Brahma Viharas - Upekkha (Equanimity)

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on one of the Brahma Viharas - Metta (loving kindness).

Transcript

Okay,

Other announcements about upcoming stuff?

So,

Equanimity.

Probably word is upekkha.

One of the four brahambhavaharas,

Or divine abodes,

States or realms of consciousness that the Buddha recommended we cultivate.

This also,

One of the seven factors of enlightenment Buddha talked about this teaching about the bodhyanga,

The lens of enlightenment he spoke about,

As your practice matures and what not,

There are certain qualities of mind and motives that become,

Over time,

A little more ripe,

A little stronger,

And kind of begin to reinforce and support each other.

Mindfulness,

Sense of inquiry or interest,

Energy,

Rapture,

Calmness and equanimity.

What's the last one?

Concentration and equanimity.

And the reason that that gets as much emphasis as it does in several of the Buddha's different lists and teaching systems and what not,

Is because in some ways it is the great open field that within which all these other qualities of mind arise and change and pass away and arise again.

It is the buddha field,

It is the great seemingly boundless expanse,

What's called the Mahayana,

The mind that contains all things and yet is not made up of them.

Suzuki Roshi once said,

The way to train a cow is to give it a great huge field to wander around in.

So it's this space that allows all things to occur without reactivity is in story about trying to demonstrate the quality of equanimity.

The samurai comes to the zindo,

On demands of the zen master who is sweeping the place out,

The old country zindo,

I would learn the dharma,

Says the samurai.

The zen master says,

Well my whole dharma class is on Saturday,

Come back then.

You don't usually talk to a samurai that way,

They tend to take it the wrong way and this guy certainly did,

But the hand on the hilt of the sword starts to draw,

He says,

Do you not know who I am?

I am one who could run you through without bludging an eye.

The zen master says,

Yes,

And I am one who could be run through without bludging an eye.

And of course in the stories,

The samurai comes back and says,

So that ability to be with literally anything,

What Nicholas Kantzosakisons or the Greek calls the whole catastrophe,

All of it,

Every bit of it.

So each of these brahmavaharas or divine abodes has what's called its far enemy and its near enemy,

Which is to say its polar opposite and something that's kind of like it except not really.

So the polar opposite of the far enemy of equanimity is restlessness and worry,

Which is also one of the five hindrances,

Fear,

Anxiety,

Sense of unease,

Mental unease.

The near enemy is usually referred to as something like deliberate indifference,

Which is to say this kind of stony,

Cold demeanor that appears to be untouched by anything.

The Tibetan teacher,

Pema Chodron,

Once,

When she was giving a talk and taking questions,

She was challenged by somebody who was quite active and engaged in Buddhist activities at the time,

And she was giving this talk on equanimity and he says,

You know,

It seems to me like this is really kind of a cop out,

That you want to cultivate this quality of mind so that you're untouched by the cares and the sufferings of the world and you can just kind of blank everything out and create your own little bubble where nothing can touch you,

Nothing can harm you,

And it seems like basically all you want to do is remove yourself from the world and bliss out and have that be the end of it.

She was fairly forthright and saying,

Well,

You know,

That's really kind of a misunderstanding of what equanimity is all about.

In fact,

She said that the cultivation of equanimity is in fact what makes it possible for you to open your heart to the suffering of the world and to begin to take some responsibility for it and to discern what the skillful beings are of addressing it.

Because she said,

If you're not coming from a place of equanimity and you get engaged in these issues,

They'll burn you up,

You know,

Like a moth to a flame.

You know,

Your own rage,

Your own despair,

It will preclude your ability to skillfully apply the insights of the Dharma to the situation at hand.

There's this fairly famous story of the sort of patriarchal leader of Cambodian Buddhism,

Again,

Buddhism was the state religion in Cambodia at the time that the Khmer Rouge overran the place and began murdering.

They began to systematically murder all of the monastics in Cambodia,

Destroyed the temples,

And they started killing off the priesthood and the nuns,

You know,

Working their way down through the ranks.

You know,

So it was this massive slaughter of thousands upon thousands of monastics.

And also,

Of course,

The lay people who had been contributing to the temples and whatnot,

Over two million people killed during the kind of reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge.

And as this began to take over the country,

People were fleeing Cambodia with only what they had on their backs,

You know,

Trying to get away from this terrible,

Murderous regime.

And he set about putting together these refugee camps in the surrounding countries,

You know,

Especially in Thailand,

For receiving these refugees.

And he did this for years and years until finally the Khmer Rouge were defeated by the Vietnamese.

In 1996,

He was awarded a kind of an international peace prize for his work.

And he was asked at the time,

These people who were fleeing Cambodia,

You know,

These monks and nuns who had been mutilated or tortured,

The stories he was hearing about his dear friends who had all been,

You know,

Assassinated by Khmer Rouge,

He said,

Given the enormity of the suffering that was being inflicted upon your sangha,

How could you even find it in your heart to do the work you did without being consumed by hate,

Without being consumed by rage,

Without being consumed by despair?

And his response was,

You know,

Pretty much the entire time I was doing this work,

I was making peace with myself.

There's this book by Jack Kornfield called Half with Heart,

Which was written a bunch of years ago.

And one of the chapters in the book is titled Stopping the War Within.

And so what Mahakosananda was talking about was that there is this horrible war engulfing the entirety of Cambodian Buddhism and the entirety of Cambodian society,

And he was doing what he could to help heal from this,

To help his people get over it.

And he said,

In order for me to be able to do that,

I had to be continuously making peace with myself.

That my own eponymity was the place of refuge,

The sanctuary from which it was possible for me to sort of move forward and do the work I did.

So in cultivating this quality of eponymity,

You know,

We look at the dharmapyal,

At the depiction of the eightfold path,

We have the three meditative qualities,

You know,

Samadhi,

The two wisdom qualities,

Panya,

And then the three sila factors,

You know,

Of skillful speech,

Action,

And way of life.

And the cultivation of equanimity,

The meditative factors.

What happens when the mind becomes really,

Really calm,

Another one of the factors of enlightenment,

And really deeply relaxed,

Is that it becomes possible to relax the mind to the point where the discursive mind ceases to create the self.

In other words,

It ceases to construct an I,

That we would call the I-making and me-making.

He said,

When the mind becomes calm enough,

It becomes possible,

At least temporarily,

To cease the I-making and the me-making.

And he said,

When that time arrives,

There are no longer objects in the world,

Because there is no longer a subject to view them.

And the verses on the faith mind,

The 30s and elder,

Though,

One of the founders of Zen thought,

He writes,

To live in the great way is either easy nor difficult,

But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute.

The faster they hurry,

The slower they go,

And cleaning and attachment cannot be limited.

Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray.

This is one of the things that we all find ourselves,

It's one of the great cosmic jokes of the Dharma.

Ego wants to be around for its own female.

Essentially,

You need to find yourself in a place where I am no longer keen on getting enlightened.

So I no longer have the goal of being enlightened,

Of being in some way other than I am.

Because all these people say all the time,

If we can hear it,

That this state of non-self,

The enlightened state of mind is already within us.

It's already there,

It's not something to be sought,

It's not something to be pursued,

It's something to be more relaxed into.

He said,

If you wish to move in the one way,

Do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.

Indeed,

To accept them fully is identical with enlightenment.

So that's where the near enemy of equanimity comes in,

Trying to shut out the world,

I won't be touched by any of the 10,

000 joys or the 10,

000 sorrows,

As the Chinese text say.

It's rather to open to it all and embrace it all,

But to do so in a way that leaves out nothing,

That is there for it all.

And of course,

As we all know,

It's easier said than done.

So the mind can become peaceful and open and unclouded,

To the point where sometimes you can get this little taste of the self getting kind of wavy,

Kind of like in Star Trek,

They beam me up Scotty,

You know,

And the things that had to look solid and hard all of a sudden just kind of look like little points of light,

Things get a little soft.

When they get to that point,

The Buddha advises that there is a set of reflections that you can work with that actually help you to cultivate equanimity.

It's basically a way to kind of check your equanimity game,

You know,

How you're doing in this realm.

And it's to remind yourself of these various aspects of existence that he would bring up from time to time in his talks.

I am of a nature to age,

Not beyond aging.

Are you okay with that?

It's the truth,

It's how things are.

Is that something that.

.

.

Yeah,

Of course.

I'm in this body,

This two-two mortal coil.

All compounded things are impermanent.

They enchant as the Buddha was dying,

As he had asked them to do,

Just to remember that.

I'm just like you.

I arose,

I changed,

And now I'm passing away.

So,

You know,

I'm of a nature to age,

Have not gotten beyond aging from a subject to illness and infirmity.

Not gotten beyond illness and infirmity.

I'm of a nature to die.

I have not gotten beyond death.

So if you're still chilled out,

Then here comes the next one.

All that is mine,

Dear and delightful,

Will change and vanish.

So,

Being open to understanding of accepting of the inevitability of loss.

And so,

Each time you say one of these things,

It's a way to say,

Whoops,

Not quite there yet.

And that's alright.

This is just a way of checking in with yourself.

Because to the extent that you can set aside all the time and go through these,

Gradually they become more comfortable and you find yourself able to accept them a little more completely.

And that very acceptance cultivates equanimity in a pretty powerful way.

The last of the five recollections is,

I am born of my karma,

I am heir to my karma,

My actions are the womb from which I have sprung.

And basically that's based on this understanding of the cyclical and replicative nature of time.

That as we have spoken and acted and lived our lives in the past,

Whether or not you subscribe to rebirth,

But how you lived your life in your past yesterday,

The day before,

Ten years ago,

Or when you were serving Vietnam,

Whatever it was.

Basically we are the inheritors of our past words and deeds,

The way of life.

My actions are the womb from which I have sprung.

My actions are my relations.

Because every act we take is interactive in nature,

We are all involved in this web,

This network,

And everything we do or say inevitably affects another.

And another aspect of this one is,

My actions are my protection.

What do you think the Buddha meant when he said,

My actions are my protection?

The floor is open.

You have control over your actions.

You can change them.

You have positive actions.

You have positive karma.

Yep.

Do you have a mic?

You have control over your actions so you can do positive things.

You have the ability to do that and then create positive karma.

And that way the actions would be a protector.

Which is easier said than done too.

Please.

Would that also be the foundation of the gain of wisdom?

Sure,

Of course it is.

Right.

What's being said here is the same thing that my children were saying.

The same thing that Mahakosananda was saying.

Is that when you are residing in a state of equanimity,

Of non-reactiveness,

Of non-reality,

Then any words,

Deeds,

Way of life that ensues from that state of mind can only endure to the good.

Can only endure to the wholesome.

Can only endure toward the cessation of suffering.

And by that means when you are not harming another,

Then you are likewise not harming yourself.

You are not creating the potential to be harmed by virtue of the actions that you have taken.

It might be hard for other reasons,

But it won't be because of how you behaved in the world.

So that's what's meant by that observation.

My actions are my protection.

That is really,

I think,

Kind of a central teaching for our times.

When you find yourself feeling despair or rage or isolation or just a sense of deep disturbance.

Over the last few months,

The ongoing cultivation of equanimity,

I'm just going to read this out as some notes that I put together.

Over the last few months,

The ongoing cultivation of equanimity has begun to assume increasing importance in my own practice.

When it is the refuge from which I venture forth,

I tend to have more faith and confidence in what I do or say.

When I forget the importance of this place and lose faith in this mind,

It's when I tend to feel the most hopeless,

Despairing,

And fearful for our collective future.

So just in terms of my day-to-day happiness in the world,

It's so helpful for me,

Kind of like that image of the eye of a hurricane.

I know that I'm going to be going forth into this kind of maelstrom of activity.

That's why the sense in me is usually translated as verses on the faith mind or verses on the mind of absolute trust.

It's the same when you are able to come from this place of equanimity,

Then it is as if you have created this aura of beneficence in the world.

This trust in your own mind,

This trust in your ability to be in the world,

To be with others,

Including being with people that you don't agree with or in difficult situations.

As long as you are in touch with that place,

If you are coming from a place of genuine equanimity and compassion,

As we were talking about last time,

Kindness,

That this creates an aura of well-being in terms of our own state of mind,

In terms of the people that we interact with.

I'm involved in some of the service activities I do are inevitably somewhat confrontational in nature.

For instance,

Some environmental justice litigation activities I'm involved in.

I'm sometimes struck by the strength of the opposing states of mind of the people who are engaged in these.

There is the inevitable potential to see unskillfulness,

To see all the things that the Buddha advises to avoid in terms of aversion and greed and willful ignorance and what not.

There is a tendency for the mind to get very polarized.

I feel that kind of a rise in me.

When I feel those things is when I feel vulnerable,

When I feel afraid,

When I feel powerless basically because I know that to move forward from that state of mind,

No good will come of it.

I heard an interview,

There was a story I interviewed a few years ago,

It was about this program they had of starting up neighborhood bands and music groups in some of the toughest neighborhoods in New York City,

Some of the most gang-ridden neighborhoods that were out there.

There was this one student,

This guy who was part of this program,

He was a gang banger,

But he was really into his music,

He was really learning this instrument,

He was learning to play the trumpet.

He was asked,

Well,

What makes you come here?

How do you feel differently when you're in here than when you're on the street?

And he said,

When I'm on the street holding my piece,

I feel afraid.

When I'm in here,

When I'm holding my trumpet,

I don't feel afraid.

I don't feel fear when I'm holding my trumpet.

That was his version of equanimity,

Having found a place of peace within his own heart,

Where he felt whole and where he felt safe.

And that's pretty much what we're talking about here as well.

Thank you.

So you're talking about being in that place of opposition,

In the courtroom,

Or in the legal battles.

I find that the same as the political situation that's going on in the country,

Right?

And so I hear that sense of vulnerability,

Of feeling like,

And it's brought on by typically the responses of other folks.

And so you're in this place of wanting,

All of a sudden feeling like you have to defend yourself.

And in that moment,

I'm wondering what you do.

Do you come to equanimity?

Do you take a breath?

Do you go and say,

I've got to go meditate?

See ya?

Good question.

Thank you very much.

Personally,

I try to make sure that one of the first things I do every morning is sit.

Because otherwise,

If I get up and turn on the computer and start reading emails,

I'm off to the races.

But whether it's for a long period or a short period,

If I can at least spend some time in that space at the beginning of the day,

Then when I go forth,

I'm aware of how close my mind is to still being in that space versus being elsewhere.

It's kind of like a touchstone.

You know,

Like if you start off on a hike or something,

You want to make sure you have a pretty good idea of where you are before you start out.

It's a reference point in terms of where you want to go.

There is a woman who for quite a few years was part of the Sangha who was a criminal defense attorney.

We were having a discussion about the Brahma Vaharas and about the practice of Nata.

We talked about this on retreat.

She was saying how beneficial she had found the practice of the Brahma Vaharas to be.

Because she said what she found herself beginning to do from time to time,

She was kind of like the gangbanger in the street whenever she'd go into the courtroom.

She said I always felt afraid or anxious because she was often trying to represent in some way.

Reviews

Really needed this today, thank you.

For a Sunday morning reflection

I love listening to you, humble and encouraging always. Thanks for being part of my process 💕

Thank you for this gift, what a wonderful way to start my day!

Thankyou so much , I will listen to this talk again 🙇‍♀️💚🌺🕉

That was an amazing teaching. 🙏

Thank you. Sometimes equanimity can look like ‘indifference’ from an observers point of view, but I love that you confirm that it is the condition that allows the heart to open.

So insightful, reaffirming and comforting. Thank you.

Thank you for your insights 😊

Wonderful talk! I enjoyed the short meditation at the end. I will listen to this again. Thank you so much for sharing.

Beautiful and profound. I listened multiple times. The first brought deep rest, then there was space to absorb the thoughts.

Thank you for the Dharma talk to start my day. 💜