The brahmavihāras (sublime attitudes, lit. "abodes of brahma") are a series of four Buddhist virtues and the meditation practices made to cultivate them. They are also known as the four immeasurables (Sanskrit: apramāṇa, Pāli: appamaññā).

According to the Metta Sutta, Shākyamuni Buddha held that cultivation of the four immeasurables has the power to cause the practitioner to be reborn into a Brahma realm (Pāli: Brahmaloka). The meditator is instructed to radiate out to all beings in all directions the mental states of: 1) loving-kindness or benevolence, 2) compassion, 3) empathetic joy, and, 4) equanimity. The four immeasurables are also found in Patañjali's Yoga Sutras (1.33), a text composed long after the beginning of Buddhism and substantially influenced by Buddhism. These virtues are also highly regarded by Buddhists as powerful antidotes to negative mental states (non-virtues) such as avarice, anger and pride.

Brahmavihāra means “Brahma abidings”, or "sublime attitudes." It may be parsed as "Brahma" and "vihāra"; which is often rendered into English as "sublime" or "divine abodes".

Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert on April 6, 1931) is an American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India and his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, and for founding the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. He continues to teach via his website.

Alpert was born to a Jewish family in Newton, Massachusetts. His father, George Alpert, was a lawyer in Boston, president of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, one of the founders of Brandeis University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as well as a major fundraiser for Jewish causes. While Richard did have a bar mitzvah, he was "disappointed by its essential hollowness". He considered himself an atheist and did not profess any religion during his early life, describing himself as “inured to religion. I didn’t have one whiff of God until I took psychedelics.”

Piya Tan Beng Sin (Chinese: 陈明信; born 20 August 1949 in Malacca, Malaysia), also known as Piya Tan or Piyasilo (monastic name), is a Peranakan full-time lay Buddhist writer-cum-teacher in Singapore. He actively teaches the Buddha's Dharma, meditation and Pali to various Buddhist groups and organisations, and also works as a meditation therapist and counsellor at The Minding Centre (TMC). He is the first full-time lay Dharma worker ("Dharmacari") in Singapore to be supported by donations from the Buddhist community.

As a youth, Piya was a self-confessed bookworm who loved the great outdoors, especially climbing Gunung Ledang in Malaysia. On one such trip, while running after a butterfly to net it, he serendipitously stopped right at the edge of a cliff. During this near-death experience, the thought flashed across his mind that there are better things than catching butterflies. This was one of the major factors that led him to later become a monk. In his layman years before ordination, while Principal of the Seck Kia Eenh Dharma School (Malacca Buddhist Association), Malaysia, he prepared and implemented the Integrated Syllabus of Buddhist Studies, the most comprehensive Buddhist syllabus in Malaysia and Singapore then. As a monk, Piyasilo was best known for his national Dharma courses in Malaysia and Singapore and served as advisor or consultant to various tertiary Buddhist societies and Buddhist groups.