On cultivating the immeasurable change of heart: The Buddhist brahma-vihāra formula
✍ Scribed by Barbara Stoler Miller
- Publisher
- Springer
- Year
- 1979
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 646 KB
- Volume
- 7
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-1791
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
ON CULTIVATING THE IMMEASURABLE CHANGE OF HEART: THE BUDDHIST BRAHMA-VIH.~RA FORMULA True to the Buddha's enlightened insight that the cure to universal suffering lies in the cultivation of means to break through the barriers that lock people into painful egotism, Buddhists have continually explored techniques for reducing the boundaries between oneself and others. The fourfold brahma-vihara formula is an ancient Buddhist technique for effecting a radical change of heart by cultivating extraordinary feelings of love, compassion, joy, and impartiality toward all living beings -oneself, friends, strangers, and enemies. The technique involves a magical transmutation of egotistical emotions into immeasurable virtues. The origin and articulation of the brahma-vihara formula within the texts of early Buddhism seems to provide important clues to the significance of the formula itself and related techniques of meditation.
The brahma-vih~a formula, whose subject is the monk (bhikkhu), appears frequently and uniformly in the P~ Canon:
So mett~t-sahagatena cetasa ekarh disam pharitvi vihaxati, tathi dutiyarh, tatha tatiyarh, tath~ catuttham. Iti uddham adho tiriya~h sabbadhi sabbattataya sabbavantam lokam metta-sahagatena cetasfi vipulena mahaggatena apparel, ena avere.na avyipajjhena pharitv',] viharati. Puna ca param kar~.a-sahagatena cetasi.., mudit~-sahagatena cetasa.., upekkhi-sahagatena cetasi .... Filling one quarter of the world with his heart in harmony with love, he transforms the world. In the same way he transforms the second, third, and fourth quarters of the world. Thus filling the world above, below, across, everywhere, in every case, in every way with his abundant, expansive, immeasurable, peaceful, uninjuring heart in harmony with love, he transforms the world. And again with his heart in harmony with compassion.., with his heart in harmony with joy.., with his heart in harmony with impartiality...
The formula is often followed by a coda that reads:
So ime catt~ro brahma-vihara bh~vetvi kiyassa bhedi param mara~.-sugatirh brahmalokam upapajjati. Evarh kho Do.ha htihmafio hrahmasamo hoti.
Having cultivated these four brahmanic changes of heart, after the dissolution of the body in death, he enters the happy way of the brahmanic world. Thus, Do .ha, does a brahman become equal to the brahmanic god.