not incline to anything

such a mind is free of influence, as last in regards to these particular emotions.

The four are clearly a progression, and there are remnants of the hieronomy preserved at places in the canon, although I don’t have my references with me now :slight_smile: