So today we come to the fourth Brahma Vihara,
These four qualities or expressions of love that are boundless,
Immeasurable.
So the first metta,
Mettas,
This friendliness and goodwill.
We see this everywhere in daily life,
Hopefully.
The second karuna,
Compassion.
I think most people and most cultures appreciate and hold compassion and its value is very high.
And then celebrating with people,
This is a great human custom.
Maybe they don't call it mudita or the complicated phrase appreciative joy but people celebrate each other all the time.
And this fourth state of being equanimity,
It might not be as common especially kind of equanimity as a kind of love.
The Pali word is upeka.
Upeka,
It literally means to have an overview of something,
To have the ability to see the big picture.
Upeka.
It's like sitting on a boulder and watching the river below rolling by.
Or the Buddha gives a description of sitting on a hill above a town and looking down at all of the hustling and bustling of the town and having this overview that allows for a certain non-reactivity,
Non-agitation of the mind.
To have peacefulness in the mind.
That's what equanimity is.
I like the description that equanimity is like having glasses which are smudged and dirty and then cleaning them and it's like when you put them on,
It's like wow,
It's really clear now.
I can see really clearly now.
So with equanimity it's kind of like that.
When the mind is equanimous there's a clarity,
An openness,
Even intimacy,
You know,
That's possible.
In the Buddhist teachings there's a specific teaching on the eight worldly winds and there are these four pair of conditions that change throughout our life and they blow through all of our life is the way it goes.
And these four pair of opposites are gain and loss,
Praise and blame,
Pleasure and pain,
And success and failure.
So gain and loss,
You know,
We get things and then things go away.
We get the job,
We get the relationship,
We get the money and then we lose the job,
We lose the relationship,
We lose the money.
Praise and blame,
You know.
I see this a lot in my role as a facilitator.
When you're speaking in front of people or speaking in public,
You know,
Some people are just like I love what you're saying and some people really don't like what you're saying.
They hate it.
It's inevitable.
That's just the way it goes,
Praise and blame.
Pleasure and pain,
You know.
We feel that all the time in the body.
And success and failure is just kind of a more specific version of praise and blame and pleasure and pain.
And these are the conditions of our life.
And they're constantly bouncing around,
Changing.
And it's said that the world revolves around these eight winds.
They come and go in all of our lives.
They blow through our lives.
And what happens ordinarily when we meet with gain or loss or praise and blame,
We get caught.
We get caught in them.
We're elated when things go our way or we get thrown off balance when they don't.
You know,
A new relationship or job or promotion,
It's all so gripping in the moment that and we lose sight of the perspective that all that has the nature to arise also has the nature to pass away.
Anything that comes into being will eventually pass.
So when we don't see it clearly,
When we don't see this happening is subject to change,
Then our mind becomes obsessed or becomes attracted and obsessed or repelled by that which we don't like.
And that's when we start to spin and get pulled around by these winds.
So learning to work with these teachings,
Allowing yourself to feel the pull of attraction of gain,
To feel the repelling the pushing away of not wanting loss.
That's how we develop equanimity.
We find the balance saying that all this is subject to change.
It's fragile,
It's impermanent.
In some ways that I believe is what this virus COVID has been teaching us.
Change,
Change,
Change.
How many times have we had to change our position,
Our view throughout this past couple of years?
So we begin to see the reactivity in the mind and to widen the awareness and make space for the reactivity,
Not to respond from it,
But just so that the heart can learn to be balanced within it.
You know,
When things don't go our way,
Just notice how your heart is responding.
Often you can feel it,
You know,
It's like,
Okay,
Is there resistance here?
Like there's a contraction when you hear something that you don't agree with.
And if there's resistance,
That's feedback.
That's immediate feedback.
It's a way that your heart is not understanding the way things work right now.
We can learn there in that moment if we pay attention.
So equanimity in the Brahma Viharas is one of wisdom's most mature forms really,
Where we're so at ease and peaceful with what's there that we're unactivated by the eight worldly winds of gain and loss,
Praise and blame,
Pleasure and pain,
Success and failure.
These winds can happen to us,
But because equanimity is so stable,
We're not agitated.
There's peacefulness and ease with it.
As I was reflecting on these Brahma Viharas and this new year 2022,
I think in part the Brahma Viharas,
These divine abodes,
These divine places to navigate from,
Their decisions,
Their decision that we make that if we're going to have a better world for everyone,
It needs to include our love,
Our loving kindness,
Our metta,
Our friendship and goodwill.
And if it doesn't,
Then I don't really think we can make a better world for ourselves.
So to let this new good world develop in this year of 2022,
It starts with you.
It starts with me.
Don't sit around expecting and waiting for someone else to make the world better.
Each of us is the agent for a new world.
So may we bring our love and care,
Our goodness and generosity out into the world this year.
May it be so.
Thank you for your kind attention this morning.
