All You Need?

The brahmaviharas—sublime attitudes of unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited equanimity—are a set of concentration practices recommended in the Pali canon, the earliest extant record of the Buddha’s teachings. They’re called brahmaviharas, which literally means “Brahma-dwellings,” because they’re the attitudes that characterize Brahmas, devas on the highest levels of the heavens.

Some Pali discourses present these attitudes as an alternative to the standard definition of right concentration—the four jhanas, or absorptions—although these discourses give varying explanations as to how far these attitudes can take you when compared with the jhanas. AN 4:123 and AN 4:125, when read together, make the point that the first brahmavihara can lead to rebirth on the same Brahma level as the first jhana, the second can lead to rebirth on the same Brahma level as the second jhana, and so forth. SN 46:54 states that if the brahmaviharas are cultivated together with the seven factors of awakening, they can lead to rebirth on even higher levels, again in ascending order. AN 8:70, however, indicates that any of the four brahmaviharas can be cultivated in a way that takes the mind to a state equivalent to the fourth jhana.

Despite these differences, the discourses are all in agreement that the brahmaviharas, on their own, can’t take you all the way to the final goal, the cessation of suffering and the end of rebirth.

At least, that’s how the discourses have been traditionally interpreted. More recently, the idea has been proposed that if you really knew how to read the discourses, you’d see that the Buddha recommended the brahmaviharas, on their own, as a complete path to full awakening. This new interpretation had its start in academia, but has now spread to a number of practice communities in the West. So it’s an issue of practical importance: What are the real-world consequences of adopting this new view? Can you really gain awakening simply by practicing the brahmaviharas?

The key argument for the new interpretation is based on a discourse in the Digha Nikaya, DN 13, read in conjunction with the discourses that precede it. Those discourses all have in common long sections describing the standard training of a monk along the path to full awakening: strict adherence to the principles of virtue, mindfulness and alertness, restraint of the senses, being content with few material possessions, abandoning the hindrances, developing the four jhanas along with the extraordinary knowledges based on the fourth jhana, including knowledge in terms of the four noble truths, leading to full awakening and guaranteed release from rebirth and all suffering.

In DN 13, however, two young brahman students come to the Buddha and ask him the path to union with Brahma, which is the goal of their religion. The Buddha responds with a path that starts out like the one described in the preceding discourses, up through the abandoning of the hindrances. Then, however, he takes a sharp turn. Instead of describing the jhanas, the four noble truths, or freedom from rebirth, he describes the practice of the four brahmaviharas, ending with the comment that it’s possible that a monk who practices in this way will, after death, go to union with Brahma.

The argument based on this discourse is basically this: To read “union with Brahma” as meaning rebirth in an actual Brahma world would be as unsophisticated as believing that God is an old man with a flowing white beard sitting on a throne in heaven. Therefore, the Buddha must have meant “union with Brahma” as a metaphor for unbinding (nibbana), the goal of his own practice, implying being his description of the brahmaviharas should be understood as equivalent to his descriptions of the path given in the preceding discourses.

The argument is then bolstered with reference to a famous discourse, the Karaniya Metta Sutta (Sn 1:8). There, the Buddha describes the path by which you can develop goodwill to enjoy a brahma-dwelling now, ending with the comment that when you do, you will never again lie in the womb—a metaphor, we’re told, for complete awakening.

If we interpret the texts in this way, the advantages are said to be twofold. First, we restore love and compassion to their rightful place at the center of the Buddha’s teachings—a place that has been obscured by the monks who have been passing the teachings along over the millennia. Second, we throw light on the deep message of the discourses, which is that the Buddha’s main accomplishment in religious history lay in discarding the earlier Indian metaphysical obsession with Being, and replacing it with a focus on the importance of intention in ethical action. Given that this was the Buddha’s true focus, references in the discourses to cosmology and levels of being after death have no place in the Pali canon. They should be regarded as later, inauthentic additions, made by later monks who didn’t understand the Buddha’s true message or his place in religious history.

With this comment, the argument tries to invalidate any passages in the canon that would contradict its conclusion that the brahmaviharas are a complete path to awakening, and that union with Brahma is equivalent to unbinding.

It needs to invalidate them, because there are a lot of them. A few of the more prominent:

• In MN 49, we learn that Baka Brahma has given rise to the “evil viewpoint” that his Brahma world is deathless: i.e., equivalent to unbinding. The Buddha goes to Baka’s world to show him that he is mistaken. His world is impermanent, and the consciousness of full awakening is far beyond his ken.

• In MN 97, Ven. Sariputta visits one of his students, Dhananjanin, who is on his deathbed. Sariputta reflects that Dhananjanin is a brahman, and that brahmans aspire to union with Brahma, so he teaches him the four brahmaviharas. Dhananjanin follows the instructions and, after he dies, is reborn in a Brahma world. Sariputta returns to see the Buddha, who chides him for not taking Dhananjanin further, toward awakening, and instead leading him to the “inferior” Brahma world.

Now, anyone predisposed to dismiss passages that focus on rebirth after death in Brahma worlds could easily reject these passages as unsophisticated and therefore unrepresentative of the Buddha’s actual thinking. However, there are other passages in the discourses that mention why the brahmaviharas are not a complete path to unbinding. Even though these passages, too, mention the Brahma worlds, their discussions of what a person should be doing in the here and now to gain awakening—activities lacking in the brahmaviharas—are harder to dismiss.

• In MN 83, the Buddha notes that in a previous lifetime he practiced the brahmaviharas, but because they didn’t lead “to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, stilling, direct knowledge, self-awakening, or unbinding,” they led only to rebirth in a Brahma world. He then contrasts that practice to the noble eightfold path, which he teaches now and which does lead to unbinding.

• In AN 4:125, the Buddha points out how ordinary unawakened people who practice the brahmaviharas—if they don’t fall away from the practice, which is a big if—will be reborn in the Brahma worlds, with a lifespan growing progressively longer the higher the world. But when their lifespan runs out, they’ll fall from those worlds to be reborn in hell, in the animal womb, or as hungry ghosts. If, however, they’re noble disciples, they’ll be unbound in that state of being, and won’t return to this world. AN 4:126 then points out what makes people noble disciples: When practicing the brahmaviharas in this lifetime, they contemplate their awareness in that expansive state, and see that it is composed of the five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. They then view these aggregates in terms of the three perceptions, or variations on them, as “inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, an emptiness, not-self.” After death, they’re reborn in the Brahma worlds called the Pure Abodes, and will gain full awakening there.

• In SN 55:54, the Buddha tells his lay cousin, Mahanama, that if, while counseling a wise person on his deathbed, he discovers that the person has set his mind on rebirth in the Brahma world, he should tell the person, “Friend, even the Brahma world is inconstant, impermanent, included in self-identity. It would be good if, having raised your mind above the Brahma world, you brought it to the cessation of self-identity.” The fetter of self-identity is one of the fetters abandoned with the first level of awakening, which shows that reaching the Brahma world isn’t equivalent even to that level of awakening.

From these three passages, we can conclude that the brahmaviharas, on their own, can’t take you to awakening because they don’t lead to disenchantment, dispassion, or cessation. That’s because they don’t include the practice of analyzing mind states into their component factors—the five aggregates—and they don’t then develop dispassion by viewing those aggregates in terms of inconstancy, stress, and not-self. They can form the basis for such an analysis, which is why they can form part of a path to awakening, but on their own, they can’t take you all the way.

Ironically, there are two more passages that show what’s missing in a path comprised solely of the brahmaviharas—ironically, because they’re the two main passages on which the new interpretation is based.

∙ First, DN 13: To see that the path presented in DN 13 is meant to be equivalent to the path as described in the preceding discourses in the Digha Nikaya is really quite a stretch. If you actually read the preceding discourses, then when you come to the path as described in DN 13, the first thing you notice is that it’s truncated. There’s no mention of insight into body and mind, no mention of discerning the four noble truths, and no mention of gaining release in the present life. On top of that, the Buddha concludes his discussion, not by saying that brahmavihara practice guarantees union with Brahma, simply that there’s a possibility that it could lead there after death. Given the vicissitudes of kamma as described in MN 136—the “big if” I mentioned above—this means that if the monk in question has a change of heart, if he has strong bad kamma from a previous lifetime, or if he adopts wrong view at the moment of death, he could fall to a lower realm. This is hardly equivalent to the result of completing the path of jhanas and insight, in which the monk knows in this lifetime for sure that his heart is released, birth is ended, and there’s nothing further for the sake of any world.

That gives us two more points in the checklist of what’s missing in pure brahmavihara practice: insight and discernment of the four noble truths. Essentially, this means that the brahmavihara are lacking in right view.

∙ As for Sn 1:8, it nowhere says that brahmavihara practice on its own leads to full awakening. Instead, after concluding its description of how to attain a Brahma dwelling here in this life, it adds a list of further practices beyond the brahmaviharas in its last lines: 

Not taken with views, 
but virtuous & consummate in vision, 
having subdued greed for sensuality,
          one never again
          will lie in the womb.

The first three qualities—not being taken with views, being virtuous, and being consummate in vision—are attributes of a stream-enterer, someone who has attained the first level of awakening. Having subdued greed for sensuality is an attribute of the non-returner, someone who has attained the third level. And never again lying in the womb isn’t even a metaphor for full awakening. It refers to the penultimate level of awakening, non-return. To get to this level requires more than the brahmaviharas. It requires developing right view and overcoming sensuality, two things that brahmavihara practice, on its own, can’t do. 

So, given that none of the discourses support the new interpretation—and that the passages on which the new interpretation is based actually contradict it—there’s no textual reason for adopting it.

That, however, takes us outside the texts, into the area of value judgments as to what the texts should have said, and what the Buddha should have thought and taught. 

Those judgments, you may recall, come down to two: that love and compassion should have a central role in the path to awakening, and that the importance of the Buddha’s teaching lies in its rejection of a focus on Being in favor of a focus on the role of intention in ethical action.

• As the Buddha said, all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering. Just as the waters of the ocean have a single taste, the taste of salt, the dhamma has a single taste: the taste of release. Now, if you don’t aim at full release, you can aim your practice at whatever you want. But if you do want full release, the brahmaviharas on their own can’t take you all the way. The discourses repeatedly refer to the brahmaviharas as forms of awareness-release (ceto-vimutti), but as AN 4:178 points out, awareness release doesn’t automatically inspire you to aim at ending self-identity and ignorance. More needs to be done. And it’s hard to imagine that the Buddha would have spent so much time teaching the four noble truths if they’re weren’t really necessary for going all the way.

If you don’t aim at full release, you can aim your practice at whatever you want. But if you do want full release, the brahmaviharas on their own can’t take you all the way.

• As for his teachings on action: It’s true that he gave great importance to the role of intention, both in leading to suffering and, when trained, in following the path to suffering’s end. In fact, it’s hard to overstate the importance of intentional action in his teaching, and its revolutionary implications in the context of his times. But it’d be a mistake to see issues of action as totally divorced from issues of Being—or as he called it, bhava: becoming. 

For him, the concept of becoming meant the act of taking on an identity in a world of experience. What makes intentional action important is that it leads to becoming, and anything aimed at becoming causes suffering and stress. This, too, was one of the Buddha’s most important discoveries—a fact that’s rarely appreciated, even though it’s central to his description of dependent co-arising, his explanation of how suffering is caused. 

Even more important, he saw that the processes of action leading to worlds of experience happen both inwardly in the mind, and outwardly as you go from lifetime to lifetime, and that if you develop dispassion for the processes inwardly, through meditation, you can put an end to the processes both internally and externally, bringing about an end to further becoming and to all suffering.

This is why we practice mindfulness and concentration: to create worlds of becoming in the mind that we can observe clearly and use as a basis for developing dispassion for these processes. To practice the brahmaviharas to the point of developing concentration but then to stop there would be to stop halfway along the way and lie down on the road.

So ironically, even though we’re told that allowing for brahmavihara practice to be a complete path to awakening would allow the Buddha’s teachings on action to show their true importance, in actuality that path wouldn’t uncover and release us from the most important actions of all: the ones we’re doing in our own minds.

The Buddha saw it as his duty as a teacher to give his listeners solid advice on what they should and shouldn’t do, based on his knowledge of where actions can lead, how long their consequences can last, and how it’s possible to go beyond action altogether. As he saw on the night of his awakening, intentional actions can lead past death to more becoming—from the highest to the lowest levels of the cosmos—or even beyond becoming and the cosmos.

The brahmaviharas can play a large role along the path, but don’t be swayed by baseless speculation that they’re a complete practice.

Having seen that, if he hadn’t given his listeners at least a sketch of what those levels might be—and that’s what the cosmology of the discourses is, a sketch—he would have been irresponsible. Otherwise, they might mistake the highest levels of the cosmos—the Brahma worlds—for genuine release. Unlike the post-modern attitude, which sees the question of life or annihilation after death as an unknowable mystery, the Buddha saw that these issues can be known, and that he could convey that knowledge to his listeners so that they could have a basis for deciding how best to act.

What this means is that a focus on intentional action doesn’t preclude at least some teachings on cosmology. It demands them.

It’s no coincidence that two of the major passages dealing with the drawbacks of the Brahma worlds center on the question of how to counsel people on their deathbed. These are issues of life and death importance. And it would be irresponsible not to treat them that way.

The brahmaviharas can play a large role along the path, but don’t be swayed by baseless speculation that they’re a complete practice. Understand how they’re best used: as a basis for developing right view and then using the tools of right view to observe the intentions of the mind in action and to perceive them in a way that allows you to let go of them through dispassion and find total release.