Metta
Karuna
Mudita
Upekkha
This alone - one's service to sentient beings (sattvaraddhana) is pleasing to the Tathagartas.
This alone is the actual accomplishment of one's goal.
This alone removes the suffering of the world.
Therefore, let this alone be my resolve. ~ Shantideva, "The Bodhisattva's Way of Life"
I'm reading a gorgeous book called 'The Bodhisattva's Brain' by Owen Flanagan, who had been invited to Dharamsala by the Dalai Lama, otherwise unprompted, by his writing of 'Consciousness Reconsidered' in 1992. Flanagan is a secular phenomenology-oriented neurophilosopher, who brings his fascination with the question of whether the teleological assumptions of Buddhism can be suspended to reveal 'Buddhism, naturalised', what he claims as a emprically responsible Buddhism. He has a healthy scepticism regarding the esoteric.
And the book is brilliant - bringing challenge and question to the Bodhisattva concept, enquiring into the characteristics of the vow, the interaction and interconnection of sila, samdhi and prajna, deeply enquiring into the colour of happiness and flourishing, selfless persons and being no-self.
Confucius and Aristotle are heavily drawn on to create a comparative container. There's rich discussion of the necessary and sufficient conditions for sustained happiness via analysis of different approaches to virtues and ethics, and ecological approaches to intersubjectivity abound. Nussbaum and Foucault are regularly employed for styles of approach to the phenomena.
Emptiness.
No village law, no law of market town,
No law of a single household is this -
Of all the world and all the worlds of gods
This is the only Law, that all things are impermanent.
(from the parable of the mustard seed).
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