IN DEPTH SERIES

The four Brahmaviharas

The Virañani Festival

Start 4 week In-Depth series

What if you could learn to relate differently to stress, restlessness, and the patterns in your own life?

In this course, you explore four qualities of the heart that can deeply support your everyday experience: the Brahmaviharas, or “divine abodes.” You'll discover how these qualities are not abstract ideas, but something subtle and very present within your own lived experience.

You explore what loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equality truly mean—and how you can recognize, strengthen, and embody them in daily life.

Together with Buddhist nun Ayya Viranani, who has lived and taught these qualities through years of dedicated practice, you are guided step by step. With clarity, simplicity, and depth, she brings these ancient teachings close and directly applicable.

In your own pace, with space to explore and let things land.

For anyone who wants to cultivate a more open, kind, and balanced way of living.

Interested?

What to expect

  • 4 week in-depth series

    After activation, you'll get weekly access to a new in-depth theme page. Each week focuses on one Brahmavihara, allowing you to explore the material step by step. This pacing is intentional, giving you the space to take in the teachings slowly, let them settle, and integrate them into your own experience.

  • 4 Hours of pre-recorded video teachings

    With each theme page you will dive into a new Brahmavihara with a pre-recorded video teaching by Ayya Virañani:

    • Week 1: General context & Metta (loving-kindness)
    • Week 2: Karuna (compassion)
    • Week 3: Mudita (empathetic joy, gladness)
    • Week 4: Upekkha (equanimity)

    Recording quality: The local recording conditions (in Myanmar) where not ideal, but we have been able to achieve a video and audio quality that is expected to be sufficient for almost everyone. please watch this videomessage by Ayya Viranani.

  • Insight into the Suttas

    You'll have access to a rich selection of suttas, the classical Buddhist texts, along with supporting quotations and readings for each Brahmavihara. These texts offer additional depth and reflection throughout the course. Although the course is in English, many of the suttas are also available in Dutch translation.

  • Online Community

    Connect with like-minded people from around the world and share your questions, experiences, thoughts and insights.

  • Revisit and reexamine

    You can review all components during and after the (4 weeks) course period.

    With a Courses/ Courses account you will have access for 3 months – With a membership/ Membership account you will have unlimited access.

The Virañani Festival

Ven. Virañani began to practice meditation in 1979, as a scientist and conservation biologist in Hawai and New Zealand. In the mid-1990s, she began to practice more intensively, and in 2003 took novice ordination in the Burmese lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw beginning a four-year period devoted to intensive practice. She took permanent ordination in Burma with Sayadaw U Pandita on New Year 2006, and now mostly resides at the Chanmyay Myaing Meditation Center North of Yangon. She teaches loving-kindness and vipassanā meditation retreats worldwide.

She was one of the editors (for Pali and English) of the translation from the Burmese of Mahasi Sayadaw's Manual of Insight published by Wisdom Publications.
In 2008 she co-founded Metta In Action, a charity foundation that supports young nuns in Myanmar, and devoted to offering Burmese people in need of the means and skills to help themselves.

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Themes

  • Week 1

     

    Metta (loving kindness)

    This week we first have an overview of the four Brahmaviharas: what they are and how they are related. Then we begin a deeper consideration of the first of these, Mettā (loving-kindness), touching on aspects of the practice that are important to consider in order to cultivate mettā successfully.

  • Karuna (compassion)

    After a brief review of mettā as a foundation for karuna, we consider the impediments of compassion: its far enemy (cruelty), and its 'near enemy, grief or sadness. 

     

    Week 2

  • Week 3

     

    Mudita (empathetic joy, gladness)

    Feeling happy for the good fortune of others is not encouraged in our competitive world. But it is a source of a delicious form of happiness. This week we'll explore mudita and how to gain skill in accessing it.

  • Upekkha (equanimity)

    Equanimity is held in the highest regard in the Buddha's teachings – both for its own sake and as a springboard to deepening wisdom. 

    This week we'll encounter the form of equanimity that is specific to the Brahmaviharas that underlies all balanced worldly relationships: parents with kids, partners with each other, collegial relationships with family members, friends and workmates.

     

    Week 4

Access from all your devices

Activate your access to The four Brahmaviharas

With membership the costs for access are € 45,-
Without membership the costs for access are €50

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  • With membership the costs for access are € 45,-
  • Without membership the costs for access are €50
  • After payment, you will get access to a new theme page/ Brahmavihara each week;
  • With a Courses/ Courses account you will have access for 3 months – With a membership/ Membership account you will have unlimited access;
  • If you would like to sign up but cannot afford it, please send us a message. Because although we are an organization that incurs costs, we believe that money should never be the reason not to give people access.

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This page has been automatically translated from Dutch. Some phrasing may feel less natural. 

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