Determined on the Sublime Attitudes

This evening there was a large spider in my room. I’ve seen bigger. I’ve told you the story of Ajaan Fuang with the snake. This spider has been there for two days. So I let it stay. This evening, though, I figured, okay, that’s enough. So with a lot of goodwill, I caught the spider and released it out into the trees. I don’t love that spider, but I wished it well. I mention this just to make the point that mettā, or goodwill, doesn’t necessarily mean loving-kindness.

Tonight I’d like to discuss the ways in which you can use the topics we’ve been discussing—in particular, the three fabrications and the four determinations—in the practice of developing the sublime attitudes, or brahma-vihāras. Because this is a meditative practice, you can meditate while we talk.

The brahma-vihāras are the practice of developing unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited equanimity. Goodwill means wishing for happiness. Compassion is what goodwill feels when you see beings who are suffering, hoping that they will be released from their suffering. Empathetic joy is what goodwill feels when you see people who are already happy: You want them to continue in their happiness. Equanimity means being unshaken emotionally when you realize that there are a lot of people who are doing things that are unskillful that you cannot change and you can’t let yourself get upset by that.

Sometimes we’re given the impression that desire and determination don’t play much of a role in developing these attitudes. In particular, we’re told that unlimited goodwill comes naturally to the mind, that all you have to do is let the mind reveal its innate nature and it’ll feel goodwill for all.

That, however, is not how the Buddha explained the issue. As he said in the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta, the attitude of universal goodwill is something you have to make an effort to keep in mind. It’s a form of mindfulness that you have to be determined on. This means that universal goodwill and the other attitudes are not innate. They’re called brahma-vihāras for a good reason. Brahmās are high levels of devas who have developed these attitudes and who dwell in them. We human beings don’t dwell innately in these unlimited attitudes. Our goodwill, compassion, etc., tend to be partial: We easily feel them for some beings, but not for others. To say nothing of human beings, even lower levels of devas don’t have these universal attitudes.

There’s a story in the Canon of a leper who sees the Buddha giving a talk. First he thinks, “Oh, there must be a food distribution here. Let me go and see if I can get some food.” As he goes closer, he realizes there’s no food, but that the Dhamma is being taught. So he sits down and listens to the Dhamma. The Buddha focuses on him. As the leper listens to the talk and reflects on the Dhamma, he becomes a stream-enterer, which is the first level of awakening. He dies soon after and becomes a deva. And now he’s a deva who outshines all the other devas on that level. But instead of being happy about this, the other devas resent it. “How did they let these lepers into our place?” So even devas don’t have universal goodwill, to say nothing of human beings.

Human goodwill tends to be partial. You wish for the happiness of those who are good to you and to people you love, but it’s easy to feel ill will toward those who have harmed you or those whom you care about. We don’t need the Buddha to point this out to us. We can see this clearly in other people’s behavior and in our own hearts and minds. This is why unlimited goodwill is something you have to be determined on developing.

Two levels of desire are involved here. Goodwill in and of itself is a desire for happiness. And for it to become unlimited, you have to desire to develop that unlimited mind state within your own mind. Both of these desires, to become well-established, involve all four aspects of a skillful determination: discernment, truth, relinquishment, and calm.

• Discernment plays a major role in all of the brahma-vihāras: figuring out what they mean, figuring out why they would be conducive to your long-term welfare and happiness, knowing how to foster them, and knowing which brahma-vihāra is appropriate for each occasion.

Here it’s worthwhile to stop and think about the question the Buddha says lies at the beginning of discernment: “What, when I do it, will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” This shows that goodwill is inherent in true discernment. You want your happiness to be long-term, and you realize that if it depends on afflicting others, it won’t last. So you wish for their happiness as well.

The brahma-vihāras fall into two sorts. Those that express a wish—this would include goodwill, compassion, and empathetic joy—and then the one, equanimity, that accepts the fact that your desires can’t always be fulfilled as you would like and that you have to learn how not to suffer from that fact. You may have noticed, if you’ve looked in the chanting book, that the translations of the first three brahma-vihāras are expressed as wishes—“May…may…may”—whereas the last one is simply a statement of fact: “All beings are the owners of their actions.” That’s the correct translation.

A couple of years ago we found that there was an incorrect translation in an earlier edition of the book here, saying, “May all beings inherit the results of their actions.” It sounds like a curse. So now it’s been corrected as simply a statement of fact.

Discernment has to understand that all the brahma-vihāras will train both the heart and the mind. The mind is needed to figure them out. The heart involves an act of will. You have to figure out what each of the brahma-vihāras means, how to foster it, and how to get the heart to want it.

Let’s start with mettā. Mettā means goodwill—not love or loving-kindness—because from the Buddha’s point of view, love is partial and unreliable. If you love someone, and someone else is good to that person, you’ll love that second person, too. If a person mistreats someone you love, you’ll hate that person. If there’s somebody you hate, and somebody else mistreats that person, you’ll love that second person. And if someone treats that person well, you’ll hate that person. That’s why love is not a universal attitude. It contains a lot of clinging and partiality, and can carry hatred in its wake.

Basically mettā is a wish that other beings be happy and that you be happy, too. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have any relationship with those beings. I’ve told you the story of the Ajaan Fuang and the snake. There’s also a story in the Canon. A monk is sitting under a tree meditating. A snake falls out of the tree, lands on him, bites him, and kills him. The monks go to the Buddha to deliver this news. The Buddha said that the monk had died because he hadn’t spread goodwill to all the families of snakes. Apparently there are four main families of snakes. At any rate, the Buddha then teaches the monks a chant for spreading goodwill to the snakes. It starts with the four families of snakes and then goes to all beings, including all the creepy, crawly things you can think of. Then it says, “May they be happy. May they meet with good fortune. And may they go away.”

That’s not necessarily love. It’s simply goodwill.

Now, sometimes you hear mettā is defined as acceptance, saying, “I accept you,” but that’s a pretty low bar. If someone were to say to me, “I accept you,” I might respond, “Why should I care? I’d prefer that you want me to be happy.”

Mettā is actually a matter of respect, and it involves two kinds of respect. First is respect for the desire for happiness. That desire is what defines people, so when you’re wishing that people be truly happy, you’re sympathizing with the best versions of what they are and what they can be.

The second object of respect is respect for the principle of kamma, realizing that lasting happiness has to come from skillful actions. It can’t come just from good wishes. This is why we say, when spreading thoughts of mettā, “May you understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.”

The teaching on kamma actually plays a role in three issues related to goodwill.

– First is understanding how universal goodwill would lead to your long-term welfare and happiness.

– Second is understanding the role of desire in fabricating goodwill.

– Third is understanding how to skillfully go about expressing the wish for happiness.

1) First point: Universal goodwill leads to your long-term welfare and happiness both in relation to how it would induce you to create good kamma now and in the future, and also in relation to the kamma you’ve done in the past.

In terms of present and future kamma, if you have ill will for anybody, you’re going to harm them easily. That’s going to become your bad kamma. So to protect yourself from yourself, you try to have goodwill for all.

As for your past kamma, the Buddha says that when that ripens, the effect it’ll have on your mind depends on your mind state right now. If your mind is narrow and restricted, the effect of that past bad kamma will be very strong. If your mind is more expansive—as when you develop universal goodwill and the other brahma-vihāras—then the effect of that past kamma will be weakened.

The image he gives is of a large lump of salt. If you put the lump of salt into a small cup of water, you can’t drink the water because it’s too salty. But if you put it into a large river of clean water, then you can still drink the water of the river because the salt has been diluted into so much water.

So that’s why the practice of universal goodwill can lead to your long-term welfare and happiness: It protects you from bad kamma—past, present, and future.

2) As for the role of desire in fabricating goodwill, that’s a kind of kamma in itself. You do this because you need it. If you feel ill will for anyone, you’re bound to behave unskillfully toward that person and that will then become your own bad kamma and lead to your own unhappiness. So you talk to yourself about this, and you give mental images to emphasize this point so that you’ll want to develop universal goodwill. You want a happiness that harms no one. If it harms you, it’s going to lead to aimlessness and depression. If it harms others, they’ll try to destroy that happiness. So you have to remind yourself that you’re offering protection for yourself and for others.

This, of course, involves verbal fabrication, but actually, all three kinds of fabrication are involved. You try to make the breath as calm and comfortable as possible, because if the way you breathe is aggravating, it’s going to be hard to wish for the happiness of others. You have to talk to yourself, using directed thought and evaluation. You remember some of the lessons we talked about this morning, about the bandits with the two-handled saw and about the nature of human speech. You can also use mental fabrications, such as perceptions—like the perception of your mettā as being large like the earth, like the river Ganges, and like space.

You can also call to mind the image of the mother loving her only child. I’d like to emphasize again what that image means. It’s often mistranslated as saying that you should love all beings the same way that a mother would love her only child. Instead, it actually says you should protect your goodwill as a mother would protect her only child. In other words, you realize that your goodwill is valuable.

The Buddha explicitly calls it a form of wealth—and it’s a kind of wealth that you can create all the time. It’s as if you have your own treasury, your own mint. Unlike the money of the world, the more you print the wealth of goodwill, the higher its value because it gives you protection all around. And it’s wealth that nobody can take from you. You lose it only if you throw it away.

So again, these are perceptions you can hold in mind.

3) As for the role of kamma in understanding happiness, realize that beings are going to be happy not because you wish for their happiness, but because they act skillfully. This is expressed in the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta. Its statement of goodwill starts out, “May all beings be happy at heart,” but then it doesn’t stop there. It also says, “May they behave skillfully”—or more precisely, “Let no one deceive another or despise anyone anywhere or, through anger or irritation, wish for another to suffer.” So if other people behave unskillfully, you’re not saying, “May you be happy whatever you’re doing.” You’re saying, “May you see the harm that you’re causing and give rise to a desire to stop.”

This relates to what in Thailand is called a high level of mettā. This term describes the situation when someone is kind to you in a way that’s not necessarily pleasant, but in which they hold you to a higher standard than you might desire. This is an important aspect of mettā. We don’t just act in a pleasing way. Sometimes we have to say things that are unpleasant, for the good of that other person.

There’s a story in the Canon. A group of sectarians called the Nigaṇṭhas call a prince to them one day and say, “Do you want to become famous?” “Of course.” “We’ll tell you how to do it. We’ll get you to ask a question the Buddha can’t answer, and that’ll make you famous. The question is this: ‘Would the Buddha ever say anything unpleasant?’ If he says, ‘No,’ we have him on record for saying that Devadatta was going to go to hell. That was displeasing to Devadatta. If the Buddha says, ‘Yes, he would say things that are displeasing,’ then you say, ‘Well, what’s the difference between you and ordinary people in the market?’”

So the prince invites the Buddha for a meal. This, by the way, is why monks have to be careful when accepting invitations. They never know what their hosts have in mind. After the Buddha has his meal, the prince asks the question. The Buddha says, “There’s no categorical answer to that question.” “Ah,” the prince responds, “the Nigaṇṭhas have been defeated,” and he explains the set-up.

Then the Buddha explains his answer. First he asks a question of the prince. The prince has brought his baby son to sit on his lap. So the Buddha says, “If your child here got a sharp object in his mouth, what would you do?” The prince replies, “I’d hold his head in one hand and, with the finger of the other hand, I’d get the object out, even if it meant drawing blood. Why? Because I have compassion for the child.” The Buddha then says that, in the same way, there are times when he would have to say things that are displeasing out of compassion.

You can see this point also in the Vinaya. It’s not the case that monks sit around smiling at one another all the time. There are issues. And the Buddha has advice on how to deal with issues. Basically the principle is, if you’re going to criticize somebody, one, you try to show respect. And two, you show respect by approaching the topic one-on-one first. In fact, you even ask permission, “Can I talk to you about something?”

So you show respect, but also you look into your own behavior. If you’re guilty of the same fault that you’re going to criticize in the other person, you have to get rid of that fault first. Otherwise, if you say, “Did you do x?” the other person’s going to say, “So what if I do? You do, too.” And that’s the end of the discussion. So an important part of criticism is in showing respect for the other person. And it is possible to give criticism out of goodwill as long as you do it right.

So that’s the role of the first determination with regard to mettā, which is discernment: understanding how universal goodwill would lead to your long-term welfare and happiness, understanding the role of desire in fabricating goodwill, and understanding how to skillfully go about expressing the wish for happiness.

• The second determination is truth. Here, this basically means that once you’ve extended thoughts of goodwill, you actually act on them. We talked about the person coming from a mettā retreat and then getting cut off in traffic. You’re going to go back to a world where everybody seems to be competing in how much they can challenge your goodwill. This is why the Buddha said training in the brahma-vihāras is training in mindfulness. You have to keep them in mind all the time. So the first order of business is to work for your own genuine happiness by following the noble eightfold path. That way, you begin to get more practical experience of what actually leads to happiness. And you’re not the only one who will benefit if you do.

This point can be illustrated with another verbal and mental fabrication: the image of two acrobats. They set a bamboo pole vertically in the ground. One acrobat gets up on the top end of the pole, and then he gets his assistant to get up on his shoulders. Then the first acrobat tells the assistant, “Okay, you look after me and I’ll look after you, and that way we’ll be able to do our tricks and come down safely from the pole.” But the assistant says, “No, that’s not going to work. I have to look after myself, you look after yourself, and that way we’ll come down safely.” The Buddha says that in that case, the assistant is right: You can’t maintain someone else’s balance, but you make it easier for the person to maintain balance if you maintain your balance. So if you’re able to maintain your mettā, that helps other people maintain theirs.

The Buddha says that the principle also works the other way around. You can look after other people by being kind to them, and that’s the same thing as looking after yourself. Being kind to other people involves sympathy, harmlessness, endurance, and goodwill. As you develop these qualities, you, too, benefit from them.

So when you know what things cause true happiness by giving rise to those causes in yourself, you become a good example to others, and you’re in a position to offer reliable advice.

As for compassion and empathetic joy, as we said earlier, these are applications of mettā. Compassion is what mettā feels when you see somebody suffering. You want them to end their suffering. Empathetic joy is what mettā feels when you see people are happy. You want that happiness to continue.

The Buddha gives the example of seeing extremely rich and extremely poor people. These are perceptions you should hold in mind. When you see somebody who’s very rich and powerful, you remind yourself: You’ve been there before. If you see those who are poor, you remind yourself: You’ve been there before, too. If you don’t get out of saṁsāra, you could easily be there again. These perceptions help make sure that your compassion doesn’t become patronizing. You’ve been in those miserable conditions, too.

We had a question the other day about spreading goodwill to beings in the lower realms—whether by thinking of them as being inferior, you’re looking down on them. But in the Buddhist universe, as I said, you’ve been in these realms as well and you realize how much suffering is involved in being there. So your compassion doesn’t have to be patronizing.

You may also have some relatives who are down there right now.

There was a brahman who came to see the Buddha one time. He said, “This merit that I make and dedicate to my ancestors, does it go to them?” Here you have to realize that, in India in those days, they would consider people going back seven generations—in other words, people descended from the great-grandparents of your great-grandparents—as related to you. The Buddha said, “If they’re reborn as hungry ghosts, Yes, it would go to them.” The brahman said, “But what if none of my relatives are hungry ghosts?” And the Buddha said, “Don’t worry, everybody has relatives who are hungry ghosts.” So when you spread compassion to these beings, it’s not that you’re looking down on them. You actually have to think of them as your relatives.

A similar principle applies to empathetic joy. The perception of the fact that you’ve been rich and fortunate before helps to make sure that you don’t feel resentment for other people’s good fortune. Empathetic joy is also a test of the sincerity of your mettā when you see the stupidity of those who abuse their good fortune. This is why goodwill is best expressed as a wish for true happiness and acting on the causes of true happiness.

That’s the determination of truth as it relates to the brahma-vihāras.

• As for the determination on relinquishment, for your mettā to be sincere, you have to relinquish ill will, harmfulness, and resentment. So you have to look for the allure of these things and compare it with their drawbacks, so that you can find the escape from them.

• Finally, there’s the determination on calm. You know that not all beings will act on the causes for happiness. Beings are free to choose what they do, say, and think, so they’re free to act skillfully or unskillfully. Even the Buddha didn’t live to see all beings be happy. Think of the case of the person who cuts you off as you’re driving. As I told you the other day, the best thing to think is, “May you learn how to drive skillfully.” Every day when you get out onto the road, this should be your attitude: “May all drivers drive skillfully.” The question is, “Are they all going to drive skillfully?” No. So you have to be prepared for those who won’t.

This is where the practice of the brahma-vihāras focuses on equanimity. Notice that the Buddha doesn’t have you start out with equanimity. In all the lists where equanimity appears, it comes last—not because it’s higher than the other members of the lists, but because it needs their support so that it doesn’t turn into defeatism, depression or apathy.

Ajaan Fuang made a distinction between what he called “small-hearted equanimity” and “large-hearted equanimity.” Small-hearted equanimity basically says, “Well, I guess I have to put up with this.” It’s unhappy and a little resentful. Large-hearted equanimity comes from the practice of concentration, when you create a sense of well-being inside, and you realize that your happiness doesn’t have to depend on things outside being in a certain way, so you can feel equanimity without being depressed.

The Buddha recognizes many levels of equanimity. There’s what he calls “equanimity of the flesh,” in which you say, “I won’t be reactive to whatever’s happening at any of the six senses.” As you begin meditation, he told his son, you have to make your mind like earth. You can use this perception to incline the mind not to be shaken by any negative things happening in your meditation.

But then as your meditation progresses, the Buddha says, your equanimity gets a different basis. It comes either from the pleasure of the first levels of jhāna or from the sense of freedom that comes when you gain an insight that lets your put down a burden.

Finally, the highest level of equanimity is the equanimity of full awakening. Note that this is not a feeling of equanimity, and it doesn’t define awakening. It’s an inner stability that comes from having found the happiness of the deathless. You no longer have to feed on the world, so whatever kind of food the world has to offer you, it doesn’t bother you. You can face the issues of the world with equanimity.

So those are the lessons of the four determinations that are used in developing the brahma-vihāras.

And what are the lessons you learn from brahma-vihāra practice?

One is that happiness doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is one in which, if you gain, other people have to lose; or if they gain, you have to lose. But here you learn that you can find happiness in the happiness of others. In that way, both sides win. The sum of the game can go higher and higher.

You also learn that happiness comes from within. It’s your ability to develop the brahma-vihāras, through the three kinds of fabrication, that allows you to bring a skillful attitude into any situation. And it’s that attitude that will constitute your happiness. As I said, it’s a wealth that comes from within, and you can make sure that it’s independent of whatever happens outside.

Sometimes we’re told that a sense of an independent self is a bad thing. But actually it can be very useful. If you have a sense that your goodness doesn’t have to depend on the goodness of others, then you can trust your goodness no matter what happens in the world.

So those are some of the positive lessons you learn from the brahma-vihāras.

But also we run into some of the limitations of even these kindest and most sociable of desires. A sociable desire is one that basically says, “I want other people to be happy.” But you learn some sobering lessons, for example, from empathetic joy: Look at people who are happy. Many of them abuse their good fortune, their power, their wealth, their good looks. In mettā practice you say, “May all beings be happy,” but this is what happiness looks like when it makes people heedless. You’ve probably behaved heedlessly in that way in the past, too, when you were happy. That’s why you’re still here. So it’s up to you to develop a sense of saṁvega, a motivation to practice for more total freedom.

The lesson you learn from equanimity is that as long as happiness is dependent on conditions, it won’t last. Freedom of choice means that beings are free to choose, out of ignorance, to suffer. This is why the Buddha, when asked if all the world would reach awakening, wouldn’t answer. It depends on the choices of beings outside of even his control. This is why the brahma-vihāra practice on its own is not a complete practice. It can’t take you totally beyond suffering.

So in this world where no one is in charge, it’s wise to listen to the Buddha when he says that there are two things not to accept: any unskillful qualities in your mind and the level of your skill as long as it hasn’t reached the end of suffering. This means you have to encourage yourself on the path, taking joy in what you have managed to accomplish and maintain the desire to accomplish even higher things. That’s the only way out to total freedom.

In the meantime, mettā is a form of wealth that’s really yours. It leads you to create good kamma, and that’s the only thing you can take with you when you go. And in taking it, it’s not as if you’re taking anything away from the world. You’re leaving behind good things as well, all the goodness you’ve done under the influence of goodwill.

This is one of the paradoxes of human life. If you leave good things behind, you have good things to follow you as you go. If you try to grab hold of things, they get torn from your grasp.