Four Immeasurables in Bewilderment

Odilon Redon Large Bouquet of Wild Flowers 

In Richard Powers' Bewilderment, we see the dad (Theo) and Robin do their nightly prayers, which was a ritual started by the late wife.  Robin asks about the origin of the prayer:

Where does it come from, anyway? I mean, before Mom.

I told him.  It came from Buddhism, the Four Immeasurables. "There are four good things worth practicing.  Being kind towards everything alive. Staying level and steady. Feeling happy for any creature anywhere that's happy. And remembering that any suffering is also yours."

I wrote about the Four Immeasurables in April, here. This other posting references Dan Harris and Joseph Goldstein and Tricycle magazine.   Harris talks  the Brahma viharas or the "four immeasurable heavenly abodes": loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, sympathetic joy.