The unselfish emotions, the Brahma Viharas: Compassion, Lovingkindness, Sympathetic Joy, Equanimity. These are very, very important as a foundation of our practice. When we look at these unselfish emotions, they are important for the developing of Morality, they are very important for the development of Wisdom. They are very important for understanding how to find more happiness in this world, happiness that is not so dependent on outward things.
When we look at the Noble Eightfold Path, it starts out with Right View and Right Intention. Right Intention is defined as thoughts directed towards renunciation, towards harmlessness, free from ill will, and free from cruelty. So if we are going to walk the Noble Eightfold Path, we have to develop the unselfish emotions, because this is the motivation behind developing more Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood. These are prerequisites for developing Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. So the unselfish emotions are the foundation of developing deeper morality. That is, morality not dependent on rules and rituals, but coming from an unselfish mind.
Another way the unselfish emotions are important is that we start to understand that when we have them within ourselves, then the mind feels more at peace. When we are selfish, we feel more suffering. So what this teaches us is that the way to peace is letting go of selfishness, not the other way around, which we are normally taught in our life: that if we get things, we are going to be happy. Rather, that if we learn to be unselfish, we have more happiness, spiritual happiness. So the unselfish emotions allow us to find more spiritual happiness. This is quite important if we are going to be able to let go of some of the attachments we have to worldly happiness, which is impermanent. We see we can depend on something better. It does not depend so much on gaining and obtaining things that we don't always have power to control.
When we practice the basic awareness of the hindrances, we see that when desire is in the mind, when aversion is in the mind, when worry and fear are in the mind, there is suffering in the body and the mind. Usually these are motivated by thoughts of self. Desire: wanting, wanting something pleasant in the future. Aversion: not wanting something for ourselves. Worry and fear: fear of obtaining things that we don't want. And worry and fear about not getting things that we do want. When we start to develop Compassion/ Lovingkindness, we start to realize that it doesn't really matter so much about the object; whether a person is pleasant or gives us what we want. We can change our view of this person, and our suffering fades away within ourselves. We realize that we don't have to have control over them in the ways we normally think we do, and that actually the way out of suffering is by changing ourselves to be more unselfish. So Compassion/ Lovingkindness teaches us a lot about the Four Noble Truths. The way out of suffering is to lessen our selfishness.
Now this emotional well being that we feel from developing these qualities of Compassion, Lovingkindness, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity is a very solid base for developing the higher stages of Wisdom. Because as we develop wisdom, we are going to see things in life from which we may pull back, that we don't want to see. Impermanence, Dukkha, and that nothing is really ours. This can shake the mind up a little, unless we realize that actually nothing is really ours anyway. And letting go of self is actually healing to the mind, so we're not going to lose anything by opening to the way things are. This gives us the emotional stability to open more to the unpleasant characteristics of existence that often people are not wishing to see.
This brings in Equanimity and Sympathetic Joy. Because when we open to see Dukkha and the cause of it, it is quite unsettling to the mind. Then we have to understand that there is the third and fourth Noble Truth. Part of Sympathetic Joy is recognizing the qualities and capacities to overcome suffering, and also recognizing them in others. Equanimity helps to balance all the other unselfish emotions and helps us to accept what we cannot change. So these are very important balancing foundations to the practice and I don't believe it's possible to really develop the practice without them.