{"id":70366,"date":"2025-10-17T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nalandabodhi.org\/?p=70366"},"modified":"2026-03-26T10:49:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T17:49:22","slug":"connecting-the-disconnected-the-four-immeasurables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nalandabodhi.org\/nl\/2025\/10\/17\/connecting-the-disconnected-the-four-immeasurables\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting the Disconnected: The Four Immeasurables<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Connecting the Disconnected: The Four Immeasurables<\/strong><\/h1>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Part I<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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We are honored to share two articles based on Mitra Lee\u2019s teaching at Sangha Retreat 2025.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>In
this first part, she offers some background and insight, which are followed by suggested practices for the immeasurable of equanimity.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>The second part<\/a>, contains insight and practices for the other three immeasurables: love, compassion, and sympathetic joy.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The idea to talk about the four immeasurables started because I had to give a little presentation about Khadiravan\u012bt\u0101r\u0101, and while describing her symbolism I said, \u201cShe has two arms and two legs.\u201d This reminded me that her four limbs symbolize the four immeasurables: love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.<\/p>

Shortly thereafter, I met with a student who told me a story from a book by Matthieu Ricard called Notebooks of a Wandering Monk<\/a>. When Ricard was twenty, he saw a film that had a section with faces of great Tibetan masters who had fled to India. He thought they had an \u201cextraordinary quality,\u201d and within a year he went to India. There he met Kangyur Rinpoche, who had the kindest face of anyone he\u2019d ever seen, wrote Ricard. He was so struck by that kindness that he moved to the Himalayan region and has lived there ever since. Ricard says that feeling Rinpoche\u2019s kindness has been his strength for his whole life.<\/p>

And then I happened on an article by a student of Suzuki Roshi, who said that even when he was ill and dying of cancer, Suzuki Roshi seemed completely untroubled and joyous. The student wrote, \u201cHe was the embodiment of his own best teaching: Don\u2019t stick to anything, even the truth. Each moment new.\u201d<\/p>

All of this kept reminding me of the four immeasurables. Certainly, I knew about them and appreciated the idea of them, but I hadn\u2019t really utilized them as a practice. Unlike the four noble truths<\/a> and the four reminders<\/a>, which had definitely urged me to meditate and to commit to the path, the four immeasurables remained rather abstract. Of course, I wish happiness and less suffering for everybody, but there was a sort of disconnect.<\/p>

I thought I would offer some practices with the intention to connect what might be disconnected. We can connect to our buddha nature with a bit more focus, and we can aspire to connect more unconditionally to a broader range of other beings. Traleg Rinpoche says in Mind at Ease, \u201cWe do the greatest service to ourselves when we concentrate on others.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Intention of the Four<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The four immeasurables of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity are a meditation practice from the mahayana tradition. They are a method to increase our awareness of the suffering of beings and to soften our aggression and egocentricity. They are a core foundation for the training in bodhicitta (enlightened mind).<\/p>\n

The four are called immeasurable\u2014or limitless or boundless\u2014for several reasons:<\/p>\n