Cattāri Brahmavihārā

Yesterday’s episode has had me thinking about which practices might be the most effective to help me to work with these deeply rooted defilements. It almost seems like my practice lies incribed along the path of a pendulum’s swing going from more explicity breath-centered to brahma vihara practices. And it seems that when my heart tells me that more kindness and compassion is needed I often go looking to Mahayana practices for inspiration. And, this time at least, I found some good recommendations for practice from a Gelug monk here in NYC named Ven. Phuntsok.

In short, part of the way he describes the practice of metta is that we actually need to engage the beings in our lives in a true spirit of love and concern. In other words, we don’t simply try to maintain a general sense of loving-friendliness in our hearts passively but we actively wish them well by imagining what we might do in the moment to bring them happiness. Maybe it shouldn’t seem so revolutionary to me and I should have been doing it all along but it never occurred to me.  Practicing with it for less than a day has been difficult as I come up against my against my own laziness and resentment but it’s precisely what I need to be doing.