Thoughts On Equanimity

In this talk, we return to contemplations of the mind and a practice of equanimity. We discuss equanimity from three different perspectives: as a balancing factor in the face of life's changes; as one of the brhamavaharas, or divine abodes; and in relation to meditative insight.

Transcript

I wanted to talk a couple minutes about the idea of equanimity because it's something that keeps coming up. Our teacher at the Zen Center was talking about it this morning and we're finishing up a book group on the seven factors of awakening and we read about equanimity today and I don't know so I think what I want to do is talk for a couple minutes about equanimity and to do that I want to go back to the third group of contemplations, Those of the mind, And I want to look again at the idea of liberation which is the final four contemplations of the mind. If you remember all of these contemplations breathing in I'm aware of my mind, Breathing in out, Breathing in and out I gladden my mind, Breathing in and out I deepen my concentration, And breathing in and out I liberate my mind. So in the scheme of anapanasati contemplations this liberation as we've talked about comes directly from deepening our concentration because in deeper concentration we find that the hindrances like fear, Doubt, And worry they begin to affect us less and less. Bhikkhu Bodhi, A well-known kind of Buddhist author and translator, He speaks of the state as a neutrality of mind, A sense of being there in the middleness which is a translation of the Pali term for equanimity. It's a little odd in English but there in the middleness and this is where we begin to think about this idea of equanimity which is the last again of the seven factors of awakening which we're gonna start to consider more deeply as we finish the contemplations of dharmas in the coming weeks. Equanimity, Just to put a definition on it, A balance of mind, A equal valuation of phenomena, Perceptions, Events, The actions of others, Indeed really others themselves, An equal valuation of all sentient beings. And equanimity rises out of concentration. Concentration has that power to keep the mind secluded from the hindrances which move our actions and reactions, Things like clinging and aversion, And these often manifest as our likes and dislikes, Fears, Judgments, Uncertainties. The seclusion of our minds from the effects of the hindrances, This is what allows for balance and neutrality to be established and for the mind to be unmoved in the face of our reactions to what happens around us. So as in our meditation we work to understand what's happening in our minds it can be useful to better understand the kinds of things which pull our minds one way or another. In his book Mindfulness, Which is a great book I'd recommend it to anyone, It's simply called Mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein speaks of several ways that we can consider the idea of equanimity. The first being a quality of balance, Not getting lost in the forces which affect our lives. He speaks of the eight worldly vicissitudes, Changing fortunes basically. And you know this is where the Buddha has made a list of things for us to consider and the more you look into Buddha's teachings, The more you read the early sutras, You find the Buddha was a famous list maker. The eight worldly vicissitudes, These sort of endlessly changing conditions of our lives which the Buddha expressed as pairs of opposing circumstances in life. Gain and loss, Praise and blame, Fame and disrepute, Pleasure and pain. So gain and loss, Just to look at these briefly, You know we often think of this in terms of material possessions but we can feel the effect of gain and loss whenever we're invested in a particular outcome or we're attached to how we think things should be. We see this in our relationship to sports, More and more deeply our relationship to politics, You know even in relation to our practice, You know our assessment of progress or non-progress on the path. We had a good sitting, We had a bad sitting, We don't feel like we're keeping the precepts well enough, We feel like we're not doing enough work to move our recovery from being clean to being sober. So we wrestle a lot with feelings of gain and loss. Praise and blame, That's a big one you know I was thinking about that and I used to feel this a lot in in my teaching because you know parents want their students to to move forward and when they would I would get all kinds of praise. But it's also true that this moving forward can be a messy process and some of you know I teach in a Montessori setting, I have my students for three years and we're doing conflict resolution and I'm allowing things to unfold over time and sometimes people look in the window of the classroom like what the you know what the hell is going on in this room it looks you know it's messy and I would get this blame. I'm not one who craves praise but I I don't like blame and I think that's probably true for all of us. Fame and disrepute you know we all want to be well thought of we don't like it when people think ill of us this could feel very vital in relation to our careers our reputation in our community be it our town our Sangha. Pleasure and pain it's bred into our bones to hold on to what is pleasant and to push away what it is that we don't want clinging in a version creating what Joseph Goldstein calls a roller coaster of hope and fear. Now these things gain and loss praise and blame fame disrepute pleasure and pain these things are the products of the inevitability of changing conditions in our lives things that are often beyond our control usually beyond our control but you know with clarity and insight we can see that these changes loss uncertainty they're inevitable pleasant feelings don't disappear you know because we've done something wrong for instance it's simply the nature of conditioned things to change impermanence like we've talked about when we're praised or blamed these are things that exist as ideas in other people's minds colored by their own perceptions and ideas and if we're well established in ethical conduct following the precepts if we know that we're working to act as skillfully as we can then we can remain unmoved by the projections that others put on to us so equanimity is the steady conscious realization of realities and permanence it's transience it's an evenness of mind especially under stress the teacher Gil Fronsdell who I like quite a lot says this equanimity is one of the most sublime emotions of Buddhist practice it's the ground for wisdom and freedom and the protector of compassion and love while some may think of equanimity is dry neutrality or cool aloofness mature equanimity produces a radiance and a warmth of being the Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as being abundant exalted immeasurable without hostility and without ill will and when we develop a practice of equanimity we see these opposing sets of life conditions and and that we were just joined by Kathleen here and she loves this quote we we can see these sets of life conditions and we can ride those waves with balance and ease this is Joseph Goldstein speaking without equanimity he says we're tossed about by the waves crashing into the changing circumstances of our lives so one way Joseph Goldstein is encouraging us to view equanimity as this quality of balance to the things that happen to us another way to consider equanimity is as a divine abode being the fourth of the other Brahma vahara or immeasurable minds loving kindness compassion appreciative joy equanimity and in this context our primary quality of equanimity is impartiality which allows us to bring loving kindness compassion and appreciative joy to everyone around us not just to some of them if we can remain unmoved in the face of those who praise and blame us who shower us with fame or disrepute who bring us pleasure or pain if we can remain unmoved and simply see them as beings who suffer like us then we can choose to act toward them with care rather than than reacting without thought a third way he encourages us to view equanimity is from the wisdom aspect the experience of meditative awareness in relation to equanimity there's a quote that is quoted in Joseph Goldstein's book awareness and also as part of a chant that Sam and I do all the time at the Zen Center it says the great way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose when attachment and aversion are both absent the way is clear and undisguised make the smallest distinction however and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart this is equanimity as non preferential awareness which is tricky because of course you know we all have opinions and frankly some things are right and some things are wrong and and we have to act and response sometimes we have to take a stance but we can respond to things in life with equanimity based in a deepening insight into three characteristics all of which will be familiar to you the first is the truth of change the undeniably of impermanence in life the truth of no self that there's nothing about us that that represents a permanent unchanging sense of self and the truth of Dukkha the truth of suffering or dis-ease in life now it's interesting I was telling Kathleen in our book discussion earlier I heard a Dharma talk by the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center I've forgotten his name and he said you know I would kind of rearrange this a little bit or change this a little bit to say okay yes there's the truth of impermanence the truth of change and there's the truth of no self but then he said depending on how we react to those two things there is either the truth of Dukkha suffering or the truth of Nirvana the truth of release or awakening so equanimity helps us to hold steady in the face of adversity equanimity helps us to pick apart the circumstances of our lives and to better understand to better accept things that have happened and to learn from them really equanimity helps us to be more balanced in our feelings our thoughts and emotions in the first place so that we can have less unskillfulness less uncertainty less reactivity to begin with so I want to just end with a couple of thoughts on how to develop and strengthen that equanimity very very briefly Joseph Goldstein quotes Ajahn Chah who was with a group of students talking about this and he held up a cup and he said the best way to relate to the cup is as if it's already broken we use it we take care of it but we remain unattached to it because we know that it's subject to change and then there's a teaching in the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita which says that we should act without attachment to the fruit of our action we can do what we do with full commitment but the outcome is beyond our control and when we act without attachment to the outcome that our minds can remain peaceful no matter how things unfold and the Dalai Lama who emphasizes that the value of an action is measured not by its success or failure but by the motivation behind it so would anybody like to respond to you that before we sit yeah I have something I'd like to say in many different areas of life you know recovery or professional life I find that like it's really hard to strike a balance between like caring enough having enough attachment that I show up and you know do my job and you know achieve my goals but being detached enough that I don't get tossed about by you know the ups and downs and it's that's something I'm kind of struggling with to find that equanimity that you know that in between spots you know secure enough that you know I need to do but at the same time not getting up I'm repeating myself I don't know how else to say it but I hope that makes sense is it so tempting to not care you know like to just stop caring and you know just to let it all go but mm-hmm I can't really do that you know I have to invest and I have to you know care about the things that are important to me like you know like work for example so I'm you know curious if anyone else knows what that's like or has anything to say about that anybody care to respond please do that's an excellent point and I don't know we have enough time for me to say that words to go in in depth with that so I work in a engineering profession and so it's just generally assumed that you bring a certain level of passion and I think that the the best way I can the best way I can relate equanimity as far as how I approach my daily work is I don't focus so much on the end on the end states of the goal so like if I was playing tennis for example my goal isn't going to be to win the match because that's not fully within my control right the other guy on the other side of the mess got plenty to say about whether or not I win or lose however if I adjust my goal to making sure that I play my best game then winner loss it doesn't matter I put it all out there right so all of my effort and energy goes into maintain and it does just simply doing my best you know and if I'm just starting my best isn't gonna be as good as federal numbers you know just didn't you know there's a difference in time in and so that would be my my best two cents to offer with with that anonymity we still have that passion but it's how you relate to those end goals right yeah I think it's like Joseph Goldstein was saying in terms of knowing that you're living according to precepts knowing that you're involved or right action and in the case of that there's a lot that can happen in terms of what's gonna make you feel good or bad what's gonna be blame or or or praise or whatever but if you get blamed you know you're you're spoken of poorly if you know you've acted as well as you can with them what you know is right then you're doing okay anybody else I think the the metaphor from Ajahn Shah could be extended here too you know with the cup you know to look at it as if it's already broken because it will be but that it doesn't mean I don't care about it it doesn't mean I don't take care of it doesn't mean I don't care for it but without clinging to it because I know it's going to change why don't we go ahead and sit find your comfortable posture consider a sense of dignity engaging with practices that have come down to us over 90 generations since the time of the Buddha upright body and mind do just a quick scan through the muscles of your face your jaw root of your tongue your shoulders take a few breaths nice and deep let some of that tension fall consider the space you're in bring a sense of gratitude for the safety and seclusion that it offers you as a place of practice and set an intention leaving behind the cares of today the concerns for tomorrow and to practice with your breath this time this place with this Sangha you you