Here we are at the final of the Four Brahma Viharas:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
This is maybe the hardest brahma vihara of all for me. I live my life on an emotional rollercoaster, and I always have. I tend toward the happy, except in periods of sadness. This year of such deep mourning finds me in a near-constant spiral between the two extremes.
Buddhanet again: "In the practice
of Upekkha Bhavana one first selects the neutral person. Bearing him [sic]
in mind one reflects that he is the owner of his own Kamma. [...] When one does so
with understanding, the even state of mind with regard to the person
arises." What interests me about this passage is the notion of equanimity as a characteristic of a person as well as a way of relating to that person. "The neutral person," it seems to me, isn't necessarily an even-keeled one, but they may be touched by your equanimity towards them. It's a little bit like paying it forward.
When I think of trying to regard someone with that "even state of mind" even as my joys and sorrows cloud around me all the time, I imagine ascending to a small cloud, above the riot of sunshine and rain, and observing the person from there. Up there, all of the preconceptions and assumptions and other baggage one might carry with regard to a person fades away, and all you are left with is the connection between that person and you. The world might be a better place if we all had those little clouds to tote around.
Showing posts with label brahma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brahma. Show all posts
Friday, April 19, 2013
Thoughts on the Brahma Viharas: Mudita
Halfway done. Now, the third of the Four Brahma Viharas:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I've gotten better at sympathetic joy over the years. Buddhanet defines it thusly: "Mudita means sympathetic joy or rejoicing at others' happiness and prosperity. It is the opposite of jealousy or envy, and therefore it is suitable for one wishing to overcome it. The object and near cause of sympathetic joy is the prospering or happy being. So one who wishes to develop mudita should select such a person who is doing well spiritually and materially. Preference will of course be given to spiritual happiness as it is a more true and lasting type."
I'm pretty prone to jealousy and envy in a knee-jerk kind of way. As I've gotten older, I've worked harder and harder on making it just a knee-jerk reaction, and making congratulations just as automatic. I still get envious of people when they have something I want, but automating congratulations makes it easier to be happy for them immediately, and then when I reflect on it, I find an even more genuine kind of happiness for them.
I also think that part of being able to practice mudita is keeping joy about your own circumstances and achievements close to the surface. What better way to combat envy of what another has than to stare straight at your own pride in what you have? It' a rationalized way of getting to mudita, maybe, but it's a start.
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I've gotten better at sympathetic joy over the years. Buddhanet defines it thusly: "Mudita means sympathetic joy or rejoicing at others' happiness and prosperity. It is the opposite of jealousy or envy, and therefore it is suitable for one wishing to overcome it. The object and near cause of sympathetic joy is the prospering or happy being. So one who wishes to develop mudita should select such a person who is doing well spiritually and materially. Preference will of course be given to spiritual happiness as it is a more true and lasting type."
I'm pretty prone to jealousy and envy in a knee-jerk kind of way. As I've gotten older, I've worked harder and harder on making it just a knee-jerk reaction, and making congratulations just as automatic. I still get envious of people when they have something I want, but automating congratulations makes it easier to be happy for them immediately, and then when I reflect on it, I find an even more genuine kind of happiness for them.
I also think that part of being able to practice mudita is keeping joy about your own circumstances and achievements close to the surface. What better way to combat envy of what another has than to stare straight at your own pride in what you have? It' a rationalized way of getting to mudita, maybe, but it's a start.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Thoughts on the Brahma Viharas: Karuna
On to the second of the Four Brahma Viharas:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joyt
4. Upekkha: equanimity
It seems to me that one immediate difference between metta and karuna is one of vectors. Loving kindness doesn't have to go in any one direction or have any particular target, but compassion is transitive. (It's also reflexive, but more on that later.) As the reliable Buddhanet has it, "it is clear that the degree and quality of compassion comes with the degree of understanding of what suffering is."
My life is turbulent right now - in the last six months, I have lost, to illness and death, two close friends and, worst of all, my mother. Now my uncle is dying, as well. Now feels like a particularly apt time to think about compassion. I'm receiving a lot of it, from more directions than I probably even know. I'm working on showing it to myself as much as I can. I tend to be pretty exigent where habits and expectations are concerned, and I'm trying to learn how to loosen up a bit, to give my grieving soul a little more freedom to breathe.
I'm also making sure that I show compassion to others. Even so-called "silly problems" can be important - we all have them - and I've been taking care to let my friends know that they can still vent to me and confide in me. If I haven't said it directly, let this be their notice that this is true. I wouldn't be able to get out of bed every day without the love that I receive from friends and family on an hourly basis, and I need to make sure that they know that I'm sending it right back, just as my mother always did.
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joyt
4. Upekkha: equanimity
It seems to me that one immediate difference between metta and karuna is one of vectors. Loving kindness doesn't have to go in any one direction or have any particular target, but compassion is transitive. (It's also reflexive, but more on that later.) As the reliable Buddhanet has it, "it is clear that the degree and quality of compassion comes with the degree of understanding of what suffering is."
My life is turbulent right now - in the last six months, I have lost, to illness and death, two close friends and, worst of all, my mother. Now my uncle is dying, as well. Now feels like a particularly apt time to think about compassion. I'm receiving a lot of it, from more directions than I probably even know. I'm working on showing it to myself as much as I can. I tend to be pretty exigent where habits and expectations are concerned, and I'm trying to learn how to loosen up a bit, to give my grieving soul a little more freedom to breathe.
I'm also making sure that I show compassion to others. Even so-called "silly problems" can be important - we all have them - and I've been taking care to let my friends know that they can still vent to me and confide in me. If I haven't said it directly, let this be their notice that this is true. I wouldn't be able to get out of bed every day without the love that I receive from friends and family on an hourly basis, and I need to make sure that they know that I'm sending it right back, just as my mother always did.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Thoughts on the Brahma Viharas: Metta
The Four Brahma Viharas are:
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I'm going to devote four posts in the next two weeks to an examination of each of these as part of my homework for a Thai yoga massage training I'm about to take.
Metta is a word that I've known for most of my life, at least in terms of the sounds of its letters. My mother had a college friend named Metta. People talk about it a lot in yoga and in peace and justice circles in which I participate. When I started studying Judaism, I learned it again as chesed, which also translates to loving kindness. (It's interesting that the term in English is mostly used as a translation for other terms. I'd bet there's a word for it in Irish.)
Buddhanet (linked above) says that "the direct enemy of Metta is anger." In the wake of my mother's death (and the deaths of two close friends preceding hers and additional family illness shortly after her death), I've spent at least part of most days angry in some form. Now feels like a perfect time for me to take stock of the relative frequency of anger and metta in my life, and work on decreasing the former by increasing the latter. I can't reject my anger entirely, because that wouldn't be true to how I feel, but I'm happy to try to make it smaller. I first learned that love vanquishes anger from my mother, and then from The Beatles. The concept seems much more simplistic in English than in Sanskrit, but not necessarily any easier to deploy. Without having looked at the other three principles, I wonder if there is any sort of enemy of sadness. It can't be happiness. I feel both simultaneously on a regular basis.
What's especially interesting to me in the texts is the link between Metta and concentration. Any time I'm angry, I definitely feel that my anger makes it hard for me to focus on anything but my anger, and it makes it hard to show loving kindness to anyone, least of all the object of my anger. Sometimes movement is the only way to shake me out of it. That's deliberate. Ive also had what i think of as surprise infusions of loving kindness toward a person I'm angered by. Sometimes it starts with pity or regret, but it ends in a rush of love. Even if it's fleeting, the fact that it sometimes appears makes me wonder if my yoga is having more of an impact on my spirit than I sometimes think.
Buddhanet also says: "The cultivation of this state of mind [of Metta] is called Bhavana or normally translated as meditation. When we cultivate it, it becomes strong, powerful and useful. It brings us abundant, deep and intense peace and happiness. The cultivation of it involves the following:
1 The concentration of metta. Concentrated, it becomes strong and powerful.
2 Metta is also trained so that it can be given to anybody. That is, it is flexible, versatile, universal and boundless.
3 When this potent force has become powerful we can make use of it to produce many marvels to make everyone's life better.
To do this effectively one needs the method. Acquiring the skill requires patience. With experience one improves."
That's a lot to unpack, but I quote it all in case it's helpful for someone, and to remind myself to return to it when I need a metta boost.
Bringing things back around to the beginning, a simplistic look at the sounds of the word compares it to the English adjective meta, one of my favorite words. Intellectually, I know they don't have any connection through their shared sounds, but more imaginatively, the concept of metts seems pretty darn meta to me. It should be, at the very least - couldn't we all use more loving kindness that, in referring back to itself, never ends?
1. Metta: loving kindness
2. Karuna: compassion
3. Mudita: sympathetic joy
4. Upekkha: equanimity
I'm going to devote four posts in the next two weeks to an examination of each of these as part of my homework for a Thai yoga massage training I'm about to take.
Metta is a word that I've known for most of my life, at least in terms of the sounds of its letters. My mother had a college friend named Metta. People talk about it a lot in yoga and in peace and justice circles in which I participate. When I started studying Judaism, I learned it again as chesed, which also translates to loving kindness. (It's interesting that the term in English is mostly used as a translation for other terms. I'd bet there's a word for it in Irish.)
Buddhanet (linked above) says that "the direct enemy of Metta is anger." In the wake of my mother's death (and the deaths of two close friends preceding hers and additional family illness shortly after her death), I've spent at least part of most days angry in some form. Now feels like a perfect time for me to take stock of the relative frequency of anger and metta in my life, and work on decreasing the former by increasing the latter. I can't reject my anger entirely, because that wouldn't be true to how I feel, but I'm happy to try to make it smaller. I first learned that love vanquishes anger from my mother, and then from The Beatles. The concept seems much more simplistic in English than in Sanskrit, but not necessarily any easier to deploy. Without having looked at the other three principles, I wonder if there is any sort of enemy of sadness. It can't be happiness. I feel both simultaneously on a regular basis.
What's especially interesting to me in the texts is the link between Metta and concentration. Any time I'm angry, I definitely feel that my anger makes it hard for me to focus on anything but my anger, and it makes it hard to show loving kindness to anyone, least of all the object of my anger. Sometimes movement is the only way to shake me out of it. That's deliberate. Ive also had what i think of as surprise infusions of loving kindness toward a person I'm angered by. Sometimes it starts with pity or regret, but it ends in a rush of love. Even if it's fleeting, the fact that it sometimes appears makes me wonder if my yoga is having more of an impact on my spirit than I sometimes think.
Buddhanet also says: "The cultivation of this state of mind [of Metta] is called Bhavana or normally translated as meditation. When we cultivate it, it becomes strong, powerful and useful. It brings us abundant, deep and intense peace and happiness. The cultivation of it involves the following:
1 The concentration of metta. Concentrated, it becomes strong and powerful.
2 Metta is also trained so that it can be given to anybody. That is, it is flexible, versatile, universal and boundless.
3 When this potent force has become powerful we can make use of it to produce many marvels to make everyone's life better.
To do this effectively one needs the method. Acquiring the skill requires patience. With experience one improves."
That's a lot to unpack, but I quote it all in case it's helpful for someone, and to remind myself to return to it when I need a metta boost.
Bringing things back around to the beginning, a simplistic look at the sounds of the word compares it to the English adjective meta, one of my favorite words. Intellectually, I know they don't have any connection through their shared sounds, but more imaginatively, the concept of metts seems pretty darn meta to me. It should be, at the very least - couldn't we all use more loving kindness that, in referring back to itself, never ends?
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