Lovingkindness (Four Immeasurables)
Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova
Lovingkindness, maitri, is the wish for happiness for ourselves and others, and also the first of the Four Immeasurables. In this talk, Zuisei explores what it means to embody lovingkindness in a world that can often be harsh, isolating, and far from kind.
We all have within us the capacity to be kind and loving, for these qualities are actually intrinsic to us. But we must cultivate and work to remember these qualities that are our very nature. This is the paradox pf spiritual practice: we are working hard to become what we’ve always been.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Lovingkindness (Four Immeasurables)
About a month ago, I gave a talk about the four immeasurables and the characteristics that are their foundation, their ground: the four immeasurables of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. As I was speaking about this, I was quoting from a talk by Candra Rinpoche. In it, she says that from a Vajrayana perspective, there are two approaches to practicing the four immeasurables, cultivating them.
The first is for the sake of living beings, which really means that we practice them in order to attain enlightenment, with the belief that they are good, that they are worthy practices, but with the understanding that they will ultimately lead to realization. In the Visuddhimagga, the Path of Purification, Buddhaghosa, a fifth-century Theravadan monk and scholar, explains how practicing the four immeasurables leads to the cultivation of the four jhānas, the deep states of meditation. In other words, you practice them as preparation.
The second approach is to cultivate them just because. You do so because they are intrinsically who you are as a human being. This, she says, is the ultimate, only authentic approach. The confidence that allows you to bravely practice these four immeasurables is that absolute approach.
But of course, whether you practice them for the sake of living beings, for yourself, or just because you understand that they are who you are, we're practicing them—we're embodying them—and that's the whole poem. The different quorumsays: “With perfect and unyielding faith, with steadfastness, respect, and courtesy, with modesty and conscientiousness, I will work calmly for the happiness of others.” I understand this perfect faith as the unshakable knowledge that these qualities, which are also the embodiment of nature, are who we are as human beings. That's why we can calmly wait and work for the happiness of others.
I've reflected many times that Buddhism doesn't necessarily see the world through rose-colored glasses. If it is true that we are by nature loving, kind, and wise, why does the world look the way it does? “All evil karma ever committed by me since beginningless time, on account of my grief, anger, and ignorance, born of my body, mouth, and thought, I now atone for it all.” When something goes awry—when a white policewoman shoots an innocent Black man just because—that is not because these four immeasurables are not who we are, but because we become separated from that knowledge. It's because of a misapprehension of reality, because of losing our direction on the path to the pursuit of happiness: the memorial ignorance of delusion. That separation, that journey, that search for a true home, returning to our true home, is what we call the path.
The Discipline of True Practice
Perfect practice doesn't just happen. It takes study, and more study. Yet we are so used to, and increasingly so, getting things quickly, conveniently, and cheaply. I read an article in the New York Times about Obosanbin, a new service by Amazon Japan, which essentially provides a priest on demand. For $300, you can order a priest to come to your home and conduct a service, or perform a funeral. There is some controversy around it, but many support it because it's accessible, easy, and cheap. Perhaps we could do the same thing—people don't come to retreats; they could just do a rent-a-priest, so to speak.
“With perfect and unyielding faith, with steadfastness, respect, and courtesy, with modesty and conscientiousness, I will work calmly for the happiness of others.” I like this phrasing, and though I don't know the original, it captures the essence: respect and courtesy, with modesty and conscientiousness, with great care for the beings whose happiness I am working for, calmly working for them.
The first of the four immeasurables is loving-kindness, mettā in Pāli, maitrī in Sanskrit. It is the wishing of happiness for ourselves and for others. Interestingly, when she describes it, Candra Rinpoche says that there isn't anything to point to and say, “Well, that's not my kind of thing.” It is merely the absence of emotions such as greed, anger, impatience, or stubbornness, which arise out of the exclusivity of the self. From the perspective of the self, it makes perfect sense to be otherwise.
I reflect on the many moments in which kindness hasn't been my first impulse—or the second or third—and I can always trace it back to the presence of fear: fear that this will go away—my life, my position, my security, my health. I may lose all of this to environmental collapse, to war, illness, violence, or death. I may lose it to you, taking from me what I want or need. This fear, when we're in the midst of it, is very real, compelling, and drives our actions.
Master Dōgen says in the Mountains and Rivers Sutra: “Water is not earth, water, fire, wind, space, or consciousness. It is not blue, yellow, red, white, or black. It is not form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or idea. Nevertheless, the water of earth, water, fire, wind, space, and the rest is spontaneously appearing. This being the case, it becomes difficult to explain by what and of what this present land and palace are made. To say that they rest on the wheel of space and the wheel of wind is true neither for oneself nor for others. It is just speculating on the basis of little understanding and is only said out of fear that without such a resting place, things would not abide.”
Water is an apt image for loving-kindness: it can be a tsunami, a glacier, or shifting clouds.
Whenever I read the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, I hear Taira's voice in my ear, reading at his rhythm, his intonation, as in the recording of Genjō Kōan online. He loved the sutras, and of course, they are the name of our order. It is difficult to explain by what and of what this present land and palace are made. It is more difficult even to explain where they go when they disappear or change. Living with the possibility—or certainty—of losing our ground leads us to be stingy, judgmental, harsh, and not loving or kind. These fears are real; some are imagined, but many are true.
I saw a headline about college students drinking themselves into oblivion because they are afraid—afraid of social insecurity, job insecurity, debt. These are real concerns. Is it possible, in such circumstances, in a world full of self-inflicted and other-inflicted suffering, injustice, and bias, to be kind, to be loving? The Four Immeasurables say yes. They are not telling us to lie down and resign ourselves. As Candra Rinpoche says, we do what needs to be done, bravely and kindly. Given that there is no fixed ground anyway, why not live with kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity?
Sooner or later, we all lose what we hold most dear. This was one of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha, the Five Remembrances: “I am of the nature to grow old, and I cannot avoid that. I am of the nature to become ill. I am of the nature to die. Everything I own, everything I have, everything I know, I will lose.” The only thing we have is our actions. Our actions are the ground upon which we stand. This may be the firmest ground we'll ever have, like surfing, where we must stay nimble to remain on the board. The moment we become rigid, the wave swallows us.
Certain conditions make loving-kindness more possible: warmth, gratitude, and humility. It is difficult to be cold and kind, resentful and kind, arrogant and kind. I was once described as imperious—and they were right. I had been put in charge in a very small way, didn't know what I was doing, and was terrified. I compensated with bravado and harshness. When you're the victim of someone else's hubris, it is difficult to remember, yet recognizing fear in others allows us to respond with kindness.
I have been thinking of Kaizen for a number of reasons recently. For those of you who did not know her, Kaizen was one of our monastics. She was here for over twenty years. She came from New Zealand, from our group there. She was originally from England. She was our gardener for many years and our housekeeping supervisor. She was possessive of her housekeeping, especially—if you left your clothes downstairs for an extra day or two, you might find your favorite shirt all cut up in the rag bin. So you had to be really on your game with her. She was also a workhorse. As she got older, she couldn’t sit on the floor as easily, though she could manage. So she started sitting in a chair, and we put her back where the Jisha is now, so she could be close to the hallway if she needed to get up.
She would often fall asleep, which became a bit precarious for the monitor sitting next to her because she could lean quite a bit. So we put her in a chair with armrests. Once, we were taking pictures of zazen for a catalog. She was sitting in her chair, and one of our students took an iconic shot of her. In the soft background was a perfectly straight row of sitters, and Kaizen was in the foreground, two or three feet away, completely diagonal, her eyes closed, suspended in either Samadhi or deep sleep. It was such a picture of her that Zuisei had it as her desktop picture for a while, and I remembered that recently.
Her nephew came to visit her grave a month or two ago. He also wanted to talk because his daughter was having a difficult time. He told me that a few years earlier, he was going through a rough time in his marriage—getting divorced—and he sought Kaizen's advice. Towards the end of her life, we could always just raise her finger and she would say, “Loving-kindness.” She evoked the Dalai Lama often. He asked her for advice because he felt very angry. She told him, “Then get larger. Step back and see your life from a bird’s-eye view. Reach in and pluck the anger out. Get rid of it.” Later, he said that she claimed she had never said that, but it didn’t matter; it saved him. It struck me because it is a different way to get close—it is to become larger, see the bigger picture, and see the obstruction, in this case anger, as small, flick it away.
Last week, I found a poem by chance in a book she gave me, The Mother of All Buddhas, the next issue of The Mountain Record. She had become enamored with the concept of Prajñāpāramitā—the womb, the source of all Buddhas being feminine—even though she had been anti-feminist. At the end of her life, she seemed to embrace this. In her spidery handwriting, she wrote a verse on the occasion of her birth, addressed to herself as a baby:
“Child of a mother who cannot give you love, do not believe that no one else can love you. Do not let your mother's sorrow turn you against yourself. You are loved. You are loved.”
This gave perspective on her crankiness, self-hatred, and self-doubt. At least we can hope she understood that loving-kindness begins with oneself. Buddhaghosa says: “May I be filled with happiness and know the root of happiness. May I be free of enmity, affliction, and anxiety.” We sometimes forget that we can and should start with ourselves. Thinking this is selfish is misleading. We cannot build a house without a foundation; we must first teach ourselves to love ourselves before extending it outward.
The Courage and Practice of Lovingkindness
The Four Immeasurables start with oneself, then extend to loved ones, all beings, and finally those with whom we have difficulties. Can we deeply understand the root of happiness, which is interdependence—the understanding that I cannot be happy without you? This is lacking in modern consciousness. Can we hold ourselves in moments when we are not loving or kind, when we feel the strong need to protect ourselves? The immeasurable nature of the Four Immeasurables is unconditional love. Start with yourself.
If this sounds soft or mushy, consider the courage required to remain kind and open in uncertainty, the clarity needed to not give in to territoriality or possessiveness—whether with countries, work, or waiting in line. Kindness arises naturally out of non-defensiveness. But I would caution those in abusive situations: protect yourself first. Buddhist teachings are universal, but individual circumstances—our karma—shape how we experience them.
With privilege comes responsibility. I am not worried every day about bombs falling or being killed in the street, so I have the imperative to not perpetuate suffering. Start by understanding interdependence, practicing gratitude—for parents who gave life, teachers who guided us, people who grow our food, make our clothes, write our books. When the mind shifts from annoyance to gratitude, the depth of giving by others becomes evident. Feeling a debt of gratitude encourages us to give back, a good place to start in conflict.
Disagreements occur, but wishing others gone in our minds doesn’t solve anything. The practice of loving-kindness implies willingness to remain open to what we wish to close down. Life is like a vast, intricate tapestry; we are but one thread. Humility matters because we cannot see the whole picture.
A story: once in the dining hall, a fellow resident insisted on pronouncing a Spanish word a certain way. I tried to correct him, but he was certain he was right. We often prefer certainty to truth.
Another story: a teacher who practiced Om Mani Padme Hum for years went to see a hermit. The hermit had practiced the mantra incorrectly for thirty years. The teacher corrected him, left, and later saw the hermit walking on water while carefully repeating the correct mantra. This is the power of walking on uncertain ground, the power of not being certain.
Dōgen says: “All dharmas are ultimately liberated; they have no abode.” Because all dharmas are liberated, loving-kindness is our original nature. Because there is no fixed ground, we can stand anywhere freely. Water is an apt image for loving-kindness: it can be a tsunami, a glacier, or shifting clouds. Sometimes one must be harder than diamond; sometimes softer than milk.
In my zazen, I read the Riot Act to myself—firmly, sometimes cuttingly—not against myself but against thoughts that pull me away from myself. This is a loving practice, protecting the mind while gradually opening to the world. Sometimes we cut away the extra; sometimes we allow everything that needs to be seen to be seen clearly, so we can love it.
We must realize the path on which the self encounters the self, and spring up from the path on which the other studies and fully comprehends the other. One definition of maitrī is an active interest in others. Loving-kindness is studying and fully comprehending the other, studying and fully comprehending ourselves, and knowing that the two are not different.
Someone asked where the feminine is in Zen. If by feminine we mean deeply caring, nurturing, life-affirming, it is everywhere.
Lovingkindness (Four Immeasurables), a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 :The Four Immeasurable Qualities by Khandro Rinpoche
02 : Mountains and Rivers Sutra by Master Dogen
03 : “Amazon Priest Delivery” New York Times