Search results for: "The Brahmavihara"

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  2. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
    Brahmaviharas at the Breath February 7, 2010 We chant the brahmaviharas, the four sublime attitudes, every evening before the meditation. It’s to remind ourselves of the attitudes we should bring to ourselves and to other people: attitudes of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy or appreciation, and equanimity. You notice that the chant starts with extending these attitudes toward ourselves. One of the difficulties in … 
  3. Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation
     … The second one is the brahmavihāras. If you can’t get the mind into jhāana quite yet, you can at the very least think thoughts of goodwill for everybody. The Buddha calls this his Brahmā bed. You realize that, for all of us, happiness has to be found within. And the pursuit of true happiness is something that everybody can do without conflict. In … 
  4. The Sublime Attitudes in Context
    We chant those phrases of the sublime attitudes, the brahmaviharas, every evening, and we do it with a purpose. They’re good things to think about before you meditate, and they’re a good part of the meditation. Sometimes we forget that they’re meant to serve a higher purpose. These attitudes seem to be good things in and of themselves, but the Buddha … 
  5. Empathetic Joy
    When we talk about the brahmaviharas, the one that doesn’t get mentioned very often is empathetic joy. People talk about goodwill, compassion, equanimity quite a lot. But empathetic joy somehow gets lost between the cracks. Which is unfortunate because it’s a very important background for our practice, a very important context for our practice. If you can’t be happy for other … 
  6. The Purpose of Empathetic Joy
    When the Buddha lists the brahmaviharas, he notes that if you use the different themes of the brahmaviharas as topics of meditation, as you go up the list you get to higher and higher levels of concentration. Compassion leads to a higher level of concentration than goodwill, perhaps because the desire to help those who are suffering, or those who are creating the causes … 
  7. The Noble Pursuit of Happiness
     … So learn how to develop all four of the brahmaviharas as a way of adjusting your attitude toward happiness, realizing that it is okay to say, “I want to be happy. May I be happy.” Years back, I was talking with some nuns from another community. They also had their way of chanting the brahmaviharas in their chants, both in Pali and in English … 
  8. An Equanimity You Can Feed On
     … The equanimity you can feed on comes either through doing the brahmavihara practice or through practicing strong concentration. In both of those cases, you have to take the mind first through some pleasant, nourishing states. Feed it with pleasure, and then you move on to the equanimity that comes with being full. There’s a very subtle pleasure that goes with the equanimity, and … 
  9. Fully Absorbed
    We recite the chant on the brahmaviharas to tie up our loose ends with the world of beings—particularly the beings that we’ve had dealings with today or in our family. We want to bring those narratives to a nice close—or at least bring the narratives to the fact that you’re meditating. You’re meditating in the context of those narratives … 
  10. Lessons in Happiness
     … You look in the texts and you see that breath meditation and the development of the goodwill, the brahmaviharas, are listed as separate techniques, but in practice they really come together. In the process of working with the breath, you’re learning lessons in how to make yourself happy, how to develop a sense of pleasure within. Once you have that sense of pleasure … 
  11. The Reality Principle
     … This gets you thinking in terms of the sublime abidings, the brahmaviharas: limitless goodwill, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity, not just for your friends and family, but for everybody—because everybody is subject to these same problems. And it’s not just that we’re subject to aging, illness and death. The Thai translation of this passage is interesting. It says, “Aging is normal, illness … 
  12. Disconnecting
     … They’ve become Brahmas from developing the brahmavihāras. They don’t need one another. They’re able to generate happiness inside—independently. That means that their goodwill, compassion, and equanimity are total and pure. Of course, even their lives aren’t totally perfect. They can stay there for a while and then they fall back down. But it makes you think about nibbāna, where … 
  13. The Goldsmith
     … As we all know, goodwill is the first of the brahmaviharas, and the last is equanimity. Sometimes people interpret that as meaning that equanimity is the highest of them, the one you’re trying to get to. But the Buddha never taught equanimity on its own. It always has to be based on goodwill or the other factors of concentration, to make sure that … 
  14. Skills to Make You Free
     … By that, he meant developing the attitudes of the brahmaviharas: limitless goodwill for all beings, limitless compassion for those who are suffering, limitless empathetic joy for those who are happy, and limitless equanimity in cases where you can’t make any difference. These attitudes enlarge the mind. The next two skills are that you train yourself in virtue and train yourself in discernment: your … 
  15. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … You develop equanimity as part of the brahmaviharas. Equanimity comes after you’ve made a difference in your mind, after you’ve found a sense of well-being, the potential for well-being in each of those activities. The equanimity of insight comes after the joy of insight. You gain insight to things that have been burdening the mind, and you realize that you … 
  16. Life in the Context of the Practice
     … Particularly with the brahmaviharas: It’s good to think of all beings before you meditate and when you come out. You do it before you meditate to remind yourself of the larger picture, just like the Buddha on the night of his awakening. We think we have narratives that we bring into the meditation: He had thousands and thousands of them that he could … 
  17. May All Beings Be Heedful
    Back in the 70s, when people in my generation had gone to Asia, learned the Dhamma, and came back to teach, one of the teachings they brought back was the practice of the brahmavihārās: the practice of extending goodwill to all, compassion to all, empathetic joy to all, and equanimity to all. Of course, the word “all” includes extending these attitudes to yourself. The … 
  18. Put Some Heart into Your Practice
     … And equanimity is found in many of the lists of the qualities you’re trying to develop as you meditate—both in the heart qualities of the brahmaviharas and in the more head qualities, the factors for awakening. So dealing with other people and trying to help them as best you can will require patience because people are difficult. If you say, “I don … 
  19. Goodwill for Safety
     … The kind of conversation that goes on in the mind has a huge effect on feelings, which is why we repeat the brahmaviharas every day, twice a day as a group—to get those thoughts embedded in your mind. And it’s why we don’t just chant them in Pali, we also put them in English. As an exercise, if your native language … 
  20. Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources
     … So all of the brahmaviharas have to be limitless—in other words, something you can apply to anybody in any situation. And they require the discernment to see when is it appropriate to apply goodwill together with compassion and empathetic joy? And when is it appropriate to develop equanimity? There are no hard and fast rules for this, as with all the elements of … 
  21. Feeding on Right Resolve
     … In terms of the brahmavihāras, equanimity goes together with goodwill, compassion, and empathetic joy. In terms of the factors for awakening, it goes together with mindfulness, analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture, calm, and concentration. In both lists, the context is important. In terms of the brahmavihāras, you practice the equanimity of a doctor. The doctor wants the patient to get cured, but realizes there … 
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