Yogi: I was doing walking meditation and saw someone sick. Immediately a caring arose. That was interesting because the cultivation of the 4 Brahmaviharas and mindfulness may have different approach but they seem to go to the same goal.

How do they come together in the mindfulness practice?

Sayadaw: It’s simple – for me, it’s cultivation of mindfulness first. The mind becomes more wholesome.

When the mind is more wholesome from mindfulness, it is readily given to the wholesome impulses of the Brahmaviharas.

When I was practicing very dedicatedly at home, I wouldn’t let any unwholesome feeling or mind stay – whenever I noticed it coming up, I would take the time to watch it until it was gone.

I did that over and over again, never getting involved in the story, always taking care of the unwholesome volitions that came up.

Unwholesome stuff was not allowed to grow and the result of keeping the mind clear like that was that if I saw other people, I felt metta for them; if I saw someone suffering, I felt compassion for them; if I saw someone doing well, I felt happy for them; and if it was a situation where I couldn’t do anything about, the mind was equanimous.

Because wisdom was there, the greed and aversion weren’t given room in my mind at all; the mindfulness would just keep at it.