The Four Immeasurables

The Four Immeasurables

"Compassion and love, joy and equanimity are not mere luxuries.
As the source both of inner and external peace,
they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species."
--His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

During the time of Buddha’s enlightenment, there was the beginning of a shift from a purely agrarian economy to some capitalism that was springing up in small towns around Northern India. One of the things that Buddha discovered was that along with the process of selling and buying also came greed, corruption, stealing, killing. Although the time may have been long ago, it seems that our financial situation continues to have elements of greed, corruption, stealing, killing. Buddha identified a reaction in people, that can happen in good times and in bad, when people feel a primitive sense of lack and poverty, have a sense of separation from one another, a desire, a craving to gain advantage over others, a need to put up defenses. As Buddha reflected on the negative impact of these thoughts and feelings, he could see that they were arising out of a sense of craving, aversion and ignorance. This reaction caused great suffering in the world then, and it causes great suffering in the world now.

So what do we do? Where do we begin? Is it an impossible task to overcome these historic and monumental struggles within and around us? The Buddhist teachings encourage us that there is a way to get better address the challenges we face. The Buddha discovered that we can get beyond these struggles: First, by recognizing them for what they are, then by practicing a kinder way of being and living, to see things more clearly, to act more compassionately and wisely.

One of the practices that the Buddha developed to help cultivate these attitudes and actions are call The Four Immeasurables, The Four Sublime States, which are LOVING-KINDNESS, COMPASSION, SYMPATHETIC JOY and EQUANIMITY.

The short prayer practice goes like this:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness,

May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering

May all beings have sympathetic joy which is free from suffering

May all beings come to rest in the great equanimity which is beyond attachment or aversion to friend, enemy or stranger.

The Buddha taught the following to his son, Rahula (from "Old Path White Clouds" by Thich Nhat Hahn):

"Rahula, Practice loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding anything in return. Practice compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the capacity to remove the suffering of others without expecting anything in return. Practice sympathetic joy to overcome hatred. Sympathetic joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes others well-being and success. Practice equanimity to overcome prejudice. Non-attachment is the way of looking at all things openly and equally. Myself and others are not separate. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another. I call these the four immeasurables. Practice them, and you will become a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others."

So, the practice of the Four Immeasurables calls upon each of us to try to cultivate these four feelings and actions. In these practices, sometimes we don’t initially feel very loving or joyful. We start to say this prayer about everyone being happy and peaceful, and we don’t feel very happy or peaceful ourselves. Just sit with those thoughts and emotions; make friends with them. Feel it completely, then go back to the practice of visualizing being loving and kind. This practice is not to whitewash over longstanding emotions. RATHER, it is to uproot those old habitual emotions, see them for the illusion that they are, and replace them with kinder and more productive ways of viewing the world.

Loving-kindness - I want all beings to have happiness and feel love.

Compassion - I want all beings to be free from suffering.
Sympathetic Joy - I want all beings to never be separated from sublime joy
Equanimity - I want all beings to live in equanimity, beyond judgments of friend, enemy, stranger.

Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity practice is a way to transform our world:

1. We see more clearly how we are interacting in the world.

2. We explore a new way of being, to be open to new ways of seeing ourselves and others.

3. We learn to fully embody these experiences as we deal with ourselves and others.

Using Awareness to expand the possibilities

In Buddhism, we practice mindful awareness, striving in each moment to be fully aware of what is happening. Many of us seek out this practice because we feel stressed and overwhelmed by our daily lives. It might seem that mindfulness is about relaxing and letting go of that which we are stressed about. But have you ever tried to relax and let go, only to find yourself holding on more tightly? This is the illusory bind that our minds put us in. In Buddhism, we are taught about the paradox of mindfulness, the paradox of practice, that to truly let go, we must first be fully aware, to be mindfull is to be aware in three ways—by not pushing away, by not holding on to, by not ignoring. Just being awake to what is happening in each moment.

These three instructions are the key to being fully mindful in the moment. These practices of not pushing away, not holding on to, not ignoring enable us to become aware more fully of what is. We start exactly where we are at. It is only from that starting point, that we can then see new possibilities in our lives. The practice of mindfulness is the doorway to these new possibilities, new ways to see our selves and our lives and others. By seeing more possibilities in our lives, we give ourselves the gift of a deeper, richer, fuller experience of living.

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been so struck by the simplest of sayings from George Santayana. “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. “ So, how do we become aware of what is possible? In Buddhist practice, knowing the full range of possibilities can only occur by being fully present in each moment. We are taking in information in each moment, processing the world around us. But we most often take in information and immediately filter it through our past experiences. Some of this filtering is good—we learn early on that stoves are hot and that we don’t want to put our hands on a hot stove or we will get burned. But other of our filters are not so simple or so serving. We might have had an abusive parent, whose actions caused us to believe that we are not worthy of love, that there is something wrong with us, that we are something less than. It might seem that pushing those experiences away would be the best way to overcome these horrible misperceptions. But, once again the irony of mindfulness is that we must first be fully aware of what we are thinking, what we are feeling, how we are responding, in order to open ourselves up the full range of possibilities.

Albert Einstein has some wonderful quotes about seeing our selves and our lives with fresh eyes. One quote is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The other quote I love is that "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." These are very Buddhist perspectives, encouraging us to see everything and everyone in our lives, including ourselves with a fresh perspective, like seeing with new eyes.

The paradox of the practice of mindful awareness is that by not pushing away, not clinging to, not ignoring, we start to see things and people and situations in our lives more clearly, and we begin to create new possibilities. On most days, most of us probably spend our time reacting in conditioned ways. We wake up in the same way, we brush our teeth in the same way, we drink our tea or coffee in the same way, we respond to the stresses in our lives in the same way. So, how do we wake up in the middle of our lives?

There are simple ways to try this theory out. One way to open ourselves up is to change our routine in some way. For example, tonight when you brush your teeth, you could try holding the toothbrush in the opposite hand that you normally use. It seems simple enough. But, research shows that something as simple as using a different hand to brush your teeth causes your brain to grow new neural networks. By not reacting in conditioned ways, we are actually training our brains to see ourselves and the world in new ways. We are creating new neural networks that enable us to create new possibilities in our lives.

Another simple exercise that we can try is in this moment, cross your arms. Something we all often do. Just cross your arms in this moment. Now, try crossing your arms in the opposite way. There are so many ways in our lives to shake up our old way of seeing things. The loving-kindness practice that we do at the end of each hour is another way to be open to new possibilities. We do this visualization and continue to be present with what arises. Sometimes when we are visualizing the person in our life who we find it difficult to be with, we don’t feel very loving and kind towards them. The practice calls on us to stay open to the emotions and thoughts that arise in the moment of trying to send them loving-kindness. We practice staying present with whatever comes up. And this age-old practice has been proven to help open us up to new possibilities, new ways of seeing the people in our lives, new ways of seeing ourselves, new ways of responding. So, this simple practice of mindful awareness can transform our lives in uncountable ways. Not pushing away, not clinging to, not ignoring things in our lives, but rather waking up to, bringing awareness to, seeing with fresh eyes, the habitual reactions in our lives. In that moment of clarity, in fact only in that moment of clarity, can we choose a new way of responding, a new way of being.

This new way of being is said to be the ultimate freedom.

In the teachings of Tilopa, a buddhist teacher around the tenth century, he says:

“If you strive in this endeavor, you will free yourself from the imprisonment of the endless cycle of suffering.

If you meditate in this way, you will burn the veil of karmic impurities.

Therefore you are known as “The Torch of the Truth”.

Each of us can strive to not push away, not cling to, not ignore our conditioned ways of being and see life full of new possibilities. You are “The Torch of the Truth”!

What does "being in the moment" really mean?

There’s an often quoted statement in Buddhist writings about “Being in the Moment”, and encouragement about the freedom that arises from just being in the moment. In Buddhism, we are taught that being fully present is the doorway to true freedom, to deep happiness, not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, not acting out of conditioned habits. But what does that really mean?

There is a wide spectrum of interpretations to “being in the moment”. One extreme is to use it as an excuse for bad habits. Haven’t we all had those moments where we tell ourselves that we just want to “be in the moment”, we don’t want hassle with changing our bad habits, we don’t want to think about the consequences of our actions. We’re having fun, or we just want the relief that comes from acting in old, comfortable ways. And yet, from a Buddhist perspective, this is NOT what being in the moment is about at all. In Buddhism, being in the moment is about being compassionately aware of what’s happening, and open to fresh ways of responding.

We all struggle against dogma, that tendency to want everyone and everything and every situation to fit into some nice little box, where one size fits all, one rule fits all. How easy life would be if there was one rule that fit all situations. The Buddhist precept of not killing seems so straightforward, but if you were in a situation where you could kill one person and save the lives of a thousand people, what would you do? The world is far too complicated to have any rule that would work in that way. So, in each situation, to be truly deeply happy, we must ask ourselves, “What is the most compassionate action in this moment.”

There was a quote from Noah Levine in Tricycle Magazine about transforming our survival instinct. We have been conditioned to care about ourselves and our families first. But in Buddhism, we’re asked to look from a higher level at the survival instinct, to a compassionate awareness for all. Noah suggests that being in the moment AND our long term survival is about asking ourselves, “How can I use my life’s energy to benefit all living beings?” Okay, that might be a bit of stretch to begin with, but I would offer a baby step of “How can I act without harming myself or others?” It might seem counter-intuitive, but it has been proven to be true. Taking a larger perspective would bring us more joy and more happiness versus continuing to focus solely on our own needs and concerns.

Noah Levine is speaking from experience. In his book, Dharma Punx, he talks honestly about his own addictions, living on the street, doing drugs, getting to a point where he cared only about his own obsessive needs, even stealing from his family and friends to feed his short term happiness. This is the extreme of selfishly being in the moment. For Noah, He was able to finally drop these horrible habits by first forcing himself to sit in the moment with each thought of wanting to do drugs, without acting on his desire to do drugs. Just sitting, just being, not acting upon, not knee-jerk doing, but holding back, examining, asking ourselves deeper questions. And he knows the pain in the moment, the frustration that arises when we try to hold back from reacting in our conditional ways. Just sitting with that frustration is about being fully present in the moment.

Each of us has habits that we know are not serving us, that have captured us and taken away some of our freedom. Think for a moment about those habits in your life that are ultimately causing you pain, even if they might be pleasant in the moment. The Buddhist path is at its essence solely about waking up in this moment in order to stop doing what is ultimately causing us or others pain.

The Zen Master Dogen describes enjoying momentary pleasures like licking honey from a razor's edge! To be fully aware of the dangers that come from being addicted to something that doesn't last. I would add that if the consequences of our actions were that immediate, like licking honey from a razor’s edge, most of us would stop doing them immediately! But since it’s usually not that immediate, we need some supporting tools to change.

The practice of “being in the moment” is a tool to help us stop reacting in old, conditioned ways. STOP! Wait for a moment. Wake up to those thoughts and emotions that are trying to lure us into old unskillful habits. The practice of mindfulness is about creating a gap between stimulus and response, buying ourselves some time to reflect on our options. George Santayana said that “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”

Waking up to what we are really thinking and really feeling and really doing is the first step in radically changing the way we live our lives. And, it seems that is often the biggest obstacle to starting a meditation practice. When we first start to really listen and observe what we are thinking and what we are doing, it can be very discouraging. We all have thoughts that we think and things that we do that we know are not serving us. The paradox is that the practice of mindfulness, of waking up in this moment is the ONLY way that we can get beyond these obstacles to happiness. To support our practice of staying present, we can remind ourselves that the possibility exists for a deeper long term happiness that is there in each moment, just waiting for us. All we need to do is try to stay compassionately present. Each moment is an opportunity to begin again, to try anew. To Start over. To start fresh. Thank goodness for each new moment to begin again.

We may not get it right every time, but the teachers are telling us to just continue trying, to make being present/being mindful/being compassionately aware a priority, and soon it will work a little , and the more we keep trying, the more often we will succeed.

So, perhaps this week, each of us can look at some thoughts or actions in our lives that are not serving us in the long term. Identify what it is that is not serving the greater good. And see what happens when we just be in the moment with that old habit, with the desire to just be with, not to immediately act on, but to create a gap that can help uncover all the new possibilities.

George Santayana said that “Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.” – and that is what being in the moment is all about.