The Four Brahmavihāras: The Sublime States

By Tim Yu · Updated 2026-06-04

The four brahmavihāras — “divine abidings” or “sublime states”, also called the four immeasurables — are four heart-qualities the Buddha taught us to cultivate without limit: loving-kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā). Each is radiated boundlessly toward all beings “in all directions.”

The short answer

A brahmavihāra is, literally, a “dwelling place” (vihāra) worthy of Brahmā — a sublime, godlike way of holding the heart. The tradition counts four of them, and Encyclopædia Britannica’s entry lists exactly these: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. They are not four separate techniques so much as four faces of one capacity — the trained heart turning to meet whatever it finds. To a being in general: goodwill. To a being in pain: compassion. To a being who flourishes: gladness. And underneath all three, holding them steady: equanimity. (For where this practice sits within the wider map of Buddhist meditation, start there; unfamiliar Pāli terms are in the glossary.)

The four states, one by one

Mettā — loving-kindness

Mettā is unconditional goodwill: the simple, active wish that beings be well and at ease. It is not romance, not preference, not liking someone because they please us — it is the warmth that wishes well even to the difficult and the distant. The Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta (Snp 1.8) gives the most famous image: “And just as might a mother with her life / Protect the son that was her only child, / So let him then for every living thing / Maintain unbounded consciousness in being” (trans. Ñāṇamoli Thera). Mettā is the foundation the other three stand on; for the step-by-step method of growing it, see our guide to loving-kindness meditation.

Karuṇā — compassion

Karuṇā is what mettā becomes in the presence of suffering: the heart that trembles at another’s pain and wishes it to ease. The tradition is careful to distinguish it from grief. Compassion is not being dragged down into despair alongside the sufferer — that helps no one — but a steady, warm responsiveness that moves toward suffering rather than recoiling from it. It is goodwill meeting the first noble truth honestly, without flinching and without drowning. Importantly, karuṇā is not pity, which looks down on the sufferer from a safe distance; it meets pain as a near equal, with the felt wish may this ease, and is willing to act on that wish where it can.

Muditā — sympathetic joy

Muditā — sometimes rendered “appreciative joy” or “altruistic joy” — is gladness at the happiness and good fortune of others. It is the rarest of the four to cultivate honestly, because its counterfeit is so common: we more easily resent another’s success than rejoice in it. This makes muditā the direct antidote to envy and jealousy. Where comparison says why them and not me?, muditā says may your good fortune grow. (On working with the bind of comparison itself, see Buddhism and jealousy.) Nyanaponika Thera describes it as “a sublime nobility of heart and intellect which knows, understands and is ready to help” — joy that widens the self rather than defending it.

Upekkhā — equanimity

Upekkhā is balance: the even, unshaken heart that can care deeply and still remain steady when outcomes lie beyond its reach. It is the most easily misunderstood of the four, because its counterfeit looks almost identical from outside. Cold indifference also stays calm — but by not caring. True equanimity stays calm while caring fully. Nyanaponika calls it “a perfect, unshakable balance of mind, rooted in insight.” It is what keeps the other three sustainable: without it, compassion burns out and goodwill curdles into attachment to results.

How they are practised: radiating “in all directions”

In the early discourses, the brahmavihāras are a meditation, not just an attitude. The Tevijja Sutta (DN 13) preserves the classic formula. The practitioner “meditates spreading a heart full of love to one direction, and to the second, and to the third, and to the fourth. In the same way above, below, across, everywhere, all around, they spread a heart full of love to the whole world — abundant, expansive, limitless, free of enmity and ill will” (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato). The same formula then repeats for compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity in turn — all four cultivated the same boundless way.

The sutta gives a vivid simile: just as “a powerful conch-blower would make themselves heard in the four quarters without any difficulty,” so the liberated heart radiates these qualities in every direction, leaving no being outside their reach. This is why the four are also called the immeasurables (appamaññā): cultivated fully, they have no boundary — no being who is excluded, no direction left dark. The boundlessness is the point. These are not preferences we extend to a chosen few but qualities trained until they reach the difficult person and the stranger as readily as the friend, dissolving the usual lines between “mine” and “not mine.”

A simple way to practise, drawn from this tradition:

1. Settle. Sit comfortably, soften the body, and let the breath steady the mind for a minute or two.
2. Begin near. Start with an easy object of goodwill — often yourself, or someone you love plainly. Silently wish them well (may you be safe, may you be happy, may you be at ease).
3. Widen by circles. Extend the same wish outward in rings: a benefactor, a neutral person, a difficult person, then all beings.
4. Turn to the matching state. When suffering comes to mind, let goodwill become compassion; when someone’s joy comes to mind, let it become gladness (muditā).
5. Rest in balance. Close by holding all beings in equanimity — caring, but releasing the need to control how their lives unfold.
6. Radiate “in all directions.” Following DN 13, finally let the quality spread to every direction without limit, excluding no one.

You need no special belief to begin, and the practice asks for patience rather than force: you are not manufacturing a feeling on demand but inclining the heart, again and again, in a kinder direction.

The near and far enemies

The fifth-century Theravāda manual the Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification), compiled by Buddhaghosa, systematises the four states in its ninth chapter — and gives each a “far enemy” and a “near enemy.” The distinction is one of the most useful in all of Buddhist psychology. A far enemy is the obvious opposite of a quality, easy to spot. A near enemy is far more dangerous: a counterfeit that resembles the real thing closely enough to be mistaken for it. As the manual puts it, the near enemy corrupts through similarity, while the far enemy is its plain opposite.

A few of these repay attention. Mettā’s near enemy is attached affection — the warmth that secretly wants something back, or that loves only what flatters us; it looks like love but is really self-seeking. Karuṇā’s near enemy is grief — sliding into the sufferer’s despair, which feels compassionate but merely adds a second person in pain. Muditā’s near enemy is worldly excitement — getting carried away in another’s success in a grasping, comparing way rather than a free one. And upekkhā’s near enemy, the one most worth guarding against, is indifference: the Visuddhimagga calls it the “equanimity of unknowing,” the dull unconcern of someone who simply ignores faults and virtues alike. Its far enemies, the text says, are greed and resentment — “for it is not possible to look on with equanimity and be inflamed with greed or be resentful” at the same time.

The lesson the enemies teach is precision. These states are not vague good feelings; each has a true form and several false ones, and growth lies in telling them apart — choosing real compassion over pity, real gladness over giddiness, real balance over a shrug.

How the four fit together

It helps to see the brahmavihāras as a single integrated capacity rather than a checklist. Mettā is the ground — goodwill toward all. Karuṇā is mettā when it meets pain; muditā is mettā when it meets joy. And upekkhā is the steadiness that lets all three last without tipping into their near enemies. Each catches what the others might miss: compassion keeps goodwill from going soft on suffering, gladness keeps it from souring into pity or envy, and equanimity keeps the whole from burning out or grasping at results.

This is also why equanimity is taught last and treated as the most refined: it is not a withdrawal of love but its maturity — the letting go of the demand that we control how things turn out, so that we can keep caring without exhaustion. Held together, the four describe a heart that can meet the whole of life — its sorrows, its joys, and its sheer uncontrollability — with warmth, clarity, and a balance that does not break.