The Four Immeasurables.
sublime attitudes for living in harmony with others
Lord Buddha wanted us all to live in harmony with each other and to realise the enormous capacity we have, as human beings, to train our mind and really take control of how we use our speech and actions during this lifetime.
A beneficial and easy to remember starting point for how we conduct ourselves and interact with others is to learn and practice The Four Immeasurables:
- Metta — loving kindness
- Karuna — compassion
- Mudita — sympathetic joy
- Upekkha — equanimity
When we check ourselves, to make sure we are acting and speaking with these things in mind, we prevent ourselves from causing harm to others and experiencing feelings of guilt and regret.
They also serve, respectively, as antidotes to anger, cruelty, envy and discrimination. When we find these negative states of mind arising, instead of allowing the mind to proliferate and create all kinds of extra suffering, we instead set the intention to counter those thoughts and resulting feelings by applying the corresponding noble attitude:
- We counter our anger at another person by sending them loving kindness and by remembering that we are all the same in our human predicament.
