The Four Immeasurable Qualities [Audio]

[ai_playlist id=”201162″]

The Four Immeasurable Qualities, by Ayya Anandabodhi:

So, this morning’s reflection of death, contemplation of death. Probably not something you hear that often, unless you work in the hospital or ___, but it’s a very important, and in a way, precious reflection. And the Buddha often speaks about necessarily, refers to this ___, in this teaching, and it all says, you haven’t ___ that death is inevitable, that we can’t take with us there the treasures, the things that we have, or the, or even the health, or the physical strength, or the stages of the wealth that we have, we can’t take any of that with us.

So, ___ death or calm, so do good. ___ use your life to do good to generate merit, be generous. There’s this saying that there’s really nothing more important, but the only that’s more important to generate merit is to fully liberate the heart, and until we’re very close to that, the generation of merit or ___ is very important support, so this comes through keeping there the five (5) precepts for example. So, in keeping the precepts, we become a source of safety to ourselves or to all beings, and through generosity, there is strength. Generosity. And finding opportunity to do good in the world.

And sometimes, we come from backgrounds were it isn’t the norm to live like that. And so we come to the Dharma, because of there, having gone down the wrong road a number of times and ___ in trouble, or miserable, or confused, and so we seek another way, and we wish, we shown another way, but it’s still hard to change direction.

It is very important in a time like this where we have a supportive environment and there’s nothing too challenging, apart from maybe early mornings, a little bit of sleep deprivation there. And then a little hungry in the evening. But other than that, nothing really big. On the external level. So, it’s very important that in a time like this to generate to like, actively, for effort, into generating the wholesome qualities of heart.

So, we touched a little bit the practice of loving kindness. And the Buddha in the early teachings you know, you find teachings on loving kindness, or ___, loving friendliness on their own so that the ___ this is a ___ quality of its own. And then later on, we kind of put together these four qualities, which we’ll come up again with the description of the teachings. The quality of loving kindness. The quality of compassion. The quality of the ___ deeper. We really don’t have an English for it, which why I find it interesting. It’s something like altruistic joy, appreciation of the joys of others, equanimity, and evenness.

So, these are four (4) qualities of love, four heart qualities. And meta is like, it’s like sharing the love in a very equal way with all beings. Sharing that sense of friendliness is, you know, it’s a sense of meta here, when there’s a meta in another heart, you want to work on sharing that to others. And there’s, it has a kind of evenness, it’s like a, you know, it’s ___ to everybody. ___ equally, and the quality of ___ or compassion. This is particularly towards being ___ suffering. So, it’s not the same as pity. Oh, there’s poor people. There’s poor… there’s… it’s not patronizing or looking down on. In the way that we most, strongly feel compassion, is the suffering of another, ourselves… When we see something else, suffering, we can empathize. We know how that is. It’s a kind of feeling with, or trembling with the suffering of another.

So, in there, in the meditation practices, usually called ___, but also called ___, which is to tremble with the suffering of another. So, there’s ___ who in a situation that’s less fortunate that we are in this moment. And then there’s ___, which is the sense of joy and appreciation, celebration, of the good fortune of others, even if we don’t have that good fortune ourselves. So, maybe, you’re in competition with someone else, and someone else wins. And we’re like, yeah, ___. Oh, I think culturally that’s really foreign, it’s like in America, it’s like competitive culture, you’ve got to be number one. So, that’s very lonely setup. You got how many people live in America? Then, there’s anyone winner. So, with ___, I feel like it’s a great thing, because somebody else wins, they felt good, and then he get to felt good too about them winning or getting their price. It’s like you don’t have to, it feels great to enjoy the good fortune of other.

And also, I also ___ nature and just look at the beauty of nature. For the beauty, for the incredible beautiful unfolding of the buds and spring, come help and feel joy. You want to see that? And then, ___ or equanimity. And, ___, the way equanimity doesn’t really bring out the sense of love. It seems a little bit cold, unresponsive, but the ___ is, in some ways, it’s the highest form of love. So, meta is like sending it out there, you know, joy, and ___ beings, and ___, the compassion for the inevitable suffering that we all experience both within ourselves and what we observe in the world. And ___ is like the celebration, and then ___ is one of those come-together, and there’s kind of a larger view of the human condition, or the sentient condition where you recognize that all beings need to experience love, every baby, every child, needs, any animals, and it’s the care and love of its parents, or whoever substitute for parents, it doesn’t have to be the biological parents. And yet, all beings die, and also, and then when you see the inevitable sufferings. When I went to India, a number of years ago, I ___, and I see a lot of suffering, it’s like everything’s just out there on the street.

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