Cattāri Brahmavihārā

I’m stealing the title of today’s post from Ajahn Thanissaro’s essay of the same name. I was fortunate enough to be able to offer him daana and ask him questions about my practice in a small group setting (about 15 – 20 of us). There is something which is incredibly uplifting about being in the presence of someone like Thanissaro Bhikkhu and whenever he comes it gives a big boost to my practice. I considered copying and pasting his entire essay into the post today but I think I’ll just give you a taste, and if you’re interested, you can use the link to find the rest. So, without further ado, here is the essay:

The brahmaviharas, which are sometimes translated as “sublime attitudes,” are the

Buddha’s primary heart teaching—the teaching that connects most directly with our

desire for true happiness. The term brahmavihara literally means dwelling place of

brahmas. Brahmas are gods who live in the higher heavens, dwelling in an attitude of

unlimited good will, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited

equanimity.

Of these four emotions, goodwill is the most fundamental, for it relates most directly

to the heart. It’s the wish for true happiness, a wish that can be directed to yourself or to

others. It’s also fundamental in that it was the underlying motivation that led the

Buddha to search for Awakening and to teach the path to Awakening to others after he

had found it.

The next two emotions in the list are essentially applications of good will.

Compassion is what good will feels when it encounters suffering: It wants the suffering

to stop. Empathetic joy is what good will feels when it encounters happiness: It wants

the happiness to continue. Equanimity is a different emotion, in that it acts as an aid to

and check on the other three. When you encounter suffering that you can’t stop no

matter how hard you try, you have to develop equanimity so that you don’t create

additional suffering and so that you can channel your energies to areas where you can be

of help.

All four of these attitudes are emotions we’ve encountered throughout human life.

But to become brahmaviharas, they have to become limitless. That takes work. It’s easy

to feel good will, compassion, and empathetic joy for people you like and love, but there

are bound to be people you dislike for one reason or another—often for very good

reasons. Similarly, there are many people for whom it’s easy to feel equanimity: people

you don’t know or don’t really care about. But it’s hard to feel equanimous when people

you love are suffering. Yet if you’re developing the brahmaviharas, you have to include

all of these people within the scope of your awareness so that you can apply the proper

attitude no matter where or when. This is where your heart needs the help of your head.

All too often, meditators believe that if they can simply add a little more heart juice,

a little more emotional oomph, to their brahmavihara practice, their attitudes can

become limitless. But if something inside you keeps churning up reasons for liking this

person or hating that one, your practice starts feeling hypocritical. You wonder who

you’re trying to fool. Or, after a month devoted to the practice, you still find yourself

thinking black thoughts about people who cut you off in traffic—to say nothing of

people who’ve done the world serious harm.

2

This is where the head comes in. If we think of the heart as the side of the mind that

wants happiness, the head is the side that understands how things actually work, the

principle of cause and effect. If your head and heart can learn how to work together—

i.e., if your head can give priority to finding the causes for true happiness, and if the

heart can learn to respect the need to embrace those causes—the training of the mind can

go far.