The Four Immeasurables ~ Jigme Lingpa

Love means wishing for the happiness of others.
Like a loving mother cherishing her child,
One’s body, wealth, and virtue all amassed one gives for others’ benefit,
While training to endure the harms that they inflict.

Compassion is a powerful state of mind,
An inability to tolerate the fact that others suffer.
Beings in the six realms are entrapped by sorrow and its cause,
And seeing this brings tears to one’s eyes.

Joy is to delight in other’s pleasure and success;
It is to cultivate the wish that all have happiness.
It is a joy one feels when they achieve it for themselves
And is the wish that they should never be deprived of it

Impartiality is freedom from attachment and hostility,
When sides and factions are all seen as equal,
When enemy and friend and neither –
Are all treated with an evenhanded kindness.
We should practice these four attitudes, remembering
That all is without true existence.


Jigme Lingpa

from the book Treasury of Precious Qualities

translated by Padmakara Translation Group


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