How Can I Find Equanimity, Not Apathy, Through Meditation?

[With English interpretation] Ven. Pomnyun Sunim's (법륜스님) Answer to “How can I find equanimity, not apathy, through meditation?”
A question chosen from the weekly Sunday meditation with Ven. Pomnyun Sunim(법륜스님).

Peace of mind is only one step away.

Transcript

It seems that one way meditation helps us to be happy is to have us practice equanimity,

To not invest too much emotion in our thoughts about the past,

Present,

Or future.

How can I find that golden mean between pain and apathy?

Meditation helps us to be happy is to have us practice equanimity,

To not invest too much emotion in our thoughts about the past,

Present,

Or future.

How can I find that golden mean between pain and apathy?

Apathy is a phenomenon,

An emotional phenomenon that happens.

It's almost like giving up when things that you want to achieve doesn't come to be.

Underlying motivation behind apathy is that you didn't get what you want.

You wanted to do something,

Achieve something.

So there's a certain level of defensive indifference because you didn't get what you want.

So you're washing your hands of the whole thing.

But equanimity is not about giving up.

It's not about apathy or indifference.

Equanimity is about looking straight at the issue.

For example,

If there's pain,

Apathy comes into being because you feel the pain and you hate the fact that you are obsessing with the pain.

So you create this emotion called indifference to try to stay away from the pain.

Equanimity is all about recognizing the pain for what it is,

Just pain.

So apathy is all about indifference and indifference is a form of hatred,

Dislike.

And that creates pain,

Suffering.

However,

Spiritual practice is not about indifference.

It's about equanimity.

It's looking straight and recognizing a phenomenon as is.