Therefore,
Brahmavihara is the dwelling place of the gods,
Or the divine abodes or sublime minds.
So it gets translated in lots of different ways.
And there are four of them.
And they're distinct from one another.
They are metta,
Karuna,
Mudita,
And upeka in Pali and Sanskrit are pretty close.
Pali is the language that is used to offer the Buddhist teachings in Taravada lineages,
And Sanskrit is the language that's used in Zen lineage.
Metta is love.
Loving kindness,
Loving friendliness,
Love,
All the different ways you want to offer it.
And we have four more practices of cultivating metta.
Sometimes it's a practice of sending well wishes,
Right?
So I think that that can kind of start to feel like,
How's that different from compassion?
We can start to like get muddy in there.
Maybe that's like boundary between the two because they're all connected before.
They're distinct and connected.
Karuna is compassion.
Karuna is how the heart that's filled with love responds when it meets suffering.
It's the response.
So maybe it's a loving response or a kind gesture or well wishes.
It's the tenderness and care for the suffering of ourselves or another.
It's a compassionate act when we recognize we're suffering and we greet the suffering.
Oh,
Hello there fear.
Hello there grief.
Hello there anxiety.
When we show up for it,
That's a compassionate act.
That's an upwelling of the heart,
An upwelling of love that meets suffering.
Metta is an independent thing,
Right?
It might respond to something else,
But just the heart state,
The mind state of metta is just love.
Which maybe is kindness,
Gentleness,
Tenderness,
Care,
But it's not responding to something.
Compassion is that heart responding to something internally or externally.
The third Ramavahara,
Mudita,
Thich Nhat Hanh translates that as joy.
In the insight traditions and in Theravada practice,
It's translated as sympathetic joy or altruistic joy or taking delight in another's joy.
So it has different nuances and different schools of Buddhism.
I think I've practiced both of them and for me they are distinct.
And so the practice of cultivating joy,
It's very powerful and very impactful.
Maybe you've seen some of the talks or read the book or listened to some of the experts,
Experts,
Of Desmond Tutu and his Holiness the Dalai Lama,
Their conversations on joy.
Joy.
Can you touch joy in your body right now even though maybe there's nothing happening specifically?
You can activate it,
You can cultivate it if you choose to.
And you can spend time doing things that create joy.
The image of a three year old naked girl running through tide pools creates joy in my body.
I love tide pools.
I love water.
I love being naked.
And I was a swimmer as a child.
So I spent a lot of time,
A lot of time in water.
I grew up on the East Coast and not in Nantucket but down in Philly.
We don't have any tide pools in Jersey.
Right?
So time in the swimming pool,
Time at the ocean and time naked in the sun or in the water.
I wore a bikini as a child and it was,
There was no top involved in my bikinis until I was a neighbor that was necessary.
Right?
So it's a lot of joy in my body that gets touched by that remembering and by that experience.
And my present moment life,
I encourage people and encourage myself when things are feeling dark to spend time in beauty.
And that that creates joy,
Whether it's walking meditation or just being outside or rolling a wheelchair or sitting in the sun or lying in the sun or forest bathing or swimming in the bay as I've been doing a lot lately.
Time in nature,
Time in beauty,
Creating art,
Experiencing art,
These things,
They lift the resonance of the heart.
And when the heart mind is filled with joy,
We're less irritable,
We're less depressed,
We're more accepting of ourselves than others.
And things are just easier.
If we're caught in this,
Oh,
I shouldn't be joy,
I should have joy,
That's not what we're talking about,
But to turn towards the things that touch that in us.
And then the last brahmara,
Upekka or upeksha in Sanskrit is typically translated as equanimity.
Thich Nhat Hanh has been offering the translation of inclusiveness.
So if we hold how equanimity and inclusiveness might have similarity,
We can recognize that there is a welcoming and embracing and accepting of all the parts.
There has been a trend,
I don't know how long it's been going on now,
But in psychology or therapy or one of those kind of arenas of parts work,
Where we get to look at the parts of ourself,
We're made up of all these parts.
And from a Buddhist perspective,
We have bija or seeds that are in our consciousness.
And every human being are bijas or seeds and that the seed of greed,
The seed of joy,
The seed of anger,
The seed of love,
The seed of happiness,
The seed of regret.
They're all there already.
They lie in us.
And an experience happens and it gets activated,
It gets watered and it sprouts and it blossoms.
If we're cultivating equanimity or inclusiveness or upeka or peksha,
Then when that seed sprouts,
We can hold it.
It's OK.
There's space for it.
We can allow it to be just as it is.
And so for me,
That's acceptance.
And when I'm in acceptance,
Everything's groovy.
It's all fine.
It's all fine.
Someone that I love dearly may be having a manic episode and it's OK.
I don't have to run and save them.
I can treat them with love.
Someone I love dearly might be having a depressive episode.
I don't have to jump in and save them.
I can spend time with them as much time as I can spend.
And just be present and then I can say goodbye and I can nourish myself and I encourage them to nourish themselves and I know that they can only do what they can do.
It's all OK.
Instead of trying to fix it or fix myself.
There's an acceptance.
Oh,
My goodness,
Really?
That again?
Either out there in the world or in here and here.
Oh,
It's OK.
I got you.
I got you and the freedom that that brings.
So those are some reflections on the four Brahma Baharas,
And I hope that that helps you to see that they are quite distinct from one another.
And they're interrelated.
So we can formally cultivate.
All of them,
You know,
We can formally cultivate equanimity,
We can formally cultivate joy,
We can formally cultivate compassion,
We can formally cultivate metta.
And for me,
Time spent cultivating metta and cultivating joy has led to compassion and led to equanimity.
I haven't spent time formally.
Cultivating compassion.
I was going to say I haven't spent time for like cultivating equanimity,
But I have spent time formally cultivating acceptance.
So I guess I have because of how I'm languaging what that fourth Brahma Bahara is.
But I think that just,
Just,
Just,
Just,
Just cultivating metta leads to all of that.
And that rather than formally cultivating equanimity as we cultivate our ability to be with things as they are,
Which is present moment awareness,
Which is what we're doing.
This body,
Right?
These smells,
These sights,
Right?
The five sense doors as we think of them,
Plus the sixth one of the mind as we cultivate awareness for that.
And we allow ourselves to be with things as they are.
What else could arise but equanimity?
Oh,
It's like this.
That beautiful teaching from Ajahn Sumedho.
It's like this.
So I hope that that's helpful as we continue to navigate our lives with all of the ups and downs.
They come and they go.
This is how it is.
And if we try to start to block out the unpleasant,
We can't not block out the pleasant.
We don't get to choose.
News alert!
So instead,
We cultivate our ability to be with things as they are.
And then we can enjoy the pleasant and we can navigate the unpleasant.
It's impermanent,
Imperfect and impersonal.
Like all conditioned things,
Right?
It can't be otherwise.
