Introduction
This is another post about ‘four of something’, this time the four sublime attitudes, or brahma-viharas. They are considered to be the highest emotions in Buddhism:
- Loving-kindness, goodwill towards everyone
- Compassion, wishing for suffering to cease
- Vicarious joy, rejoicing in response to another’s joy
- Equanimity, the wish for the discernment and willpower to remain in emotional equilibrium in all circumstances
The two elements of brahma-viharas can each be translated in several different ways: brahma as sublime, divine or heavenly, and viharas as attitudes, states, abodes or estates. I’ve chosen sublime to avoid metaphysical difficulties with divine and heavenly. And using ‘attitudes’ emphasises that they can be adopted at will, whereas the other translations feel more passive to me.
In keeping with the no-self idea, these attitudes are intended to apply to everyone, with no distinction between oneself and others. (Vicarious joy only really applies to others.)
These attitudes predated Buddhism but were developed within Buddhist thinking and there are detailed meditation practices for each of them. This is all set out in detail in Sharon Salzberg‘s book Loving-kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness and I have included a very brief summary of the meditation practices towards the end of the post.
In the diagram at the head of this post I’ve arranged the attitudes as a ‘see-saw’ with the first three in a row, pivoting around loving-kindness in the middle, with compassion and vicarious joy at either end, balanced on equanimity underneath. That arrangement helps me to think of compassion and vicarious joy as wholesome responses to sorrowful or joyful experiences, with loving-kindness being adopted regardless of circumstances, and equanimity underpinning the other three. It also brings out that the other three attitudes grow from loving-kindness.
These attitudes are an important part of resisting the Three Poisons (fear, greed, and ignorance) discussed under the second Noble Truth. We can think of compassion as being preferable to fear or aversion in response to another’s suffering, and likewise vicarious joy as improving on envy in response to another’s happiness. An interesting post here draws a closer connection between the sublime attitudes and the Noble Truths.
If one takes the sublime attitudes towards oneself (which I think most people would), and also accepts the truth of no-self, then it is logical to take the same attitudes towards others. However, it is important to be clear where the boundaries are. To understand this, it is helpful to introduce the idea of karma. This refers to the results of past intentions and actions contributing to present and future conditions, and is a natural corollary of interdependence. As we saw with nirvana in the post on the Four Noble Truths, there is a metaphysical sense to karma that may be unhelpful (the view that ‘bad luck results from bad deeds in a past life’). But one does not have to believe in reincarnation to understand that (un)wholesome intentions and acts can have (un)wholesome outcomes that reverberate interdependently through a person’s life, and the lives of others. Whether the effects persist beyond death is not really the point as far as this life is concerned.
With very limited exceptions, everyone is responsible for their own intentions and actions. As a result, everyone owns their own karma. That doesn’t mean people are responsible for bad luck that befalls them from out of nowhere, which is why everyone should be treated by others in accordance with the sublime attitudes. But everyone is responsible for their contribution to current circumstances. The sublime attitudes do not seek to subvert this karmic responsibility and ownership. Instead they strike a middle way (or Golden Mean) between the two extremes of trying to do everything for other people, and doing nothing in complete indifference. On one occasion when I was really struggling with this, I came up with the phrase ‘caring without caring’. This is perhaps a bit close to being an annoying faux-Zen koan, but nevertheless is one way of illustrating the balance that needs to be struck.
Below I expand on each of the sublime attitudes in turn.
Loving-kindness
This is a translation of the Pali metta (Sanskrit maitri) and can also be expressed as benevolence or good-will, or sometimes just kindness, or even love. Love isn’t a particularly helpful translation: in current Western usage it is tightly caught up with romantic love, with other meanings being secondary and masked by the use of a single word to cover a wide range of different forms of love. However, the use of loving as a qualifier to kindness works reasonably well, in my view.
In her book on loving-kindness, Sharon Salzberg introduces the idea using an excerpt from a beautiful poem by Galway Kinnell:
The bud
Excerpted from Saint Francis and the Sow, by Galway Kinnell
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow of the flower,
and retell it in words and in touch,
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
Salzberg notes that ‘reteaching a thing its loveliness’ is the essence of loving-kindness, and cautions against confusing it with passion or sentimentality, both of which are close to attachment.
In traditional Buddhist teaching, each of the sublime attitudes has two ‘enemies’: a ‘far enemy’ which is the obvious opposite, and a ‘near enemy’ which is superficially similar to the attitude but subtly different in a way that tends to undermine it. Fairly clearly, the far enemy of loving-kindness is ill-will, or even hatred. The near enemy is selfish affection, which can be thought of as loving-kindness defiled by attachment and conditionality.
Put differently, a sentimental feeling of apparent benevolence towards somebody because it makes us feel good, or only during good times, or so we can get something in return, or while we consider the recipient ‘deserves it’, is not loving-kindness. The intent has to be unconditional goodwill purely for the other person’s sake. It’s fine if something good is likely to happen to us as a result of the goodwill we wish the other (‘collateral benefit’), but that can’t form part of the intent.
Compassion
Compassion is used as a translation of the Pali karuna (same word in Sanskrit), which connotes both compassion towards others and self-compassion. The wish is for suffering to reduce and cease, and it is the expression of loving-kindness in the face of sorrow, or as Salzberg puts it, ‘compassion is the refinement of love that opens to suffering‘. Much the same can be said about vicarious joy being the refinement of love that opens to joy, and this is one of the reasons for putting compassion and vicarious joy on opposite sides of loving-kindness in the diagram.
The far enemy of compassion is cruelty, in the sense of wanting to make bad things worse, or taking pleasure in someone else’s suffering. The near enemy is pity, in the modern sense connoting a patronising sense of superiority in relation to the person suffering, possibly with a sense of relief that ‘at least it isn’t me’.
As with loving-kindness, the difference between compassion and its near enemy relates to intentions: one needs to feel compassion purely for the other person’s sake, which rules out superiority and patronisation. Doing this can be very difficult if one is empathising with another person’s suffering in the strict sense of experiencing similar emotions, because empathy leads to suffering in one’s own right, and in turn that means compassion can sometimes be selfishly motivated, at least in part.
In order to feel true compassion one has to let go of empathetic suffering, and stand back in order to direct compassion towards the other for their own sake. This is hardest of all when the person suffering is a loved one, but unless one treats the feelings arising from empathy neutrally, it can lead to trying to ‘fix’ or ‘rescue’ people for what are ultimately selfish reasons.
Developing the ability to stand back from emotions felt through empathy has the side effect of helping to stand back from emotions felt directly, and vice versa. Both help to weaken the hold emotions have on the mind. This doesn’t mean ignoring them – emotions are very often things that need to be heeded – but by not attaching to them, they cease to be painful.
It can also be hard to feel compassion for another when things are going well for oneself, but it is another sign of attachment if one feels one’s own happiness is ‘spoiled’ by someone else’s suffering.
Vicarious joy
This is an inelegant translation of Pali mudita (same word in Sanskrit) and refers to rejoicing in the joy of others. It is often translated as sympathetic or empathetic joy. In my view, neither of these translations quite works: sympathetic is too close to compassion and that undermines the joyful aspect; and it isn’t necessary to be able to empathise directly in order to take delight in the pleasure of others. Indeed, empathy is sometimes simply not possible, for example the childless cannot empathise directly with new parents, but it is definitely still possible to rejoice in their joy. So I’ve reluctantly settled on vicarious joy as a translation.
Vicarious joy is like loving-kindness (and unlike compassion and equanimity) in that there is no single-word English translation that works in general. (There is a word ‘compersion’ but this is not well-known and where it does turn up, it’s used in a more specific sense than is useful here.)
The far enemy of vicarious joy is envy: feeling unhappy at someone else’s joy, in a similar way to cruelty being pleasure at someone else’s suffering. The near enemy is exuberance, in the sense of ‘piggy-backing’ on someone else’s joy for selfish reasons. Again it’s all about intention: there is a big difference between selflessly expressing joy for another’s sake, and trying to hijack it for one’s own sake. It can be hard to rejoice for another when one is suffering oneself, but cultivating habits that allow this are a form of self-compassion.
Equanimity
This is from Pali upekkha (Sanskrit upeksa). It relates to determined emotional neutrality in the face of ever-changing fortunes for oneself and others. As the Buddhist monk and writer Bhikku Bodhi puts it:
The real meaning of upekkha is equanimity, not indifference in the sense of unconcern for others. As a spiritual virtue, upekkha means stability in the face of the fluctuations of worldly fortune. It is evenness of mind, unshakeable freedom of mind, a state of inner equipoise that cannot be upset by gain and loss, honor and dishonor, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. Upekkha is freedom from all points of self-reference; it is indifference only to the demands of the ego-self with its craving for pleasure and position, not to the well-being of one’s fellow human beings. … [Equanimity] does not override and negate the preceding three [attitudes], but perfects and consummates them.
Bhikku Bodhi, Toward a Threshold of Understanding
The far enemy is attachment, which amplifies positive and negative emotions once it takes hold, and the near enemy is indifference. There are some aspects in common with the Stoic apatheia, which originally referred to not being captured by emotions. It’s a shame that the English word apathy has picked up the connotations of the near enemy, much like pity now has in relation to compassion.
One can think of the causes and conditions that have arisen as falling into two categories: one’s own karma, which one is responsible for, and everything else, which one isn’t. Equanimity helps one to see the distinction, not to get emotionally caught up in things one can’t control (the reasoning of the Serenity Prayer is also relevant), and to find the middle way of helping others, without taking ownership or responsibility for things that one ought not to.
Equanimity, and balance more generally, is illustrated by Alan Watts’s story of the Chinese farmer.
Meditation practices to support the sublime attitudes
There is a meditation practice to support each of the four sublime attitudes. For loving-kindness, one starts in the same way as mindfulness meditation by relaxing in a conducive posture, and then one mentally recites the following (or similar) phrases:
- May I be free from danger
- May I have mental happiness
- May I have physical happiness
- May I have ease of well-being
This can be repeated as often as helpful, or synchronised with the breath. Personally, I find 10 repetitions, with one cycle of breath per line, works well.
It’s important to ‘really mean it’ rather than just reciting the words for the sake of it. A good sign that one means it is a feeling of emotional warm-heartedness that can be directed to different people at will, rather than attracting itself to some people and being repelled from others.
Directing loving-kindness to oneself can feel quite strange but I can attest it definitely has a beneficial effect. Partly this may be the result of physical relaxation and focused breathing, but reciting these phrases helps one to look at oneself ‘from the outside’, so to speak, and that also seems to be beneficial. The neutrality of the verb ‘may’ is important too, it makes the appropriate wishes without taking responsibility or ownership.
Having directed loving-kindness to oneself, one then repeats the practice five times for other people, bringing their image to mind, and replacing ‘I’ with ‘you’. First is a benefactor (someone who has been truly helpful), and second a loved one (one’s partner, or a relative or close friend), then third someone to whom one is indifferent (for example the person working on the checkout at the last shop one bought something from), fourth someone whom one dislikes or is in conflict with, and finally all beings. Sending loving-kindness to a disliked person can be particularly hard, and reminding oneself of the ‘may’ can be helpful in finding a neutral position that doesn’t get captured by negative emotions.
Directing the same thoughts to people to whom one has a a wide range of instinctive emotional reactions has several benefits:
- the regular breathing and physical relaxation help one to see the instinctive emotional reactions arise, and to start to learn how to let go of them before they take root in the mind
- it thereby helps to reduce attachment and conditionality to the benefactor and loved one, and likewise to reduce aversion to the disliked person
- one realises that the person of indifference is a friend-not-yet-made, rather than a stranger, at least potentially
- treating all these people in the same way helps to break down the artificial barriers between self and others
- this is reinforced by sending loving-kindness to all beings, as it is necessary to think of all beings as a whole rather than an unimaginably vast collection of individuals.
There are similar exercises for the other three sublime attitudes, with different sets of phrases appropriate to the situation.
- For compassion one could recite ‘may I/you be free from pain’, ‘may I/you find peace’, or in some circumstances ‘may I/you find a way to bear my/your pain’ might be more appropriate.
- For vicarious joy the phrases might be ‘may my/your good fortune continue’ or ‘may my/your happiness not diminish’.
- For equanimity the words are a little different: ‘all beings are owners of their karma; their happiness and unhappiness depend on their actions, not on my wishes for them.’ As Salzberg notes, this does not undermine the other three sublime attitudes, but is a realistic way of setting sensible boundaries. She gives the example of someone who is acting self-destructively: we wholeheartedly send them our goodwill and wish their suffering to cease and for them to be happy, while recognising that they are ultimately responsible for their own actions. Not setting this boundary can lead to codependency.
Conclusion
This post discussed the four sublime attitudes, their near and far enemies as shown in the table below, and showed some connections to the ideas in earlier posts. It also introduced the idea of karma.
| Attitude | Near enemy | Far enemy |
| Loving-kindness | Selfish affection | Ill-will |
| Compassion | Pity | Cruelty |
| Vicarious joy | Exuberance | Envy |
| Equanimity | Indifference | Attachment |