This prayer is called The Four Immeasurables.
It is an every-day prayer for the release from suffering for everyone suffering now; a prayer that past suffering may be released from… and old wounds healed, and that future suffering may be avoided…
through wisdom.
So it’s a prayer for everyone which can be said by everyone. At the time of saying it brings the links between us all into speech, and this energy moves out into the world motivated by a profound gesture of goodwill.
James’ recent translation (2025) is:
May all beings have happiness, and know the root of happiness
May all beings be free from suffering, and the root of suffering
May all beings experience the joy which is not mixed with any suffering
May all beings experience equanimity free of bias in favour of friends and relatives and against enemies and
people we dislike..
Here’s the 2009 translation derived from the text below:
May all beings have happiness, and know the root of happiness
May all beings be free from suffering, and the cause of suffering
May they abide in happiness free from suffering
May they rest in equanimity free from aversion (turning away from or hardening the heart) to enemies and
strangers, and from grasping at, or clinging to, friends and relatives.
How to enjoy and appreciate friends and relatives… without appropriation? Why bother extending this prayer to all beings rather than just the ones that we like, that we think like us?
To unpack this and look at a very big way of loving you might like to listen to the talk James Low gave in back then in Macclesfield, talk 10… on Love, compassion, joy and equanimity.
This is a prayer which has been recited for over a thousand years… below is a recording of James singing and introducing it to us during those teachings…
the words are below…
