The Brahma Viharas are explained - this is the first part of the Buddhist path to awakening

I want to shift gears a little bit to give you more clarity on what the Brahma Viharas are, to understand a little bit more about why we use the Brahma Viharas as the object. What does Brahma Vihara mean? In the time of the Buddha, you had the Shramanas and you had the Brahmanas. The Shramanas were the wanderers. For example, you had the Buddha and his Sangha, you had the Jains, you had the Ajivikas, you had many different communities of wanderers who would go about wandering from place to place in search of food or whatever it is, but for the purpose of being supported so that they could meditate and do their practice for their understanding of what awakening is.

And then you had what were known as the Brahmanas or the Brahmins. These were a group of people within society who were namely the priestly class. They did all of the rituals and ceremonies. They did fire offerings. They did animal sacrifices at that time. They did all kinds of things. And their whole process, as we understand it from the lens of the suttas, is to understand how to get to something known as Brahma.

Brahma is the divine. Their whole thing was, their idea of moksha, of freedom, of liberation, was to attach oneself to Brahma, to the heavens in which Brahma resided. And so the Buddha said, there is a way to do this. You don't need to do rites and rituals. You don't need to do animal sacrifices. In fact, that's being harmful.

There is another way of doing it. And they asked, what is the way leading to Brahma? And the Buddha said, the Brahma Viharas. So Brahma here is denoting the divine, the thing that represents the divine. And Vihara means it could be a temple, it could be a living space, it could be an abode. So it's the divine abodes.

And why did the Buddha say these are the divine abodes? Because you are essentially cultivating the same kinds of qualities in the Divine, in Brahma. Namely, these four. These four, what we call metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha, are not found just in Buddhism. If you go to the Yoga Sutras, and that's how I came through this process, I was going through the Yoga Sutras and doing practices that were mentioned there.

Learning how to do the practices that are mentioned there, and then learning how to master them, and so on. There was one sutra, one segment, which said the way to stilling consciousness, the way to experience nirodha, to get the mutable consciousness into a state of immutability, is by cultivating metta, cultivating karuna, cultivating mudita, and cultivating upekkha. Any of these that you may do allows for the stilling of the mind.

That was the goal. How do you still the mind? So I looked for how does one practice this? Of course, the rest is history. I learned about this place. I learned about Bhante Vimalaramsi. I did a retreat. Got what I needed from there. And continue getting what I need from there. So now, what do we mean by these terms? Metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha. The word metta is coming from the Sanskrit maitri.

Or maitreya. And that is a feeling of goodwill. A feeling of, I wish goodness and good things upon myself and upon others. So the direct translation is usually friendliness, because it comes from the word mitra. One who is a friend is mitra. One who gives support is mitra. Ati mitra, that's my best friend. That's what it is in Sanskrit, atimitra. So having that attitude of how you would be with a friend, somebody you genuinely love and adore and admire and respect, somebody who when you speak with them, you feel uplifted. When you spend time with them, time just passes.

You can laugh with them. You can share jokes with them. These kinds of things is what a mitra is. But when we say metta here, it's that feeling of, I desire happiness for you. I desire happiness for myself and I desire happiness for you. When we share merit, like I said yesterday, that's what we're doing. May all beings be happy. That is a feeling and wish of metta.

It may feel joyful in the heart. Somatically, it may feel warm. It may feel all kinds of things. Those are all just little signposts to let you know you are being mindful and aware and cultivating and being collected and meditating on metta. And then from metta, there is something known as karuna, which is generally translated as compassion.

What is compassion? How can one cultivate and utilize compassion? In the context of this practice and in the context of the path, compassion is the recognition of one's own suffering and the suffering of others. I suffer the same way you suffer, the suffering you are experiencing, because at some point I have suffered like that before. I recognize it. I see it.

But I don't look down upon it. That's sympathy. That's pity. That's, oh, poor you. That's too bad for you. That's not what we're talking about when we say compassion. Compassion is not only the recognition of the other's suffering, and that they be uplifted out from that suffering. It's the feeling of, I see this, I know what suffering feels like.

And I wish you well. I hope things go good for you. I hope you come out of whatever terrible situation you're in. It's not about the equivalent of, somebody is going through something, just email them and say thoughts and prayers. It's not that. It's doing more than that. But remember, it's not about being a crutch for that person. When we teach Dhamma, as a teacher or as a guide, when they do it, they do it out of compassion.

They recognize the situations you're going through because they've gone through it themselves. They recognize the issues that you're going through in the meditation because they've done it before. They failed many times. They've seen all of the ins and outs, or as many ins and outs as they have. And so they're here to help you to come out of it. But as they say, you can bring the horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink.

A teacher, a guide, a fellow practitioner can only point the way and say, have you tried this? Have you tried that? Try it this way. Try it that way. But you have to take the action. You have to take the steps. So when you have compassion for someone, don't get involved in their suffering. You know, if they're not making progress, that's not a reflection on you.

If they're choosing not to come out of that suffering, they're choosing to be a victim. They're choosing to be whatever it is. That's not a reflection on you. That's just their choice. You cannot take on their suffering. You cannot be their savior. You can be there as a shoulder for them to cry on. You can be there to give them words of advice.

You can even be there to take care of them maybe when they're sick. Maybe make some food for them, make some soup, whatever it is that feels appropriate. But they have to come out of that suffering on their own. So compassion can be as simple as listening to a person, heard and seen. Many people just want to have a conversation because they just want things to be let out.

They just want to be heard. They want to be recognized for their pain and their suffering. That's fine. Just by listening and giving them that space, that's compassion in action. In the meditation, the compassion may feel lighter than metta. It may feel like the feeling is going away. It may feel like what's going on to the metta? It's not the same intensity.

It doesn't have the same weight. It doesn't have the same maybe buoyancy as it had before. And that's okay, because the metta changes to karuna. The loving kindness changes to compassion, where it feels a bit more diffuse, feels a bit more spacious. Some people have described it as cotton candy, very soft and fluffy.

And then we go into something known as mudita, which I like to translate as empathetic joy. It can be sympathetic joy, whatever works for you, or just joy in general. Mudita is the celebration of another person's happiness. It's the antidote for jealousy and envy. It's the true happiness that you feel when you see a person making progress, when you see a person coming out of their suffering, when you see a person celebrating their birthday.

You see a person driving their dream car. Wonderful. Good for them. They're celebrating whatever it is they're celebrating. You see, jealousy and envy, they come from where? They come from a feeling of lack. A feeling of insecurity. A feeling of, I'm not enough. I'm inadequate. Or the other person, why do they get to enjoy those things? Why do they get to get all the things that they're having? Why do they get to celebrate?

You can moan and groan about it. You can wallow in self-pity, so-called self-pity, or be the victim, or be jealous, and all of these things. But that's just all elements of suffering. Some people are very comfortable with their suffering. Some are very attached to their suffering. And that's why some people are not ready for practice. You only come to this practice, generally speaking, because one, you're curious about a way in which your life might be better.

And second, you may have experienced suffering to such a great degree. You're like, okay, I've had enough of this. There must be a way out of this. Some drugs, I'll go and party, I'll go and numb myself with food, or just watching TV all day, or whatever it is. There must be a way in which I can truly come out of suffering. Because all those other things, while they may feel good in the short term and numb the so-called pain, they only accentuate it.

They only amplify it over a period of time. And what you're left with is a mind that is dull, a mind that is weak, a mind that is struggling. So mudita is the recognition of, ah, this person is happy. And I'm happy because they're happy. And it feels like a very content joy. It's not an exuberant kind of joy. on.

It's a joy that is sustainable. It's not like a flickering flame. It's a steady flame. And so it's a quiet kind of joy. It's a joy that's, okay, this is great, wonderful for them. And you can remain in that feeling for as long as you can, for as long as you want. And then we have something known as upekkha, which is generally translated as equanimity. Upekkha is in a way related to upeksa, the Sanskrit, is in some ways related to apeksha.

Apeksha means to wait. Apeksha means there's an expectation. Something is just around the corner. I'm just waiting. We've been waiting for this person. We've been waiting for that thing to arrive. That's the upeksha. Upeksha is letting go of that. There's an equanimity. There's a lack of expectations. A letting go of expectations. Seeing things as they are. In full acceptance of however they are. Indifference.

Indifference has a certain kind of flavor of aversion. I'm choosing to be indifferent. I'm pretending to be equanimous by being indifferent to it. But equanimity is whatever is happening, I'm seeing it. I'm aware of it. I'm okay when it feels pleasurable. I'm okay when it feels painful. I'm okay when it feels neutral. My mind is able to see things as they are. And so in the meditation, that may feel like calm, tranquility, serenity.

I like to use the image of a clear blue lake. When I was in Austria, when we did the retreat in Carinthia. There's a beautiful large lake over there and with beautiful mountains in the background. And there was one day when we were walking there and we were sitting on the bench right in front of the lake and you can see how the lake is so still that it's reflecting the sky above it. And so you just see a little bit of the border, the horizon of the lake. But everything is calm and still and quiet.

And at peace. You don't need the fireworks. You don't need a lot of joy to happen. You are content with being at ease and at peace. Because I've said this in the past, bliss is overrated. When you experience equanimity, bliss doesn't compare to it. It feels amazing. And I say it feels amazing, not in the sense of it feels exuberant, it feels wonderful, because it's so profound.

Of course it's profound, but it's amazing because of how your mind is just so content. How's the food? It's okay. It's all good. How was your meditation? Just fine. A bee stung you? How are you feeling? It's okay. It's alright. There's pain there, but I'm fine. It's okay. So equanimity is not a numbing agent that you won't feel anything.

Equanimity is where you're so content that you accept things as they are. And so in the meditation, as I say, it feels like this tranquil serenity. It's called the fourth jhana is called the beautiful. And that's where equanimity is strongest. It's a different kind of beauty. So that gives you some idea of the Brahma Viharas. Now generally, when we give you the instructions, we will tell you, start with metta. Start with loving kindness. Tomorrow you will all start your interviews. There I may change your meditation and you may experience other things. You may experience these other Brahma Viharas in different ways. We'll see how it goes. We'll see what happens. That's all I have for you today.