The Warm Heart of the Four Immeasurables
May I and all beings experience goodness and plant the seeds for goodness.
May we be free of suffering—if suffering arises, may we find our way back to peace.
Together, may we enjoy mutual goodness, wholeness, and wellbeing.
Free from holding on too tightly or pushing away, may we rest in boundless equanimity.
Our family has a morning practice routine and certain elements are pretty consistent—like the Wave Breath, some seated meditation, bowing out and thanking each other using our refuge names or soul names—and then we play with changing some elements as life unfolds and we respond to it. Recently I was inspired to add a Four Immeasurables verse but did not find a version that I felt connected to, so, I wrote this one.
Often the first line is wishing happiness and the roots of happiness for ourselves and others. I preferred the word goodness as so much of our suffering comes from chasing illusory happiness rather than the things that truly make us happy. One New York Times article talked about how we are actually happier when we strive to live meaningful lives rather than when we chase happiness. So, we’re trying the word goodness for now.
The second line mirrors the first, with wishing ourselves and others to be free of suffering. I’ve been learning a little how certain Native American traditions consider suffering to be an important and sacred part of our journey of growth. I wanted to move away from this dualistic notion of happiness being good and suffering being bad and more towards the direction of uncertainty about the final outcome of any experience. Often things that we might consider ‘bad’ bring great change into our lives that over the years we come to appreciate more and more deeply. So, here we still wish for all beings to be free of suffering, but we also acknowledge that suffering is a sacred part of the experience of awareness and there is a path back to peace from even the greatest suffering.
The third line reflects how our happiness and wellbeing is so intimately connected with the wellness of all. Some traditions have a heaven where you look down into the hell realms below you and you can enjoy seeing the suffering of your enemies. To me, this is a really bizarre concept of heaven. It is a very young kind of consciousness that likes to triumph over others. A more mature consciousness is always torn by the suffering of others, understanding that beings in pain cause other beings pain.
One of the aspects I really love about Mahayana Buddhism is the understanding that for me to be truly content, free, and happy, others also need to be free of pain and suffering. That just makes so much intuitive sense to me. It is painful to know that others are unhappy or suffering.
The final line comes down to this profound work of freeing ourselves of the death grip onto that which we think serves us or may save us and the rejection of that which we think threatens our happiness and wellbeing. The more we can loosen our ideas about what we think we should be experiencing, what we think should be happening, and rest with what is, the closer we come to the experience of equanimity. This isn’t a dumbed down state of not knowing what our experience is, we know when our body and mind feel well and we know when they feel disturbed, and we build the tolerance and flexibility to ride out whatever waves arise in our ocean of awareness.