What is the best response to our share of the joy and pain of the world? Are we tossed by the winds, inclining to exuberance when things go our way or to depression when they don’t? What evokes appropriate and balanced response?
Everyone’s life is, by nature, continually vulnerable to pain. Remembering this is the gateway to mudita (often translated as appreciative joy or joy for the joy of others), the third of the four Brahmaviharas (Boundless or Supreme States).
Compassion (Pali: karuna), the second of the four Brahmaviharas (Divine or Supreme states), is the spontaneous response of the heart of metta to suffering it encounters. Etymologically, “com” is “with” and “passion” is “suffering.” We are WITH the suffering, not above it with pity or rejecting it in fear. Compassionate response is based on the dignity, integrity and well being we know belongs to every creature, including ourselves, our feeling of mutual resonance and natural connectedness in the face of the universal experience of loss and pain.
What do we usually consider love to be? We conventionally "love" based on desire and attachment—unreliable because it is fundamentally about grasping—one of the roots of suffering. This "love" is conditioned on what returns to us. Love with attachment or mixed with expectation, by definition, contains unskillful mind states. At first, the attraction and grasping can feel exciting, which veils the underlying suffering.
Maya Angelou said, “The ache for home lives in all of us—the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” Loving-kindness (metta), Compassion (karuna), Sympathetic Joy (mudita), Equanimity (upekkha). In Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, these four are known as Brahmaviharas—Divine (Brahma) abodes (vihara) or more commonly, high or sublime states of mind/heart—safe home.
The fourth hindrance of restlessness and worry, encountered in meditation and in daily life, is nervous unsettled physical energy, characterized by quickly changing thoughts, anxiety, agitation and worry in the mind, and difficulty sitting still.
Sleepiness, a/k/a sloth and torpor (the phrase admirably describes the state)—is the third of the five hindrances or difficult energies that arise in practice. Training the mind to work with them in meditation is a template for arousing energy for quotidian tasks.
Aversion, the opposite of desire, is the second hindrance encountered in meditation as well as daily life. Anger, fear, boredom and judgment are facets of aversion. Anger is outflowing, expressive, energized; and fear is held in, frozen, imploding—both striking-out against what is happening, wanting to declare it not-to-be-so, separating from it, pushing it away.
The first hindrance is desire for sense pleasure—pleasant sounds, sights, tastes, smells and bodily sensations. Desire in itself is not wrong or a problem—it is the concomitant mentality in which we believe that if we can string together enough pleasant experiences—the right job, relationship, personality, looks, amount of money, etc., we will have a permanently happy life without cease—the “if only...” mentality.
Let us reflect on what is known as the Five Hindrances in the Teachings. These hindrances are common experiences that arise in meditation: desire (attachment), aversion (anger, fear), sleepiness (sloth and torpor), restlessness (agitation) and doubt. Meditation mirrors our actual lives—as they arise in meditation, they also arise in daily life. Their arising is not a problem. It is only a problem when we are overwhelmed, consumed, or define ourselves by them, when we tangle with them rather than working skillfully.
