This was the second talk I gave on the Order Convention of 2003. It’s about the theme of positive emotion in particular about the Brahma Viharas. The first section is reproduced here The complete talk is quite long so I’ve not included the whole text here but instead made it available to download as a document file. You can find that document file at the end of this extract.
I thought that writing this talk would be quite straightforward. I’ve talked about the brahma viharas so often, and when I was meditating one morning a title I really liked leapt into my mind: the Alchemy of Happiness. I thought Happiness, ’sukha’,the precursor to Insight - positive emotion - brahma viharas - that’s it! And ‘alchemy’ conjures up a bit of mystery: change, transformation, purification, the search for truth. Great! I’ve got it!
But actually writing the talk has been very different. I struggled for two months to find a structure. I could just have redone one of my old talks, but bearing in mind that on this convention we’re trying to investigate the whole system of meditation and how well it may or may not work, I knew I had to put the brahma viharas into that context, and that’s where it all refused to come together. Either everything seemed completely obvious - what could I possibly say to you that you wouldn’t know already? - or nothing seemed at all obvious and it all floated in and out of focus, a bit like my eyesight these days.
Last weekend I was on the phone to a friend of mine and I told her that I was struggling to make this talk come together, so she gave me a bit of advice. She said: `Well Mum, stop trying to make it into a talk. Just tell them what you’ve been thinking about. Maybe it will be a series of wee talks. Just stop trying to do it. If you haven’t done it in two months you’re not going to do it now, are you? Those sounded like words of wisdom, and I decided to do it that way and leave it to you to make sense of it. So this is not the definitive talk about the alchemy of happiness, and I don’t think it has any system at all. It isn’t joined up; it’s like bits of a jigsaw puzzle which you may or may not be able to piece together to glimpse some kind of picture.
The question is, how do the brahma vihara practices support the other three aspects of this system of meditation? In my introductory talk I mentioned that the model I like for the system of meditation pictures it as four mutually conditioning elements, each propped against the others like sheaves of corn, so that no one practice is pre-eminent and they only work if all of them are there. I want to consider positive emotion in that way too. I also like to think of the brahma vihara practices as helping us to create a mandala of happiness, for ourselves but not only for ourselves. And then, when I was thinking about what to say, the mandala of happiness changed to a crucible of happiness - which in a sense is about going beyond happiness - and that’s the image that began to interest me most. Perhaps the mandala of happiness connects more with the supporting factor of mindfulness, in which case the crucible of happiness would probably link more with the element of spiritual death and spiritual rebirth.
Last night when I was lying in bed not sleeping very well I thought that maybe the trouble I’ve been having with this talk is that the title is bigger than I thought. To begin with I was just thinking Happiness = brahma viharas but since then I’ve come to think that it’s more that the brahma viharas are doorways into happiness. Happiness comes from practising them, but it’s much more than that; it has to do with stillness and stability and reliability, qualities that are themselves the source of the brahma viharas. So there seems to be a mutual conditioning going on here.
Let’s have a look at what the Buddha had to say about the brahma viharas. This is from the end of the Kalama Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya:
“One who is a noble disciple, devoid of greed, devoid of ill will, undeluded, alert and resolute, keeps pervading the first direction, the east, as well as the second, the third, and the fourth, with an awareness imbued with goodwill. Thus he keeps pervading above, below, and all around, everywhere and in every respect, the all-encompassing cosmos, with an awareness imbued with goodwill, abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility and free from ill will.”
And then the Buddha goes on to say exactly the same about pervading all directions with an awareness imbued with compassion, with gladness, and with equanimity - all of them everywhere and in every respect, the all-encompassing cosmos, with an awareness that’s abundant, expansive and immeasurable. So that is the outcome of practising the brahma viharas. It’s quite something, isn’t it? It tells us how the world, the cosmos, would benefit if I, if you, if we, were really able to embody the brahma viharas and communicate and act from them. The whole world would benefit, not just the part we like and the people we prefer. It’s one of the basic qualities of the brahma viharas that they are inclusive, based on the wisdom of sameness, seeing the potential in every human being. Yes, you can also see differences and different courses to be taken, but it’s inclusive; no-one is missed out.
Another thing that strikes me about the set of four practices is that they are complete. Whatever feeling, whatever vedana arises, however pleasant or unpleasant, if we are practising the brahma viharas, the appropriate one moves in and blocks off the potential we have for craving and aversion. So whatever vedana arises, if we practise these four meditations and put some effort into them, we’re going to be able to respond positively.
If you are interested in the rest of the talk, you can find it all here - then print it out or save yourself a copy