Brahmavihara · Pāli/Skt: brahmavihāra

The four brahmavihāras are mettā (loving-kindness), karuṇā (compassion), muditā (sympathetic or appreciative joy) and upekkhā (equanimity). They are named together in the Brahmavihara Sutta (AN 10.208), where the practitioner “keeps pervading the first direction with an awareness imbued with good will, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth”, until he pervades “the all-encompassing cosmos” with an awareness “abundant, expansive, immeasurable, without hostility, without ill will”, and then does the same with “an awareness imbued with compassion”, “an awareness imbued with appreciation” and “an awareness imbued with equanimity”.

The name joins vihāra, an abode or dwelling place, to the name of Brahmā. Nyanaponika Thera explains that they are called abodes “because they should become the mind’s constant dwelling-places where we feel ‘at home’”, and that one who lives in them is said to become “an equal of Brahma (brahma-samo)”. They are also known as the boundless states, appamañña, “because, in their perfection and their true nature, they should not be narrowed by any limitation as to the range of beings towards whom they are extended”. That is the demanding part: they are meant to be “non-exclusive and impartial, not bound by selective preferences or prejudices”, which is what marks them off from ordinary fondness.

They are not a Theravada speciality. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that “most lineages of Buddhism, including the Theravāda, value and practice the Four Divine Abidings (Pāli brahma-vihāra), also known as the Four Immeasurables”. For the first of them as a step-by-step practice, see loving-kindness meditation.