In Asia, the word and character in Chinese script of the word in general in most of the languages

for heart and mind are the same. And I find this interesting because if you look at the Chinese

characters for mindfulness, the word is present heart. And the significance of this is that you cannot

cultivate a mindful awareness without simultaneously cultivating heartfulness. That embedded in

mindfulness is the embodiment and the aliveness and warmth of the heart. And so what I'd like to do

for these next number of classes, it may be for it may be more, is to explore what are known as the

in a four-arctiple or universal expressions of love. In the Buddhist or polyscript, they're called

the Brahma-viharas, which mean the divine abodes. And it's a beautiful term because they're the

really the dwelling place of the awakened heart. And they're also the practices and processes that

awaken our hearts amidst a really challenging, uncertain world. Great bumper sticker. Life is

fragile. Love is the glue, okay? So we'll do that together. The first of the Brahma-viharas or

divine abodes is loving kindness. And loving kindness is our response, our appreciative

response to the goodness that we perceive in this world. The second of these universal faces is

compassion. And that's the loving response that we experience when we are connected with suffering,

with pain. The third, which is described in different ways, but it's basically joy,

is really the heart's awakeness or aliveness when it opens to the full catastrophe, as it said,

when it opens to everything. And then the fourth of the divine abodes is equanimity, which is that

quality of presence that's profoundly balanced and non-reactive because there's that wisdom

that really it's impersonal. So there's a vastness, a spaciousness and a balance that allows us

to be with everything without reacting. So each of these faces of love is in innate capacity.

We all have the neurologic and biophysical rigging for it. They're all a part of us naturally.

From an evolutionary perspective, which I think is really valuable, these faces of love are what

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