68. Magick and the Brahma Viharas¶
Despite talking more about the powers in MCTB1 than most meditation manuals do, I have still been accused of saying little that was practical or useful about them. This following section had a two-year gestation period, during which I felt like I was pregnant and having premature contractions, like it was kicking around in my mind, and I would try to write something and yet nothing would come. Then, one day, after two years of this working itself out in the back of my being, I suddenly had to write it down, and it came out as fast as I could type it, which took about two hours. I had no idea where it was leading until I got done typing it. Thus, I offer this baby to you. I leave it nearly in its original form, with its odd, outlined format in places, as it seems to have its own inner coherence. May it do something useful for your practice.
I myself was surprised where the analysis led, which is to the brahma viharas (“divine abodes, abidings, states, or dwellings”), something that was woefully underdeveloped in MCTB1. My treatment of the brahma viharas is still underdeveloped and worthy of much more study, commentary, and specific advice, but this is a good start, and if you supplement it with readings from other reference sources, you should do just fine. If this more formal discourse on magick totally bores you (which I would personally find mind-boggling, but I admit that muggles—I mean, people—have peculiar tastes), then skip to the section below on how to cultivate the brahma viharas of loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity.
Whatever language we use to describe the magickal potentials that exist within people in the wide web of causality, we will run into problems when dealing with anyone who is not well-versed in the terminology, not broad-minded, or who is inexperienced in these domains. For example, if you call magick by the name “science”, you may alienate both those who have a religious aversion to science as well as scientists who would not lump unusual effects into science. If you call it magick, then you alienate the scientist types or merely the concrete and conventional. At some point, you will see a breakdown in communication with almost everyone, but those with real knowledge and understanding will not have a hard time getting back on track. The trick is to work with people where they are.
Formal Definitions¶
Consciousness plus intention produces magick. Anything that was produced by these two, even in the least conscious or subtlest way, is a magickal act or product. This broad definition of magick, while more correct than less inclusive ones, can be limiting, so I will define two subsets of magick for the sake of discussion.
Ordinary magick: that which most people don’t call magick, involving what the ordinary person generally believes to be simple intentions leading to actions (realizing that intentions themselves are actions, and very important ones), like lifting a spoon with your hand or composing a symphony. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to ordinary magickal effects simply as “ordinary effects”.
Extraordinary magick: includes the levels of causal effects that are beyond what most people consider the ordinary world of cause and effect, for example, the realm that science (with the occasional exception of some theoreticians in quantum physics and a few in what are still considered the fringes of science) considers mythical, such as invoking an angel or hearing someone else’s thoughts. In short, what most people would call magick, regardless of whether they believe in it, would fall into this realm, including magickal effects from “ordinary actions”, that is, effects beyond what ordinary people imagine come from what they misperceive to be simple, non-magickal acts, something I term “collateral magick”. For the sake of clarity, I will call extraordinary magickal effects simply “magickal effects”, realizing that this may cause confusion in those who do not understand the full implications of the broad definition of magick.
The more we increase our ability to concentrate and to perceive reality clearly, the more we will begin to perceive the extraordinary magickal aspects of reality. Magick can be looked at from two points of view:
the ultimate, in which all that occurs is the natural, impersonal unfolding of the lawful pattern of totally interconnected causality; and
the relative, in which each individual agent has the power to influence their field of experience/universe/life.
The combination of understanding ordinary magickal effects and relative reality is something I will call “conventional reality”.
Next is the degree to which the act is consciously perceived or conceived as a magickal act. For instance, an ordinary, non-magickally-oriented person might, in a moment of rage, suddenly decide that they wish to send that rage flying through space against the person they are enraged by. If they consciously understood that this act was causal and magickal, they would be more likely tempered by their own moral and philosophical codes than if that act were not recognized as the clearly magickal act that it is. Thus, we have “conscious magick” and “unconscious magick”.
By way of another example, someone might just be walking around in a self-obsessed rage with no obvious awareness that this internal state is very likely to have significant real-world, not to mention subjective, consequences, and this would be an example of unconscious magick.
Since most people do not think that their every conjunction of consciousness and intent is magickal, then from this point of view the majority of their magickal acts will be unconscious ones, meaning that they are not recognized to be as causally effecting as they are. Those who can identify their mind states and emotions as they arise will have taken a crucial step toward making their magick conscious and thus hopefully more skillful.
I would very much like to be able to say that unconscious magickal acts are likely less powerful or effective than conscious magickal acts, but I unfortunately do not believe this to be true, and I view unconscious magick as one of the primary problems facing the world today. In other words, the failure of most of us to consider every intention a magickal act with implications beyond what we can imagine is possible—and thus the failure to have a potent impetus to apply a carefully chosen moral and philosophical code to every waking and dreaming intention—results in an inconceivable amount of “collateral unconscious magick”, much of which ranges from being immoral, unkind, unsustainable, and unskillful, to being extremely destructive, toxic, and ruinous. I encourage you to apply at least a basic universal non-harming ethic to your every thought, word, and deed, and you will help reduce this ongoing catastrophe. Remember the first training in all things! I wish you the best of luck balancing this high standard with the realities of being a hominid.
My point here is not to cause practitioners to become filled with guilt and neuroticism about every unskillful thought they have, as that would likely proliferate the sorts of mental qualities that I am trying to reduce. So, the trick is to find a skillful, kind, and reasonable way to treat your heart and mind and the various forces and feelings that roll through them.
These definitions of magick and the ultimate and relative points of view help define various axes of perceptual and paradigmatic development.
The degree to which practitioners perceive and appreciate ordinary and extraordinary magickal aspects of reality.
The degree to which they perceive and appreciate the ultimate aspects of reality, which include such fundamentals as:
complete interdependence
perfect lawful causality and causal efficacy
total agencylessness (which yet avoids unskillful nihilistic or responsibility-absolving distortions of that perspective) [5]
lack of a fixed or unchanging centerpoint
lack of an independent, autonomous, separate perceiving subject outside of the causal matrix
a comprehension that transient manifestation is equivalent to awareness, both ontologically and geospatially
atemporality
boundarylessness
In general, the more the ultimate aspects of reality are directly and perceptually experienced and appreciated, the more obvious it is that things are interconnected and interdependent to a degree that makes magick much more workable, and provides a deeper appreciation of the vast complexities of causality.
To the degree that the relative perspective is valid, where our experience field overlaps with someone else’s experience field, there is an interplay of forces shaping that conjunction, specifically the consciousness and intent of each of those perceiving that conjunction. In this case, the difference between belief, intent, and force is an arbitrary one.
The corollary of this is that the less obvious the conjunction of experience fields, the less obvious the interplay. This has important implications for those who practice magick, as becomes clear when we examine the next few points.
Different effects may occur if the interplay/overlap is more or less overt, particularly if the beings involved subscribe to different paradigms of what is possible. That is, if some of the beings involved think that some effects are impossible and other beings involved think that those same effects are possible, there is potential for very deep conflict, as well as for experiencing those “same” effects totally differently, as our presumed knowledge of the world affects how we think we perceive the world, and even how we perceive it at some basic level.
Our expectations, beliefs, previous experiences—and the paradigms that guide us—condition, color, and filter what we perceive. They have a direct effect on our field of experience and life. Most people don’t have a well-developed understanding of the vast and complex terrain of the magickal world. These factors create a type of causality that can have extraordinarily powerful magickal force, something I will label “the field of disbelief”. While not nearly as static or simple as this name would imply, the general nature of its effects can be commented upon in rough terms. The field of disbelief is actually a field of beliefs generated by all involved agents about how things are.
That thirteen is sometimes considered an “unlucky” number, while rabbit’s feet are sometimes considered “lucky” (though not for the rabbit), illustrates the point about various beliefs and how they may influence people’s perceptions of their world and how they literally construct the world, such as the designations of hotel floors, house numbers, and the like. That thirteen is avoided and omitted so often is revealing of how potent and causally efficacious various beliefs are in the world today.
The fields of disbelief and belief may vary radically among people. For example, one person may consider a rabbit’s foot to be very powerful, whereas another may have occasional premonitory dreams but think that a rabbit’s foot taken as lucky is pure superstition. One person may think that traveling out-of-body is not that unusual but that telekinesis is completely impossible. Some believe in angels, devils, spirits, fairies, pixies, trolls (beyond the warty internet species, which we know exist in staggering abundance), and/or ghosts. Some think it possible to speak with the dead, heal by the laying on of hands, read other people’s thoughts, or divine the past or future. These are but a few examples of common magickal beliefs in modern times.
In general, the more people’s fields of experience overlap, and the more obviously they overlap, the more fields of belief and disbelief you have to deal with. In these circumstances, overt magickal acts that do not fit with the paradigms of these fields become more difficult. Ways to deal with this include:
Giving up and not attempting magick. I call this dodging the issue, or settling for the lowest common denominator. Magick is happening regardless of whether you wish to acknowledge it, and beyond a certain point the pretending magick isn’t occurring option is not really possible and certainly not ethical, given that all our actions are causal.
Attempting magick in “private”, with the thrust of the work being to cause effects that will have minimal if any obvious overlap with anyone else’s field of experience, with intentional magickal set-up to help block the bleed-through of those magickal effects into the wider world. This paradigm is still extremely naive, in that causes ring out widely in time and space. However, in practice, doing magick in private can be quite effective. I call this “private magick”. It is clearly the easiest of the lot. While there is no such thing as private magick, as this field of manifestation is interconnected in deep and resonant causal ways, still, there are some basic, functional reasons to think about magick done in private versus that done in public. However, like all the others, even so-called private magick still involves the most important field of disbelief of them all: yours.
Attempting magick that does overlap with others’ fields of experience but does so in ways that all the effects appear to be either ordinary, or at least not noticed to be magickal. I call this “stealth magick”, as it gets in under the radar of the field(s) of disbelief.
Example: you are in a conference in a small, poorly ventilated room with a guy waving around a dry-erase marker with the cap off. The solvent smell is causing you nausea. After careful consideration of the ethics involved, you mentally will him, with no external indication, to put the cap back on the marker when he is not writing with it. He puts the cap back on the marker and doesn’t notice at all. The act was clearly magickal but didn’t run into anyone’s field of disbelief.
This example brings up another sub-point of great profundity: it is impossible to distinguish between spell-casting and prognostication. It is purely a matter of convention. One could just as easily say that your internal experience of willing him to do something was just a clue concerning what was going to happen anyway. To needlessly anthropomorphize causality, it doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.
Attempting to work with the specific holes in a person’s or a select group of people’s fields of disbelief, thus working specifically in ways that they truly believe are possible, so that you do not overtly run into the blocks in their field of disbelief, but instead work with what the group feels is possible. I call this “public consensual magick”, as there was a consensus as to what was possible and what was acceptable. Just as the medical profession highly emphasizes informed consent—so as to respect the patient’s beliefs and rights—so we should adopt a similar view regarding magickal acts and those involved in them. Obvious examples include such things as faith healing and fortune telling. As those who were there often share what happened with people who have different beliefs, public consensual magick often enters the next category.
Attempting to work in public ways that directly contradict a person or group’s field of disbelief. This can be done, but the backlash tends to be significant and often much more harmful to the practitioner than to those whose paradigms were challenged. I call this “public non-consensual magick”. Important points about this are:
It can be astounding how dense people can be in the face of magickal experiences that might challenge their paradigms. The connections people can miss and experiences they can seem to forget happened or that they compartmentalize away can be amazing. While this can be very useful for the magickal practitioner, it is not an effect that we want to count on happening in the face of repetition, nor even count on the first time.
People often react negatively in relation to those whose paradigms diverge from their own. This is instinctual and, while these reactions can be clothed in the predominant institutions, laws, and decorum of a specific time and place, nonetheless they can be extremely detrimental to the magickal practitioner. We can look to myth, legend, and history for illumination on this point. Consider a fanciful medieval setting and the reaction that various non-magickal people or groups (or those of another competing magickal tradition) might have towards various other magickal ones. Note the common elements of denial, fear, anger, bargaining, and manipulation in the following scenarios.
The local ruler might size up the old wizard in the lone tower on the hill. He might believe that the wizard was just an old wacko or, if he believed he had some power, would want to know how to keep him on his side and his chances of doing so. Could he be bought, seduced, or coerced through threat or otherwise manipulated? The local townspeople might know of a witch out in the forest. Many would fear her. Some would seek her out for help with love, illness, or obstacles. Others might think she was just an old madwoman. Religious people might think she was in league with Satan and burn her at the stake. Reactions like these take place today all over the world and in “civilized” societies. The more your basic paradigms and lifestyle diverge from those around you and the more obvious you are about this, the stronger the reactions you will encounter. Consider those of one religion or political party killing those of another, as we see on the news daily.
Attempting to alter the paradigms and expectations of a person or group before performing public magick, thus changing it into “targeted public magick”. Skeptics would call this suggestion. I would call it education.
Another extremely important point about having magickal experiences is that your paradigms will begin to diverge from those around you who haven’t yet had magickal experiences that they acknowledge as such. There is no way around this. The more times you see visions, travel out-of-body, do energy work, trace glowing pentagrams in the air, speak with spirits, shift into altered states of consciousness, manipulate the world in various extraordinary ways, understand aspects of ultimate reality, or radiate glowing beams of love out into the world, the more you will be out of alignment with “conventional reality”, not that you could get two people to agree about exactly what that is, which itself is very revealing. Real practical wisdom involves working with this to everyone’s benefit or at least not to anyone’s detriment if you can help it.
There is a difference between our inner world diverging from “the non-magickal norm” and our appearance diverging from it. This has to do with external marks of being “different”, such as unusual clothes, tattoos, hairstyles, props (such as wands, daggers, pentacles, crosses, amulets, dorjes, bells, incense, etc.), special languages, special symbols on belongings, etc. Having cool and unusual props can be great fun, as well as help to create situations that are more conducive to certain desired roles, behaviors, and states of mind. They can be useful physical reminders of more seemingly abstract spiritual qualities and principles. For example, I have a Medicine Buddha thangka that I take as inspiration to use magick in healing ways and to develop healing qualities. Props can have the positive impact of giving us a sense of there being something special and symbolic in what we do.
Props and trappings may also attract people of like mind, but they can repel those who have prejudices against the particular tradition we are working within, and so are a mixed blessing. Props can also attract undue attention and can adversely affect jobs and relationships. While props have their distinct advantages, particularly as they may work with deeper aspects of your own magickal mind to short-circuit part of your own field of disbelief, and to focus and firm-up various aspects of your vision and intent, there are reasons to get used to working without them initially, since if you are going to do stealth magick it is much easier if you are free of props and trappings. I myself have some props that I consider skillful, helpful, inspiring, and aesthetically pleasing, but strangely enough, most of the time I do my most important work without them. This is merely a personal quirk of my own.
The counterpoint to this is that props can alter other people’s fields of disbelief based upon their own internal paradigm conflicts, just as they can alter our own. A person who claims not to believe in magickal things may still react strongly to something like an evocative tantric image, a statue of the Virgin Mary, or an incense-filled room decorated with curtains and a magick circle with associated symbols drawn on the floor, creating the possibility of doing more consensual magick.
Another important factor influencing the interaction of any magickal act and people’s reactions to it is the timing of the act. There is “immediate magick” and “delayed magick”.
Immediate magick is that which has an immediately obvious effect: you wish the candle flame to move, and a few seconds later it moves. Immediate magick is more impressive to all involved, including you, and thus much more likely to garner stronger reactions if it falls outside of the categories of private magick or stealth magick.
Delayed magick is often of broader, subtler, and more complicated scope: you wish for some complex work situation to resolve in your favor, and two months later it does. This sort of magick can be much more satisfying in some ways, as typically it involves situations that in the grand scheme of our lives are more important than many immediate magickal effects, but it lacks the spectacle of well-done immediate magick. Delayed magick is much more often done as private or stealth magick, but if you advertised it and turned it into public magick—however consensual—negative reactions often would be forthcoming, and you would have to deal with fields of disbelief. All other factors being equal, delayed magick is usually easier to accomplish than immediate magick. That said, immediate magick will always have delayed consequences we won’t necessarily recognize are a result of the spell we cast, as causality rings on and on and on.
The example of the candle flame moving versus the work situation resolving raises another important consideration: there is magick that works within what might appear to be natural causal mechanisms and effects, for example, the work situation resolving, and magick that works by what are, for most, clearly extraordinary or unnatural magickal methods and effects, such as the candle flame moving. For lack of better terms, and defaulting to limited and inaccurate paradigms, I call these, naturally enough, “natural magick” and “unnatural magick”.
Natural magick is clearly magickal, and yet the way that everything worked out could very reasonably be explained by a so-called “rational” or “scientific” person as being within the laws of what they think of as “ordinary reality”.
Unnatural magick is also definitely magickal, and much more in line with what most people think of as magick, in that something truly extraordinary appeared to happen, such that a so-called “rational” or “scientific” person will have to resort to some very complicated mental gymnastics to try to fit the occurrence within the “standard” physical laws of “reality”, and those engaging in these mental gymnastics may include you. All other factors being equal, unnatural magick is generally more difficult to do than natural magick.
Also influencing the likelihood of success, we have the degree of alignment between your true desire and the specifics of the magickal result you ask for, which is to say the degree to which you know what you really want and your willingness to intend for that specific outcome. This simple dynamic is one of the most challenging aspects of good magickal work. This breaks down into its two component parts:
The degree to which you want the spell to work at all. As the force of desire is the driving force behind magick, if you are apathetic about the outcome, the force behind the magickal act will likely be small, while if you are passionate regarding the outcome, it is much more likely to result in something happening.
The degree to which you are specific about exactly what outcome you desire and exactly how that will come about will have an influence on the outcome. If you are more specific about the desired outcome, it is often harder to get what you wish, though certainly not always. The degree to which you should be specific about the details of the outcomes is an extremely complicated topic. While there are definite exceptions depending on circumstances, in general it is advisable to ask for the most nonspecific outcome that will still result in the fulfillment of the core aspects of your true desire. For example, it may often be best to ask for the best possible outcome for all concerned rather than asking for a very specific outcome, though this is not always true.
In a similar vein, each one of us has an ability to feel into the specifics of the web of causality that relates to our specific true desires. This has three aspects:
The degree to which you can imagine the outcome you wish for happening, in other words, its “plausibility”. The greater the degree of plausibility, the less you will have to deal with your own and everyone else’s fields of disbelief. For instance, if you wished to point your finger at the sun and have the sun suddenly vanish forever, this is obviously significantly less plausible than if you wished to have a black sphere appear between you and the sun that only you could see.
Deeper than that is the degree to which you can feel out the possible waves of resonance of broader implications of what you truly desire happening.
Finally, there are issues of how you feel about those possible waves of resonant broader implications, as you may be just fine with the central object of desire manifesting, but you may not be comfortable with all the related outcomes. Some good outcomes arise by mechanisms that are distinctly unsavory. The degree of moral conflict you are willing to tolerate reflects the extent to which you accept the so-called “good outcomes” arising through unsavory mechanisms.
Related to this is the degree to which the intentions of independent agents (from a relative point of view) align with your own. Let’s view experiential reality as the sum of the fluxions of the magickal influence clouds (of which fields of disbelief are a small subpart) of the conscious agents in the universes. The degree to which your true desire aligns with or is not explicitly countered by that sum of influence clouds will also influence the outcome. In plain terms, if a number of beings have wishes in line with, are neutral towards, or are in conflict with your own wish, this is significant. This I term the degree of “synchrony” or “asynchrony”.
Of great significance are also underlying abilities of the agent performing the act. Briefly:
The degree of concentration skills will have a direct effect on the power behind the act, and this is particularly true for unnatural magick and immediate magick, though it applies to all other types as well. Most magickal practitioners greatly underestimate the degree to which very strong concentration skills open doors to experiences and abilities. As mentioned earlier, a hyper-concentrated mind becomes malleable, pliable, bright, and jumps to any magickal task with great ease. At a certain point in concentration, phenomena occur by merely inclining to them. As stated earlier, you wish to draw a symbol in the air: there it is, trailing off your finger like syrup. You wish to visualize an image: it appears fully formed, vivid, and radiant. You wish to jump out-of-body: suddenly you are out. You wish to have deep intuitive insight into some situation: there it is. You wish to see past lives: there they are. Learning to concentrate well opens a universe of ability that those who have never really learned to concentrate might touch on occasionally in fits and starts but otherwise will never know. For me to get to this level generally takes at least 150 hours of practice in a short time with few distractions, but I can’t predict how long it will take you.
The confidence of the agent: never underestimate the ability of someone who truly believes they can succeed, or the degree to which a lack of confidence can scuttle an otherwise very well set-up magickal act.
The level of single-mindedness of the agent. Having the sum of our attention, passion, and intent dedicated to our act is much more likely to result in stronger effects than the mind that is distracted or divided. By “divided”, I mean that it is common to have mixed feelings about our intended outcomes, even if we are not entirely in touch with those internal conflicts.
The familiarity of the agent with that specific act will also make it much easier: repeated practice of an act makes it easier and easier, with some notable exceptions that are too complicated to detail here.
There is also the issue of the set-up. Taking the time to really set up the magick correctly can make a big difference. The set-up is implied in many elements of a magickal working, such as having good props (or not), feeling out the situation, learning what you can about the causal system you are trying to influence, refining the degree of specifics and alignment, and then doing the magical act at the right time, in the right setting, and in the right frame of mind; all these will have an influence on the outcome. It also generally involves rising to the highest and most exalted state, such as the highest jhana one is capable of, leaving that state, and then resolving to have the magick occur with full and unbridled intent.
Finally, as the web of causality is so infinitely nuanced, there are innumerable factors that can’t possibly be known (except perhaps by the most highly advanced yogis, so the traditions may tell you), and these will be generically and only somewhat appropriately called “luck”, or “karma”, if you prefer. Regardless of what you call it, this could in many ways be considered the most important of the factors, but in this case luck clearly favors the well-trained and well-prepared, though not always.
We now have enough categories to be able to flush out a large swath of categories of magick and how they relate to the field of disbelief, as well as how people are likely to react to them, and how easy they are to pull off. At one extreme, we have “unnatural immediate public nonconsensual apathetic poorly-aligned poorly-felt-out morally-conflicted implausible hyper-specified asynchronous weakly-concentrated low-or-no-confidence distracted unfamiliar poorly-set-up ill-timed disgruntled unlucky magick in a non-conducive setting that sucks”, and at the other extreme we have “natural delayed private passionate well-aligned well-felt-out morally-pure unconflicted plausible nonspecific synchronous well-timed concentrated confident single-minded joyous benevolent familiar well-set-up lucky magick in a conducive setting that rocks”. Were we to put these on a spectrum, we would find that the closer we are to the former, the harder the magick is to pull off, and the closer we are to the latter, the easier it is to pull off. There are exceptions, as an extremely passionate feeling or an unusually concentrated mind might be enough to create powerful effects regardless of other factors.
That list of closely related conditions also clearly hints at how various factors might influence each other. For instance, morally conflicted magick is also likely unconfident magick, as is unfamiliar magick. Unconfident magick is likely to be distracted magick. Poorly aligned magick is likely to be apathetic magick, which itself is likely to be poorly concentrated magick. This leads to the next point, and finally brings things back into a more Buddhist context. Training the mind to have positive mental factors, ethical motivations, and less specific and more universal forms of well-wishing and compassion is an extremely good plan from a magickal point of view, both for ordinary magick and extraordinary magick, meaning the sum of intentions and their effects.
The Brahma Viharas¶
This leads to the obvious question: how do we train the mind to be clear, steady, concentrated, compassionate, loving, joyously appreciative of the goodness and success of others, and equanimous? These are the brahma viharas or “divine abidings”, qualities that often get overlooked in many magickal discussions, but which I assert are the key to optimal magick, meaning the best magick that we could have come up with in that set of circumstances. “Optimal” is a concept that those familiar with these matters will quickly realize is at once totally preposterous due to the absurdity of its naivety and, if we are willing to hold it a bit loosely and transcend our tight-assed existential, entitled, and postmodern objections, is also a very useful goal to strive for. For those not familiar with the brahma viharas, they are:
Loving-kindness (metta), which is also accurately translated as “loving-friendliness”: the natural well-wishing for oneself and all beings and the recognition that all beings wish for happiness.
Compassion (karuna): the natural wishing that our own and all others’ pain, problems, and suffering will cease, and the recognition that all beings wish not to suffer or experience misery.
Joyful appreciation (mudita): the natural appreciation of our own and all others’ successes, good fortunes, abilities, and joys. Mudita is also often translated as “sympathetic joy”.
Equanimity (upekkha): the feeling of peace that comes from realizing that all beings are the true heirs of their karma and that their well-being depends on their actions, and not on our wishes for them; it also entails a lack of attachment or aversion to any classes of beings and any individual beings. Note: there are many types of upekkha mentioned in the various traditions, so be mindful of how the word “equanimity” is used in various contexts.
The idea of these four being optimal implies an agent who can make choices. That there is an agent who can make choices is a good working assumption for all moral work. Even those with deep understandings of natural causality and interdependence can adopt the relative paradigm that there is a moral agent who can make choices.
“Optimal” also implies that there is some perfectly defined criteria for “best”, though these cannot ultimately be found. “Optimal” either becomes an article of faith, a meta-perspective, or a vision-logic mode of real understanding, or more often some fusion of both perspectives. [6]
Still, you may be reasonably be asking, “Why is it that you view the brahma viharas (and their functional applications, such as tonglen) as being the Buddhist answer to the question of meditative training that most likely leads to optimal magick?” Why, thank you, I am glad you asked this:
The brahma viharas are generally in the (somewhat inaccurate) category of private magick, and even if you make them public magick by, say, chanting out the phrases in some hopefully appropriate public context, hardly anyone would object or find anything odd in wishing others well or in the other three practices. Still, the category of private magick is a relative one, as the field of causality is unavoidably interconnected. Actions done in your own mind stream are guaranteed to have implications for the rest of the world.
The brahma viharas are not specific regarding the question of immediate versus delayed magick, and leaving that question open makes for a more workable situation.
Likewise, the brahma viharas are nonspecific, meaning that they do not lay out any criteria for the outcome beyond the most general and fundamental benefit, a quality that nearly always makes magickal workings easier.
The brahma viharas are not necessarily unnatural, though many people might be surprised to learn the depth to which we can generate those feelings in the body and some of the other unusual experiences we can have while practicing them, such as experiencing them radiating throughout space as light, etc.
The brahma viharas are not likely to come up against anyone’s field of disbelief, since who would really disbelieve that we want to cultivate positive qualities or take issue with our wishing for positive outcomes and balance of mind?
The brahma viharas are not likely to lead to moral conflict, except occasionally with the category of the “enemy” (see below), and thus, with this single exception, we can generally proceed in their cultivation completely free from moral conflict, but rather with a deep and galvanizing sense of moral imperative.
Since the brahma viharas cultivate what are clearly our deepest wishes and highest aspirations for ourselves and others, they are automatically synchronous, meaning completely in line with the intentions of the object of the practice.
Given that the brahma viharas lend themselves to strongly positive feelings, they are positively reinforcing, and being positively reinforcing, they naturally lend themselves to strong single-mindedness, confidence, and concentration.
Given that there is no time when the brahma viharas are not a good idea, any time they are practiced they are well-timed, and therefore timely.
Given that the brahma viharas require little formal set-up beyond the phrases and the feelings themselves, and given that as part of the set-up it is easy to recognize that these are a good idea, it is hard to imagine easier magick to set up properly.
As to plausibility, it is possible that some aspects of our wishes—say for the happiness of all beings to expand and increase—may seem implausible. However, that we wish this for ourselves and others is not implausible at all, and that all beings wish for contentment, freedom from misery, etc. for themselves is also not implausible. This practice is about cultivating the feeling of those wishes, with those positive qualities being their own reward even if you naively imagine that they do nothing other than simply occur “within” “us”, so, properly understood, plausibility is easily met.
As to the influence clouds that emanate from the wishes of other beings, given that the brahma viharas at their core automatically resonate with the deepest wishes of all beings, no better natural resonance and amplification could possibly be found.
As to luck, I am perhaps being a bit magickal and optimistic in my thinking here, but it is easy to imagine, should there be any such thing as luck, that luck favors these most fundamentally beneficial workings. The workings of karma are imponderable, but the conditioning within the agent during the practice of the brahma viharas is extremely meritorious and therefore beneficial.
The last factors are to make the brahma viharas familiar and to practice them in a conducive setting. The first is simply a question of repetition, and the latter is realizing that any setting may be a good place to practice these qualities that are so needed in this aching world.
In short, the brahma viharas naturally meet all the criteria that make for the most powerful and beneficial magick, and it is hard to come up with anything else that does this in quite that way other than turning attention to directly comprehending the true nature of all sensations, as is frequently mentioned at the end of texts that deal with magick, such as “The Fruits of the Contemplative Life” (DN 2).
In summary, it is highly recommended that you make some time for the brahma viharas.
Given that you are now completely inspired to try these (or further develop them if you are already familiar with them) by the amazing power of this airtight logic of staggering rhetorical force, it is worth knowing how to practice them. Excellent instructions can be found in:
The Visuddhimagga, by Buddhaghosa, chapter nine
Buddhist Meditation in Theory and Practice, by Paravahera Vajiranana Mahathera, chapters twenty and twenty-one
Path to Deliverance, by Nyanatiloka, pp. 101–110.
A summary of the basic instructions appears below:
Pick one of the brahma viharas, specifically:
Loving-friendliness: that feeling of heartfelt well-wishing
Compassion: that wish for the end of suffering for all beings equally
Joyous appreciation: that gladness for and delighting in what is good in the lives of others
Equanimity: that impartiality and peaceful acceptance that helps counterbalance the first three brahma viharas and is its own reward.
It is recommended that these be practiced in the order presented, but there is no harm in choosing the one that seems most appropriate to the time and going back and filling in with the others later. It is also highly recommended to practice them all, as they tend to balance aspects of each other that otherwise can become imbalanced if we practice them selectively.
Pick a comfortable meditation posture if possible.
Reflect on the dangers of the quality of mind that the chosen brahma vihara most directly opposes.
Loving-friendliness directly opposes hatred. Reflect on the dangers of harboring hatred.
Compassion directly opposes cruelty. Reflect on the dangers of harboring cruelty.
Joyous appreciation directly opposes jealousy and envy. Reflect on the dangers of harboring jealousy and envy.
Equanimity directly opposes both grasping and hatred. Reflect on the dangers of grasping (greed or not letting go) and hatred. Equanimity helps counterbalance getting overwhelmed by the feelings that the first three can sometimes bring up. It also helps prevent the other brahma viharas practices from becoming exercises in unskillful sentimentalism and codependency.
Each of the brahma viharas is associated with a specific phrase that is used to cultivate the sentiment until the feeling of the brahma vihara can itself be taken as the meditation object, and so the next step is to learn the phrases for that brahma vihara. The phrases may be modified to suit your inclinations, and appear in various forms in various places. Each phrase is used to extend the quality of the brahma vihara to various categories of beings, so a blank is included in the phrase that we fill in with the appropriate category as we progress through them. Here I render them as:
For loving-friendliness: May …………… be happy. May ………… be peaceful. May …………… be safe. May …………… live with ease.
For compassion:May …………… be free from suffering. May their suffering finally cease.
For joyous appreciation: May the happiness and good fortune of …………… always increase.
For equanimity: ………… is/are the true heirs of their karma. …………’s happiness depends upon their actions and not upon my wishes for them.
The phrases in the short form of the practice and then their resultant feelings are extended towards various beings and classes of beings in this traditional order:
Towards ourselves first, e.g., May I be happy, etc. Equanimity is the exception, as directing this type of equanimity towards ourselves is philosophically problematic.
Towards a friend (try to avoid those for whom you feel sexual attraction, as that tends to distract from the practice, though if we get better at this we might try to sort those out later on)
Towards a neutral person
Towards a hostile person or one towards whom you bear ill will (traditionally called the “enemy” or, perhaps a bit more generously, the “worthy opponent”)
Towards all beings everywhere; the long, monastic versions of these practices go into great detail about the categories of beings in various directions and are a mighty fine time.
When working with the categories in this way, it is traditional to stick to the easy categories first, developing them until the feeling is strong, and then shifting to the harder categories when we feel confident. This is in keeping with the magickal principles of familiarity and confidence.
We may also extend the feelings in various directions:
In front
In back
To the sides
Above
Below
All around pervading everything everywhere. [7]
As we repeat the phrases, we try to connect to the fundamental feeling indicated by the words.
We must guard against both the far enemies (emotions like greed and hatred listed above that the brahma viharas directly oppose), and the near enemies, which are facsimiles of the brahma viharas that are not the genuine quality but instead problematic impostors. These are:
For loving-friendliness, the near enemy is grasping desire, attachment, or lust.
For compassion, the near enemy is pity.
For joyous appreciation, the near enemy is also desire.
For equanimity, the near enemy is indifference.
As the feeling of the brahma vihara grows, we turn that feeling into an object of shamatha practice, such that we take that feeling and develop it directly, working with it, expanding it, gently coaxing it through any blockages or sticking points we find, extending it through our body until it pervades our whole body, and finally expanding the feeling everywhere. This is good advice for any jhana practice.
In this way, we may use the first three brahma viharas to attain up to the third jhana, as they still contain a pleasant feeling of some sort. We can take this type of equanimity to the fourth jhana and beyond, as equanimity is the basis of the formless realms.
As barriers, distractions, or issues arise during the practice, we open, we soften, and we connect with the deep and fundamental feeling of the chosen brahma vihara, and slowly extend that one through whatever blockages we encounter to reach everyone and pervade everywhere.
Much additional accessible material may be found in Sharon Salzberg’s Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness which, while not mentioning how to develop metta into the deep jhanic states, still outlines many useful aspects of the practice. It is my deep wish that you, the reader, fully excel in all these practices and thus benefit tremendously from your labors, realizing that your happiness ultimately depends on your actions.
One of the remarkable things about the brahma viharas is that their practice can automatically start to do what I advocated in the chapter “Harnessing the Energy of the Defilements”, in which I recommended finding the skillful aspects of emotions that we might otherwise label as unskillful. It turns out that enough good brahma vihara practice can begin to show us the hidden tendencies towards kindness, empathy, compassion, and equanimity that underlie other, more difficult emotions. We notice that these beneficial qualities cultivated by the brahma viharas are what those unskillful emotions were trying to accomplish in some way, and so the brahma viharas can help transform our hearts to connect more naturally with some of the most skillful magick there is. I highly recommend spending at least a few minutes every day with at least one of the brahma viharas. They can be done in nearly all circumstances of daily life but, as always, be careful when doing any meditation while performing a task such as driving or using dangerous equipment.
Loving-friendliness practices are also among what are called in the Theravada “the four guardian meditations”, sort of the Theravada meditative equivalent of a magick circle of protection. For the actual source of the practice, check out the Sutta Nipata 1.8 (SN 1.8), as well as chapter nine of the Visuddhimagga or chapter eight, section five of the Vimuttimagga, which have great instructions on all the brahma viharas. The other three guardian meditations are “reflection on the positive qualities of the Buddha” (to inspire faith), “recollection and contemplation of death” (to inspire effort and reduce attachment), and “reflections on the loathsomeness of the body” (to counter lust, attachment, and vanity). As you can see, the Theravada has no fear of the dark aspects of life, and these practices, which may initially ring a bit oddly to the contemporary ear, can be quite beneficial when done properly. Some Pali chanting of some or all of these was part of the daily ritual in most of the traditional Theravada retreats I attended in traditional monasteries, and I have learned to appreciate these practices. Similar protective meditations exist in the other Buddhist traditions also.
Bodhicitta as Magick¶
The same paradigm that applies to the brahma viharas can apply to relative bodhicitta, that wish to achieve Buddhahood for the benefit and awakening of all beings. The Mahayana is distinguished by its emphasis on bodhicitta, and so contains many practices specifically designed to cultivate not only the wish and aspiration of relative and ultimate bodhicitta, but also the living experience of bodhicitta, much as we can also cultivate the brahma viharas. The same logic that argues for the brahma viharas being among the highest forms of skillful magick applies equally to the cultivation of bodhicitta. There are many bodhicitta practices, and you can find them in countless books on the Mahayana as well as in the “Wikiyana”, but it is considered crucial in the Mahayana to receive instructions on relative and ultimate bodhicitta from living masters, as there is truly something magickal about hanging out with those who have learned these well. Further, we can cultivate the wisdom that realizes ultimate bodhicitta, with this being the highest form of magick there is. On that note…
Vipassana as Magick¶
Finally, the greatest benefit of having the level of mental control, galvanized intent, and concentration that lead to the more exotic powers is that we may turn this well-tuned mind to wisdom, to the understanding of impermanence, suffering, and no-self. Wisdom is listed as the greatest of the powers, the ultimate reason for learning to cultivate them. In this, we rise to the fourth jhana or rise to and leave the eighth jhana and see the true nature of experience, allowing us to cut through delusion and untangle the knot of suffering and ignorance. This is the final punchline of many a great sutta for good reason.
Further, wisdom teachings have their own magick to them. Perceiving sensations clearly transforms them into something more workable than the way we typically perceive them. Perceiving emotional energies as patterns of transient, natural sensations can make them vastly more workable. Attaining deep, transformative insights and the stages of awakening can themselves shift our way of perceiving issues that we might otherwise have tried to solve at a more mundane magickal level. Feeling deeply into any shifting disturbances in our field of experience can help resolve those disturbances. Further, the texts state that realization provides defense against some of the magick of those of lesser stages of realization or magick performed by the unrealized. [8]
Sometimes the best magick is not explicitly magickal but more in the realm of vipassana. Both more formal magick based on concentration, particularly the brahma viharas, and more insight-based magick have their uses, and trying to sort out which is better in any given situation is part of the adventure. These practices that can fuse concentration and insight can be unusually profound. This combination of vipassana and brahma vihara practice is also some of the cleanest, most powerful, and most karmically skillful protective magick around. Still, while practicing, keep morality at the front of your mind, and whatever you do in your practice will likely go vastly better. May all your intentions be for the benefit and awakening of all beings.
Footnotes
