The four divine abodes

The "four divine abodes" (brahmavihāra, from brahma, "divine" or "sublime," and vihāra, "dwelling") are four warm-hearted attitudes that Buddhism encourages a person to cultivate and, ideally, to extend without limit toward all living beings. They are called "divine dwellings" because to live in them is to live in a state worthy of the highest realms - and they are deliberately developed through meditation, not left to chance. Found across the Buddhist traditions, they form a kind of curriculum for the heart.

There are four. The first is loving-kindness (mettā): the genuine wish that beings be happy and well, a friendliness with no strings attached. The second is compassion (karuṇā): the wish that beings be free from suffering, the heart's tender response to others' pain. The third is sympathetic or appreciative joy (muditā): gladness at others' happiness and good fortune - the opposite of envy, taking delight in someone else's success. The fourth is equanimity (upekkhā): a calm, even-minded balance that holds all of this steady, caring deeply yet without grasping or favoritism, and accepting that not everything can be controlled.

They are taught together because each one balances the others. Without equanimity, compassion can burn out into overwhelm; without compassion, equanimity can harden into indifference; joy guards love against pity, and so on. Traditionally one practices them by directing each wish first toward oneself, then to loved ones, then to neutral people, then to those one finds difficult, and finally to all beings everywhere - widening the circle until the attitude becomes truly "boundless." The result is meant to be both an inner state of well-being and a way of actually treating the world.