The Four Immeasurables
This essay is my notes from a short talk by Khenpo Tsultrim at the Tibetan Meditation Center. The subject was how to practice the four immeasurable qualities: loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. These are only notes and not a verbatim transcript of what he said.
Love is the wish that all beings be happy and compassion the wish that they be free from suffering. Sympathetic joy is the happiness you have when you see others are happy and equanimity is extending these emotions equally to all. Merely being free of preferences is not equanimity because then you would have equanimity when you are asleep. It must be joined with the other emotions.
Gotsangpa gave instructions on how to practice the unlimited qualities. First visualize yourself as Chenrezig and think of his qualities. This is loving kindness towards yourself. See your body, speech, and mind as Chenrezig. Then you will be free of disrespect for yourself. To meditate on loving kindness towards others. The world is built of the five elements. See the five elements as the five female buddhas and your body as the five male buddhas. If you visualize the world as the five female buddhas, you will not abuse the world environmentally. This is loving kindness towards the elements of the world. The earth holds and supports us. Water gives us drink and food. Fire provides the heat of digestion and body. Wind provides us with movement. Space allows the other four elements to function. So the five elements are very kind to us and thinking this we will have loving kindness to them.
In order to protect the environment, first we must work on our emotions. Catastrophes of weather are created by human greed. So we need to see our body as the deity and the world as a mandala. Even though there was no scientific knowledge of the environment in Tibet, the respect for nature protected it.
To meditate on loving kindness to sentient beings, first visualize all the buddhas, bodhisatvas, and gurus and their great kindness. Buddha abandoned wealth and power in order to find the truth for our sake. Not only buddhas, but scientists and engineers have worked very hard for our comfort and well being. All enlightened beings have achieved it through great effort and sacrifice. Thinking of this will give us a great appreciation for others and reduce our criticism and disrespect for others.
From this beginning expand the loving kindness to all sentient beings. Remember those who who have been kind to you. Your enemy in this life has been kind to you in a previous life, so you should not exclude anyone. Most love has an element of self-interest. Recollecting kindness of others cuts through this self interest. There is no limit to a mother's love. Since others have been our mothers in previous lives, our love for them should also be boundless. Those who have misfortune in this life may be experiencing bad karma they created in supporting us in previous lives. Many bad deeds are not done out of selfishness, but out of love for their family. So being born in the lower realms may be experiencing the result of having worked for our sake in previous lives. So from this you can develop a feeling of compassion.
Our love should not be limited to our planet, it should extend to other planets and galaxies. For this reason the text speaks of limitless sentient beings. It's not enough to wish that beings be happy, you must show them the way to be happy, which is by cultivating virtue. Whatever happiness we experience in this life comes from the virtue we have cultivated in this and previous lives.