Reading:
“Here monks,
(1) One develops the awakening support of awareness,
filled with Love;
Supported by letting go,
Calming down,
Release,
Culminating in surrender.”
I write ‘relaxation’ in this translation but I go back and forth. […]
And now this is where it gets interesting because we do practice this boundless Love,
but there are many aspects of life, and many aspects of the Dhamma,
and many aspects of the practice.
And that is why I wanted to talk about this today because… this covers really good bases of the practice and it is making it very clear.
So in Pāḷi this is:
Vivekanissitaṃ
virāganissitaṃ
nirodhanissitaṃ
vossaggapariṇāmiṃ.
And I will be talking a little bit about these four because they come back every time,
in each of the seven supports of awakening,
and these seven reoccur every brahmavihāra,
so these are very…
well seven times four…
twenty-eight,
they come back twenty eight times during that sutta so I think it is probably worthwhile to look at that and what that means!
These four words , they come back very often, in fact the Buddha says that:
Vivekanissitaṃ
virāganissitaṃ
nirodhanissitaṃ
vossaggapariṇāmiṃ.
Also in the relation to the eightfold path,
he will take the eight-spoked path, if you look in the Collected Discourses (SN) in the section on the Path (magga saṃyutta)
in a lot of those suttas, he will break down the path and he won’t say it in the usual way that we are used to.
He will say: “One develops wise understanding supported by letting go,
supported by calming down,
supported by cessation, (or release, what I call release)
and supported by surrender.”
It is ‘supported’ but I remember, when I first started translating this sutta, what came to mind was actually to translate it, not as supported but as ‘leaning towards these four qualities.’
Depending what you like most in your mind.
Supported is also good,
nissitaṃ would be ‘rooted in there’,
that’s what it means.
But to practice also going towards that.
To implement that also.
So it’s not just Boundless Love.
It’s Boundless Love,
with the awakening factor of awareness,
which is only one aspect of it,
which is supported by these four qualities.
And so that’s where we find Right Effort or Wise Practice.
Because practicing Boundless Love is the second fold of Wise Practice.
Where you would bring up,
generate,
cultivate,
develop wholesome states.
But the first fold which is letting go,
relaxing (Passadhi) also,
that is not really talked about, right, in the Brahmavihāras.
One of the things I’ve been looking for a lot
when I translate and when I read the suttas is which are the suttas where I can find this.
The letting go aspect, with the Brahmavihāras.
Because just the Brahmavihāras themselves,
they don’t explain that.
that you have to let go also.
Like, how that happens.
And so, I mean, it comes back twenty-eight times in that sutta so I think it’s pretty clear!