Meaning of the Four Immeasurables (Vietnamese: Từ Bi Hỷ Xả)
The brahmavihāras (Vietnamese: Từ Bi Hỷ Xả, Tibetan: ཚད་མེད་བཞི or ཚངས་གནས་བཞི་), literally meaning "sublime attitudes, "abodes of brahma" are a series of four Buddhist virtues and the meditation practices made to cultivate them. They are also known as The Four Immeasurables (Sanskrit: Apramāṇa, Pāli: appamaññā). The Brahma-viharas are:
Loving-kindness (Pāli: mettā, Sanskrit: maitrī, Vietnamese: Từ vô lượng) is active good will towards all.
Compassion (Pāli and Sanskrit: karuṇā, Vietnamese: Bi vô lượng) results from metta, it is identifying the suffering of others as one's own.
Empathetic joy (Pāli and Sanskrit: muditā, Vietnamese: Hỉ vô lượng): is the feeling of joy because others are happy, even if one did not contribute to it, it is a form of sympathetic joy.
Equanimity (Pāli: upekkhā, Sanskrit: upekṣā, Vietnamese: Hỉ vô lượng): is even-mindedness and serenity, treating everyone impartially.
According to the Metta Sutta, cultivation of the four immeasurables has the power to cause the practitioner to be reborn into a "Brahmā realm" (Pāli: Brahmaloka).
In Buddhist tradition, it was deity Brahma who appeared before the Buddha and urged him to teach, once the Buddha attained enlightenment but was unsure if he should teach his insights to anyone.
The Brahma-viharas, along with meditative tradition associated with Brahma-vihara, are also found in pre-Buddha and post-Buddha Vedic and Sramanic literature.
Apramāṇa, usually translated as "the immeasurables," means "boundlessness, infinitude, a state that is illimitable". When developed to a high degree in meditation, these attitudes are said to make the mind "immeasurable" and like the mind of the loving Brahmā (gods).
Early Buddhism:
The Brahma-vihara are a pre-Buddhist concept, to which the Buddhist tradition gave its own interpretation. The Digha Nikaya asserts the Buddha to be calling the Brahmavihara as "that practice", and he then contrasts it with "my practice" as follows:
...that practice [namely, the mere cultivation of love and so forth, according to the fourfold instructions] is conducive not to turning away, nor to dispassion, nor to quieting, nor to cessation, nor to direct knowledge, nor to enlightenment, nor to nirvana, but only to rebirth in the world of Brahma. ...my practice is conducive to complete turning away, dispassion, cessation, quieting, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and nirvana – specifically the eightfold noble path(...)
— The Buddha, Digha Nikaya II.251, Translated by Harvey B. Aronson
According to Gombrich, the Buddhist usage of the brahma-vihāra originally referred to an awakened state of mind, and a concrete attitude toward other beings which was equal to "living with Brahman" here and now. The later tradition took those descriptions too literal, linking them to cosmology and understanding them as "living with Brahman" by rebirth in the Brahma-world. According to Gombrich, "the Buddha taught that kindness - what Christians tend to call love - was a way to salvation.
In the two Metta Suttas of the Aṅguttara Nikāya, the Buddha states that those who practice radiating the four immeasurables in this life and die "without losing it" are destined for rebirth in a heavenly realm in their next life. In addition, if such a person is a Buddhist disciple (Pāli: sāvaka) and thus realizes the three characteristics of the five aggregates, then after his heavenly life, this disciple will reach nibbāna. Even if one is not a disciple, one will still attain the heavenly life, after which, however depending on what his past deeds may have been, one may be reborn in a hell realm, or as an animal or hungry ghost.
