Dimensions of LovingKindness Practice
The development of lovingkindness, practice is one of a set of related practices collectively known as the “Child Withins Home” – because they are such fulfilling emotional states to experience and because they have such beneficial effects on our lives.
Each of these practices helps us to develop a different aspect or dimension of lovingkindness, and each of the other three practices deals with lovingkindness in contact with a different aspect of experience. or Empathetic Joy
The first dimension of experience that we can contact with our lovingkindness is the happiness of others. When our lovingkindness meets an awareness of others’ happiness, then it subtly shifts its feeling tone. We call this empathetic joy. When we are empathetically aware of another’s good fortune, then we experience a joy that aligns itself with that other joy. We feel happy because another person is happy.
This is not the same as a sense that we’re going to benefit because someone else has gained something that we want. For example, if a friend has inherited some money, you might think, “Oh goody, now I’m going to benefit because my friend has lots of wealth.” This isn’t lovingkindness, but is just a selfish greed that attaches to someone else’s good fortune.
Genuine lovingkindness is unconditional. We’re not happy because we might benefit from someone else’s good fortune. We’re just happy because we like others to be happy.
Lovingkindness, or Compassion
The second dimension of experience that we can contact is that of suffering. When our lovingkindness meets an awareness of suffering, then it is subtly transformed into compassion. Compassion is the meeting of lovingkindness and an awareness of suffering. Again it’s a sense of empathy. It’s not that we feel anxious or feel pity for the other person. When we feel pity we look down on them; feel superior to them. Compassion is simply a sense of love and cherishing for the well being of another when it meets the fact of that other’s suffering.
I think it’s very easy to see that lovingkindness, compassion, and empathetic joy are social emotions. They are emotions of relatedness, and are therefore very important guides to how we connect in our daily interactions with others.
Equanimity
The third dimension of experience that our lovingkindness can combine with is insight into the conditioned nature of both joy and suffering. When we empathetically sense the joys and suffering of others, and also see clearly how those joys and sufferings arise on the basis of those people’s actions, then there is a sense of our practice.
“equanimity” certainly isn’t a sense of indifference, and it certainly isn’t a sense of “I told you so”. If you experience these kinds of attitudes then it means that your lovingkindness has slipped and been replaced by something more judgmental and much less positive. In fact equanimity is the opposite of those attitudes.
Equanimity, in this sense, means that your lovingkindness is quite unshakable despite an awareness of how all beings bring about, in large part, their own joys and sufferings. Equanimity is a calm, loving awareness of the way that both joy and suffering flow from our own actions. It’s a deep penetration into the way that we construct – for good or ill – our own experience through the actions we make.
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