But first...another gastronomical event. We went to a lovely little French bakery in northwest Portland (23rd and Thurman, for those of you in the area) called:
Where we shared this nice pastry. A little cookie filled with custard and those little puff pastries on the top with some sort of glaze on them. Scrumptious. It is nice to be able to share something like this rather than feeling deprived because I can't have one of my own. I know it is heart hunger calling out to me when I feel this sense of deprivation. Who knows where this impulse arises from? I was never really deprived as a child, at least not of food.
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I want to promise something to those of you who are reading this and are not familiar with all of the Buddhist terminology I am tossing about. I am going to talk a bit about the brahma viharas (really not at all mysterious, though the name sounds like it) and then in the Tuesday post I will go back and summarize things and relate all of this to the overall subject of food and weight and such. I am aware that some of this may be a bit obscure, but I swear to you it all makes sense in context. It concerns me that I may have waded in too deeply and perhaps not taken all of you with me. I will do my best to make the context clear on Tuesday.
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Since I wrote about mudita or sympathetic joy yesterday, and mentioned that it was one of the four brahma viharas, I thought it would be worthwhile to go into the other three, though not in any great detail. The link in the previous sentence can provide more insight into these essential concepts.
First of all, the term brahma vihara itself. The words are usually translated as "divine abode", but we should remember that in the time and place the Buddha was teaching, everyone would have understood precisely what he meant when he said this. He was determined to make the dharma accessible to everyone, and part of that was to use terms lay people could understand. So a more up-to-date translation of brahma vihara might well be "ideal place" or "most comfortable home". This is a place all us would want to live our lives, which is precisely what the Buddha intended.
I covered sympathetic joy in yesterday's post. The other brahma viharas are lovingkindness, compassion, and equanimity.
Lovingkindness, translated by some as simply "friendliness" is taking the attitude of wishing all people to be happy and free of suffering. There is no idea in Buddhism that if we have this attitude we can free others of suffering or keep bad things from happening to them; this would be magical thinking, and the Buddha did not advocate any such hocus pocus. Rather, the point of such loving aspirations for others is to set our minds in the direction of love rather than suspicion, bitterness, or anger.
Compassion is perhaps best defined by its root meaning, which is "to feel with". When another is suffering, we can enter into their mind state to the best of our ability and wish for them that this suffering may cease. It is all too easy to see the suffering of others and feel pity, which is essentially a thinly-veiled comparison of their plight to our own lives and the underlying pleasure that we are not suffering as they are; compassion is an antidote to this feeling.
Equanimity ties these all together and serves as an assurance that they will not get out of control either in the direction of excessive involvement in others' sufferings or self-serving reflection on them. It is also very important to recognize that we must extend lovingkindness, compassion and sympathetic joy to ourselves. Without this reaching out to what is needful inside us, practicing the brahma viharas is nothing but martyrdom.
As with all the teachings of the Buddha, these are not commandments or even "shoulds", but what are known as "skillful means". When we practice the opposites of the brahma viharas, which is to say greed, selfishness, anger, envy, pride, hatred, resentment, cruelty, and their "near enemies" attachment, pity, comparison, and indifference, we create suffering for ourselves and others. When we practice this path of the brahma viharas, we put ourselves in the way of joy and genuine, lasting happiness. Of course, we cannot control the waves or the wind life sends our way, but we can set the sails.
*********************************************************************************
I want to promise something to those of you who are reading this and are not familiar with all of the Buddhist terminology I am tossing about. I am going to talk a bit about the brahma viharas (really not at all mysterious, though the name sounds like it) and then in the Tuesday post I will go back and summarize things and relate all of this to the overall subject of food and weight and such. I am aware that some of this may be a bit obscure, but I swear to you it all makes sense in context. It concerns me that I may have waded in too deeply and perhaps not taken all of you with me. I will do my best to make the context clear on Tuesday.
*********************************************************************************
Since I wrote about mudita or sympathetic joy yesterday, and mentioned that it was one of the four brahma viharas, I thought it would be worthwhile to go into the other three, though not in any great detail. The link in the previous sentence can provide more insight into these essential concepts.
First of all, the term brahma vihara itself. The words are usually translated as "divine abode", but we should remember that in the time and place the Buddha was teaching, everyone would have understood precisely what he meant when he said this. He was determined to make the dharma accessible to everyone, and part of that was to use terms lay people could understand. So a more up-to-date translation of brahma vihara might well be "ideal place" or "most comfortable home". This is a place all us would want to live our lives, which is precisely what the Buddha intended.
I covered sympathetic joy in yesterday's post. The other brahma viharas are lovingkindness, compassion, and equanimity.
Lovingkindness, translated by some as simply "friendliness" is taking the attitude of wishing all people to be happy and free of suffering. There is no idea in Buddhism that if we have this attitude we can free others of suffering or keep bad things from happening to them; this would be magical thinking, and the Buddha did not advocate any such hocus pocus. Rather, the point of such loving aspirations for others is to set our minds in the direction of love rather than suspicion, bitterness, or anger.
Compassion is perhaps best defined by its root meaning, which is "to feel with". When another is suffering, we can enter into their mind state to the best of our ability and wish for them that this suffering may cease. It is all too easy to see the suffering of others and feel pity, which is essentially a thinly-veiled comparison of their plight to our own lives and the underlying pleasure that we are not suffering as they are; compassion is an antidote to this feeling.
Equanimity ties these all together and serves as an assurance that they will not get out of control either in the direction of excessive involvement in others' sufferings or self-serving reflection on them. It is also very important to recognize that we must extend lovingkindness, compassion and sympathetic joy to ourselves. Without this reaching out to what is needful inside us, practicing the brahma viharas is nothing but martyrdom.
As with all the teachings of the Buddha, these are not commandments or even "shoulds", but what are known as "skillful means". When we practice the opposites of the brahma viharas, which is to say greed, selfishness, anger, envy, pride, hatred, resentment, cruelty, and their "near enemies" attachment, pity, comparison, and indifference, we create suffering for ourselves and others. When we practice this path of the brahma viharas, we put ourselves in the way of joy and genuine, lasting happiness. Of course, we cannot control the waves or the wind life sends our way, but we can set the sails.
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