Letting Go, Part 2: Universal Kindness

by Nina

The Love Embrace of the Universe by Frida Kahlo

I.33 By cultivating an attitude of friendship toward those who are happy, compassion toward those in distress, joy toward those who are virtuous, and equanimity toward those who are nonvirtuous, lucidity arises in the mind. —translated by Edwin Bryant 

What often interferes with our ability to be content are the feelings we have when we compare ourselves to others. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that comparing ourselves to others can lead to some ugly feelings, including envy, jealousy, anger, and intolerance. Sometimes we even have violent thoughts or feelings of ill will. Ancient yogis recognized this:

“Hariharananda suggests that envy generally arises when we encounter people whom we do not care about experiencing happiness. Even a pious person can invoke our jealously and we take cruel delight when we find an enemy in misery.” —Edwin Bryant 

But according to Patanjali by cultivating positive feelings for those who trigger the negative ones, we can “remove” the negative feelings that are disturbing our equanimity. Sutra I.33, which I’ve quoted above, says that the reason for conducting yourself with friendship, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity toward others is to allow “lucidity” to arise in the mind (not just to be a good person). And Edwin Bryant describes practicing according to this sutra as an “off-the-mat type of meditation” for quieting the mind. 

Yes, these four practices are the same as the Buddhist four brahmavihara, the divine abodes that are sometimes called the four aspects of love. They are also, individually, yamas that appear in yoga texts that came after the Yoga Sutras. Practicing these four yamas allows you to train your heart. Your ability to feel friendship (aka loving-kindness), compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity increases with practice and even changes the structure of your brain. In The Wisdom of Yoga, Stephen Cope describes it this way:

“The more we practice loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, happiness, the stronger they become. The part of the brain that supports these states is strengthened and becomes more robust. As these wholesome states are being practiced, the difficult negative states, involving quite a different set of neural connections, are waning in strength, dominance, and physical development.”

Cultivating these states might also improve your relationships, as you can become kinder and less reactive. And they may inspire you to take action in the world, turning unconditional friendship and compassion for others into force for change. 

The following sections discuss each of the four practices individually. If you have suggestions for other ways to put these yamas into practice than I haven't included here, please let me know because this is a new area of interest for me.

Cultivating Unconditional Friendship (Maitri)

“In daily life we see people around who are happier than we are, people who are less happy… Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves…our mind will be very tranquil.” — Sutra 1.33, T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga

When you experience loss, it can be hard to witness the happiness of others, especially those who have what you once had or who have what you’ve always wanted. You might feel envy—a very painful emotion—or even secretly wish some harm would befall the people you envy. 

For your peace of mind, Sutra 1.3 tells you instead to cultivate maitri for those who are happy. While Edwin Bryant translates maitri in sutra 1.33 as “friendship,” another translation is “loving-kindness.” This is the benevolent desire for well-being and happiness for others as well as for yourself. As a yama, maitri complements ahimsa, non-violence. In addition to refraining from thoughts of harming others, you should wish them well.

As one of the four virtues of Buddhism, loving-kindness, known as metta as well as maitri, is often cultivated on behalf of all beings. As a yoga practitioner, you should feel free to practice this way, too. However, in the context of yoga sutra 1.33, this practice is about letting go of negative thoughts and emotions regarding those who are happy (or happier than you). 

Cultivating this same unconditional friendship for yourself can not only help you let go of negative thoughts and emotions you have for yourself but can also train you to extend that feelings to others.

“It is never too late or too early to practice loving-kindness. It is said that we can’t attain enlightenment, let alone feel contentment and joy, without seeing who we are and what we do, without seeing our patterns and our habits. This is called maitri – developing lovingkindness and an unconditional friendship with ourselves.” —Pema Chodron

Here are some ways you might practice the yama maitri:

1. Cultivating the Opposite. You can use thoughts of loving-kindness as your “opposite thoughts” (see Putting the Wisdom of Yoga into Practice).
2. Acts of Friendship. Though acts of unconditional friendship, small and large, you can support the happiness of others.
3. Loving-Kindness Meditation. You can either use a guided loving-kindness meditation that you find in a book or recording. Or you can choose your own phrases of loving-kindness in your meditation as you picture first yourself, someone you love, a neutral person, and finally a difficult person.

My student Jacqueline, whose suffering over her online shopping I described in Letting Go, Part 1, realized during her self-enquiry she was very hard on herself for “slipping up” whenever she bought anything that she considered strictly unnecessary. So, she decided to practice her own, customized version of the Loving-Kindness meditation to cultivate kindness toward herself. As she thought of living with ease, she imagined letting go of the burden of thinking she was like her father. And she added this following phrase to the meditation: “May I be kind to myself and others.”

Cultivating Compassion (Karuna)

“Compassion for the suffering of others is more than just sympathy…. Real compassion is potent as it implies the question, ‘What can I do to help?’” B.K.S. Iyengar

To let go of the negative emotions you feel toward those in distress, sutra I.33 recommends practicing compassion (karuna). Unlike simple pity or concern, feeling compassion means experiencing the sufferings of others as if they were your own. This helps us improve our relationships with those in distress as well as those with whom we have difficult relationships because compassion allows us to understand the fears and desires that are motivating others. 

(You might wonder, who ever has negative feelings about people who are suffering? Well, I confess to having negative feelings about homeless people who leave huge piles of garbage around our city, which I try to counteract with compassion.) 

And having compassion for yourself allows you to let go of guilt about mistakes you’ve made and shame about feelings you think you should not be having. As my friend psychiatrist and mindfulness practitioner Dr. Lauzé says:

“We are human, we take wrong turns sometimes, but it’s the wrong turns that teach us how to move forward more skillfully. Self-compassion about our imperfections, and [compassion about] the imperfections of others, brings relief.” 

Unlike the word compassion in English, which just means experiencing the suffering of others as your own, the word karuna in Sanskrit includes taking action to alleviate that suffering. In fact, the idea of taking action based on compassionate feelings is built into the word karuna. According to Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, “karu” means “action, endeavor, ability to do” and “na” means “to move forward, to lead, leading capacity, the process of reaching a destination.”

“Together karuna refers to an action or virtue that enables you to move forward; the virtue that compels you to help others move forward; the virtue that compels you to pull others out of their misery; the virtue that compels you to extend yourself to those who are stuck; compassion”

So, as a yama, practicing compassion not only means cultivating compassionate feelings for others, but also taking actions to relieve their suffering. This is a completely selfless form of compassionate action, from which you do not expect anything in return, not even gratitude. 

Here are some ways you might practice the yama compassion:

1. Cultivating the Opposite. You can use compassionate thoughts as your “opposite thoughts” (see Putting the Wisdom of Yoga into Practice).
2. Helping Others. Take any appropriate actions to help individuals who are suffering or organizations that support them. Offer your emotional support, your time, your skills, your money, or anything else that might help. To practice this compassion in action the yogic way, follow the path of Karma Yoga (see The Path of Karma Yoga (Selfless Service)).
3. Compassion Meditation. In a compassion meditation, you focus on a person or a group of people who are suffering or experiencing difficulty, and then wish for a positive outcome for them. You can make up your own or look for a formal compassion meditation.

In her post Dissolving Family-Related Anger with Yoga , Charissa Loftis says that she was finally able to let go of her anger at her father, a Vietnam War veteran, by cultivating compassion for her him and taking action to relieve his suffering by giving him yoga therapy for his COPD.

Cultivating Sympathetic Joy (Mudita)

Just as we may feel envy for those who are happier than we are, we can feel the same for those who are more accomplished (or who, as Desikachar says, are doing “praiseworthy” things). 

Sutra 1.3 tells us to cultivate joy instead for those who are virtuous. Although “mudita” is often translated simply as “joy” or happiness,” it is actually is the special kind of unselfish joy that you feel when you are happy for someone else, even when you played no part in that person’s accomplishments and they won’t benefit you personally. The example that is most often used to illustrate sympathetic joy is the joy a parent feels when their child accomplishes something significant, gets a lucky break, or finds happiness. 

Practicing sympathetic joy for family members may be easy but practicing it outside of your inner circle can be challenging. Probably because of primal urges dating back to when we were competing over scarce resources, we often experience the success and happiness of those we see as “rivals” as threatening. This can cause envy and even ill wishes for those you are envious of (and then the shame that comes with having ill wishes). But rising to this challenge and cultivating sympathetic joy can help you let go of negative emotions you feel when good things happen to other people.

This reminds me a story Jivana Heyman tells about how his original motivation for creating the Accessible Yoga community was envy. When he moved to Santa Barbara, California and had to start up his yoga teaching career again from scratch, he felt a jealous of the other yoga teachers who had successful careers teaching what he himself wanted to teach. So, inspired by pratipaksha bhavana, the yogic practice of cultivating the opposite, what he decided to do was to create a venue where these very teachers—the ones he envied—could do their good work. Although he wasn’t directly inspired by sutra I.33, his practice of pratipaksha bhavana toward those he envied sure sounds like cultivating an attitude of unconditional friendship and sympathetic joy toward the happy and virtuous to me. 

Here are some ways you might practice the yama sympathetic joy:

1. Cultivating the Opposite. You can use thoughts of sympathetic joy as your “opposite thoughts” (see Putting the Wisdom of Yoga into Practice).
2. Celebrating Others. Engage in actions that support and celebrate the achievements of others.
3. Mudita Meditation. In a mudita meditation, you mentally recite phrases of sympathetic joy, such as “I’m happy for you” and “May your happiness continue” as you picture first someone you love, then a person for whom you have neutral feelings, and finally a difficult person. If you’re interested, look for a formal mudita meditation.

Cultivating Equanimity (Upeksanam or Upeksa)

Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our mind will be very tranquil. —translation by T.K.V. Desikachar

Sutra I.33 addresses your relationship with “non-virtuous” people. If you’re wondering who those might be, consider that the five basic yamas in the Yoga Sutras (non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, non-greed, and sexual continence) define the “virtuous.” Therefore, the non-virtuous would include anyone who intentionally harms others, whether through violence, lies, greed, theft, or sexual abuse.

To let go of the negative emotions you feel toward these people, sutra I.33 recommends practicing equanimity. You don’t need to cultivate unconditional friendship or compassion; instead, just work on disengaging from the anger, hatred, and other fiery emotions you might be feeling for them. As a long-time yoga and practitioner of non-violence, Mohandas K. Gandhi was committed to non-hatred of the British people, whose government had oppressed the people of India for so many years. In his Quit India speech, he said, “Our quarrel is not with the British people, we fight their imperialism” and “Speaking for myself, I can say that I have never felt any hatred.”

Taking a more “neutral” stance will not only allow you to stay balanced and steady, but also enables you to observe the non-virtuous with clearer eyes. If appropriate, you can then take action to stop them from causing harm to you or to others. This, of course, is what Gandhi did to win India’s independence from British colonial rule.

The equanimity this sutra refers to is the same as the “evenness of mind” that the Bhagavad Gita recommends for facing life’s ups and downs. This describes the yogi who has achieved equanimity:

14.24 “He who holds pleasure and pain alike, who is sedate, who regards earth, stone and gold as all the same, who is wise, and weighs in equal scale things pleasant and unpleasant, who is even-minded in praise and blame.” —translated by Mohandas K. Gandhi

As a yama, upeksa is very similar to detachment (vairagya), which I wrote about in Letting Go, Part 1. Here are some ways you might cultivate upeksa:

1. Letting Go. To let go of hatred, anger, and other negative emotions you feel toward the non-virtuous, you can use any appropriate techniques described in Letting Go, Part 1.
2. Forgiveness. For those who have hurt you or others you care about, you can cultivate kshama, yoga’s yama of forgiveness that is a form of letting go (see Forgiveness (Kshama)).
3. Concentration Meditation. You can cultivate more evenness of mind by meditating with a focus on peace, for example, by using the mantra Om Shanti or Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. And during this practice, if negative feelings arise, you can let them go as you return your focus to mediating on peace.
4. Mindfulness Meditation. Teachers of mindfulness meditation say that you can dissipate some negative feelings if you focus on them during your practice. The simple act of paying close attention to them can reduce their power.

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