Summary
Near and far enemies are a Buddhist teaching about how a good quality of heart goes wrong. Each of the four ‘divine abidings’ (brahmavihāras) – loving-kindness, compassion, gladness and equanimity – has a far enemy, its plain opposite, and a near enemy that can pass for it. The scheme appears in the Visuddhimagga, a Theravāda meditation manual compiled by Buddhaghosa around the fifth century.
There, loving-kindness’s near enemy is greed and its far enemy ill will; compassion’s are worldly grief and cruelty. A commentary says the near one corrupts “like an enemy masquerading as a friend”. Meditators use it to check their own minds on a path to liberation.
Rationale
This teaching isn’t ours, and we borrow it with care. It names a risk Part 1 describes: work that looks like care, such as a climate message built on threat, feeding what it opposes.