Lesson for mindfulness - part 25:

Chapter Four: Metta (Loving-Kindness)

Four sublime states of our mind

Battaramulla
Siri Sudassanarama
sadaham senasuna
Ven. Dr. Mirisse Dhammika thero

In addition to the aspects of metta, there are three more qualities related to metta. I have touched on them already, but I will summarize them in more detail here. They are compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha).

If one practices metta he considers everybody as his friend. If there is a sympathetic feeling of friendliness with others, this generates compassion, a deep understanding of the sorrow and pain in others. One feels others’ pain and sorrow as if they were one’s own.

Similarly, by virtue of the sympathetic feelings generated by metta, one can also easily show and celebrate others’ success and good fortune, even if being bothered by jealousy and envy. This is mudita: the ability to feel others’ joy as if it were one’s own.

Equanimity is the response to both negative and positive events with calm neutrality. When one meditates on loving kindness and then compassion and then sympathetic joy in that order, upekkha or equanimity will naturally occur of its own accord.

The Buddha described these four states of positive emotions as the four sublime or boundless states or divine abodes (brahma-vihara). They are the fundamental functions in developing all the other types of wholesome acts, such as generosity, or honesty. For example, we can practice generosity with impartiality when we have overcome egocentric likes and dislikes, and cultivated metta.

Whereas, when we do not practice metta, we may be inclined to be generous only to those whom we like. The four sublime states are the basis for the performance of moral actions.

We should conduct wholesome deeds without expecting favours in

return. From this one can learn to forgive other people, even if they harm us. If we feel hatred towards those who harm us, as a rule, the only results we may get are increased blood pressure and stomach upset.

There is likely to be no positive

change in the behaviour of the person we hate. But when we develop and maintain metta, we can learn not to get upset at the behaviour of others, and therefore not develop anger towards them.

We will learn not to think of them in terms of “us versus them” or superior or as inferior: this is ego-centred conceit.

When we closely inspect all our thoughts and feelings with full mindfulness, we will get to know through our own experience that wholesome mind or kusala citta is totally different from unwholesome mind or akusala citta as we discussed in Chapter Three.

I wish to emphasize that the practice of metta is an arduous labour for us because we have the tendency to be strongly egocentric.

One has to be constantly vigilant about not succumbing to ego-centricism and its manifestations like strong greed, lust and anger. Traditionally, in the Buddhist texts, these negative emotions are depicted as enemies to developing metta. Commenting on the Vidduddhimagga, Buddharakkhita notes that there are two types of enemies: the near and the remote.

Greed, lust, worldly affection, sensuality-all these are said to be the ‘near- enemies’ because they are similar in tendencies. The lustful also sees the ‘good side’ or ‘beauty’, and therefore gets involved. Love should be protected from it lest the masquerades of these emotions deceive the meditator. Ill-will, anger, and hatred, being dissimilar emotions, therefore, constitute the “remote enemy”.

The remote enemy can easily be distinguished so one need not to be afraid of it, but one should overcome it by projecting a higher force, that of love. But one has to be wary of the near enemy because it creates self-deception, which is the worst thing that can happen to an individual.