The Religious Life: A Psychological Perspective

By Sylvia Swain

Continued from part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4

The Brahmavihāras

Following mettā practice, the second of the Brahmavihāras, the divine abidings, is karuṇā, compassion. With mettā as the foundation of our house, compassion can more easily be built into the structure. Compassion means passion-with, so the time has come to open up and to widen the horizon with passion. In the religious context passion is linked to patience and the endurance of pain, and passionate means easily moved, so it is a very interesting word implying a steadfast attitude to the endurance of one’s own pain, and yet having a readily available sympathy and understanding of the suffering of others. Often these two qualities tie in very appropriately when we meet with those whose situation can only be helped through empathy in a necessary process of patient endurance. When there is a quick solution to a problem, it is very gratifying to be able to offer it, but when there is no such remedy we should not think that there is no remedy at all. Being with that person patiently in the long term may be our greatest gift to them. The Buddha said that patience is the greatest austerity, so patience is not a light undertaking, but we grow stronger as we put it into practice.

The third of the Brahmavihāras is muditā, sympathetic joy, the next floor of the house. This is more subtle, less easy to recognize and practise, because it is not just a simple matter of joining in the jollifications, although that comes into it, but it requires us to overcome envy in all its devious forms. Envy arises not only from ambition and greed but from an attitude of begrudging to others such pleasures as we may not be enjoying in our own lives, and so it is bound up with our competitiveness, and thus is the very core of the divisive sense of self. We need the underpinning of our mettā and karuṇā in order to build this rare dwelling place for the heart, because not until we have faced up to those dark impediments to the sharing of joy will we be able to experience the true empathy which is the portal to all forms of unity: to the understanding of self and other, to communion, to healing, and by practice and process, to the realization of holistic consciousness, which is the ultimate integration of heart and mind.

Whilst inviting us to practise and to experience these divine states, Buddhism is also revealing the painful truth of the ill state, something which is clearly described by Phiroz in The Heart of Religion, p.152:

It is a mistake to try and get rid of suffering, or to avoid it or prevent it. Suffering is the inevitable consequence of evil. Wisdom lies in understanding suffering and evil. Understanding suffering does not mean avoiding it or preventing it because I fear or dislike it, nor being rid of it by conquest. It means, among other things, that I must see that I cannot separate out the environment, myself, and evil and suffering into watertight compartments. I and my world are tied together by the whip-knot of evil … My neighbour too is knotted, for his world and my world are but one world; and he too is in tears. Suffering is not simply individual suffering, an isolated phenomenon. It is part and parcel of the becoming process, involving each and every person.

The gradual process of the understanding of evil and suffering through religious practices helps to prepare the heart for the fourth of the Brahmavihāras, upekkhā, equanimity. This serene condition comes about as a consequence of the previous three practices, as we gradually cease to fear and deny the evil and suffering of life, and come to see it for what it is, how it arises and passes away. Until we know it and understand it we can never transcend it, but, brought to consciousness and acknowledged, it is comparable to the redemption of the shadow material, and those hitherto unconscious complexes which otherwise, all too often, disrupt our peace. Upekkhā is an even-handed, non-judgmental state of mind necessary for the deeper practices.

In The Heart of Religion on page 318 Phiroz wrote:

When there is non-attachment in mindfulness, then there is equanimity, upekkhā, necessary for that meditation which is communion.

So these abidings support, encourage and develop one another, they are part of a whole practice. And on page 377, he writes:

If the Divine Abidings can be realized, it also means that the meditator can enter upon and abide in the profound modes of awareness. The two interdepend. When the mind glows with unlimited loving-kindness and compassion, all sense of otherness in relation to any person vanishes. Loving one’s neighbour as oneself is a realized fact. In these profound meditative states, one sees the light of the soul of one’s neighbour and knows his destiny and fate. Such a meditator is fit to be a teacher.

From a beginning of something as simple and as human as loving-kindness, the path through the ethical life to ultimate realization can unfold. How can one resist the invitation to try?

May all beings, without exception, be well, may they be happy, may they be at peace.

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