… Of the four brahmavihāras—mettā, karuṇā, muditā, upekkhā—two of them, mettā, goodwill, and upekkhā, equanimity, are also perfections. Why are compassion, karuṇā, and empathetic joy, muditā, not perfections?
A: Because compassion and empathetic joy actually come under mettā, or goodwill. Goodwill is a wish that all beings be happy. Compassion is what your goodwill feels when you see that someone is suffering. Empathetic …
… For instance, you may realize that you need to do some more metta practice: goodwill for yourself, goodwill for other people. That’s exerting a fabrication. You’re dealing with your directed thoughts, evaluations, and perceptions.
If you’re feeling lazy, it’s good to think about death, realizing that death can come at any time. You may feel that we’re living in …
… There’s a passage where he says, “There is a kind of craving that has good results — the craving that leads you away from repeatedly wandering on, the desire to get out of this wandering, to discontinue this wandering.” So you take that desire — which is what the expression of metta is all about, the desire for happiness, both for yourself and other people …
… The word metta, goodwill, is
described by the Buddha as a form of restraint, which is an
interesting idea because it’s also an unlimited attitude. So what’s
the restraint on something unlimited? Well, the unlimited part is that
you have goodwill for all beings without exception. The limitation of
the restraint is on your actions. In other words, simply thinking
thoughts of …
… Years back, I was sitting in on a class when someone was explaining
the Karaniya Metta Sutta. He came to the first line, “This is what
should be done by one who aims at a state of peace.” There was a hand.
Someone said, “Wait a minute. I thought Buddhism didn’t have any
shoulds.” The teacher spent the whole morning trying to explain …
… It would seem to be
redundant with the resolve for non-ill will, but the texts say that
non-ill will correlates to metta or goodwill, and harmlessness
correlates to compassion. In other words, when you see that somebody
is suffering, you don’t want to go and add a little bit more on. You’d
prefer to see the end of suffering. This …
… Remember that line toward the end of the Karaniya Metta Sutta:
“to be determined on this mindfulness.” After all, goodwill is not
necessarily the natural state of the mind. Goodwill is easy in some
cases and not easy in others. Ill will can be just as easy in some
cases and not in others. Your mind can go either way. So you have to …
… You don’t have to look anywhere else, just look at the kitchen in Wat
Metta. Everybody’s commenting on everybody else—and everybody’s
causing themselves to suffer.
So we have to look at the things that we’re clinging to, and to see
that they’re not worth it. Our passion for these things is what makes
us suffer.
Now, the Buddha …
… Like the solar electric system here at Wat Metta: When we were first setting up the batteries, we were careless and put them on a couple of boards on the ground. Well, sure enough, a rain storm came. One of the wires shorted, and by the next day the batteries were totally dead. Even though the solar panels were pumping out energy, the batteries …
… Sometimes, you find you need to work with the 32 parts of the
body, or you need metta meditation, or contemplation of death for
specific problems that come up in the mind. But the home base here is
the breath.
After all, it’s where the Buddha found awakening. The breath is
something that’s always there and always immediately relevant to
whatever is …
… Ajaan Mun, they say, would do some metta meditation
every morning right after he woke up, every afternoon right after he
woke up from his afternoon nap, and then every evening before he went
to bed. You can do this by reciting different phrases of goodwill or
just stopping to think: What does it mean to have goodwill? What kind
of happiness are you …
… In the Metta Sutta in the Sutta Nipata, where the Buddha talks about how to express a thought of goodwill, he doesn’t simply say, “May all beings be happy.” That’s part of what he has to say, but not all. He goes through all the various categories of beings: long, middling and short; seen, unseen; big and small. But he also says …
… This is why we chant the passages for metta, or goodwill, before we meditate together: to remind ourselves that we really do wish for happiness, true happiness. Everyone wishes for happiness, but when you look at the way people go about looking for happiness in their lives, you wonder exactly how much serious thought they give to what they’re doing. True happiness has …
… He asked me a couple of questions about life here at Wat Metta. And one of them was, “When Westerners come to the monastery, what do they come for?” He’d been talking about virtue and generosity to the laypeople, so I mentioned that a lot of people don’t come thinking about generosity and virtue at the very beginning. Their first motivation for …
… This is why part of the Karaniya Metta Sutta says, “May no being
despise any other being anywhere.” Not simply, “May beings be happy,”
but may they not act on the causes that would lead to unhappiness.
Then the question is, to what extent can you influence that? There are
some people you can influence. As the Buddha said, when you become
generous, it …
… There’s the idea that by doing metta practice you burn
away your anger or by doing mindfulness practice or looking at things
in terms of the three characteristics, you burn away your old
sankharas. The Buddha heaped a lot of ridicule on the idea that you
could burn away your old karma, burn away your old defilements simply
through mindfulness or simply through …
… When he talks about the rewards of metta practice, the rewards
of goodwill, a lot of them have to do with the dangers that will not
come to you when your mind is spreading goodwill in all directions.
And here it’s useful to engage not only in the verbal fabrication of
goodwill but also the in mental fabrication, perceptions that help
strengthen your …
… There’s that verse in the Karaniya Metta Sutta where the Buddha says
that just as a mother would risk her life to protect her only child,
you should protect your attitude of goodwill. This doesn’t mean you’re
going to go out and cherish everybody the same way she would cherish
her child, or to fight off every injustice that’s going …
… It’s a distinction the Buddha makes in the Metta Sutta. He describes the ideal meditator as “not taken with views, but consummate in vision.” We spend most of our time talking about, “I think this about that, I think that about this, this is my opinion on politics, this is my opinion on the Michael Jackson feeding-fest in the media and whatever …
An Overview | Good Heart, Good Mind
… Of the four brahmavihāras—mettā, karuṇā, muditā, upekkhā—two of them, mettā, goodwill, and upekkhā, equanimity, are also perfections. Why are compassion, karuṇā, and empathetic joy, muditā, not perfections? A: Because compassion and empathetic joy actually come under mettā, or goodwill. Goodwill is a wish that all beings be happy. Compassion is what your goodwill feels when you see that someone is suffering. Empathetic …
