The Art of Zen Living

When I first came to Buddhism, I wondered what an enlightened person would be like.  Maybe that guy from “Kung-Fu”, with all that way-out “wisdom” that sounded good, but made no sense?  “Together, we will be as strong as a mule with TWO (he holds up 4 fingers) sacks of grain!”  As it turns out, not so much.  So how do you tell someone that is enlightened?  I think perhaps a good measure would be the four immeasurables.

The four immeasureables are also know as the Brahma-vihara, which translates as “The abodes of the Gods”, and they are also sometimes known as “The Four Divine States of Dwelling” or “The Four Perfect Virtues”.  No matter what you call them, they are universally appreciated.

Let’s take a step back and go over my definitions for a moment.  My understanding of Buddhism is that it is a way to end our suffering.  Whether by design or coincidentally, in achieving that, we also become the best human being we can possibly be.  The Buddha told us that we are, in fact, already perfect.  We have all the love, compassion, generosity and wisdom we’ll ever need.  Our job is to strip away the greed, hate and delusion that keeps our perfection from shining through.  So if the goal is to be the best person I can be, how can I measure that?

The four immesurables are metta, karuna, mudita and upekkha.  In English, in the same order, Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity.  Wow.  That’s a really short list of qualities for a perfect human being, isn’t it?  I haven’t met many people that demonstrate these qualities consistently.  I know I don’t.  I try.  I’ll improve over time.  But now I have a list of qualities to work with, to measure my thoughts and actions with.  Most cool.

I’ve included the original Pali words here because the translations are not exact, and because of that we may talk about several different ways of looking at these traits.

So this week, my goal is to write a little bit about each of the 4 immeasureables.  I think it will make a nice “welcome back” series, and it will help me to focus on where I am personally with each of them.