“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”
― Brad Meltzer
The focus this month is on cultivating compassion. For ourselves. For our loved ones. For those we do not know. For those we find difficult. And for all sentient beings.
If you missed the last blog post, I invite you to check it out. The post, From Self-Medicating To Self-Compassion: How Fostering An Inner Nurturer Helps Us Heal, details how and why we might self-medicate, explores ways to increase inner kindness toward ourselves and explains how to develop, foster and strengthen our own inner nurturer. The supporting guided meditation, Listening To Your Inner Coach, is designed to help you recall a moment when you needed support and comfort, and then visualize how you can offer support to yourself—much like a coach or a mentor would. And, playing on the compassionate, encouraging coach theme, for those of you who also love Ted Lasso, there’s a mention of how we can become our own inner Coach Lasso. I highly recommend watching this show to get a strong dose of what kindness in action can do.
This post is designed to piggyback on the last and extend that same kind-heartedness toward oneself that I explored in the last post to others through using a traditional Buddhist meditation that was developed to help us learn to apply warm-heartedness as often as we can. We begin this lovingkindness meditation (or metta) by feeling compassion for ourselves, then extend it to a benefactor that we know cares about us, then—taking that same energy—extend it to a good friend and then to a neutral other (someone we’ve met or who performs a task for us, as a way to continue practicing with the energy of empathy and kindness). And finally, we extend compassion to someone we find difficult, which I’ll detail in the final blog post this month. This meditation practice is centuries old, can be quite powerful, and invites us to extend a friendly attitude to all sentient beings.
Feeling into Compassion
To help you get into a felt-state of compassion and empathy, before reading any further, I encourage you to watch a short video (it’s less than five minutes) from the Cleveland Clinic called Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care. As we move into extending loving kindness showing compassion for others, this video, which is beautifully done and showcases the range of emotions that people experience in a hospital—from sorrow and sadness to hope and joy to uncertainty, fear and grief—helps us relate with people also having a complex and oftentimes challenging human experience.
This short video may also help you really feel into the guided metta meditation on lovingkindness, Lovingkindness Meditation For Benefactor, Self, Familiar Stranger, that is designed to support this post and help each of us broaden our capacity for compassion for others.
When we are in a state of feeling and showing compassion for others, both we and those we are extending kindness to benefit.
The Cultivation of Metta & The Four Jewels of the Heart
The cultivation of metta, which is a Pali word—Pail is the language of ancient India that the Buddha used— translates to friendliness or loving-kindness, and is part of what is known as the Four Jewels of the Heart, also referred to as the Four Immeasurables, the Four Brahmavihatas and the Four Virtues of the Heart. If you’re unfamiliar, these jewels (or virtues) are lovingkindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity.
The four jewels (or virtues or mindstates) help us to develop a kind-heartedness and bring this positive energy to all beings. The Buddha was also known to call these the Divine Abodes, meaning that we want to encourage these qualities within ourselves—within our internal home. The more we are able to greet the world from these mindstates, the more we are ‘dwelling in this divine abode’ (this is also language from the Buddha, and I love the phrase), the more we can live our lives from an inner state of balanced emotions and joy—showing compassion for others and love for all beings.
Understanding The Far Enemies & Near Enemies Of The Four Virtues of the Heart
The four virtues also have what are called “far enemies” and “near enemies” in Buddhism, which are what we hope to avoid by practicing lovingkindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity. The far enemies can be seen as almost an opposite of what we are trying to cultivate when practicing the jewels and are often easy to recognize. The far enemy of loving kindness is hatred/ill will. The far enemy of compassion is cruelty. The far enemy of empathetic (or sympathetic ) joy is jealousy. And, the far enemy of equanimity is resentment and envy.
The near enemies of the jewels can be harder to recognize as they’re often less dramatic and less obvious. In Buddhist psychology, a near enemy is a mental state that might appear to be a positive emotion, but in truth undermines it. Unlike a far enemy, which is usually easy to spot, a near enemy may go undetected and cause damage to the wholesome state, thoughts and behaviors that we’re working to cultivate.
The near enemies of lovingkindness are sentimentality, clinginess and conditional love. Feeling sentimental about someone, feeling attached to another or employing conditional love is not the same as wishing someone well just for the sake of wishing (and truly wanting) them to be well. However, sentimentality, in particular, may give us a false sense of warmth, causing us to believe that we are practicing loving kindness when sentimentality actually separates us, creates an attachment and, within it, we often lose sight of the wholeness of the other being. Alternatively, the goal of lovingkindness is to extend love, kindness and affection because we truly love—without any sort of expectation that we might receive anything from the other person in return.
The near enemy of compassion is pity. When we feel pity for another, instead of feeling the openness of compassion, the recipient of our pity becomes separate from us, and people can absolutely feel the difference between compassion and pity on the receiving end. Pity puts others in a lesser-than position and we see them as different from us, whereas true compassion joins us with another. Showing compassion for others helps both us and others in almost any circumstance.
The near enemy of empathetic joy is hypocrisy—essentially a feigned appreciation and joy for someone who is experiencing good fortune. The problem here is actually recognizing and honestly admitting to faking it. Whereas the far enemy, jealousy (or envy), is far easier to spot, when experiencing hypocrisy, we might secretly (or not consciously) be passing judgment on another and/or feeling that they are not worthy of this good fortune. When we feel jealous or competitive with another, the Buddha instructed us to cultivate sympathetic joy—to truly celebrate another rather than just feeling dismal—as the antidote.
The near enemy of equanimity is indifference, which is far less obvious and far less dramatic than the far enemy of hatred. An indifferent mindstate may have you believe that you are practicing equality, but indifference feels different and has a very different effect. Not caring, which is the attitude of indifference, is contrary to caring deeply, equally and inclusively.
Bring Awareness of the Four Jewels of the Heart & Their Enemies into Meditation and Your Life
The more you practice cultivating the virtues of loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, the more you can undo their near and far enemies, experiencing more connection with others and more lightness within your heart.
As mentioned earlier in this post, the accompanying meditation, Lovingkindness Meditation For Benefactor, Self, Familiar Stranger, is designed to help increase your ability for feeling, extending and showing compassion for others. A version of the traditional Buddhist metta meditation, this guided meditation will help you feel into your own heart, infusing lovingkindness into your heart space and then extending that love and kindness out to others.
I’ll sign off now with loving kindness words that you may choose to bring into your metta meditation.
May you be filled with loving kindness.
May you be well.
May you be free of suffering.
May you be happy.
Thank you for your practice.
Loving and kind blessings to all,
Karen