Brahma Vihāra
The four Brahma Vihāras are considered by Buddhism to be the four highest emotions. The word brahma literally means ‘highest’ or ‘superior.’ It is also the name given to the supreme god in Brahmanism during the Buddha’s time. Vihāra means ‘dwelling,’ ‘living’ or ‘abiding.’ Thus the Brahma Vihāras are not emotions one occasionally feels, but those that one ‘lives in’ and ‘lives by’ all the time. These four Brahma Vihāras are love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. They can be understood from several different perspectives – as four related but separate qualities or perhaps better, as four different ways by which the spiritually mature person relates to others according to their situation.
So, for example, we relate to friendly people with love, to those in distress with compassion, to the successful with sympathetic joy and to unpleasant people with equanimity. The purpose of the practice called loving-kindness meditation is to encourage and nurture the Brahma Vihāras. See Kindness and Sympathy.
The Four Sublime States, Nyanaponika,1980.
