Brahmavihara

The brahmavihārās (sublime attitudes, lit. "abodes of brahma") are a series of four Buddhist virtues and the meditation practices made to cultivate them. They are also known as the four immeasurables (Sanskrit: apramāṇa, Pāli: appamaññā) or four infinite minds (Chinese: 四無量心).[1][2] The Brahma-viharas are:

  1. loving-kindness or benevolence (maitrī/metta)
  2. compassion (karuna)
  3. empathetic joy (mudita)
  4. equanimity (upekṣā/upekkha)
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Translations of
Brahmavihāra
Englishfour divine abodes
Sanskritचत्वारि ब्रह्मविहाराः
(catvāri brahmavihārāḥ)
Palicattāri brahmavihārā
Burmeseဗြဟ္မဝိဟာရတရားလေးပါး
Khmerព្រហ្មវិហារធម៌
(Prummavihearathor)
Korean사무량심
Tibetanཚངས་པའི་གནས་བཞི་
(tshangs pa'i gnas bzhi)
Thaiพรหมวิหาร
(RTGS: phrom wihan)
VietnameseTứ Vô Lượng Tâm
Glossary of Buddhism

According to the Metta Sutta, cultivation of the four immeasurables has the power to cause the practitioner to be reborn into a "Brahma realm" (Pāli: Brahmaloka).[3]

Etymology and translations
  • Pāli: cattāri brahmavihārā
  • Sanskrit: चत्वारो ब्रह्मविहाराः (IAST: catvāro brahmavihārāḥ)
  • Tibetan: ཚད་མེད་བཞི། | (Wylie: tshad med bzhi)

Brahmavihāra may be parsed as "Brahma" and "vihāra", which is often rendered into English as "sublime" or "divine abodes".[4]

Apramāṇa, usually translated as "the immeasurables," means "boundlessness, infinitude, a state that is illimitable".[5] When developed to a high degree in meditation, these attitudes are said to make the mind "immeasurable" and like the mind of the loving Brahma (gods).[6]

Other translations:

  • English: four divine abodes, four divine emotions, four sublime attitudes, four divine dwellings.[7]
  • East Asia: (traditional Chinese: 四無量心; ; pinyin: Sì wúliàng xīn; Korean: 사무량심; Vietnamese: Tứ Vô Lượng Tâm; "immeasurable states of mind, from apramāṇa-citta"), (traditional Chinese: 四等(心); ; pinyin: sì děng; "four equalities/universals"), (traditional Chinese: 四梵行; ; pinyin: sì fàn xíng; "noble Brahma-acts/characteristics").[8]
  • Tibetan: ཚངས་པའི་གནས་བཞི་, Wylie: . tshangs pa'i gnas bzhi (four Brahmavihara) or Tibetan: ཚད་མེད་བཞི, Wylie: tshad med bzhi (four immeasurables).

The Brahma-vihara

The four Brahma-vihara are:

  1. Loving-kindness (Pāli: mettā, Sanskrit: maitrī) is active good will towards all;[9][10]
  2. Compassion (Pāli and Sanskrit: karuṇā) results from metta, it is identifying the suffering of others as one's own;[9][10]
  3. Empathetic joy (Pāli and Sanskrit: muditā): is the feeling of joy because others are happy, even if one did not contribute to it, it is a form of sympathetic joy;[9]
  4. Equanimity (Pāli: upekkhā, Sanskrit: upekṣā): is even-mindedness and serenity, treating everyone impartially.[9][10]

Early Buddhism

The Brahma-vihara are a pre-Buddhist concept, to which the Buddhist tradition gave its own interpretation.[11][12] The Digha Nikaya asserts the Buddha to be calling the Brahmavihara as "that practice", and he then contrasts it with "my practice" as follows:[11]

...that practice [namely, the mere cultivation of love and so forth, according to the fourfold instructions] is conducive not to turning away, nor to dispassion, nor to quieting, nor to cessation, nor to direct knowledge, nor to enlightenment, nor to nirvana, but only to rebirth in the world of Brahma.

...my practice is conducive to complete turning away, dispassion, cessation, quieting, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and nirvana – specifically the eightfold noble path (...)

— The Buddha, Digha Nikaya II.251, Translated by Harvey B. Aronson[11]

According to Richard Gombrich, an indologist and scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli, the Buddhist usage of the brahma-vihāra originally referred to an awakened state of mind, and a concrete attitude towards other beings which was equal to "living with Brahman" here and now. The later tradition took those descriptions too literally, linking them to cosmology and understanding them as "living with Brahman" by rebirth in the Brahma-world.[13] According to Gombrich, "the Buddha taught that kindness - what Christians tend to call love - was a way to salvation.[14]

In the Tevijja Sutta, The Threefold Knowledge of the Digha Nikaya set of scriptures, Buddha Shākyamuni was asked the way to fellowship/companionship/communion with Brahma. He replied that he personally knows the world of Brahma and the way to it, and explains the meditative method for reaching it by using an analogy of the resonance of the conch shell of the aṣṭamaṅgala:

A monk suffuses the world in the four directions with a mind of benevolence, then above, and below, and all around – the whole world from all sides, completely, with a benevolent, all-embracing, great, boundless, peaceful and friendly mind … Just as a powerful conch-blower makes himself heard with no great effort in all four [cardinal] directions, so too is there no limit to the unfolding of [this] heart-liberating benevolence. This is a way to communion with Brahma.[15]

The Buddha then said that the monk must follow this up with an equal suffusion of the entire world with mental projections of compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (regarding all beings with an eye of equality).

In the two Metta Suttas of the Aṅguttara Nikāya,[16] the Buddha states that those who practice radiating the four immeasurables in this life and die "without losing it" are destined for rebirth in a heavenly realm in their next life. In addition, if such a person is a Buddhist disciple (Pāli: sāvaka) and thus realizes the three characteristics of the five aggregates, then after his heavenly life, this disciple will reach nibbāna. Even if one is not a disciple, one will still attain the heavenly life, after which, however depending on what his past deeds may have been, one may be reborn in a hell realm, or as an animal or hungry ghost.[17]

In another sutta in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, the laywoman Sāmāvatī is mentioned as an example of someone who excels at loving-kindness.[18] In the Buddhist tradition she is often referred to as such, often citing an account that an arrow shot at her was warded off through her spiritual power.[19]

Visuddhimagga

The four immeasurables are explained in The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), written in the fifth century CE by the scholar and commentator Buddhaghoṣa. They are often practiced by taking each of the immeasurables in turn and applying it to oneself (a practice taught by many contemporary teachers and monastics that was established after the Pali Suttas were completed), and then to others nearby, and so on to everybody in the world, and to everybody in all universes.[20]

A Cavern of Treasures (mDzod-phug)

A Cavern of Treasures (Tibetan: མཛོད་ཕུག, Wylie: mdzod phug ) is a Bonpo terma uncovered by Shenchen Luga (Tibetan: གཤེན་ཆེན་ཀླུ་དགའ, Wylie: gshen-chen klu-dga' ) in the early eleventh century. A segment of it enshrines a Bonpo evocation of the four immeasurables.[21] Martin (n.d.: p. 21) identifies the importance of this scripture for studies of the Zhang-Zhung language.[22]

Origins

Prior to the advent of the Buddha, according to Martin Wiltshire, the pre-Buddhist traditions of Brahma-loka, meditation and these four virtues are evidenced in both early Buddhist and non-Buddhist literature.[23] The early Buddhist texts assert that pre-Buddha ancient Indian sages who taught these virtues were earlier incarnations of the Buddha.[23] Post-Buddha, these same virtues are found in the Hindu texts such as verse 1.33 of the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali.[24]

Three of the four immeasurables, namely Maitri, Karuna and Upeksha, are found in the later Upanishads of Hinduism, while all four are found with slight variations – such as pramoda instead of mudita – in Jainism literature, states Wiltshire.[25] The ancient Indian Paccekabuddhas mentioned in the early Buddhist Suttas – those who attained nibbāna before the Buddha – mention all "four immeasurables."[23]

According to British scholar of Buddhism Peter Harvey, the Buddhist scriptures acknowledge that the four Brahmavihara meditation practices "did not originate within the Buddhist tradition".[12] The Buddha never claimed that the "four immeasurables" were his unique ideas, in a manner similar to "cessation, quieting, nirvana".[11]

A shift in Vedic ideas, from rituals to virtues, is particularly discernible in the early Upanishadic thought, and it is unclear as to what extent and how early Upanishadic traditions of Hinduism and Sramanic traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism influenced each other on ideas such as "four immeasurables", meditation and Brahmavihara.[23]

In an authoritative Jain scripture, the Tattvartha Sutra (Chapter 7, sutra 11), there is a mention of four right sentiments: Maitri, pramoda, karunya, madhyastha:

Benevolence towards all living beings, joy at the sight of the virtuous, compassion and sympathy for the afflicted, and tolerance towards the insolent and ill-behaved.

See also

References
  1. Jon Wetlesen, Did Santideva Destroy the Bodhisattva Path? Jnl Buddhist Ethics, Vol. 9, 2002 Archived 2007-02-28 at the Wayback Machine (accessed March 2010)
  2. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. Abhidhammattha Sangaha: A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma. BPS Pariyatti Editions, 2000, p. 89.
  3. AN 4.125, Metta Sutta. See note 2 on the different kinds of Brahmas mentioned.
  4. Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
  5. Rhys Davids & Stede, 1921-25, Pali-English Dictionary, Pali Text Society.
  6. Peter Harvey, "An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics." Cambridge University Press, 2000, page 104.
  7. Bodhi 2012, p. 1618.
  8. W.E. Soothill and Lewis Hodous, 1937, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms.
  9. Merv Fowler (1999). Buddhism: Beliefs and Practices. Sussex Academic Press. pp. 60–62. ISBN 978-1-898723-66-0.
  10. Peter Harvey (2012). An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices. Cambridge University Press. pp. 154, 326. ISBN 978-1-139-85126-8.
  11. Harvey B. Aronson (1980). Love and Sympathy in Theravāda Buddhism. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 71. ISBN 978-81-208-1403-5.
  12. Peter Harvey (2001). Buddhism. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 247. ISBN 978-1-4411-4726-4.
  13. Gombrich 1997, p. 84-85.
  14. Gombrich 1997, p. 62.
  15. Majjhimanikaya, tr. by Kurt Schmidt, Kristkeitz, Berlin, 1978, p.261, tr. by Tony Page.
  16. AN 4.125, AN 4.126
  17. AN 4.125: Metta Sutta: Loving-kindness, Ñanamoli's translation (accessed March 2010)
  18. Bodhi 2012, p. 112.
  19. "Sāmāvatī". Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names. 2. Wilts: Pali Text Society. 1938.
  20. Mishra, N. K. Singh and A. P. (2010-01-01). Global Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophy. Global Vision Publishing House. ISBN 978-81-8220-294-8.
  21. Berzin, Alexander (2005). The Four Immeasurable Attitudes in Hinayana, Mahayana, and Bon. Study Buddhism. (accessed: June 6, 2016)
  22. "For students of Tibetan culture in general, the mDzod phug is one of the most intriguing of all Bon scriptures, since it is the only lengthy bilingual work in Zhang-zhung and Tibetan. (Some of the shorter but still significant sources for Zhang-zhung are signalled in Orofino 1990.)" Martin, Dan (n.d.). Comparing Treasuries: Mental states and other mdzod phug lists and passages with parallels in Abhidharma works of Vasubandhu and Asanga, or in Prajnaparamita Sutras: A progress report. University of Jerusalem. Archived 2011-06-28 at the Wayback Machine (accessed: Monday March 1, 2010)
  23. Martin G. Wiltshire (1990). Ascetic Figures Before and in Early Buddhism: The Emergence of Gautama as the Buddha. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 248–264. ISBN 978-3-11-009896-9.
  24. Quote: मैत्री करुणा मुदितोपेक्षाणां सुखदुःखपुण्यापुण्यविषयाणां भावनातश्चित्तप्रसादनम् ॥ ३३॥ - Yogasutra 1.33; Source, SanskritDocuments.Org
  25. Martin G. Wiltshire (1990). Ascetic Figures Before and in Early Buddhism: The Emergence of Gautama as the Buddha. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 241–242. ISBN 978-3-11-009896-9.

Sources
  • Bodhi, Bhikkhu (2012), The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya, Boston: Wisdom Publications, ISBN 978-1-61429-040-7
  • Gombrich, Richard F. (1997), How Buddhism Began, Munshiram Manoharlal

See also

Further reading
  • Buddhas Reden (Majjhimanikaya), Kristkreitz, Berlin, 1978, tr. by Kurt Schmidt
  • Yamamoto, Kosho (tr.) & Page, Tony (revision) (2000). The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra. London, UK: Nirvana Publications.
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