Equanimity As A Practice And The Result Of Practice

This is a recording of Dharma talk four of the Nov-Dec “presence and the awakened heart” retreat at Sangsurya Byron Bay, Australia. The topic of this talk is equanimity. It described what it is, how it is a quality of wisdom and therefore the result of both insight and serenity meditation as well as a practice within itself, as a divine abode. As deeply understanding equanimity also requires an understanding of karma, there is also a mention the law of karma and the principles of what is wholesome and what is unwholesome.

Transcript

So welcome to tonight's Dharma talk.

The topic of tonight's Dharma talk is equanimity.

And what I'd like to do is describe what equanimity is in my view and as far as I understand.

How it's a quality of wisdom.

And therefore,

And also,

I'd like to describe how we experience it.

I'd also like to describe how it is both the result of insight meditation practice as well as serenity meditation practice.

And as well as the results of meditation practice,

It is a meditation practice in and of itself as a divine abode,

As a divine,

A boundless divine abode.

And in addition,

Because understanding equanimity relies on an understanding,

Understanding of deeply,

Relies on an understanding of what karma is or kamma in Pali.

So I'll be briefly mentioning the law of karma and the principles of what is wholesome and unwholesome.

So equanimity is the result of the four,

Is one result of practicing the four establishments of mindfulness.

It is also the result of,

And the result of accumulation of the previous six factors of the seven factors of awakening being mindfulness,

Investigation of dharmas,

Energy,

Joy,

Tranquility,

Concentration.

Equanimity results from them coming together.

So interestingly,

There's seven factors of awakening.

I'll just make this brief comment.

The first three factors,

Mindfulness,

Investigation of dharmas and energy,

You find that in insight meditation practices.

The next three factors,

The next three factors are joy,

Tranquility and concentration you find in serenity meditation practices.

So when I'm saying equanimity is the result of both equanimity and,

Sorry,

Result of both establishments of mindfulness as well as serenity,

You can understand how these can sort of work together.

In addition,

These seven factors,

And I'd better not divert on this being a talk about the seven factors of awakening,

But these seven factors,

They've got calming and energising aspects.

So the calming aspects are tranquility,

Concentration and equanimity.

And the energising factors are mindfulness,

Investigation of dharmas,

Energy and joy.

Joy energises.

So coming back to equanimity now,

Coming back to my topic of this talk,

Is I want to,

If you look in the English and I'm looking in the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary about the meaning of equanimity and where it comes from,

It comes from the Latin words equius meaning level or equal and animus meaning soul or mind.

And equanimity has come to mean evenness of mind,

Especially under,

Especially under stress.

It has also come to mean a kind of a balanced disposition,

A sense of balance,

A sense of equanimity,

A sense of stability.

Other English words for equanimity could include peacefulness,

Stillness,

Calm,

Emotionally balanced,

Centred,

Equipoise.

And I've also talked about it as a wise perspective with committed purpose,

Having inner stability,

Resilience,

Emotional flexibility and the strength and the power of being centred,

Stable and grounded.

So you're getting a sense of what equanimity means here.

I just want to talk a little bit about karma now and this combination with equanimity,

This connection with equanimity.

The way we beings are in life comes about from a range of causes and conditions,

A whole bunch of causes and conditions.

Many of these causes and conditions are completely beyond our control.

Like we can't control the cultures that we've been born into.

We can't control social conditioning that we've had.

We can't control the genetics that we've been born with.

And we can't control a lot of the situations that happen in life like disasters,

Like being subject to cyclonic weather,

For example,

Or being in a tsunami or something terrible like that.

But there's something that we can do.

Within all that uncontrollability in our lives,

We can still make a choice with how we respond to things that come our way.

And that's the power we have.

We have the capacity to choose how we respond to these situations and the actions we do in those situations.

So we can still steer the direction of our lives and how our lives may unfold because of our decisions.

And these decisions involve intentions and the actions that we do based on these intentions or decisions,

If you like.

So the term Kama or Kama,

K-A-R-M-A or Kama,

K-A-M-M-A,

As it's spelled,

It's kind of roughly spelled like that in Pali,

Literally refers to actions.

And they are like the seed that will ripen into fruit.

They ripen into fruit depending on the causes and conditions.

And the actions we do or don't do need to be intentional for them to ripen into particular fruit,

Into particular karmic fruit.

So in Buddhism,

Actually this is one of the principles of Buddhism,

One of the fundamental understandings of Buddhism.

There is,

There are what's called wholesome actions and unwholesome actions.

Wholesome activities and unwholesome activities.

So wholesome refers to those activities that are in line with the Eightfold Path,

Basically,

That are in line with moving away from suffering,

Moving outside that kind of being bound to cycles of suffering.

Generally,

They're the opposites of greed,

Ignorance and hatred.

They're generally motivated by the opposites of greed,

Ignorance and hatred.

Unwholesome karma or unwholesome actions,

On the other hand,

Are those types of actions that maintain us or lead to suffering and maintain us in cycles of suffering.

So generally,

From the basic principles here,

We're talking about activities or,

Yes,

Behaviours that are driven by greed,

Ignorance and hatred.

So,

And I,

Look,

I'm saying this,

I realise there's an argument out there.

This came up at the,

I gave a talk similar to this at the last retreat I did here.

And there was a bit of discussion about this,

How,

Seeing there's no self in all this,

How can we make decisions?

What's the meaning of that?

And also,

I'm aware that,

Like,

Isn't it just an unflowing according to nature and there's nobody really there making decisions and nobody gathering unwholesome karma and wholesome karma?

And I'm also aware of some research in neuroscience that talks about the potentiality of neuronal firing can come before a thought about it.

And one of the clinical psychologists here is nodding their head,

So they probably know about that research.

So,

You could say,

Well,

If that's the case,

There's no such thing as this intentional action,

There's no such karma because nobody's doing it all.

But maybe that's,

That's kind of,

There's some truth in all that.

But I'm working off our relative realities.

I'm talking about our relative realities and our basic understandings of how we live in life and how we can progress through and beyond our cycles of suffering.

And it is based on us cultivating the wholesome and releasing the unwholesome.

And it's based on us,

For want of a better word,

Creating good karma,

Good actions.

There's another word for,

Normally we understand karma by understanding our cause effect relationships.

And there's a lot of,

I guess,

Myths about what karma is,

Like,

You know,

It's your karma.

Somebody's caught up in a tsunami,

It's their karma.

Well,

It's not quite like that.

The word for results or effects is vipaka.

So,

We have karma vipaka.

Karma literally means actions,

Vipaka means the results of actions,

The consequences of actions.

Excuse me a minute.

And we create karma with our choices and the actions that come our way.

And it's beyond the unenlightened capacity of our minds to understand what fruit will arise from particular karmic actions.

But it is possible for us to discern what is wholesome and what is unwholesome.

So the way we do that is by developing wisdom and equanimity is an aspect of wisdom.

This word discernment,

I think it's a great word.

I remember when I first started hearing about how mindfulness could be called non-judgmentally aware.

I really had a difficulty with that term non-judgmentally aware.

And I think the person who coined that term,

They had very good intentions and they were probably American.

And they were talking about how,

What we are trying to understand about as non-judgmentality or being non-judgmental.

It means non-condemning,

Non-pushing away,

Not judging someone as negative.

But I had a few issues with it because we're always making some sort of judgment.

We're making,

And you could say we're always having discernment about what we're doing.

We're contemplating it.

We're making a decision.

And if we're faced with a difficult circumstance,

We're discerning what's the best possible outcome here or what's the best possible action we can do.

And if we're driven by greed,

Ignorance and hatred,

Perhaps we're not having much wise discernment because we're making our decisions based on our mental distortions.

You know,

What we really want or what we really don't want or what we're confused about.

So the way it works is that actions driven by kind intent or actions driven by intentions of letting go or actions driven by goodwill or actions driven by harmlessness usually work out in a wholesome way,

Often work out.

Not always,

But you know,

It's more likely that unwholesome results will manifest.

On the other hand,

Unwholesome actions based on cruelty or intentions of letting go or greed or intentions or confused intentions,

Like people ignorant to what's going on,

There's more probability that they will,

The outcomes of those intentions and those actions based on those intentions will be problematic,

Will be a cause of suffering or suffering in itself.

With wisdom,

We also understand that the way events are interpreted is dependent on each and every different individual's perceptions,

Worldviews and beliefs.

An innocent action may be praised by some and criticised negatively by others.

It's simply unhelpful,

For example,

To believe that everyone should like us.

I mean,

We'd like to believe that everyone likes us and we've got lots of good reasons why they should like us,

But you know,

It's irrational.

Albert Ellis,

The person who developed rational emotional therapy,

He said that there's a bunch of irrational beliefs and one irrational belief is that I should be loved by everyone.

It's a completely irrational belief,

So some people are going to dislike you.

So anyway,

I'm coming back to this,

These actions.

An innocent action may be praised by some and criticised negatively by others,

And it's simply unhelpful to believe that we should be liked and our actions should be considered as wonderful by everyone.

Actions based on wholesome intent can be perceived in a positive manner or a negative manner.

Throughout history,

Even our courageous saints have been criticised for their actions.

They have been condemned.

Sometimes they've even been harmed and crucified because of their actions,

The actions that are based on wholesome intent and others' negative misjudgments.

So coming back to now,

Now coming back to equanimity.

According to one Buddhist master,

Sayadaw Upandita,

Equanimity is the quality of mind that remains centred without inclining towards extremes.

I've practised with Sayadaw.

I've even massaged Sayadaw.

He's really cool.

I preferred to massage him than to practise with him.

When I was practising with him,

He was saying,

No,

Go back,

Do this,

Do that,

And you know,

Or you haven't made any progress at all.

But when I was massaging him,

He was really kind.

I was just massaging him and I asked him one day,

Because I was a cook on a retreat and he was running,

And I just said to him,

Sayadaw,

I'm skilled with massage.

Would you like a massage?

He said,

Yes,

Sir.

That would be good.

It's healthy for you,

Isn't it?

I said,

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

Sir.

I was giving him a massage and I end up giving him a massage nearly every night.

I thought,

That's great.

And we had a little conversation and I said,

Sayadaw,

Is it possible to wake up,

You know,

Get enlightened giving massage?

He said,

Yes,

Yes.

Whenever there's good intention and mindfulness and concentration,

It's possible to wake up.

So there you go.

He said,

The quality of equanimity is a quality of mind that remains centred without inclining towards extremes.

He was a very revered master.

And according to Thich Nhat Hanh,

This is one thing he said about equanimity,

Is that it is a quality of non-attachment,

Even-mindedness,

Non-discrimination and letting go.

And according to others,

Equanimity is the spacious stillness of mind that provides the foundations for the other sublime states.

Now,

They're talking about equanimity as a sublime state.

And as a sublime state,

As I'll mention in a little while,

It is considered the queen of the divine abodes or might be considered as the king.

I'm not sure,

One or the other,

But in that it governs them all.

It kind of balances them all.

By the way,

That statement is from Sharon Shalesburg and Joseph Goldstein,

Who have been my teachers as well.

I've practised with them several times and I've also massaged them as well.

But not while I was meditating with them.

It was when they came to Australia and practising down where I was living in,

Where was it,

Barrel.

They were doing a meditation retreat in Barrel.

They'd just come back from India and they were both sick and they were coughing and all the rest of it.

And I said,

Would you like to get a massage?

And they said,

Yeah,

That'd be really great.

So I was massaging Joseph.

And he said,

Why didn't you tell me this when you could massage when you were doing a retreat with me?

I would have had a massage every day.

And Sharon really appreciated it as well.

But anyway,

I've done a number of retreats with them and I did a three-month retreat with them in Barry,

Massachusetts in 1984.

That's cool.

They're great,

Great teachers.

They're still great teachers.

So just kind of coming back to Malcolm,

Don't go off on too many tangents.

I'm just coming back to the theme of this Dharma talk.

In Buddhist psychology,

The eight worldly winds are four sets of opposite circumstances that destabilise sense of emotional balance.

And I think Lisa talked a little bit about the eight worldly winds last night.

And I'll be repeating some of what Lisa said last night.

So they are circumstances that our egos often either yearn for or reject and fear.

These four sets are praise and blame,

Or praise and honour.

Praise,

Honour and blame.

Loss and gain or failure and success.

Pain or unhappiness and pleasure or happiness.

This last one I'm going to use a couple of terms.

Fame,

Notoriety,

Social acceptance and disrepute or disgrace,

Embarrassment,

Insignificance or even social rejection.

We all want to be socially,

Most of us want to be socially accepted and most of us don't like social rejection.

We don't like to be blamed.

We like to be praised.

We like to succeed.

We don't like to fail.

And we don't like,

Most of us don't like pain,

Unless we're a masochist or something.

And we like to have pleasure.

And what happens as a human,

Most of us are preoccupied with getting one or the other.

Getting one,

Getting one and pushing away the other.

We're just kind of constantly in the ways of the world trying to achieve,

Being blown around with our behaviours and with our thoughts and with our mind,

Obsessed with these four polar opposite situations,

Circumstances.

So,

Most of us like,

For example,

To have social esteem and be noticed and we don't like to be disgraced,

Embarrassed or feel socially insignificant.

The thing about these eight worldly winds is that they're part of life.

Everyone experiences them.

However,

They can create enormous suffering,

Especially when we obsessively crave,

Grasp and cling to one side of the pair and crave to push away the other.

So,

But they're present in life.

Even the Buddha,

Someone who you can only think of as praiseful,

He had his critics and he even had murder attempts on him.

He was disliked by many people.

A lot of people tried to discredit him because they kind of,

They didn't like him shaking up their social status,

Their social norms.

Because the Buddha went in and he was breaking up families in so far as,

You know,

These children of business people,

For example,

Very wealthy people,

They were choosing rather than to spend their lives promoting the business,

They went into the monasteries,

They became monastics.

So,

He was quite criticised and also making these statements about not-self,

Whereas the spiritual traditions of the time were about the big self.

I mean,

I know there's kind of overlaps with these different approaches.

However,

He was highly criticised by many spiritual leaders because he was pulling disciples and students away from those leaders.

So,

He,

However,

Was unshaken.

Actually,

There's one example where this group of people tried to discredit the Buddha.

So,

They organised with a woman to,

You know,

Roll up his dharma talks and go round the back of the hall or whatever it was,

It's a sala he was giving talks in,

And then,

You know,

Constantly be at these dharma talks and then gradually indicate that she was pregnant.

And then one day,

And,

You know,

She started spreading words about the Buddha and,

You know,

We're having a relationship and things are going,

You know,

He's the father of this child and so on.

And then one day she made this announcement,

She made the announcement that the Buddha is the father of this child and she's pregnant,

This child that I'm pregnant with.

And the Buddha looked at her and said,

Only you and I know the truth of this matter.

He didn't say anything other than that.

And at that she stood up and this block of wood or whatever it was fell out of her skirt and fell on the ground and she was exposed for what she was.

But the point I'm making is that the Buddha wasn't shaken around.

He wasn't shaken around by these claims.

It's like equanimity.

Equanimity is one way of understanding equanimity is unshakability,

Like being unshaken,

And particularly being unshaken by the eight worldly winds because that's just irrelevant.

When one with equanimity is not caught up in that concerns,

Those concerns.

So it's like an unshakable mountain in the midst of a violent storm in that it provides emotional stability when challenged by life's vicissitude.

Equanimity can counter distorted thinking patterns,

Negative self-concepts,

Taking personally negative life events,

And ultimately equanimity results in a peacefulness of mind and a deep acceptance of ourselves and the unavoidable realities of life.

Equanimity also helps one to cope with and manage difficult interpersonal relationships because it provides a balanced state of mind in order to see the way things are and be able to see both sides of a conflict.

Sometimes I've compared equanimity to the flexibility of bamboo.

Bamboo,

As you know,

Is a very strong,

I mean there's a few bamboo around here,

That's a very strong structure,

Yet it's very flexible.

And it has,

I mean,

I've seen it in Asia as being,

Providing scaffolding for lots of buildings and also actually being the foundation of many buildings.

So,

And it is flexible.

So,

Once I lived in a forest temple in northeast Thailand,

And I'll talk a little bit more about that later on in this talk,

And also in the talk tomorrow night.

And I was,

When I lived there,

I was living with a very powerful Thai acharn.

Then he was called an acharn,

Which means teacher.

Later on,

As he grew older,

He was called luang por,

Which means venerable grandfather,

Venerable one.

So,

He was very kind and compassionate,

Especially to me.

He was very kind.

He'd give me chocolate every now and then.

My name in Thailand,

When I was in Thailand,

My name was Kum.

So,

He'd say Kum,

Which is kind of ironic,

Because it was like,

Kum,

Here's a chocolate.

Because it was an allowable medicine,

They called it chocolate medicine,

And it was allowable in the evening,

And I was really,

Really skinny.

And he'd always be saying,

Are you having enough food,

Malcolm?

You know.

I was getting plenty,

I just couldn't digest it very well,

Because it was sticky rice,

Glutinous rice.

And,

You know,

We'd have one morning,

One meal a day,

Usually finished by about 8.

30.

Anyway,

He used to give me chocolate.

He was very kind.

But he was also what's called in Thai,

Du,

Du means fierce,

Fierce.

He wouldn't stand up for,

He wouldn't,

He wouldn't tolerate,

Or he'd call it out,

If he saw any behaviours that were going against the principles of the Eightfold Path,

Or the principles of the Buddhist teachings,

He would call it out.

No hesitation whatsoever.

So,

One time,

In that monastery,

We,

The monastery was sort of surrounded by a fence.

It was quite a large monastery,

It was probably about three kilometres in diameter.

I don't know how big it was,

But it was,

It was filled with bush.

It was on top of the hill,

It was called Wat Doi,

Wat Doi Dhammajedi,

Which translates as the monastery on the top of the hill,

On the hill,

The hill of the monastery with the big stupa in the middle.

That's what it was,

Wat Doi Dhammajedi.

Anyway,

It was surrounded by a fence,

And we used to go out the gate and go down to the village,

Which was probably a couple of kilometres away.

And then we'd walk back every morning.

So,

One morning we were walking back,

And there were soldiers with,

With machine guns outside the gates.

And we thought that was a bit strange.

And then we walked in towards where we were going to have our meals,

Where we were prepared to have our meals and so on.

And it became evident that there was a general,

A soldier there,

And he was surrounded by more soldiers in the temple,

And they're all holding guns.

And my teacher just kind of walked in and noticed him,

And he told him,

Get rid of those guns.

This is not a place for guns.

If you can't get rid of your guns,

You can get out.

Just leave now.

So,

I guess what that means is that I would see him as someone with equanimity,

Who was very,

Very powerful.

And here,

Equanimity,

He's not going to be pushed around.

He's not going to be intimidated.

And he's going to stand firm on his principles.

And he demonstrated that.

He was du,

He was fierce.

And he was powerful.

I remember just walking behind him.

It was really,

Going pin by pin.

It was just walking behind a Rolls Royce of a human.

It was really powerful.

This grounded person.

Solid.

Anyway,

I guess I'm saying that because when we cultivate equanimity,

Sometimes we think it's sort of like this acceptance of things,

And it's kind of passive.

But it's actually a powerful place.

It's,

It gives us power.

When we're,

When we're in a place where,

When we're doing what is right,

We have this,

When we're doing,

When we have a resolve about what is right and what is wrong,

What is harmful and what is not harmful,

We have this inner confidence.

And we're unshaken.

We're unshaken by threats.

In fact,

Look,

I'll share a comment that one of my clients made,

Only a couple of,

Only at the beginning of this year,

One of my clients were talking about certain things.

And we talked about the theme of equanimity.

I won't go into details about what we're talking about,

But we're talking about the theme of equanimity.

And this client said,

You could be,

You could be surrounded by,

Actually,

I'll mention one other thing.

Just,

If you don't mind,

I'll just step back a bit.

The ways,

One way we cultivate equanimity is through maintaining impeccable ethics.

That's one of the supports for the cultivation of equanimity.

Impeccable ethics,

Which means we are blameless.

We,

We maintain principles of non-harm.

We maintain principles of goodwill.

And we maintain principles of letting go.

And most,

Most particular is these principles of non-harm and doing the right thing.

Like Lisa was talking about with the governance of the Medtar Centre yesterday.

So,

Moving forward again,

Back to that,

This story.

When we can maintain ethics,

Then we are fearless.

And my client said,

You know,

You know,

You could be surrounded by people pointing guns at you and you could be fearless because you know you're doing the right thing.

And,

And if you believe in actions have consequences,

If you stick to that,

You know that the consequences will be good.

And you,

You could even,

You could even die,

But you would die and whatever happens from that,

I mean,

I,

You know,

You could,

There's a bit of an argument,

What happens with death.

One argument is that after death there's nothing.

Another argument of death is that,

That you'll be born as something.

But I don't know about that.

I don't know which one to believe or not believe,

But I do know that there are,

Actions have consequences.

And if you maintain ethical principles through your life,

Then when you die,

There should be wholesome outcomes,

If that makes sense.

So the point I'm making is that it's not weak.

It's not a passive attitude.

It's not an acceptance of things,

But it's a,

It's the power of being resolute.

And it gives us power to stand up to injustice,

Oppression,

And anything else that we see that is harmful.

And in this modern world with so many extreme views,

War,

Disasters,

Equanimity does not mean we become passive or ineffective.

On the contrary,

Equanimity provides the power to have that resolve to act wisely and follow through with it fearlessly.

And equanimity is not confined to Buddhism.

And parts of the well-known,

Often recited Christian serenity prayer seems to encapsulate many of the themes related to equanimity.

For example,

And I'll use the term God,

Whatever God means to you,

God,

Give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,

The courage to change the things that need to be changed,

And the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

So I have seven grandchildren.

Two of them are step-grandchildren.

And five of them are biological grandchildren.

The latest grandchild is going to be two years old in a couple of months.

And he was born with cystic fibrosis,

Which is,

I don't know if anybody knows about cystic fibrosis,

It's an illness that's really debilitating.

I won't go into the details of it.

But in the old days,

People used to die very young.

It's genetic and it's kind of a gamble.

It's a possibility of having it.

And my current partner who's the mother of my youngest son's sister died when the sister,

When she was three,

And her sister was eight.

She died because of having cystic fibrosis and she ended up dying of a lung condition.

It's about,

Cystic fibrosis is about fluids and the viscosity of fluids.

It's got something to do with the sodium channels in the cells and there's a problem with the sodium channels.

So when our grandson was born,

He went home but he had to go back into hospital within 24 hours because there was something wrong with his digestion.

He wasn't pooing.

Ended up,

He went into ICU and he had an operation on his intestines because they were fused.

I can't remember the term for that but anyway,

They were fused.

Like nothing was going through them and he had to get that chopped out.

This is a little baby,

About this big.

And so he's had,

Raising a child with cystic fibrosis is quite an ordeal.

I mean it's much better than it was 60 years ago when my partner's sister died of cystic fibrosis and the prognosis is much better for life.

Yet,

It's still a big thing.

I mean,

Currently he has digestion problems and his belly sort of extends and it's really,

You can see he's in discomfort but he's really a cruisy little kid.

He laughs a lot and all the rest of it.

So,

But the point I'm getting at is that what can you do with that?

I mean,

A little baby,

One needs to have equanimity because we can't go in there and change that baby's life trajectory.

All we can do is do the best we can.

In the long run,

We can't heal him but we can help him heal himself of course.

And what we need to do is have a deep acceptance of the reality of the situation and do the best we can.

And we do.

I mean,

My son and my daughter-in-law,

They're amazing.

They work so hard to do what needs to be done.

So acceptance of the reality of what's actually happening is equanimity as well.

And we need equanimity in a lot of circumstances to be able to make the right decisions to do what we need.

If we were reactive and,

You know,

Wailing with grief all the time with our grandson,

Well,

We wouldn't be affected from what we need to do.

And this kind of brings about something else that happens with equanimity.

When we have equanimity,

We begin to realise that we can that we don't have to be responsible for other people's feelings.

I know a lot of people tend to try to dump us with the way they're feeling.

You know,

You made me really angry.

I depend on you.

My happiness depends on you.

But with equanimity,

We can see clearly that everyone is on their own life trajectories.

We can't go in and change their life trajectories.

We can't go in and change the actions they've done to create the outcomes that are manifesting.

We can't go in and change the way they are thinking,

Feeling and behaving.

That's their responsibility.

And this might be a bit difficult to hear.

When I used to talk about equanimity in groups I used to run in mental health services and also in the public,

It must be now 25 years ago,

Maybe 30 years ago,

I can't remember how long ago,

A long time ago.

I used to bring up the term of equanimity as being this kind of centred and balanced and unshaken by things.

And people would say,

But what about children?

What about children who have been abused?

How can you be so accepting of that?

And I would say,

Well,

Look,

I see a lot of children who have been abused.

Sometimes I was seeing adolescents at the time and I've also seen a lot of adults who have been abused as children.

And I do the best I can to help them as clinical psychologists.

I'm doing the best I can to help people.

But we know that eventually it's up to that individual to heal themselves.

Hence Paul Gilbert.

Paul Gilbert's the proponent of compassion-focused therapy,

The main developer of that approach.

He said something one day.

He said,

The way we are is not our fault,

But it is our responsibility.

So I might talk a little bit about,

I can see it's five to six.

How long have I been going on for?

I might go on for a little bit longer.

Is that all right?

So,

There are two words in Pali that are used to refer to equanimity.

One word is upekka and the other word,

And I'll try to say it correctly if I can,

Tatramajjahatata.

Now the first word,

Upekka,

Literally translates as to look over,

As well as to see with patience.

And it can also refer to seeing with understanding.

And it's like with equanimity,

It's like we're seeing the bigger picture.

Sometimes I have this vision in my mind like I'm up on a hill and I'm looking down on the world out there and there's all these crazy activities that are going on and I can see it.

And I'm sort of,

I can see and understand it,

But I'm not caught up in it.

It's like that.

It's like that sense of equanimity.

Reminding you that it's not passivity as well,

But it's seeing clearly and understanding,

Yet responding to the situation effectively as is needed.

And the other term,

Tatramajjahatata,

Is a compound word made of some Pali words.

And tatra means there and sometimes refers to all these things.

Majja means the middle and tata means to stand or poise.

So putting together,

The word becomes to stand in the middle of all this.

As a form of equanimity,

Being in the middle refers to balance and remaining centred,

In the middle of whatever is happening.

It's like a ballast on a yacht,

How the ballast keeps the yacht upright in the winds.

And it maintains that stability in the storms,

Hopefully.

And this for us refers to how we can maintain stability,

Calm,

Confidence and integrity in the process of the strong winds that blow us around,

In the strong winds of the eight worldly winds and life's vicissitudes.

And there are many ways to cultivate equanimity.

I mentioned maintaining ethics and I gave a bit of a talk about that.

Other ways we can cultivate equanimity is simply by reflecting on things.

And I've got a little bit of a story here.

I was in the monasteries many years ago.

I was only,

I was 21 when I ordained and I was in the monasteries,

22,

23,

Around about that age,

22 and 23 I think.

I was only young.

I went to live in these monasteries and I was pretty gung ho.

I went to a monastery where there wasn't speaking to anybody,

English speakers and it was pretty difficult.

And when I was there I got sick.

Well actually I got,

I had a mosquito bite in southern Thailand and that mosquito bite had malaria in it.

So I received the results of malaria when I was up north in the forest monastery.

And so I was sick with malaria one time and then eventually I overcome it because I'd had malaria before and I knew what to do.

And I got some medicine from a doctor.

But also I had hepatitis A which was really unpleasant.

And I really thought I was going to die,

You know.

And my concentration wasn't very good.

I couldn't focus very well.

Couldn't do my fluid breathing very much.

Actually when I did my fluid breathing,

My body would vibrate because I was so skinny.

When my heart beat,

With my heart beat my body would vibrate.

So I was a little bit distraught.

If I knew that then,

If I knew what I knew now then I would have been mindful of the movement.

But I didn't know that then.

It was a bit difficult.

But I did take up something called the five recollections which I've mentioned.

And I found that the five recollections gave me deep peace.

And I've mentioned it before and I'll mention them again.

These are the five recollections.

I'm of the nature to age.

I've not gone beyond ageing.

I'm of the nature to have illness.

I've not gone beyond illness.

I'm of the nature to die.

I've not gone beyond death.

All that is mine,

Beloved and pleasing,

Shall one day be parted from me,

Shall one day vanish.

I am the owner of my actions,

Heir to my actions,

Born of my actions,

Related to my actions,

Abide supported by my actions.

Whatever actions I shall do of those actions I shall be the heir.

That was so powerful.

And that last phrase,

That fifth recollection in particular is the phrase one uses to develop equanimity.

Like seeing the cause effect relationships of our karma and vipaka.

Seeing this,

Oh this is just the way it is.

Of course.

It's just the way it is.

How could it be otherwise?

I have a body.

I have malaria in my body.

It's natural that I will have these kind of responses and reactions.

It didn't,

You know,

It didn't bring me enlightenment,

But it brought me great peace,

I must say.

So that's a really powerful way.

And other ways we can cultivate mindfulness is through,

As I mentioned earlier,

Insight meditation or mindfulness.

Being able to see with discernment or more than discernment,

Directly experiencing impermanence,

Directly experiencing the dukkha nature of experience,

Directly experiencing not-self,

Directly experiencing these phenomena,

Seeing that within ourselves and all experience,

Helps us create wisdom.

We gain wisdom.

And also seeing dependent arising.

Do you remember we talked about dependent arising basically?

It's seeing independent,

Seeing how one thing leads to another and there's no one thing in all this other than this web of interactions.

Seeing that cultivates a type of equanimity.

There's a couple of different types of equanimity.

It's called the equanimity of seeing our mental creations.

Like,

I guess you kind of pretty well tuned into the fact that we create the world a lot with our mind.

We create these stories and we get caught up in these stories.

This particular type of equanimity is related to seeing how we create the stories.

It's equanimity about mental creations.

There's also another type of equanimity related to this.

It's called equanimity of the six senses and it results in a fading away of craving after the pleasant and craving to get rid of the unpleasant.

So it's equanimity about the sense experiences.

It's equanimity about sight,

Sound,

Smell,

Touch,

Taste and mind.

And I'll be referring to this tomorrow when we do the last tetrad of the mindfulness of breathing,

This fading away.

And equanimity can also be developed with serenity,

As I mentioned before.

And in particular,

It's a feature of the fourth jhāna,

The states of highly refined states of concentration.

And with the fourth jhāna,

I think I talked about this fourth jhāna on the last talk.

It's a state of stillness and peacefulness.

And there's an analogy described by the Buddha about the fourth jhāna.

And he says,

As if a person is covered with a luminous sheet.

And I think this means that one is kind of insulated from the ways of the world,

Like there's a sense of being unshaken and impacted by the eight worldly winds.

At the same time,

One is brightly aware of what's going on.

Brightly aware,

But not caught up in it.

And yet another type of equanimity is that that is practiced by the divine abodes.

And I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

But I just want to mention one thing.

With these divine abodes,

I mentioned that there's near and far enemies to the divine abodes.

The near and far enemies of equanimity,

You know,

Near enemy being a forced simile,

A forced representation of this quality,

And a far enemy being the opposite.

The near and far enemies of equanimity,

Well the far enemy is by kind of being emotionally overreactive,

Taking everything personally,

Feeling that I'm responsible for everyone's stories,

And just being overreactive in general.

The near enemies are interesting.

These are the forced similes.

This is a kind of a dissociated,

Disengaged aloofness.

Like a disengagement,

Dissociation from what's happening.

Almost a sense of denial.

I was seeing a client once,

And this client had just broken up with their girlfriend just a couple of days previously.

And this client said,

Oh,

I'm not affected.

He said,

Oh,

I'm equanimous.

But you could see he was really just denying the pain and the suffering.

He was just kind of pushing it away.

So with the far enemies of equanimity being this kind of emotional reactivity and taking everything personally and feeling responsible for everyone,

It is a matter of cultivating equanimity in the many different ways we can do it.

With the near enemies,

It's a matter of cultivating one or the other divine abodes,

In particular compassion.

Because compassion sort of softens that up.

It gives us kind of some softening to that rigidity and solidity of that,

Of that,

Of that,

Of that,

Of that aloofness,

That disengaged calmness.

Okay.

With equanimity,

We kind of transcend this.

I think Lisa mentioned this last night.

We try to transcend this sense of,

Of,

Of,

Of bias towards beings.

We're usually biased towards liking the people we're attracted to and disliking the people we're not attracted to,

Or pushing away the people we're not attracted to,

Rejecting them,

Or even disliking them.

What equanimity does is doesn't,

It helps us relate to all beings equally deservant of kindness and compassion,

Because we're not discriminating between what I like and what I don't like.

We're just seeing all beings equally deserving,

And I think this is what Lisa said last night,

Equally deserving of kindness and compassion.

So,

Oh look,

I just mentioned one last thing.

And that,

That particular aspect of equanimity highlights its relationship component.

If we can be in the world with equanimity and relate to people with equanimity,

It gives the basis of the other diviner birds and it also enables us to be independently interdependent,

If that makes sense.

Equanimity is,

At a boundless level,

Becomes this state of mind.

And as a diviner bird,

You can have it as a state of mind.

We experience the state of mind of equanimity as this state of boundless experience.

Boundless here meaning,

As I've mentioned several times on this retreat,

This expansiveness.

It's like literally our awareness expands out boundlessly.

And also this constructed division,

And it is,

Remember how I mentioned the other day we kind of concocted the difference between this person in here and that person out there.

It's,

It's free of that.

So that they,

We don't fuse with people,

But we,

We see there's an interconnection between all beings.

So at that point,

I would like to bring this Dhamma talk to a close and I thank you for your attention.