In a time of physical isolation it is essential to know how to generate love from the inside. The Brahma Viharas, or The Four Immeasurable Minds, are the Buddha’s teachings on love. The four qualities of friendliness, compassion, resonant joy, and equanimity offer a time-tested path that anyone can follow to nurture the deepest love for all beings, including ourselves.

This week's practice:

Practice this or a related meditation on Karuna

Several times a day pause and ask yourself, "Is there suffering here? Can I care for it? Is there something to celebrate here? Can I rejoice?"

 

References

Metta, [kindness] the love that connects, is an antidote to all forms of aversion. It is not attachment. If it slides into sentimentality, karuna [compassion] brings the heart back into balance. 

Karuna, the love that responds, is an antidote to cruelty. It is not pity. If it slides into sorrow, mudita [appreciative joy] brings the heart back into balance. 

Mudita, the love that celebrates, is an antidote to envy. It is not competitive. If it slides into agitated excitement, upekkha [equanimity] brings the heart back into balance. 

Upekkha, the love that allows, is the antidote to partiality. It is not indifference. If it slides into disconnection, metta brings the heart back into balance.

~ Caroline Jones and Paul Burrows

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a covenant between equals. Compassion is always, at its most authentic, about a shift from the cramped world of self-preoccupation into a more expansive place of fellowship, of true kinship.

~ Father Greg Boyle

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to places where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.

~ Henri Nouwen

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