Equanimity In The Time Of COVID

Today's Wake Up Call fell on the official one-year anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The questions that were alive were, what can we do to mark this incredibly sad moment? And how can we do that and retain, or locate, our sense of balance, poise, equanimity? Equanimity is the fourth of the four most treasured qualities of the mind. What does equanimity look like right now when there's still so much sorrow, uncertainty, and fear?

Transcript

Hello,

Everyone.

Welcome to the Wake Up Call.

This is Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 292.

And the title of today's call is Equanimity in the Time of COVID.

It was a year ago today that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

I was in Muir Beach,

California,

At San Francisco's Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm with 14 other teachers and students from three continents in the middle of the first retreat of our 2020 Mindfulness in Law teacher training.

We had two guest teachers who were scheduled to come.

They both bowed out feeling safer to stay at home.

San Francisco went into lockdown,

Which is the nearest city.

One of our students had to make their way home to Santiago.

Another flew from the West Coast through Western Europe and home to Warsaw,

Ultimately making their way home through an hour-long line,

Hours,

Many hours long line crossing into their country by car.

And I remember stopping on the way home from Green Gulch and buying canned goods and pasta and paper products.

And the news from New York and Italy started to come in and it was,

It was grim and it was quickly deteriorating.

So I just want to invite us all to take a moment to remember Martin remember March 11th,

2020,

Or that time right around then.

Now,

Where were you?

Who were you when?

What were you feeling?

It's been a long year.

COVID has claimed,

What,

Two and a half million,

More than two and a half million people,

Mothers,

Fathers,

Children,

Siblings,

Grandparents,

Colleagues,

Friends,

Probably not a single one of us on this call,

Hasn't lost someone.

So maybe take a moment to remember someone you've lost.

And I guess the question that arises for me is what does it even mean to talk about equanimity on an anniversary like this?

Because it almost feels sacrilegious.

How can,

How can we be equanimous right now?

How can we not be tipped in the direction of grief?

You know,

We've lost so much,

We've lost people,

But we've also lost the person we were before the pandemic,

A kind of innocence lost and maybe would,

Which will never return,

We've lost work.

Maybe we've lost economic stability,

The comfort of,

You know,

Seeing our kids go off to school,

Workplaces,

That sense of camaraderie that comes from being there day after day,

Side by side.

We live in,

Or we bear witness to,

The deep grief of the African American community and other communities of color who have suffered really just a vastly disproportionate share of illness and death in this pandemic.

So how can we talk about equanimity?

So I was thinking about that then.

I realized that in a way,

In the midst of this collective grief and loss,

And also with the vaccine slowly,

Slowly beginning to end the pandemic,

Equanimity is kind of the perfect quality to investigate.

So equanimity is the fourth of the four Brahma Viharas,

Or heavenly abodes,

Or trensured states of mind,

Loving kindness,

The first,

An invitation to wish for wellbeing for everyone.

Certainly been a year for that.

I changed my email signature many times,

But it always included,

Stay safe,

Be well.

So loving kindness,

The second one is compassion,

And definitely a year for that,

For compassion for others,

For self-compassion.

And then the third one is sympathetic joy,

Taking joy in the happiness of others.

And,

You know,

That's been really important.

To take joy where we find it and to increase our own joy by being joyful for other people as well.

So the first thing I want to say about equanimity is that it's often confused with being kind of cool or indifferent or removed,

But it's not that at all.

In fact,

It's quite the opposite.

True equanimity is a kind of groundedness,

Being connected to the earth and to each other,

Come what may.

It's got a come what may quality.

In this moment,

On this anniversary,

Equanimity invites us to experience the world as it is right now with not one of us,

Not one person in the whole world,

Untouched,

Unscathed by this pandemic.

It invites us to really care deeply about this moment and to see finally what the sages have been telling us for millennia and the scientists,

Also for decades,

That we're completely in the same place.

That we're completely inextricably connected.

Connected in our sorrow,

Connected in our joy,

Connected in our fear,

Connected in our wonder.

But equanimity doesn't stop there.

It reminds us that we are just here for a moment.

And,

You know,

As at that point hasn't been brought home to us over and over this last year,

It reminds us to take that view,

To see that in the long course of human history,

Yeah,

There have been other pandemics,

There have been natural disasters,

There have been wars,

There are systems of oppression in place that have shifted and changed,

But that continue to oppress.

And it invites us to see that this being human is full of joy,

But also challenged in a manner,

The moment in history.

The Buddhists call this existence the 10,

000 joys and 10,

000 sorrows.

And equanimity invites us to see that and to live in that.

Equanimity,

It pans out to that big,

Wide,

Long view to help us remember that to whatever extent we've survived this current pandemic so far,

And to whatever extent we survive it in the end,

We've done so,

Or we will have done so,

At least in part by observing things just as they are.

You know,

We haven't survived.

We can't survive.

We can't survive by wishing things were different or by magical thinking.

If we're fortunate enough to emerge,

Then when we emerge,

It will be by seeing things as they are and by being with them as they are.

So professionally,

This has meant making really,

Just mind-bending changes in the way we work and largely coming to some measure of peace with those changes.

I was talking with a law school dean this week,

And they said that they were hoping to be fully back in the classroom by the spring of 2022.

And I just had this moment where my heart just sank.

And then,

You know,

Took a few breaths and things leveled off,

And I just had to remember spring of 2022.

That's,

That's how it is.

So the Pali word for this kind of equanimity,

This ability to pan back and look above or look at the collective situation is called upeka.

You know,

Upeka is what's happening right now.

We've lived through,

We're still living through the hundred year flood.

And those of us here today,

We're still standing.

And so in this way,

Equanimity,

Upeka,

Is the ground for wisdom.

And equanimity also pans back in and it reminds us the only way to still be standing is to somehow stand right in the middle of all of this.

You know,

Sure,

We've been,

I mean,

Sheltering in place.

And I don't know about you,

But there were plenty of times this year when I could not read the nuc.

In any form,

But we've also grounded ourselves and then been there for each other.

And I guess it's,

You could say true human form,

Right?

We've suffered and then we've turned around and we've supported someone we knew who was suffering more than we are.

We've taken that breath,

Another breath,

Another breath,

Another breath,

And seen our own fear and love for ourselves.

Seen our own fear and longing for connection and loss and not turned away.

And we've helped the people we love to do that in the most dire moments and also in the most mundane.

And this panning in,

This standing in the middle of things and breathing and caring in Pali is called tatra machahata,

To stand in the middle of all this.

And that kind of equanimity is the ground for love.

So let's sit and do an equanimity meditation.

So coming to whatever posture would most support your practice right now.

Making sure that you feel comfortable,

As upright as is comfortable.

Having a care for your physical safety.

Settling into the body.

This one body that you have that's carried you through this year,

Through this life,

To this moment.

Maybe a moment of gratitude for this body.

Everybody has been through so much this year.

And the breath,

The breath,

The beautiful breath,

The anchor or sound.

The way that the sounds come and go in the space where you are.

One of those as a home base.

It's baseball season,

So maybe we'll call it a home plate.

Someplace where you know that you're safe.

And then just very simply seeing what's here.

Opening to whatever is in your life right now.

Could be something as concrete as a thorny work problem.

It could be as emotional as the loss of someone you love.

Could be an emotion.

Physical pain in the body.

Difficulty in a relationship.

As Ruyi says,

As the poet Ruyi says,

Welcome them all.

And don't try to fix anything,

Solve anything,

Cure anything.

Plenty of time for that after the meditation.

But for now,

Just see things as they are and be with them as they are.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if anything is too hard to bear,

Then just have some self-compassion.

Spend a year of things that are too hard to bear.

Pranimity isn't about heroics.

It's about wisdom and it's about love.

So today I want to end our meditation with a poem and also a dedication.

I want to dedicate this wake-up call to the memory of all the lives lost to all of those who lost their lives in the pandemic.

And this is W.

S.

Merwin's poem,

Separation.

Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Thanks everyone for joining me on the wake-up call.

Take good care.

I'll see you next week.