Equanimity And The "Eight Worldly Winds" Of Life

This session is a discussion, plus a meditation on equanimity and working with the 8 worldly winds. With equanimity, we have a clear vision because we are less swept away by ever-changing circumstances. These changes, or forces, are the "8 Worldy Winds." When we learn to recognize and accept how they come and go in our lives, our happiness (a deep sense of well-being) is not dependent on life situations being a certain way for us to be happy. We enjoy happiness beyond changing circumstances.

Transcript

Hi,

This is Madeline.

Thanks for joining.

Before we discuss cultivating equanimity,

I'd like to offer this idea.

Some laws of nature that when we understand them and really internalize them,

Help us to move through life with less suffering and more ease.

For example,

The idea of gravity,

A well-known law of nature.

A toddler knows that they wouldn't place something in midair and expect for it to stay there.

They understand that it falls,

Sometimes things break,

And they learn to live in alignment with this law of nature.

We've also internalized this concept,

And so we don't suffer when something falls and breaks.

We might be upset about it happening,

But we understand the why.

It's just the way things are,

And we were not living in alignment with gravity.

And most important,

It's not personal.

Gravity is not personally happening to me.

It's happening,

And I was affected by it.

Similarly,

There's the law of impermanence.

Things change.

We're not in control of how they change,

And they're not always changing in ways that we like.

And we understand this intellectually,

But it's a little harder to internalize.

And why is that important?

It's because we often take comfort and security or pin our happiness to things that are ever changing.

So today,

We're going to expand on this idea and use some tools to help us further integrate this law of nature,

The law of impermanence,

Into our core the same way we understand the law of gravity and live in alignment with that already.

This teaching is one of my favorites.

In the Buddhist tradition,

It's called the Eight Vicissitudes.

It's also known in secular mindfulness as the Eight Worldly Winds.

The Eight Worldly Winds are forces of strong emotions and thoughts that toss us around like a very strong wind,

No matter how hard we work or how carefully we plan.

These forces just show up in our lives.

Things we don't want,

Things we do want.

They're really not in our control.

So the Eight Worldly Winds are broken up into pairs.

Four that we generally like and four that we generally dislike.

They are pleasure and pain,

Loss and gain,

Praise and blame,

And disrepute and fame.

I tend to put them in a rhyme to help me remember them.

So these opposing forces in our lives come and go and you might visualize them as eight spokes of a wheel,

Almost like a big captain's wheel on a boat with eight spokes.

And imagine a large hole in the center of the wheel.

The Eight Worldly Winds are often explained using this wheel analogy with a hole in the center.

And we are in the center,

In the middle,

As the wheel spins around us.

We can't prevent the Eight Worldly Winds from happening,

But we do have control over our relationship with the thoughts and emotions that come up as these forces blow in and out of our lives.

So we would all love to have more from the pleasant categories and less from the unpleasant ones,

Right?

But of course,

Life gives us all of them.

When something good happens,

We cling to it and we pin our happiness to keeping things in the states that we like.

And then we're in a constant struggle with what life is really like.

Think of the law of gravity.

We've really mastered that.

We've learned to live in alignment with that concept.

So here,

This is another law of nature,

The law of impermanence.

It's often helpful to imagine the Eight Worldly Winds as a weather pattern,

A weather pattern that blows in and out of our lives.

Sometimes it's a light rain,

Sometimes it's a storm.

But what does it mean to treat the Eight Worldly Winds like the weather?

We mean that we can be in a relationship where it's not personal,

Just like the weather.

You have a great day planned at the beach and it rains that day.

We don't get mad at the weather.

We understand that it happens.

It's just causes and conditions that lead good things and bad things to come in and out of our lives,

Just like the Eight Worldly Winds come and go.

And if we can shift our mindset to the same relationship that we have with the weather,

Knowing that the weather is not personal,

We can make our lives have a lot more ease.

So let's just zoom out a little bit.

Why are we studying the Eight Worldly Winds?

The insight here is that unfortunately,

We can't direct the wheel and just lock it in the good categories,

Never letting it move.

It's something that's impermanent and changing and not in our control.

But we can cultivate the ability to stay balanced in the center of the wheel as we face these Eight Worldly Winds.

This is often called equanimity.

And if we miss it,

And we do get swept up by a strong emotion or a thought,

We can recognize it quickly and not become fused with the emotion.

All of this is developing the quality of equanimity.

So mindfulness does not have a preference what it pays attention to.

We're delighted to pay attention to whatever is there pleasant or unpleasant.

It's a presence of mind that's stable,

Clear and warm.

And it doesn't mean that we're passive,

It's actually quite the opposite.

With equanimity,

We develop clear seeing because we're not swept away by the Eight Worldly Winds.

So any action that we choose is purposeful and powerful,

Instead of reactive.

If it's a pleasant situation,

We're fine.

If it's unpleasant,

We're also fine.

So what we're shooting for here,

What the goal is,

Is our happiness,

A deep sense of well being.

Our happiness is not dependent on the Eight Worldly Winds to be a certain way in order for us to be at peace.

It would be great if we could just decide to be equanimous.

But it's something that gets stronger,

The more we practice it.

So how do we practice it?

Meditation practice is a great way to grow equanimity.

And whether you know it or not,

This is something that we're already doing in our formal meditation practice.

Every time the mind wanders and we bring it back to our home base,

Our anchor,

Our focus,

We practice letting go of what was distracting us and practice concentration.

This combination of letting go of thoughts and stories cultivates a mind that's calm and stable.

And the more calm and stable the mind is,

The more it fosters equanimity as a natural state.

So we can't really force ourselves to be equanimous,

But we can incline in that direction.

We can lean our minds in that direction.

So noticing the Eight Worldly Winds as they blow in and out of our lives can help us with difficult emotions.

We can practice being comfortable being uncomfortable.

It's a quality of,

It's okay to be uncomfortable.

It's okay not to feel good sometimes.

It's okay to have difficult emotions.

It's okay for the wheel to be in one of the states that feels uncomfortable.

Just show up for it.

Experience it.

Accept it the way it is.

We don't have to resist.

And we know things change.

So we work with these ideas in our formal meditation so that we can recognize them in our daily life.

So let's give it a try now.

Take a few deep breaths and get into a comfortable posture for a short meditation.

And you don't have to worry too closely about the way that you're breathing.

The encouragement is just for the exhale to be longer than the inhale.

That's a signal to our nervous system that it's time to down-regulate,

To let go of that fight-or-flight mode and shift into the rest and reset mode.

So take a few deeper breaths with the exhale being longer than the inhale.

And if you're comfortable,

You can close your eyes.

And if you don't wish to,

Just leave them in a low gaze in front of you.

And as you take your last few deeper breaths,

Notice any tension around the eyes.

The little micro muscles around your eyes and try to relax those.

The same with the muscles around the jaw,

The mouth.

Relaxing that jaw down.

It gets tight from talking and smiling.

Just relax the whole face,

Eyes,

Jaw.

And on your next bigger exhale,

See if it's possible to let go of any tension in your shoulders.

Just letting the shoulders drop down away from the ears.

Letting any tension just roll off your shoulders onto the ground.

And while you're relaxing your face and your shoulders,

It's helpful if you can maintain a bit of an upright spine.

The goal is to be relaxed and alert.

So the alert part can really be taken care of with just a little bit of an upright spine,

If your body allows for it.

If you need to lie down,

That's fine too.

You may just be fighting a little bit with sleepiness.

So with an upright spine and relaxed face and shoulders,

You might begin to focus in on a meditation anchor,

A focus.

For example,

Let's rest our attention on sounds.

Sounds in your experience right now.

The sound of my voice.

Sounds in the room.

Sounds outside.

Notice how effortless it is hearing.

And as the mind wanders,

Just gently escort your attention back to your anchor,

Your focus,

Which right now is sound.

See if you can notice the beginning and the end of the sounds.

And as your mind wanders off,

It's totally normal.

Just gently bring your attention back.

We do have the ability to control our attention and place it where we want it.

And right now we're just focusing on sounds in our experience.

See if you can bring a beginner's mind to the sounds.

Kind of letting go of the content of what's making the sound,

But just hearing the sounds.

Right ear,

Left ear,

Far away,

Close to me.

What is the direct experience of hearing?

If your mind is wandering more than usual,

You can give it a little bit of a guardrail and offer the gentle label hearing.

Hearing as your hearing sounds.

Just offer the label hearing.

And letting go of the focus on sound,

Imagine this captain's wheel,

This big wheel,

The wheel of the eight worldly winds.

Imagine that the wheel is large and it's laying flat on the ground.

It has eight spokes going around it and picture yourself standing in the center of this wheel in the empty space where you can observe all of the eight worldly winds blowing around you.

Pleasure and pain,

Loss and gain,

Praise and blame,

Disrepute and fame.

Though the wheel turns and turns,

The eye of the wheel is still and that's where you are.

You observe the circumstances of your life,

The losses,

The gains,

The pleasure,

The pain,

But you're beginning to get free from attachment and aversion to these things.

You don't become one with them because you recognize them coming.

You observe them like the weather passing in and out of your life.

Breathe deeply and let yourself rest in this still center,

Jumping off the endless and exhausting hamster wheel for a time.

Using sound as your anchor again,

Just open up and rest in the stillness in the center of the wheel of the eight worldly winds.

And when your mind wanders off,

Just remember we're not trying to get rid of our thoughts.

We're just wanting to notice our wandering mind and invite our attention back to our focus,

Our anchor,

Which right now is using sound.

In a few minutes we'll bring this meditation to a close,

But before we do that I'm gonna offer some words to help us remember these eight worldly winds so we can see them coming in our daily lives.

You might repeat these phrases to yourself after I say them.

In the still center of the eight worldly winds,

I remind myself that it's all impermanent.

I can hold myself and others with compassion and loving-kindness.

In the still center of the eight worldly winds,

I remind myself it's all impermanent.

I can hold myself and others with compassion and loving-kindness.

So in a few moments I'm gonna ring a bell three times.

See if you're able to listen to the sound of the bell ringing all the way out each time.

So in closing,

The more we can operate from the calm center of the wheel and not get swept away with strong emotions or thoughts,

The eight worldly winds,

The more we will have clear seeing and when we have clear seeing we can choose instead of just react.

Notice and choose.

Notice and choose.

In every situation we can choose to accept what's happening or with clear seeing,

If we don't want to accept what's happening,

We can choose how to respond and make an effort towards change instead of just reacting.

You can rub your fingers together gently,

Rotating your wrists and drop your head gently to one shoulder and down to the other shoulder,

Rolling your head however feels good for your body.

Taking a deeper breath and stretching your arms up above and if your eyes were closed you can open them with a low gaze in front of you and slowly take in your surroundings.

Thank you for your practice.

Reviews

Excellent work by you. Thank you for sharing this piece with me.

Merci. Wonderful. I will practice this teaching regularly

Wise counsel, easy to process. Thank you for your guidance 🙏

Thank you for this amazing meditation. Very good for understanding equanimity.

This really helps me to regain a sense of clarity - the eye within the storm. Thank you.

Such a clear teaching...very helpful. Would have liked the meditation to be longer.

What a thoughtful and helpful message to bring into my center. Equanimity is such a profoundly calming state to experience our world. Your imagery and peaceful presentation is so helpful. Thank you Madelyne 🙏.

Feeling centered from your serene and calming guidance. Thank you for leading me to the center of the wheel .
✨🙏✨