The Four Immeasurables

If these practices do not open our heart, we are sunk.  Mindfulness can become very ego centric if we are not careful.  So we attend to the wellbeing of the heart.

 

“We must develop kindfulness, not just mindfulness.”  ~ Jetsumna Tenzin Palmo

 

In Tibetan Buddhism, the Four Immeasurable, Apramana, are designed to assist in developing the positive emotions of our heart center.  These are known as the The Divine Abodes, Brahmaviharas, in the Theravada tradition.  If you study the yoga texts, you will recognize them from Sutra 1.33 in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

The Four Immeasurables are:

  1. Loving Kindness (maitri)
  2.  Compassion (karuna)
  3. Empathetic joy (mudita)
  4. Equanimity (upeksha)

Jetsumna spent an entire Saturday on June 4, 2016 taking us through these and sharing meditations that could help us nurture them.  I am going to break up the teachings over a handful or so of blogs to allow the them to be more digestible.