Equanimity

In the meditation instruction, there has been a strong emphasis on mindfulness, awareness, and wise presence. It is important to be awake and present if we want to investigate our hearts and minds, and our lives. But mindfulness alone isn’t enough for a complete transformation. This is where equanimity comes in. Fred von Allmen talks about equanimity – what it is, and what it isn’t.

Transcript

As teachers,

Sometimes we prepare and translate talks without realizing that our colleagues will speak on the same topic.

It just happened.

So I have to fall back on a talk that quite a few of you have heard before.

And normally I hope that people remember some of what's been said up here.

This time I appreciate if you forgot.

Like to talk about equanimity.

In the meditation instructions there has been quite a strong emphasis on mindfulness,

On awareness and wise presence.

We need to be awake and present if we want to investigate and explore our hearts and minds and our lives.

Yet as we have seen,

Mindfulness alone isn't enough in order to allow for a real inner transformation.

We also need to cultivate a helpful inner attitude so as to be able to meet ourselves and others in a wise and in a kind way.

It's the inner attitude of equanimity which makes this possible.

First I'd like to tell a story on equanimity and on what it isn't.

It's about a Zen master and a young man practicing Zen at the temple.

One day there was an earthquake so strong that parts of the temple collapsed.

Once things had quietened down again,

The master said to the young man,

Today you have been able to witness the way a Zen master behaves in moments of crisis and calamity.

You must have noticed that I didn't panic.

I took you by the arm and led you to the kitchen because that's the safest part of the monastery.

And I was right to do so since the kitchen is still intact and we survived the earthquake.

You may have noticed that in spite of my equanimity and awareness,

I had a mild shock because I drank a big glass of water and that's something I wouldn't have done under normal circumstances.

The young man didn't answer but he only smiled.

What's so funny about it?

The master asked.

It wasn't water,

Venerable sir,

It was a big glass of soya sauce.

Equanimity is actually quite a trendy topic nowadays.

Recently I found a whole table full of books on equanimity in our biggest bookstore in Bern where I live.

Question and approach may be a little different from what we're trying to get at here.

One book I remember most was titled,

Equanimity Wins,

A fit for business book.

How to deal magnanimously with questions,

With reproaches and with attacks.

It's a difficult word.

Like to talk about two different aspects of the practice of equanimity.

First one,

Equanimity in relation to all experiences,

Moment to moment as we practice it here in insight meditation in Vipassana.

In the second aspect,

Equanimity is one of the four brahma viharas and its function among the brahma viharas meaning kindness or metta,

Compassion,

Appreciative joy and equanimity itself.

We all,

All of us would like to be happy and not suffer.

That's why we try constantly day in,

Day out,

Every moment to get what's pleasant and to avoid,

Get rid of what's unpleasant.

We're attached to pleasant experiences of the body,

Sweet,

Pleasant or blissful sensations of hearing sweet words,

Nice sounds of seeing beautiful sights,

Of smell,

Pleasant odors,

Of taste,

Fine food and drinks,

Of feelings,

Nice feelings and of thoughts,

Pleasant thoughts and memories,

Hopes and ideas.

We desire,

We crave for future pleasant experiences of body,

Of hearing,

Of seeing,

Of smell,

Of taste,

Of feelings and thoughts.

The other hand,

We suppress,

Avoid,

Condemn or hate unpleasant experiences of body,

Pain,

Of hearing,

Of noise and criticism,

Of seeing ugly things,

Of tasting bad food,

Smelling foul smells,

Of painful feelings and thoughts and memories.

We fear,

We're afraid of possible future unpleasant experiences of body,

Of hearing,

Of seeing,

Of smelling,

Of tasting,

Of feelings and thoughts.

That's pretty normal and we're familiar with this.

We can observe it in our meditation here.

See how much of the time the mind is trying to do exactly this.

Keep the pleasant,

Get more of it,

Avoid the unpleasant,

Get rid of it.

Pretty normal and yet that's exactly what causes most of the difficulties in our life,

Not just in meditation.

This constant reactiveness is the cause for all of our inner suffering,

Fears,

Worries,

Sorrow,

Conflicts,

Depression,

Loneliness,

Longing,

Sadness,

Confusion,

Agitation,

Turmoil and all the rest.

Huxley wrote,

About a third of all human suffering is unavoidable.

The other two thirds arise because of our unsuccessful attempts to avoid the first third.

I would put the unavoidable suffering even lower than one third.

This kind of inner reactivity is the most unskillful and unhelpful attitude or way of relating to ourselves and to life.

And we all know very well that it would be definitely more helpful,

More fun even,

To live in a way that's wise and kind and serene and equanimous in that sense.

Equanimity in the balance,

Poise in the spaciousness is what we all need,

What we all wish for.

On the battlefield of our hearts and minds,

It's the attitude,

It's the equality that makes serenity and peace possible.

Zen tradition has a very poetic description of this.

Let the inner bird fly in the vast sky of your equanimity.

Let the fish into the bottomless ocean of your tolerance.

So what exactly is this equanimity,

This inner spaciousness?

Texts define it as the perception of an object or of an experience with a balanced heart and mind.

And it means perceiving impartially.

It's free from attachment or craving and free from aversion or hatred,

Which also implies free from expectation and fear.

Equanimity is also that quality which keeps the mind free from restlessness on one hand and dullness on the other.

It's free from confusion with a wakeful energy,

Alive and not disengaged.

Already it's quite obvious that it's an extraordinarily clear and powerful state of heart and mind,

Far away from all forms of indifference,

A wonderful inequality to aspire to,

To cultivate and practice.

A classical illustration,

Well-known illustration,

Is the Zen story of the monk and the warrior,

A little different from the one we had two days ago.

Maybe it's the same monk actually.

The enemy's army has won the victory.

The soldiers are looting the city.

All those able to flee have left the city.

Just one monk,

The abbot,

Stays in the main temple.

The general storms into the temple,

Brandishing his sword.

He screams,

Monk,

Don't you know I'm someone who can run this sword through you without blinking an eye?

Monk looks at him and quietly responds,

Don't you know I'm someone who can be run through by your sword without blinking an eye?

Monk stops and bows to the monk and leaves.

Equanimity means we meet all the situations and experiences of life with equal courage.

Actually the word we use in Swiss is gleichmut,

Which really means to meet all things with equal courage.

The word says not equanimity,

It says equal courage.

Now of course we may not be these great Zen masters like the monk in the story.

Of course some of you may.

Also most of the time it may be wise to flee because you don't know about real life generals.

You don't know how they react.

But we train ourselves in this quality of equanimity of inner balance.

We practice it in meditation and in everyday life.

If it's not this that we practice in meditation,

In retreat,

Then I really doubt the value of the whole exercise.

So central.

Do we meditate in the hope of reaching some extraordinary states or to create specially pleasant experiences hoping that somehow they will last?

Is it just to have nice feelings?

I'm sure sometimes we do.

We just look for pleasant experiences.

That's okay to some extent.

Yet whenever we do this,

We miss the crux of this whole practice,

This whole exercise.

Meditation and practice really is a training in equanimity.

Instead of habitually reacting with attachment or desire to all the various pleasant experiences,

We stay as mindful and open as we can.

Thus keep the inner balance.

Instead of habitually reacting with aversion or hatred or irritation towards all the various unpleasant or painful experiences,

We stay as mindful and as accepting as we can.

Don't get caught too much.

So it's really,

If you look at what equanimity is made up of,

It's really accepting and letting go.

It's the two main ingredients of equanimity.

Accepting when things are difficult,

Unpleasant,

Unwished for.

Letting go when things are nice,

Pleasant and wished for but about to change,

About to disappear or already disappeared.

Sometimes we mix up the two and try to reverse the order.

I don't know if you have noticed.

Sometimes I have questions like,

You know,

I have this really difficult,

Unpleasant feeling and I'm really trying to let it go and it doesn't go.

It's pleasant when we think,

Oh,

I'll really accept this.

It's easy.

It's not so much hard work.

It's unpleasant.

We try very hard to let go and we're disappointed when it doesn't go.

Of course,

It's acceptance that's needed when it's difficult,

When it's unpleasant.

Whenever we're able to truly,

Fully accept an unpleasant or painful sensation or feeling or emotion or situation,

We're free.

Doesn't mean that it goes away.

Actually when we accept it in the hope or thinking that I accept it so it will go away,

It's not acceptance and it knows.

So the acceptance is to maybe to let be more than to accept.

That's even more exactly what it is.

Whether it stays around or it changes or it disappears,

We leave it that way.

That takes practice very obviously and that's why we need practice and that's why we do all this practice.

So maybe it's good to remember that ultimately the point that matters is not how concentrated we get or even how mindful we can be but how deep and genuine our inner balance,

Our equanimity has become.

So when we sit in meditation and the shoulder is tight or there's a pain in the knee or we're suddenly flooded by a wave of heat or of cold,

That's when we need to bring up acceptance or practice letting be.

When the neighbor coughs or breathes loudly,

When the bell doesn't want to ring or when it rings too early,

That happens too sometimes.

It rains too much or someone is in our walking space,

I think that's the worst,

Isn't it?

I heard that in a three-month course when they used to come in in the middle,

We'd have new people,

I think still like that.

Apparently some new person came in and they saw this pillow and the shawl and they thought,

Oh,

This is nice,

This is a friendly place and sat down and I heard what happened to the person who had just practiced for six weeks,

Came in and found somebody sitting in their space with their pillow,

With their shawl.

Something about the equanimity became very evident,

They said.

To not see those things,

I mean I hope people don't sit in your sitting space,

But to not see these things as mistakes or faults but as really opportunities to accept or let go.

The other hand,

Finally gets really still inside,

Quiet,

Maybe very pleasant,

Then that too is an opportunity to practice equanimity as non-clinging,

As non-grasping.

When the mind gets clear and we begin to have insights and understandings of how things truly are,

Then that's a time for a quiet,

Relaxed and equanimous continuity of presence,

Of mindfulness.

Rather than the reason to start trying to formulate or conceptualize,

To try to fix and hold on to what we see,

To sort of start to try to own the insight so we can take it home.

Or when fear or trust or loneliness or deep connectedness or sadness or joy arise in our hearts,

Again that's the opportunity to stay connected and to just feel what is with as much kindness and balance as possible.

In life,

In daily life too,

We practice equanimity relating to the eight or more wins of the world,

As Christina mentioned yesterday.

Gain,

Loss,

Praise,

Blame,

Success,

Failure,

Good reputation,

Bad reputation,

And also wealth,

Poverty,

Health,

Illness.

In short,

Really,

We practice inner balance,

Everything that's pleasant or unpleasant in life.

Buddha said,

Just as a big rock is not shaken by the wind,

The wise ones are not shaken by praise and blame.

That's how inner peace comes about.

That's where genuine inner freedom lies.

Tibetan teachers give an illustration of this equanimous mind and heart.

The vast open space of the sky isn't particularly flattered by the rainbow or shaken by the rain clouds or the storm.

Find it quite an inspiring image.

And yet here one could get the impression that this means that we are equally distant somehow from all things,

Maybe also from all beings.

But exactly the opposite is true.

It really means we're equally close to all beings and to all things.

So what we're talking about here is a state of wakeful aliveness and sensitivity,

And not the so-called near enemy of equanimity,

Which is an absence of participation,

Which is disconnected from the experience,

Which really is indifference.

Indifference is the near enemy of genuine equanimity.

It can easily be taken for equanimity,

But it isn't.

Sometimes not so easy to see the difference.

Indifference really is connected and feels,

Feels in touch,

Feels in contact with what is going on,

And is in balance with that being in contact,

While indifference sort of seems balanced because it's aloof,

It's out of contact.

Sometimes we may think that Buddhists try to cut all the peaks of experience and fill up the valleys.

It's actually something I often hear when talking about equanimity.

You mean it's sort of you're trying to have your whole experience all flattened out or something.

If by this we mean the dramatic passion itself,

Suffering,

Creating emotional dramas,

Then I would say maybe that's quite useful.

Yet there are the genuinely happy,

Crystal clear,

Boundless inner spaces of insight,

Of kindness,

Of joy.

These peaks of experience can be part of genuine spiritual practice,

And yet they're only possible within the framework of pervasive equanimity.

There are the deeply touching and heart opening inner spaces of profound calm,

Connectedness,

And of compassion.

And these depths of experience too are part of genuine spiritual practice,

And they too are permeated with equanimity.

To make inner transformation possible,

We need to fully experience all things of life in their depth.

So there's no place really for indifference.

To see and understand ourselves,

We need genuine interest in all our energy.

There is really no space for half-heartedness.

And yet there's a misunderstanding that can very easily creep in,

Particularly when one hears these dramatic sense stories,

Like the one I just told at the beginning,

That I'd like to clarify.

Of course we will fall out of balance over and over again.

We will be reactive,

As we all know.

Against our better knowledge or against our better understanding,

We'll be flooded by irritation at times,

Or aversion.

We'll be gripped by attachment and desires many times,

Or by restlessness,

Or doubt,

Or by judging.

Because we're too slow,

We're not awake and clear enough in the face of our deeply conditioned patterns of reactivity.

That's okay.

That's really unavoidable.

Here's a quote that makes the point.

If you can sit quietly off the difficult news,

If in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm,

If you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without the twinge of jealousy,

If you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate,

If you can fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill,

If you can always find contentment just where you are,

You're probably a dog.

It's a new one,

This one.

Until we have become fully liberated beings,

And this may take a few lifetimes,

We will fall out of balance,

And we will be visited by the obscurations and by many difficult emotions.

But as soon as we become aware of this process within our practice,

Then it's time again for equanimity,

Which often at that point means equanimity towards ourselves,

And equanimity towards our reactive patterns.

Say,

Okay,

I did fall.

I'm right out of balance right now.

Okay.

So not judgment or punishment,

But kindness is what's needed in these circumstances.

And here we see what's meant by gentle or kind equanimity.

We feel the difficulty,

Unpleasant emotion.

We stay in contact with it,

And thus we can feel what it does to us.

We can actually feel and notice directly how it makes us suffer,

And from that experiencing it directly,

Compassion arises.

That's different from wanting to get rid of it or judging ourselves for having it.

It's a wise and healing inner attitude of understanding,

Of openness,

And of compassion.

And it's far from the disconnectedness of suppression because we meet ourselves with genuine interest,

Quite awake and alive.

The deepest equanimity arises out of insight,

Out of wisdom.

Comes from seeing the ever-changing,

Impermanent,

Non-graspable,

Non-self-existent nature of all things,

Of all experience.

Longchenpa,

The great Tibetan Dzogchen master,

Speaks about this in an ultimate sense when he says,

Since everything is mere appearance,

Complete in what it is,

Beyond good or bad,

Beyond acceptance or rejection,

One can simply break out in laughter.

The laughter of wisdom,

Laughter,

Letting go and letting be.

If we really can do that,

Even in the face of great difficulties,

Or at the time of dying,

We'll have a high level of inner freedom.

That's why we cultivate insight here,

Insight into the nature of things,

Impermanence,

The fact that we can't hold on to things and can't control them the way we would like to.

But we learn to more and more meet things with fullness,

Yet free from grasping.

Whenever we see an experience that nothing in existence can be held onto and let go and let be with gentle or compassionate equanimity,

Then we experience life as it is,

Very full and very rich.

So much about equanimity as we practice it here,

Through vipassana,

Through insight meditation.

Now in the second part of this talk,

I'd like to look at the practice of equanimity as one of the brahma vihara.

Again,

To remind you,

The brahma vihara are kindness,

Metta,

Compassion,

Joy,

And equanimity itself.

And particularly I'd like to look at the interconnection between equanimity and the three,

Kindness,

Compassion and joy.

Maybe to say a few more words to that concept,

Brahma vihara.

It comes from the Hindu mythology.

Vihara means abode,

Place of resting,

Of abiding.

Brahmas are the highest gods or highest beings in this existence.

And it's said that these beings abide exclusively in these divine states or realms,

Which are loving kindness,

Compassion,

Sympathetic joy,

And equanimity,

Which means deep peace.

With respect to the brahma vihara practice,

Such as the metta practice we do here,

Equanimity has two or more meanings or functions,

Maybe functions.

The first is equanimity refers to the impartiality between people who are usually habitually seen as friends or indifferent to us or enemies or unlike ones.

In many traditions,

One trains in this impartiality by generating kindness,

Compassion,

And empathy equally towards different groups,

Equally to oneself,

Equally to benefactor,

To friend,

But also to neutral ones,

The ones we feel indifferent to or to the ones we feel difficult and so forth.

To do that over and over and over again,

Sometimes we need to stay where it's easier and develop kindness,

Develop compassion,

And then move on to where we find it more difficult.

So I think that's important that we understand that.

It's not the kind of tendency we sometimes have,

You know,

Think,

Okay,

If I really want to do this well,

I look for the most difficult person that I really hate and I will have to manage possibly in one retreat to really love them.

That's unrealistic,

Obviously.

But still to practice with all these groups so that more and more we start to develop this sense of equality in our relationship,

In our feeling for those different groups of beings.

It's actually what we do here with Metta when we move from one group to the next,

From one person to the next.

In other approaches or practices of equanimity,

One reflects on the fact that ever so often in life,

Friends can become enemies,

Can become unlike ones.

Relationships,

As we know,

Can go from romance to indifference to contempt or hatred even as it happens in so many of the more than 50% of marriages that get divorced again.

Like it's the most incredible person in our life,

So many years later it's the most hated and the most difficult person.

And they haven't changed so much,

We haven't changed so much somehow.

Maybe that's why it didn't work.

But our relationship has very obviously changed.

On the other hand,

Enemies can become friends too.

Soon after World War II,

The US and Japan had very close ties,

At least economically.

Reviews

Very rich talk about an important topic.
🙏😊🙏🧡🙏💫🙏

This was a very insightful talk. I have been actively pursuing the subject of equanimity and this helped me with my perspective.

Words of eternal wisdom and joy! Namaste 🙏

This was great! I knew equanimity was a deep subject, it is my joy to discover new and unexpected meaningful blessings in your descriptions and teaching on this important topic. Namaste 🙏🏼

Insightful information combined with humor. One yo repeat sometimes as a reminder. 🙏🌱

I found this to be helpful explaining and expanding the depth of meditation; the role of Equanimity in all things. This teacher is knowledgeable and insightful. Recommend🙏

This presentation is done with light humor on a topic that requires constant awareness from within.

Very enjoyable and will add to my list to revisit often.🙏
Thank you 🙏

A great lesson, with wisdom and humour. Many thanks.

Thank you for this beautiful talk abd thank you for sharing it with us 🙏🌺

Wonderful. Thank you very much. I’ve been meditating for just 5 years and this was a succinct, sometimes funny and completely understandable explanation of equanimity.
Namaste.

Thank you for this talk. It brings another light to my evolution. 🙏

Very good talk..am going to bookmark and play again.

Lots of new observances and thoughts. An expanding experience.

Timeless wisdom. Thank you for this balancing lesson of compassion.

Found it useful. Nice and gentle, with humor. Bought up a sense of how I could be. Appreciated the length. There was a lot in a relatively short space of time. Suspect I will listen again.

Amazing session - really insightful, funny, engaging. Unfortunately, it stops abruptly after moving into the second part of the talk.

Fascinating. Will definitely need to listen multiple times to understand and soak in the lessons more deeply. Thank you so much! 💜

I was disappointed that the last third of the talk was cut off. It simply stopped at 23 minutes. I would like to hear the rest, as it was very helpful.

Very excellent talk - without attaching to good or bad - obviously! 😉