ABSTRACT
The divine abidings (brahmaviharas) are amongst the most popular of samatha practises. They are the meditations on loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuja), sympathetic joy (mudita) and equanimity (upekkha). In the worldly sense (lokiya), each can be present in any activity.1 The first, metta, is considered throughout Buddhist countries as providing a basis for all dealings with other beings. Bodily, verbal and mental acts of loving-kindness are to be cultivated towards other practitioners, so that they live ‘in harmony, with mutual appreciation, without arguing, blending like milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes’ (M I 207). Upatissa says that ‘the four immeasurables are of one nature though their signs are different. Thus owing to the suppression of tribulation, owing to the object which comprises beings, owing to the wish to benefit, they fulfil one characteristic’ (PF 194). Although some progression is implied, they enact four aspects or modes of the purification of the emotions: different ways that one being may respond and react to another, according to what is appropriate. In daily life compassion is the appropriate response to the presence of suffering, sympathetic joy to another’s happiness. Equanimity may arise at any time, not as indifference or boredom, but as feeling undifferentiated by pleasantness or unpleasantness. As a meditation, however, they all involve a sitting practice in seclusion, usually taking as an object living beings in all directions. The object of all beings becomes simple, because it is infinite. So one moves from a limited object, such as one person, to many and then yet more: it is then that the object becomes immeasurable (appamaja), pertaining to the formsphere. This makes it a basis for jhana where each of the four can become a deliverance of the mind (cetovimutti).
