So early on in my practice,
I heard a Zen story where the teacher comes to visit his,
Or I'm sorry,
Where the student comes to visit his dying teacher.
And the student asks,
What is the teaching of your entire life?
And the teacher replies,
An appropriate response.
An appropriate response.
This is the teaching of our entire lives.
And an appropriate response comes out of this,
This fourth divine quality.
And that is equanimity.
An appropriate response comes out of equanimity.
Equanimity is the ground for these four divine states that we've been exploring.
And the felt experience of equanimity is a balance.
Balance.
Some teachers say it's balance born of wisdom.
I really like that balance born of wisdom.
And so in relationship to these divine qualities,
First loving kindness,
The metta practice.
Metta practice is truly supported.
It's a support.
Saying these phrases supports a balanced mind.
You know,
Reading this Sutta supports a balanced mind.
Equanimity is like right in there with metta practice.
Maybe the mind swings wildly,
You know,
With liking and judging and anxiety and the phrases,
May I be at ease.
It's like a movement towards a balanced mind.
Compassion,
Karuna,
Is supported by equanimity through its capacity to be untroubled and unagitated and non-reactive when we encounter suffering.
This ability to have compassion kind of provides us lots of breathing room for suffering,
Lots of space.
And joy for others,
Known as mudita,
Is supported through equanimity as we're attuning to other people.
Attunement is a form of balance.
We're developing more sensitivity,
Understanding that other people in our lives really want the same things that we want.
And if they have achieved them before we have,
Well,
We can rejoice in that.
Oh,
Look what they,
They've arrived in a way.
I'm on this path with them.
We can be present for this joy for others,
This natural expression.
It's a natural expression.
And we experience it mostly with the ones that we're closest to in our lives,
Our children,
Our loved ones,
Our pets.
But to be a divine state,
It extends to all beings.
The postman,
The person at the checkout counter,
The person who picks up your garbage.
Joy for others.
And this fourth divine state,
Equanimity,
The Pali word is upeka.
Upeka.
And it literally means to have an overview of something,
To have this ability to see the bigger picture.
The Buddha gives this analogy of sitting on a hill above a town and kind of looking at the hustle and the bustle of the town.
And having this overview allows for a certain non-reactivity.
The mind isn't agitated.
It's just a peaceful mind.
That's what equanimity is really about.
And what's interesting about this is that sometimes non-reactivity in daily life by itself can look like and feel like indifference or disassociation.
It can be a neutrality that is like not caring,
Aloofness,
Closed down.
But equanimity is not a neutral state.
It's very satisfying.
It's peaceful and it's available in us.
It allows us to be present for things and not reactive.
Feeling like the mind is not being hijacked by reactivity.
It's such a relief.
It's really satisfying to experience the balanced mind.
And I'm certain that all of us at some point have experienced the balanced mind of being in this practice.
It's like,
Oh,
Now I'm home.
Now I'm more fully myself.
This is a healthy state.
When we have a very reactive and agitated mind,
We don't feel home in our bodies.
And if we don't know anything else,
If we're often habitually agitated and reactive and anxious,
It might feel like reactivity is actually who we are.
But the more we experience equanimity,
The more it's like,
Oh,
This is who I am.
It's very satisfying to experience this deeply.
This is who I am.
In this tradition,
This Buddhist tradition,
Equanimity is often taught through what are known as the eight worldly winds.
The worldly winds.
We've talked about this before.
There are four different pairs of conditions that change throughout our life.
And these winds,
They blow all of our life.
So these four pairs of opposites,
They're gain and loss,
Praise and blame,
Pleasure and pain,
And success and failure.
And these are always kind of happening.
Gain and loss.
We get things and things go away.
Praise and blame.
This happens all the time.
If you're in the role where you're speaking in front of people,
Or perhaps you're a body worker,
This happens a lot.
Some people just love you and other people just hate you.
Praise and blame.
It's inevitable.
And success and failure,
Just one,
It's more specific.
It's a more specific version of praise and blame.
And pleasure and pain.
We feel good.
We feel bad.
And these are the conditions of our entire life.
The world revolves around them and they come and go.
They're winds.
They come and go.
And they're constantly changing.
And when we don't see these,
Clearly these worldly winds,
When we don't see,
Oh,
This is arising,
This blame or this gain or this pleasure,
And it's passing too.
And if we don't see them and relax,
Just knowing that,
Oh,
This is arising and this is passing,
It's subject to change.
Then what our mind does is it obsesses and holds on,
And then we're pulled around.
We're pulled around by these winds.
When things don't go our way,
Or we want them to be different,
Notice how the heart responds,
How the body responds.
Is it at ease or is there resistance?
And if there's resistance,
That's feedback.
That's feedback.
Our heart is not understanding the way things work right now,
That everything is subject to change.
This is not a problem.
There's learning right there.
The equanimity of the Brahma Viharas is one of the wisdoms that is really the most mature form of our practice.
When we're so at ease and peaceful with what is happening,
And it's changing.
It's not like we arrive at equanimity as a permanent state.
You know,
It comes and goes.
These winds can be happening in our life and we might be meeting them with stability.
We're not agitated.
Sometimes how it feels is,
I can feel the tightness of the winds blowing,
Praise or blame or pleasure or pain,
Feeling that contraction in the body.
And I can also have access to that stability because I have resources in the breath.
I can feel my feet on the ground.
I can offer myself loving kindness.
Oh,
It's hard being Lisa right now.
Okay.
It's okay.
And that can bring me back to balance.
So these Brahma Viharas,
Loving kindness,
Compassion,
Appreciative joy and equanimity.
They're decisions that we make.
It's a decision that if we're going to have a better world for everyone,
Including ourselves,
It needs to include love and friendship and goodwill.
And if it doesn't,
Then I don't really think we're going to have a better world.
The Buddha said that hatred never ceases with hatred,
But by love alone is healed.
Hatred never ceases with hatred,
But by love alone is healed.
This is the ancient and eternal truth.
So thank you for hanging in with these four divine states that we're cultivating,
That we'll cultivate until our last breath.
I appreciate your attention and your being here.
