UnMind 29. Four Immeasurables Quartet 1: Loving Kindness

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A loving kindness
would be to fully embrace
“things just as it is”

From a downloaded document from one of my online dharma dialogs — dated June 8, 2016, but otherwise unidentified — we find the following definitions of the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism:

Metta (loving kindness)
Karuna (compassion)
Mudita (sympathetic joy or empathy)
Upekkha (equanimity)

I have always felt that the immeasurables of Zen practice are more important than those aspects subject to measurement. For example, it is more important in doing meditation, zazen, to never give up, as Matsuoka Roshi would often encourage us, than how long we sit when we do, how often, how frequently, how regularly, etc. More important than the quantitative dimension is the qualitative.

Folks bring this up in dokusan frequently, saying they know they need to “sit more.” I ask them when do they think they can do that. You cannot sit more in the past — it’s too late. You cannot sit more in the future, because it is not yet here, though you can plan to do so — and possibly set yourself up for discouragement by failing to live up to your own expectations — been there, done that. The only time you can do more zazen is when you are doing it. You can do zazen more by refraining from doing anything else while you are on the cushion. Such as daydreaming, worrying, planning, ruminating, regretting, and so on. Turn up the intensity knob.

The list is followed by an extension of the definitions:

The ease of equanimity, the full-heartedness of love, the tenderness of compassion, the radiance of joy.

There follows a brief “prayer,” a term we do not often see in Buddhist teachings, a “short version” attributed to H.H. the Dalai Lama:

The Four Immeasurables are found in one brief and beautiful prayer:
May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes,
May all sentient beings be free of suffering and its causes,
May all sentient beings not be separated from sorrowless bliss,
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment and anger.

This sounds very similar to the familiar Metta Sutta, or Loving Kindness Sutra, from the Soto Zen liturgy chanted often in Zen temples, though finding our “bliss” is not a term I would use as a goal or objective of Zen practice. While human beings are included in the panoply of sentient beings that we pray may be happy, it is also acknowledged that human beings can be a significant part of the problem, the cause of unhappiness and sorrow in their fellow sentient beings. Needless to say, we “pray” in the sense of earnestness — not to a god, to Buddha, nor to a specific bodhisattva. Our basic prayer is that we wake up, as soon as possible.

It should be equally needless to point out that the prayer, or wish, for all beings to be happy does not imply a rose-colored, magical-thinking belief that somehow just because we pray for it, it shall come to pass that all beings will suddenly become happy, via some “spooky action at a distance” — thank you, Zen Master Einstein.

We “transfer merit” at the end of our service because we don’t want to suggest that we actually believe we personally accumulate any real merit owing to our devotional activities. Whatever merit there may be, it must already finitely exist, and can be neither increased or decreased by what we do.

Likewise, the practical worldview of Buddhism and Zen dictates that if and when all beings actually do become happy, it will be happy with the causes and conditions of existence just as they are, or in spite of them: the unsatisfactory nature of life, being subject to aging, sickness and death, etc. ad infinitum. Zen is nothing if not realistic.

“Things as it is” is an expression David Chadwick attributes to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in his charming book, “Crooked Cucumber,” as his condensed expression of one of the central truths of Zen. It does not mean “things as they are.” If it did, there would be no reason to engage in all the necessary discipline and work of Zen, if it were only to result in things staying the way they are. That is, if our own perception and conception of our own reality did not undergo some kind of meaningful change as a result of our efforts, what would be the point of practicing? Which begs another central question, What kind of change is that?

The kind of change that can come about through the practice and study of Zen, particularly its meditation, is pointed to in the Heart Sutra, chanted ubiquitously in Zen centers all over the world. The line that declares, “Given Emptiness, there is no suffering, no end of suffering.” This Emptiness is capitalized to stress the unique meaning of the Sanskrit shunyatta. It is not voidness of existence, or devoid of meaning, but the dynamic nature of change that underlies all existence, the operative meaning of dukkha, usually translated as “suffering.” The suffering that can change through our coming to this insight that Buddha experienced and coached others to find, is of the unnecessary sort — that needless suffering that we heedlessly inflict upon ourselves and others. The suffering that does not — indeed cannot — change is that of the natural type, e.g. sickness, aging and death.

Metta, nonetheless, is a worthy and worthwhile aspiration to a frame of mind that, while embracing the universal givens — impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality — continues to encourage a hopeful mindset, and an engagement in compassionate action for all, toward that ideal of all beings being as happy as is practicable, under the circumstances.

However, kindness — and likewise the other three immeasurables — is not at all separable from the immediate circumstances of life. Suffering fools gladly, or humoring others in their delusions or neuroses, is not an act of kindness, but of uncaring, a kind of cop-out. Treating others in ways that may not be helpful, but that allow one to sustain a false sense that one is being kind, is not truly kind.

In Zen, we recognize that the kindest thing to do, with and for others, is sharing the dharma assets, including those aspects that are most adaptable by others, such as the unsurpassably simple method of Zen meditation. But we also recognize that, even then, the effect of Zen training upon their lives is entirely up to them. You can lead a horse to water, et cetera. It requires a sense of modesty and humility to accept that we can actually do very little to help anyone else. And that what we suppose to be the most important kind of help they need may not be so. The most we can do is to expose them to the practice and teachings of Zen — sanzen and zazen — in the midst of the universal, ongoing, relentless pandemic of ignorance. Whether the inoculation against this virus takes, or not, depends upon them.