This weeks FBA Podcast, “Brahma Viharas and the Key Moment“, is a distillation of Kulaprabha’s 15 years of co-leading retreats on the development of Loving Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. This talk was given in September 2001, before and after the Twin Towers attack, while Kulaprabha was on a six week retreat in Italy. She was one of only a few people on the retreat who knew what had happened and knew about the shock that had reverberated round the world. Some of her reflections from that time are included in the talk.
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Brahma Viharas and the Key Moment
(upbeat music) - This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - Okay, so, so, start off, not neglect the obvious. Just start off by, it'll be kind of straightforward basics. I said them already, but I'll say it again. What are the Brahma for Hara's? First of all, what does Brahma for Hara mean? Does that make me helpful as well? Vahara means a bode or dwelling place. You often hear it associated with the dwelling place of monks or nuns, but it's actually got a wider meaning, much wider meaning than that. So, it means a bode or dwelling place. And Brahma is a reference to one of the ancient Indian and now Hindu deities who Brahmas the overall, the creator of the world. So, Brahma for Hara means literally means they're a board of Brahma. So, you might wonder why that's got into Buddhism since Brahma doesn't hold a place, or at least not that important a place in Buddhism, certainly not the Buddhism that we practice in the West. Maybe a bit different India. Well, basically it's a way of indicating that the mind, the kind of mental states in the mind that we can create for ourselves, if we could dwell in the Brahma for Hara's, would be a mind of great good fortune and almost a godlike mind, that's the association it has within an Indian context, but I don't know if that quite works for us. But it's just an indicate that if we could really let our minds be permeated by loving kindness and the others, then we wouldn't experience mental suffering or mental anguish. We would experience great joy all the time. We've been a very, very fortunate state. So, the name indicates all of that in a particular way, but it's good for us to try and enter that world. I think if Brahma doesn't quite work, I think we could probably lay that aside, but for Hara's quite an evocative word to use in terms of a board and dwelling place, and where your mind dwells, what your mind's surrounded by. So, it's quite good just to bear that in mind. So, the meditations, Brahma for Hara's meditations then, are on loving kindness, compassion, gladness or sympathetic joy. I quite like that. It is often described as, especially in our movement, mood it has translated as sympathetic joy, I came across another translation a few years ago that I just like gladness. I just like the simplicity of it. So, gladness is the third one and in equanimity, the fourth one. So, it's a set of practices or a mandala of meditation practice. There's a process of unfolding that happens when we practice them, and the practices themselves lead to the cultivation of these four great emotions. So, the first thing to say about them, loving kindness, compassion, gladness, equanimity, they are unlimited in their scope. So, that has immediate consequences. We can hear that and go, wow, that's great, you know, it's very uplifting that. It's other unlimited in their scope. The immediate consequences of that is that, therefore, we don't cultivate them on our terms. We cultivate them from within our present scope, what we're capable of, but the actual practice broadens and extends that scope, and that won't happen if we insist on doing it on our terms. We've got to do it much more and much less limited than that. So, we cultivate them within their terms, and their terms are unlimited, so be warned. That's not necessarily going to always be easy. That might lead us into some quite difficult and hard places. And they're described often by the Buddha, after he's given other teachings, they're often, he describes him as being the outcome then of those other teachings. So, I read, if you remember last night, I read a little bit from the Kalamasuta. So, that had been a teaching from the Buddha on how to know whether a particular approach, particular spiritual teaching, a spiritual path, is helpful or not. And he taught them, he taught them a lot about clear thinking and knowing whether something produces the good rather than the evil. And then he said, well, what I quoted last night, I'll just say it again, finishes off. Says, when a noble disciple is free from covetousness, free from ill will and undiluted, then aware and mindful, he abys with a heart imbued with loving kindness, extending to one quarter, second quarter, third quarter, and the fourth quarter of the world. So, above, below, around, and everywhere, and to all as to himself, he abys with a heart imbued with abundant, exalted, measureless, loving kindness, unhostile, and unafflicted by ill will, extending to the entire world. He abys with a heart imbued with compassion in the same way, with a heart imbued with gladness, he abys with a heart imbued with equanimity. So, you definitely get the sense of the unlimitedness, don't you? So, one of us first giving this talk, it was a couple of years ago, so it was 2003. And as I was writing it, actually what happened was I remembered, or a treat I'd been on, two years before that, which was in 2001, in fact, it was in September, it included September 2001. She reveals on it as well, and it included September the 11th, 2001. So, I was on our retreat, two months long retreat, it was an ordination retreat, she got ordained there, and we were meditating a lot on it. Now, I was one of the people on the retreat who knew what had happened, that most people didn't, we told people at the end, but I knew all the way through. And I found myself in a position, and I don't often find myself in this position of, I was just asking myself, why am I doing this? Sitting meditating for several hours in the day, and this kind of programme, some are prone to what we've got this weekend with that amount of meditation and I thought, why am I doing this? What good does it do? Who benefits, look at what's just happened? So, it brought to the fore questions about, does my meditation have a sphere of influence beyond me? How would I know if it had a sphere of influence? You know, I might have hopes for it, or might be a bit skeptical about it, in my case I'd be a bit more skeptical than hopeful. But, you know, it doesn't really matter, I mean, how would I even know if it did? Well, of course, a meditation practice does have a sphere of concern beyond me. That's not necessarily the same as a sphere of influence, but it does have a sphere of concern beyond me. But does that actually make any difference to anyone in that sphere of concern? So, I was just having these questions in my mind on this, that particular occasion. And I'll come back to that later on. But, in the meantime, let's look at this sphere of concern of meditation. Now, the previous pope wrote a book called "On the Threshold of Hope", and he devoted a whole chapter to Buddhism in it. Now, I thought I was good, I thought I was good, I thought I was good, they took the trouble. Although, actually, it was an attempt to repudiate Buddhism as a worldly spiritual path. But, I thought it was good that it took the trouble, because it showed that we're getting somewhere. And, after all, what else was the man going to do? He was convinced about his spiritual path. Of course, he'll try and convince other people about that, to be enough. So, I thought it was good that it took the trouble. I thought it was a shame that he didn't take the trouble to find out what Buddhism actually does exhort its followers to do. Because, according to the previous pope, it's a selfish path not concerned with the world. If you look up the book, you'll find that written. So, on that occasion on September, 2001, there was, I wondering what effect, if any, my meditation practice has on the world, and about 100 kilometres south of where I was, I was in Italy. 100 kilometres south was the author of the chapter who said that indeed, not only did it have no such effect, it even seemed to have no interest in having any such effect. So, that's all nonsense. Of course, Buddhism and Buddhist meditation is interested in the world. Buddhist meditation is not concerned with one's self. We're not concerned with ourself alone. But, as you meditate, it's probably true to say that there and then, you know, you are primarily concerned with yourself. So, does that mean the pope's right then? Was he right? Well, it's complicated, isn't it? The Buddhist experience says that if we don't concern ourselves with our own minds, then we'll be pretty well unable to see life clearly ourselves or to help anyone else to see it clearly and to learn to respond well within it. So, maybe the answer to the pope is that Buddhist practice self-concern, yes, we do. We do it for the benefit of ourselves and others. So, probably good to recollect what the Buddha expected to follow from his teachings. If our initial point of practice is ourself, which is, when we're sitting on the cushion, it's ourself that we're dealing with. So, what did the Buddha expect to follow from that? Well, from that, and you read a lot of Buddhist texts, from that, followers would follow a concern for all of humanity and all of what human beings experience the whole human condition. So, I start off with myself what the Buddha expects that after doing that for a while, my sphere of concern is going to extend to the whole human condition. And then not only that, what follows from that, then, is a concern for all beings everywhere, whatsoever, all beings whatsoever, not just human beings, but all beings whatsoever. So, the sphere of concern of meditation is immense, and it's in this sense that the Brahma Vaharas are unlimited in their scope. They include all of that. So, okay, before moving on, before saying anything more about the actual Brahma Vaharas themselves, I'm just going to lay down some ground work for us. First of all, I hope it's inspiring to hear that the scope of Buddhist meditation is immense, unlimited, includes concern for all beings, whatsoever, in all conditions, whatsoever. That, of course, does have implications for us if we want to practice it. It means we need to go beyond our limitations. So, in particular, we have to go beyond our likes and dislikes, beyond our preferences. And these likes and dislikes, preferences, arise in dependence upon certain experiences. So, independence upon, the horizon depends upon pleasant and unpleasant occurrences. They arise in dependence upon pleasant and unpleasant people, and they arise in dependence upon pleasant and unpleasant expectations. There may be other things, those are the main things that came to my mind. So, our likes and dislikes arise in dependence upon those. While we live under the sway of those sorts of likes and dislikes and preferences, the Buddha likened us to a drunken man or a drunken woman, I expect, staggering about, acting inappropriately and, of course, subject to the consequences of those inappropriate actions. So, that's the description of us. While we're under the influence of likes and dislikes and personal preferences that make us drawn towards something craving after something and a very adverse to something else and pushing away from it, excluding ourselves from it, according to the Buddha, is like staggering about in a drunken state. So, beginning to go beyond our likes and dislikes doesn't mean that we'll stop having these preferences. So much as we'll begin to stop the craving and aversion that tends to follow them. So, instead of being driven by likes and dislikes or even intoxicated by them, we begin to find other ways of responding to what are just very basic experiences of being alive. Things happen, and they're pleasant, other unpleasant, other a bit grey, and they're a bit neutral, a bit boring even. What the Buddha saying is just really take note about what happens in your mind, in your heart, in response to that ongoing experience of being alive. So, that's the first thing, then, of laying down the groundwork. We're going to have to be prepared to go beyond our current preferences. So, then, next, in addition to going beyond those preferences, we'll need to go beyond our present limited understanding of how the way things actually are. So, in Buddhist practice, this involves facing up to the transient sea of things, and the experience of the precariousness of life. As often as not, we'd like to avoid being aware of that. Well, we're all aware of it, we know it very well, but we'd really like to avoid having to think much about it. So, in a word, then, what Buddhism itself, in particular, the Bhava Vahara is, are mean for us in practice. They're going to mean facing up to impermanence, including our own impermanence. That's all, of course, the one that's hardest, probably. But it's also hard to face up to impermanence of people that are close to us, people that we love. So, it means facing up to the inescapable fact that everything is liable to ending. Things arise and they fall away, and there is nothing which does not do that. So, if you want to practice Buddhist meditation, and the Bhava Vahara is, in particular, then, again, be warned. Your likes and dislikes are going to have to weaken their hold over you, and be, mine over me. And we'll all have to face up to impermanence, transient, say, precariousness. But if we do, then, kind of on using the Buddha's image, then we disentangle ourselves from drunkenness and its consequences. So, if we were to do that, we'd gain clarity and balance of mind. We'd gain the ability to respond to situations appropriately, and in the process we'd also gain great joy. We do gain great joy. So, that's the sort of groundwork. The next question would be how to begin then. Well, the Bhava Vahara practices have a given form which involves bringing to mind a succession of people whom you know, actual people whom you actually know. Friends, enemies, people that you see regularly, but you really don't know much about. In one of the practices we bring to mind someone we know who's currently experiencing suffering in their life. In one of them we bring to mind someone who's currently experiencing joy in their life. So, that's the general form of the practices. And then it's quite simple, really. We just try to practice generosity of heart and mind to that spectrum of humanity of our acquaintance. And then in our imagination extend that spectrum to include all beings and all situations. So, you could say that the Bhava Vahras exhort us to first of all notice what we feel when we bring someone to mind and then extend the spectrum of feeling over which we can respond with kindness. So, this of course is where our likes and dislikes come in and they need to overcome them. See, we bring to mind, we bring to mind a friend. So, recollecting a friend on all likelihoods, more often than not, is going to produce a pleasant feeling. This is what the definition of a friend is. We like them. It produces a pleasant feeling. And it's probably not too hard to feel friendliness and appreciation in response to that. Recollection of an enemy produces an unpleasant feeling. And dislike of that unpleasant feeling tends to come in. And we want to go all the scenarios that happen between us and that person come to mind. And suddenly we remember in great detail all the previous ones right in that moment. And we want to go not going there. So, it produces unpleasant feeling when we recollect an enemy. But the aim is still to respond with the same sort of kindness and friendliness. And if not appreciation, exactly, then at least some patience and some understanding. So, when we bring to mind an enemy in these practices, and then I say to you, respond with, see if you can respond with kindness. It doesn't mean pretend fits the enemy. It doesn't mean pretending that everything that goes on between me and then does isn't, somehow isn't important, or isn't really like that. It's not about seeing them through rose-tinted spectacles. It's about really taking on board that this person creates an unpleasant experience. And I say maybe he's strong as fear sometimes, or anger might be milder than that. But whatever it is, it's not pleasant. So, we're certainly not trying to ignore that. We're actually trying to feel it quite, you know, cleanly. But then not do the usual, which is to go like that. Or to go into all sorts of scenarios about who's right, and who's wrong, and who's said what when? Under that narrative. We don't want to go into the narrative. We just want to stay with ourselves in the moment, notice the unpleasant feeling, and then try and respond to that differently. That's the challenge with the enemy stage. Recollecting someone about whom we know very little, because we do that in these practices as well. So, see, I think that's intriguing. That's intriguing when we try that. Because in this case, I think you need to get under the surface of, you know, disinterest or unconcerned. Because someone that we see, but really, you know, good and old, happy at all. So you have to get under the surface somewhere. And we do that by trying to see the underlying humanity of the person, which is, of course, the same as our own underlying humanity. So that's the point of connection. But it's not based on actually knowing much about them in the way that it is with the friend and the enemy. It's about trying to get underneath the surface to what we have in common. So, recollecting a neutral person, in a sense, opens us up to the whole of humanity. One person, because the whole of humanity is going to come in, most of humanity, if we think about them, are going to come into the category of neutral people, or not even that, because we don't even know them. We could imagine, you know, we could imagine them. We see TV, we see newspapers and everything, we read books. But most of humanity comes into that category of the neutral person, the third stage in the meta bathroom. So if you can open up to one neutral person, in principle, you could open up to the rest of humanity with a bit of imaginative connection. So not only do we open up to them in that way, also we're opening up to ourselves more deeply, less superficially, and less independence upon likes and dislikes, because with neutral person, there isn't much in terms of like and dislike that's there. That's one of the great advantages of doing them, doing that person. And so that neutral person was actually, I think it's very intriguing and important, and it feeds back into the other stages of the practice, because we're not really having to tussle much with like and dislike in it. We're trying to do something a bit different in that one. Okay, so I was meant to be answering the question, "How to begin?" Right, so a key moment exists in all of this. So I'll describe it in a minute, but this key moment would be good to try and focus and hone in on that key moment, while we're actually in this roundroom meditating. So the key moment, the moment is the moment when you experience a pleasant or unpleasant or a neutral feeling. The moment when you experience it, but when so far, not much else has happened. So when so far, you haven't started wishing for more of the experience or wishing for less of it or getting bored. At that key moment, there's just the bare experience of the feeling that appears, that arises when you recollect the person. So it's quite subtle, and it does take some practice to get the hang of it, and we don't do that immediately. What usually happens is we go into the next bit of it. We go into starting wishing we weren't here in the room doing this, and then when it was how uncomfortable we are. You know, the whole narratives open up, so try and look for that moment, but don't be too, you know, don't blame yourself or don't get too disheartened or anything when you don't catch it. Just whenever you're aware and this does come into the process again, just go from there. But that key moment is the real opportunity to practice these meditations. So on a longer retreat, I would take quite a lot of time just doing mindfulness to try and help us kind of tune into that. There is a whole practice anyway of mindfulness of feeling. It's one of the foundations of mindfulness. A good key for it actually is just being aware of your body physically. Because often, you know, how you respond is there in your body if you can be aware of it. It doesn't quite work to, you know, have a serious whole practice and just as an inner reflection. Yeah, just be aware of your body and you know, you can suddenly be aware that you can't stop. And those things are sometimes good because they take us back to the kind of basics of ourselves. That's sometimes a good way to then just go what I'm feeling. What is it that's going on? What is it that's happening now? So good to have those questions there. It grounds awareness of one's body grounds oneself and it does make it easier to catch this key moment. Having caught the key moment, all you have to do is remember to be kind. Whatever image or memory you've called to mind, whoever the person is, you just have to let your heart be touched by it and encourage your heart to respond with kindness at that moment. And that's it, really. That's how you practice the brow of a hair is. All of them, all of them. So in case you think you might have missed something, I'll go through it, I'll just go through it again. You bring someone to mind. You try to catch your mind's first response to their image or the memory. That response will be somewhere along a spectrum from intensely pleasant to intensely unpleasant feeling somewhere in that spectrum. And you'll let that feeling touch your heart and then let your heart touch the feeling with kindness. And that's all. Now it's not difficult to understand. And it doesn't have to involve a great effort to, you know, be kind capital letters, you know, feel compassion. Of course, in a way, it's more ordinary than that. I mean, loving kindness can blaze up sometimes in us very, very strongly at times. But, you know, a small, but steady, flame of kindness, if it were there all the time and brought to bear all the time, might be more valuable than the big, bear up. Although the big, bear up can be very inspiring. But, you know, something small and steady actually would go a long way. So that's the key moment to look for. You feel the pleasure or the lack of it. You avoid being pulled into craving or pushed into a version and at the same time, trying to respond with kindness. And after that, the universe steps in and takes a hand. And if you've really grasped that key moment, the kindness you've brought to bear will modify itself appropriately according to the feeling that you united it with. So it's as if we're trying to make sort of receptacle of ourselves, to be able to hold, notice and then hold the feeling, pleasant, unpleasant. And at the same time and in the same place as it were, permeate that with a kindly response. So we're trying to bring those two together and hold them together in that moment. So if you've brought pleasant feeling together with meta, kindness, then moodita or gladness, sympathetic joy, naturally arises. You don't have to make it arise. You just have to bring the two together and it does arise. If you bring an unpleasant feeling and permeate that with kindness, you don't have to worry about, "How do I make compassion arise?" You don't have to worry about that. Compassion will arise. Meta transforms itself. It modifies itself in accordance with what's present. So compassion arises. If you're reflecting, as we will be tomorrow, reflecting on both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, so if we're reflecting on both joy and suffering and how they arise and fall and sometimes one gives way to the other, if we're engaging in that sort of reflection on the impermanence involved in all of this, then equanimity arises. And it naturally happens. It doesn't need a willed effort at that point. It does need a willed effort to bring the two together, the feeling and the response of kindness, but after that, that doesn't involve a willed effort. So when I say that universe steps in, what I mean is that independence upon you responding to suffering with kindness, compassion arises. Kindness naturally transforms unfolds into compassion when it comes into contact with suffering. Either your own, because it's important to be able to do that for a run suffering, or someone else's. And similarly, it unfolds into gladness when in contact with happiness. Again, a run or someone else's and similarly unfolds into equanimity if we reflect deeply on suffering and happiness. So I hope then you can begin to see, it's not really a question of us creating compassion, sympathetic joy or equanimity. It's more that we need to create the conditions out of which they will naturally appear. So about 1,300 years ago now, there was a very famous Buddhist teacher within India, Anshalanka. And he described the Braavaras as follows. He described them as the best, most immaculate attitude towards beings, to benefit them, unstained with self-interest. Very lovely, isn't it? The best, most immaculate attitude towards beings, to benefit them, unstained with self-interest. So it's an interesting, it's like cultivating an attitude in response to other beings. I really like that about that quote. Saint Russia describes them as the most rational of emotions because the most appropriate, which I like. I like the juxtaposition of rational with emotions. It makes an important point. These practices are about these four great emotions, but we need to bring our intelligence to bear with them as well. They're intelligent emotions that appropriate. We need to bring our understanding to bear as well in order to be able to cultivate them. So, yeah, the most rational of emotions because the most appropriate. So what we're trying, what we're going to be engaged on for the rest of the weekend is hopefully then stemming from a core of confidence, kindness and appreciation of ourself, we can aspire to these best attitudes to beings, most rational and appropriate of emotions. So that's fairly easily explained. I hope it's fairly easily understood, but of course it's not fairly easily done. So, I need to say something about why that is very pivotal. Easy to explain, hard to put into practice then, why? Well, first of all, because we don't usually notice the key moment. We're not aware enough. Secondly, because we're used to responding with feel, we're used, sorry, we're used to responding to feeling with emotions other than kindness. So we're not emotionally positive enough. And then thirdly, we don't understand the nature of things that are enough. We're not clear enough. So we're not aware enough, kind enough, or clear enough. We're a bit aware and we're a bit kind and we're a bit clear, right? But, you know, it's what I said at the beginning. In order to really kind of cultivate and take on these practices, we're going to have to be more aware, more kind and more clear. So how could we improve on all this? So not being not aware enough. Well, the context of being on one retreat, doing the mindfulness of breathing practice helps a lot. And in terms of, you know, normal meditation practice at home, that's why we teach both those practices. You have both the mindfulness of breathing and the metabolism that is two basic kind of practices, then it improves our awareness, but it also helps with positive emotion. So another thing that helps, which is certainly happening this weekend for, I'm sure for most of us, is just having less input from time to time. You know, moving away from a busy life to a situation where there's a lot less input can calm things down a bit in our mind, in our body, and maybe we'll just notice things more, a bit more subtly, things that we don't normally have the time to see. So giving ourselves more space helps become more aware. So into sort of slowing down a bit. So does taking notice of ourself rather than often being in situations where really we're being called upon to take notice of something outside ourselves. Other people. Taking notice of our physical being and taking notice then, letting that leap lead into taking notice of what we're feeling. Just notice it more. So second thing was being emotionally positive. So then especially developing met off and kindness for ourself. All these Brahma Vahara practices, as you'll find out, the first stage is always developing kindness for ourself. So from that other benefits arise. More confidence. It gives us more confidence. Do that over a period of time. More emotional robustness. And I think maybe most importantly meta for oneself provides resistance to all their emotional patterns in us when they arise. If you remember, that's the being drunk. That's being under this way of likes and dislikes. But we do, apart from the more, in a way, all these lights and dislikes that we might have, that some of them can be fairly easily dealt with. But others actually go a bit more deeper rooted than that. It's a bit more like this whole currents of habit and pattern in us. And they are going to be challenged by doing these practices. If they're patterns that have led us to respond with a version towards a situation or towards people or craving towards people or a version. If that's there in us, then it's going to be challenged. Those sorts of deep-asheated patterns, they're going to be challenged by doing these practices. And that's a good thing. We don't bring ourselves happiness by getting involved in a version and craving. That's quite an important consequence of practicing the Brahma Vaharis. That actual practice itself means that we do get more emotionally positive. But it might be useful at this point to identify what some of these older emotional patterns might be. So, pleasant feeling, when Buddha's teaching, pleasant feeling is said to have an underlying tendency to craving. It's kind of built in. It's kind of built in with it. There's always a tendency there, if there's someone's presence. We wish it to continue and repeat. Spontural! We just wish it to continue. It was pleasant. The trouble is so that then craving for arises. So we get caught in something or something. We get caught in greed or craving response. Grasping after it then happens. Or resentment may arise if it stops. Or envy and jealousy may arise if it's somebody else's pleasant feeling that we would like. They're good fortune but we would like. So there's craving resentment, envy and jealousy, and a bit more subtly. There can be a kind of vicarious enjoyment and satisfaction that can come in. If that's a bit harder to see, it can sometimes disguise itself as sympathetic joy. But it kind of isn't. It's a bit more parasitical than that. Not a very pleasant experience, really, but a bit harder to see. But certainly in response to pleasant feeling, especially with other people, other people, there can be this vicarious satisfaction that arises. But it's me centered. It's not really in gladness for them. It's something I gain in a kind of funny convoluted way. So then there's unpleasant feeling which, in Buddhist teaching, has an underlying tendency to aversion. So that's clear enough. Some of it's unpleasant. We all want it. We just want it to stop. We don't want it to continue and we don't want it to repeat. Other things arise in dependence upon unpleasant feeling. Of course, you'll have noticed that it depends upon unpleasant feeling. It's not always that compassion arises. We know that ourselves. Sometimes it depends upon suffering or its beings of suffering or running someone else. It's not compassion. It's something like horrified anxiety that can arise. Or even a sense of helplessness, or hopelessness in response to suffering. All sorts of things arise. It's certainly not compassionate all the time. And then if we're trying to reflect on both suffering and joy, it's more difficult to see if that has an underlying tendency. Perhaps if it does, it's connected with delusion, with deludedness. Not seeing things clearly enough. Not understanding clearly enough that suffering and joy are both impermanent. So, independence upon that, the kind of things that arises is a sort of indifference rather than concern. It's a kind of indifferent approach. Well, you might have a perspective, but it's a bit of a remote, cold perspective on things, leading to indifference. Another thing that can happen is emotional turbulence, rather than a calm mind with permeated with equanimity. Actually, it can't happen. It's a lot of emotional turbulence. So, metaphor, ourselves, helps anchor us and avoids some of those old emotional responses of ours. So, no doubt you can all recognise at least some of the examples from the list that I've given. It's my own list, but I expect you can recognise them of it. So, for example, I'm quite good at indifference. Whilst, at the same time, taking great pride in my depth of perspective on things and even people. But I can fall into an indifference. I'll lose my concern. I fall into a bit of a kind of a remote, indifferent emotional response to it. What I need to do is reconnect with Meta, for whoever it is or the situation. Now, okay. So, all these are, you know, explorations of how to begin and what to do with these practices. But we can't wait until all these old patterns disappear before starting to practice a form of ours. And there's no need for that. We'd probably never start. But anyway, the actual practices themselves provide help with eradicating the patterns. But it's good to have that kind of overview of the process, the kinds of processes that we're going to need to engage in. But very specifically, it's not just that in general, the Brahma Vahara's help with these tins is actually, they can help very, very specifically. So, for example, if anxiety arises when contemplating suffering, then what we can do is to reflect that everything is not always painful, that joy also exists. And that does help with a response of anxiety to suffering, just because recall, well, all right, but it doesn't go on forever. And other joy and happiness also arise. That helps. If the curious satisfaction, you know, the kind of parasitical kind of thing arises when contemplating joy of someone else's joy, then to avoid that getting a real grip on us, we can reflect that joy is subject to ending. And then that helps break a kind of tendency to get intoxicated with joy. And if indifference arises when contemplating suffering enjoy, then, as I said, with that one, you reconnect just by feeling metta, again, by bringing that more to the fore in it. Okay, so that was all about how to become more emotionally positive. So that leaves the third thing I mentioned, which is how do we understand things more thoroughly and become clearer about how things are from Buddhist point of view. So one answer here is just to get on and practice the Brahma Vaharis, and as you circle around that, say, that mandala of meditations, it unfolds. It unfolds under its own steam, as it were, that it felt from us as needed. But it does start to unfold, and even the beginnings of experiencing some of those four great emotions, itself brings greater understanding. So one answer to how to increase their understanding is just do it, just engage with. Just have some faith in the practices and engage with them. So you might wonder how that happens. Well, I think partly it happens just by the practices themselves eradicate at least some of our underlying tendency to craving an ill will and even delusion. And when those get weakened and then replaced with kindness and compassion, actually that does mean we're going to be able to look things in the face more than we might. You know, look things in the face, look impermanence in the face, not recoil from it, not avoid what we're seeing. So in a way of actually just doing the practices strengthens us emotionally. It makes us more emotionally robust. And the Brahma Vaharis themselves, they are, they appropriate, responds to how things are. So the more we develop them, the more they safeguard and strengthen us. So that's more or less everything I wanted to say. Just a few things maybe to finish off. And they're mostly reflections from being on these sorts of retreats. So the first thing is I noticed in myself, but I also see in others people and I'm going to retreat with them, that doing the practices does in itself have a more general effect on us as human beings. It increases our confidence and our faith. It increases our confidence in ourself, but also increases our confidence and faith in other people, trusting and trusting other people, just in a psychological kind of level. And then a bit further than that, doing the Brahma Vaharis also increases our faith in the Dharma, because you do see the results. You do start to feel the results. I mean sometimes I think we can start off thinking compassion. It's nearly always written with a capital C. I can immediately go hold here. My wavering sort of experience of that doesn't seem to merit a capital C, you know, anything. And I think just doing them, you know, even though you do have to take on what they're going to be wavering at times and disappear again. But actually we can dwell on them. And when you practice them over a period of time, you do gain a sense of being able to dwell in those mental states, those emotions. And that actually does bring confidence and trust in the world in general and in other people and in ourself, but also in the Dharma, also in the Buddha's teaching. So that's certainly one benefit, one benefit. Another benefit is this business of that they are appropriate. They are the most rational of emotions because they're appropriate. It's not rational to respond to suffering with, see, pity or horrified anxiety. That's not the most appropriate way to respond. The appropriate response is compassion. An out-of-compassion comes appropriate action as well. You know, it's not appropriate to respond to someone else's joy with envy. The appropriate response is to respond with joy. I mean, that's a win-win situation, isn't it? You know, their experience in joy, so why it's being small joy? Because their experience in joy, you know, that's appropriate. The envy isn't and it leads to suffering, at least a separation from other people. And even just psychologically it's not appropriate and it leads to suffering, but I think from a Buddhist part of your more deeply than that, it leads to this separation from other people. It leads to more and more of a sense of them, me, separate. This is mine, this is what I want, this is what I deserve, what I need. And what they've got and what, you know, they're not kind of... Other people seem separately, so it leads to a separation. And that's the core of what the Buddha's enlightenment experience led them to repudiate. That there is really, there is no separation. There need not be that separation that we feel between self and other. That the self that we feel isn't in itself inherently exist in any way. There is an empirical sense of self, obviously. But not in the kind of substantial way that we actually feel it to be there. So there's an even deeper importance than the level of plaques in these emotions. And these meditations, it tends to undermine that sense of separate self. And that's a move toward... That's where the practices begin to merge into insight practices from Buddhist point of view. And that needn't be away far down the line, actually. You can get glimpses, you might get glimpses of that this weekend. And that again is another reason for it, and that's another thing that engenders faith. So confidence and faith arise, I think, at this appropriateness, learning to respond to the universe appropriately and what it throws up for us appropriately. And then another aspect that came to mind, one retreat I was on particularly, was about purity and purifying my mind. And that does touch into the things about eradicating old patterns, freeing yourself from our past. The past will be there for reasons. It's not that what we are in the moment has arisen from our past, and there will be reasons for it all, but they're not necessarily appropriate to us now. Some of these old patterns lead us into inappropriate behaviour. So these practices can free us up from that. And then another thing that came to mind was from the experience of doing the Apeca bathness, so that's the development of equanimity. And when we do that practice, there's a lot of reflecting on about the interconnectedness of joy and suffering of life and death. And of needing to be able to look at both, and not avoiding one, I was referring to look at the other. So I had a particular, it's actually here, and this entire book, quite a long time ago, must have been early 90s, I think I was here, and it was an intensive, so it was a 10 day retreat. And I noticed that when I, after some days into it, would be doing the Apeca bathness, and I sometimes get, I have this inner orchestra. So I sometimes get this kind of inner orchestra, you know, starts up. It's usually classical, but not always. Anyway, I started up with one of the themes from Carmen, Beezy's Carmen. You know, the one that goes, I don't want to get the tune, it's something. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. No, no, no, no, that's not, that's not the one, it was, that was the next one. The Carmen one was, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That one, that one, that one, that was that Carmen, that tune. So it was very strong, it was almost 40 some more, you know, like I'm going, hang on, hang on, I've had to be doing that, I've had to be doing films, equanimity, and I've gone into Carmen, you know. Stop, stop, stop. You know, so I stopped it, kind of one of it. of it. We were there till then I got the other tune. That one, that one. No, I got the wrong one. Baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, baum, which you probably won't recognise, but it's Prokofius Romeo and Juliet. It's like I've had goodness. What's going on? I've got Carmen, I've got Romeo and Juliet. I meant to be developing equanimity, gone into love affairs. Opera, great operatic, you know, high emotion, both of those, well, Carmen's opera, Romeo and Juliet's the Bali. So at that point I started to pay attention to what my inner orchestra was telling me. And I thought it's interesting, isn't it? Because both those stories are about love and death. Actually about violence and death. Well, with Carmen, it's about love and violence. What love and hate, I mean it was hatred, but murder that comes at the end. Roman Juliet's not quite like that, but the love of fear arises out of a feud. You know, it arises out of separation, it arises out of ill will. And then, of course, it's the great tragedy, there's the great misunderstanding at the end, and they die, and the grand of Carmen, you know, it's this death at the end of both those stories. So at this point I started taking my subconscious a bit more serious and thinking, "Why is all that?" And I just got this sense of, you know, that those two things love and death, they're like that. You know, and I'm saying love and death, not life and death, love it, they're like that interlinked like that. And we would like it maybe if they weren't. So we would like it if they were like that, but actually they're like that. So what we try and do is kind of, you know, not look at one and look at the other. And what happens is you distort both the link, the link, the interlinked and because we've got a preference, we tend to distort the link that's there. But actually, the link's there. And, you know, the good of teaching is trying to point that out and also point out that what we tend to do is distort it. So we don't see things clearly. So we respond inappropriately. So we chase after some things and run away from other things. Sorry, I got up from that trend and thinking, "Oh, wow, that's quite a pretty, pretty amusingly sort of trying to resolve to remember to listen to my inner orchestras." So another connection that came up from doing these practices is just, well, apart from listening to inner orchestras, it's just making ordinary connections. So I was in there, I was trying to do the full stage of, well, I was doing the enemy stage of a practice. I think it was the development of compassion. And there was someone on the retreat that annoyed me. I hardly knew her, but, you know, it somehow happens, isn't it? And so I had her in the full stage and it was having some difficulty making any headway with it. And until I opened my eyes, she happened to be sitting across the room from out all my eyes and saw the woman. And, actually, what I saw were her hands because she was sitting there, sort of like that. And what I noticed was, what I noticed was how work worn they looked. And I just, all the rest of the stuff that was getting in the way just dissolved. I think it's been just something, seeing something quite directly and seeing her hands in a particular way that they looked. Just, I just thought, it's the marks of suffering. Well, it's hard work. It might even have been suffering. I mean, you know, it might not have been, but I suppose it opened up to me just something that was a bit more directly about how human beings are marked. We are marked by suffering. We're also marked by joy, but in that particular meditation, I was, you know, reflecting on the suffering side of it. And there's something about just the ordinariness of the woman's hands because obviously she'd used them. She'd used them, had to use them physically quite a lot because of her life. So it wasn't a great detail. You know, it wasn't a great kind of, I don't know anything in detail. I just saw the marks of something. And it did have quite a strong effect to me. I did think, oh, you know, what I'd like is just able to see the marks of suffering. In a way, knowing the details and the ins and outs, you do need to know that. That does help, actually, to be able to evoke compassion, a compassionate kind of response. But at that moment, I just thought there is another level in which, in which human beings experience suffering, and that leaves marks on us. And I just had this yearning just to have the simplicity of being able to see that directly and then respond directly, because in a way, it's easier because it comes from a deeper level. You just see the human condition and then I'm the same. So it is a bit more of a direct response there. And in comparison to that, not being able to do that and having to go through all the hard work of thinking about them in more detail, I just was weary of it. I just was weary of it and just wanted to be able to do it from this deeper level. So sometimes, on that particular occasion, I could, I can't always. So all of that, all of those are reflections from being on other retreats. And that does bring me back to what I said at the very beginning of this, which is about that question from being on, when I was on retreats, while Twin Towers in New York were being destroyed. And so, you know, the world was in shock and it was on the brink of war. And there was I sitting meditating for hours every day in a lovely old building in Tuscany. Why was I? Why was I meditating? Why was I meditating? Who benefited apart from me? Who could benefit apart from me? And I don't know that I really got left with a distinct and definitive answers to that. I think it really just threw up questions from quite a deep level of my practice. I'm not to tell you about it in order to tell you what the answer is. In any case, there will only be my answer. And I think those sorts of questions, we have to find our own answers to. So it's not, and I don't even know that I've got an answer from myself yet. I did think that I did think something, I did think it through a bit though, and I did keep being in my mind. And I thought, well, say there's no effect beyond myself on this. Obviously, I have a sphere of concern in my mind when I'm meditating, but say there's no effect beyond myself. That's still worthwhile doing. That doesn't mean that I am striving to make at least my mind the kind of mind that does its best to respond with kindness and a bit of patience and a bit of understanding. That would be helpful. That is helpful. That would be helpful if everyone else was doing it. And then because once you enter into that sort of reflection, you sort of, then you get to the point, well, if everyone else was doing it, we would be able to be in a deeper kind of communication with one another. We'd have that response that we got yesterday from the mayor of Paris saying, "We're all Londoners today." He was just saying, "We know what you feel, actually. We're, you know, we're as heartbroken about it as you are. We're as upset about it as you are, we're as horrified as you are." So it's not that, you know, so that we'd have, it would be worthwhile doing it because of that further effect. But that's, so all of that's fair enough, I think. I'm sure you can come to your own, you know, reflections on that. It's worthwhile thinking about it. But it does come back to the question of does actually anyone else benefit? Why am I actually today? Now I think there's something to be said that's quite important here at the front of a house, because sometimes you can, if you do this kind of practice and think, "Oh, when I'm actually thinking about, say I have shape of you, I'm in the same stage of the practice, right? I'm thinking about fame, so I think about bringing it to mind." Do I actually have an effect on shape of you doing that? No, I myself, I'm skeptical about that. I don't think I do. I think next time I see the woman, we have, you know, her rooms are next door to my list, so that's quite frequent. If I've had her in a meta bar now, or another bar of art, I'm much more likely to respond, I'm much more likely to smile at her. And, you know, I'd be in a human communication more immediately when I am in her company, and that would work for herself, she'd had me in her meditation. So it has that effect subsequently, I'm absolutely certain of that, I'm going to know that for a fight, but it doesn't have any effect in the moment. I think your answer to that, well, I mean, I do tend to think that I can't see them, I can't see how that could happen, I really can't see how that could happen. Mostly that's what I think. Other people have different kind of approaches to that, and don't feel it's so impossible. So it's worthwhile thinking about just what you think's going on when you meditate. But at least it affects our own mind, it certainly affects other people once afterwards, when we come into contact with them. It could be the beginning of a chain reaction if we were all doing it. And on that particular retreat, the one which September 11th fell in the middle of, oh, yeah, in the middle of, I must say I did have an inkling every now and again, that there is a level of connectedness that we are about us, as human beings and other beings, that is very mysterious, certainly not something that I understand. It's not something I tap into very often, but I think I did a little bit on that retreat just because of the shock effect, actually, of it all, and partly because I was one of the few people in the situation that knew it happened, and we were in silence and so on. So I think it did actually give me a bit of an inkling about that there is a further effect. There is a much more mysterious subtle effect that we could all be engaged in, a sort of network of connection that we could all be engaged in, in this way that the Brahma Vahara's evokes and creates. But it is mysterious. I think that the other levels of the effect of the Brahma Vahara's are maybe the ones that bring the most, the ones that require the most effort. I mean, if there is a further level of interconnectedness, well, there is. And therefore, engaging in the practices will have an effect on that. If there isn't that, then it won't have that effect. But certainly, we can't really know that quite. For short of insight, I think we can't know that, but we can know that it affects us. We can know that it affects our next door neighbour when we see them in the morning. And we can know that if everyone was doing it, it would create a bit of a chain reaction. All those are very good reasons for engaging in the meditation practices. And if there's even more benefit, then that's great. So just finish off then with just repeat what we've already, what these definitions have already said. First of all, there's buddha gosha, the best, most immaculate attitude towards beings to benefit them, unstained with self-interest. Then Sankarachta, the most rational of emotions because the most appropriate. And the other way that they're described as is the four great catalysts of being. Certainly of my being and your being and possibly also for those for whom we feel concern and connection. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [ sub by sk cn2 ] [ sub by sk cn2 ] You [BLANK_AUDIO]