Search results for: "The Brahmavihara"

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  2. A Frame for the Day
     … This is why equanimity is also one of the topics of the brahmaviharas: learning how not to get worked up about things you can’t change. This is another good thing to think about. As for mental fabrications, those are perceptions and feelings. Start with the perception of which of your belongings are valuable, and which ones not. You’ve got to hold those … 
  3. The Gift of Discernment
    When we think of the Buddha’s compassion, the first teaching that comes to mind is often the brahmaviharas, in which he teaches us to develop goodwill for all beings, compassion for all who are suffering, empathetic joy for all who are happy, and equanimity so that these other three qualities don’t cause us to suffer from all the suffering in the world … 
  4. How to Really Depend on Yourself
     … If issues of the day are filling your mind when you sit down to meditate, you might try the brahmaviharas. Remind yourself that you don’t want to have any bad kamma with anybody, that you at least wish them goodwill. Then develop some equanimity around the issues of the day so that you can settle down with the breath. Or you can contemplate … 
  5. Cleansing the Mind
     … Secondly, you spread goodwill, develop all the brahmaviharas, so that the mind is limitless. The image that the Buddha gives is someone who’s in debt. If the debt collector comes and it turns out you’ve got lots of money, the debt collector can take that amount of money and you don’t feel any problem. If you have no money at all … 
  6. You Can Do Better
     … So, there you’ve got all the brahmaviharas. Basically, with right resolve, you’re setting yourself up for right concentration. You realize that if you really want to put an end to the suffering, this is where you’ve got to do it: getting the mind into concentration and keeping it there. In that image of the chariot, concentration is the axle around which … 
  7. The Skillful Heart
    Every evening we have that chant, the brahmavihāras, the sublime attitudes, developing thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, because these are our motivations on the path. We have goodwill for ourselves and goodwill for all beings because we’re looking for a happiness that’s harmless: doesn’t harm us, doesn’t harm anyone else. **This is a quality of a good … 
  8. The Roles of Equanimity
     … As with the brahmaviharas: You start out with goodwill. And your goodwill has to be tough. The Buddha gives examples of people coming to you and saying all kinds of harmful, hurtful things. You have to maintain your goodwill toward them. It seems as if the world is behaving in such a way to defy your goodwill. You want to wish for their happiness … 
  9. The Center of Your Life
     … That chant on the brahmaviharas starts out, aham sukhito homi, may I be happy. It sounds very simple, very commonplace, not very profound. The reason it’s commonplace is because it’s the desire that lies behind every action we do. It was part of the Buddha’s genius to say, “Let’s look at that very carefully. Let’s take this desire for … 
  10. Raise Your Standards
     … In particular, he developed concentration based on goodwill and all the brahmaviharas. After eight or nine years of that, he returned home. And it was because of his example that the country in which he lived became a peaceful country, both through his instructions and exhortations, and through his personal example. The point being that the way we look for happiness is teaching a … 
  11. A Heart Set on Goodwill
     … This is why the Buddha recommends the practice of the brahmaviharas, starting with goodwill. Universal goodwill is not innate to the mind. Goodwill and ill will come very easily: goodwill for people who have been kind to you, people you like, and ill will for people you don’t like. You can’t say that one is more innate than the other. But if … 
  12. A Refuge from Karma
     … As you enlarge your mind through the concentration, you make it unlimited through the practice of the brahmaviharas: goodwill for everybody, compassion for everybody, empathetic joy for everybody, equanimity for everybody when it’s needed. That enlarges your mind, and the enlarged mind suffers a lot less than the narrow, constricted mind that’s constantly worried about this, worried about that, overcome by pain … 
  13. Equanimity in Action, Equanimity at Rest
     … Some people listening to the brahmaviharas say that they sound like the serenity prayer: wanting the ability to accept what you can’t change, the courage to change what you can change, and the discernment or wisdom to know the difference. But life is a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of things that you could change but wouldn’t be … 
  14. Karma & the Sublime Attitudes
     … It’s all the better part of wisdom—because that’s what equanimity is in the brahmaviharas: the voice of wisdom. It keeps reminding you that you have to understand your karma, you have to understand the karma of others, realizing in both cases that it’s quite complex. You can’t let simplistic emotions get in the way of making the most of … 
  15. Injustice
     … In the brahmaviharas, you start with goodwill, the desire for happiness: your happiness, the happiness of all others. When you see that people are suffering, goodwill turns into compassion: wanting for that suffering to end. When you see that other people are happy, you have empathetic joy for their happiness. You’re not jealous; you’re not resentful. But then you come across cases … 
  16. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … This is why the brahmaviharas are another way of dealing with greed and distress with reference to the world. We start out the meditation with that chant—thoughts of goodwill, thoughts of compassion, thoughts of empathetic joy, thoughts of equanimity for everyone—as a way of disentangling ourselves from the narratives of the day and the narratives of our lives. Whatever anyone has done … 
  17. Withstanding Pleasure & Pain
     … As the Buddha says, if you’re developed in body, developed in mind, developed in virtue and discernment, and you make your mind unlimited—in other words, with the brahmavihāras—the results of past karma can come, but they don’t have to have an impact on the mind. In fact, in some cases, you scarcely feel them at all. In other cases, where … 
  18. The Complexity of Pain
     … by developing the brahmaviharas. Again, use the perceptions that the Buddha recommends. Perceive your goodwill as large like the earth; it’s cool like the river Ganges; there’s no place for anything to be written on it, just like space. This is our problem with pain. We have so much commentary on the pain. We inscribe it and we pass that inscription on … 
  19. Our Variegated Minds
     … This is what the brahmavihāras are all about. They’re not just feelings of goodwill or feelings of compassion or empathetic joy or equanimity. They’re attitudes. For any of these attitudes to really be a brahmavihara—a dwelling place, a sublime attitude, a dwelling place for Brahma—you have to be able to tap into them at any time, in any situation, wherever … 
  20. A Concentration Checklist
     … Whether you’re focusing on the breath, focusing on a part of the body, focusing on the brahmaviharas, when you lose your focus, you can ask yourself why, and think of the eight different things that the Buddha mentioned. Two of them correspond to the traditional list of five hindrances: There’s doubt, and there’s sloth and torpor. In the case of doubt … 
  21. Determined Goodwill
     … Even when we go through all the brahmaviharas and get to equanimity, the reason we use equanimity is for the sake of mature goodwill, realizing that there are areas where we would like to see people do what’s skillful and to experience the results of skillful actions, but for one reason or another, it’s not going to happen. If you have genuine … 
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