Sublime Abiding Places for the Heart
Ajahn Pasanno

adapted from a May 1999 workshop at Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery
with the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies

The brahmaviharas are the qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. What is often not sufficiently emphasized is that the brahmaviharas are fundamental to the Buddha’s teaching and practice. I shall begin with the chant called The Suffusion of the Divine Abidings. I find this chant very beautiful. It is the most frequent form in which the brahmaviharas are mentioned in the discourses of the Buddha. Here is the Divine Abidings chant:

I will abide pervading one quarter with a mi nd imbued with loving-kindness; likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; so above and below, around and everywhere; and to all as to myself. I will abide pervading the all-encompassing world with a mind imbued with loving-kindness; abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility, and without ill will.

Excerpt From: Ajahn Pasanno & Ajahn Amaro. “Broad View, Boundless Heart.”