Unshakable Tenderness

When we don't take ourselves too seriously, there arises and ease. Life becomes not too heavy, not too intense. There is value in assuming imperfections because, in this state, we allow ourselves and others space to grow.

Transcript

So I wanted to introduce this at the end of the meditation,

This sense of opening to the conditions that make up our experience,

That make up different moments,

Different aspects of our experience.

And we can open this as a way of looking,

A way of relating to our experience also when we look at this talk that may have begun.

Which is also a flow through a coming together of many conditions,

Many conditions including your listening,

Your body state,

Mind state and mind.

And the light in the room and the temperature and you know whether we like the soup at tea time or if we had too much toast.

We can laugh at that.

I've learnt the hard way when I'm in this spot.

Don't eat too much toast.

So yeah.

And also this talk very much conditioned today I feel particularly by many of you that I've had the wonderful opportunity to speak with.

And it was an interesting day in that way because almost every one to one I had there would be like,

Ah,

That makes sense,

I need to put that in the talk.

So some of that only went on in my head.

Some of that you may have,

You know for some of you,

You may have heard me say to you.

I'm only going to include things I said mostly.

So don't worry.

But that sense of that,

You know that shared creation that this is.

Both in the listening,

In the presence and also in the contributions over the days.

I'd also like to offer another practice we can do.

So I'm going to encourage you through this talk with the practice,

This practice that we just started of noticing what is shaping the experience,

The different conditions that are coming through.

And that's a thread that we can gently keep going in the listening.

And the other one is a wonderful equanimity practice,

Which I'll teach you.

And it's got two words to it.

Really useful in life.

Assume imperfection.

Yeah,

Very useful for me on this seat right now as a practice.

Assume imperfection.

So we're assuming imperfection.

We're expecting imperfection.

Not from a sense of failure,

But just from that kind of sense of that broadness of what makes up our experience.

And that in our experience,

As we've been saying over the days,

The human condition includes imperfection in all its shapes,

In all its forms.

And what happens as a practice,

I'm not doing it so that you won't evaluate the talk.

I'm doing it because it's a really useful practice.

What happens when we listen,

When we experience something with that sense of assume imperfection?

Yeah,

I'm interacting with somebody else and I'm assuming,

Oh,

They're not going to be perfect.

Or this meal isn't going to be perfect or this meditation practice isn't going to be perfect.

Are you starting to get my drift?

If you're kind of assuming that,

What does that do?

And not in a way of kind of giving up on ourselves or on experience.

Not from a place of,

Oh,

We may as well not expect anything to be anything so that we don't get disappointed,

But actually from the place of the space spaciousness that that allows also to be surprised,

As Nathan said yesterday.

So two practices to play with as you listen,

If you wish.

Noticing what is shaping experience right now and noticing what happens when I look through this lens,

When I relate to an experience from that assumption of imperfection rather than perfection.

So with this opening or practicing,

Looking at the flow through of our experience of the coming together of conditions to kind of come together and manifest in a particular moment in time,

In a particular experience.

There's a beautiful reflection from Joanna Macy,

A Dharma teacher and environmental activist who,

Her definition of herself,

When she was asked,

What's your definition of yourself?

Kind of what are you as a human being?

Her definition is,

I am a flow through.

I am a flow through.

That's a definition which I really love.

So we can kind of say like a conduit for conditions coming together,

Meeting,

Manifesting,

And then flowing onwards.

And again,

What does our experience look like when we view it in that way?

That's kind of what we're interested in.

That sense that we've touched on a few times that all teachings are practices.

So anything like that,

We can look at it in our own experience.

How does that actually feel when I view things in that way?

You know,

This mind state,

This thought pattern,

This body experience,

Flowing through.

Yeah,

A flow through for that,

A flow through for biology,

A flow through for my social conditioning.

Yeah,

A flow through for my family conditioning,

My cultural conditioning.

So many levels of that,

We can see that coming together.

A flow through of food.

Ever thought of yourself as that?

I usually recommend to people to use the compost toilets at Guy House.

Unfortunately,

At the moment,

They're not operational.

That's why I haven't told you that.

But that can be a wonderful practice of seeing ourselves as a flow through of resources.

This body,

You know,

Nourished and nourishing.

A flow through of food,

Of water,

Of breath.

Breathe in.

I'm getting carried away into my favorite contemplations,

But I'm going to humor myself.

Breathing in oxygen,

You know,

Some of which was created by trees that have long been gone.

What does that do to our sense of this flow throughness?

And then breathing out carbon dioxide,

Which is nourishment for plant life,

And then through the plants for all other beings.

What does that do to the breath when we consider it in that way?

Wow,

I'm co-creating life with every breath.

What does that do when we just look at the conditions in that way?

So countless conditions that come together in each unique moment,

In this unique manifestation of life,

Which each of us is.

This particular body,

Heart,

And mind.

And countless conditions and causes that come together to shape that,

To co-create that in every moment.

And something very beautiful,

Very precious,

Can open up when we view life in these ways,

When we practice this,

And how we relate to our experience.

Something very beautiful,

Also very profound,

A lot of wisdom can arise.

And also our perspective can often change.

And particularly how personally we take things.

And one of my favorite teachings from Joseph Goldstein,

Hardly a retreat goes by that one of us doesn't quote this particular teaching from him.

And now I've forgotten it.

Isn't that great?

See,

Flow through.

Causes and conditions,

I only remember the last bit.

So he was asked.

.

.

Okay,

After all these years of practice,

What's the greatest fruit of your practice?

Something like that.

After all these years of practice,

What's the greatest benefit?

What's the greatest fruit?

What's the greatest achievement?

Practicing for decades.

I don't know what it is now,

Probably at least 40 years,

Isn't it?

And his response,

Feel free to guess in your own mind,

I'll kind of go slowly so that you can come up with some variations.

His response is,

I take myself less seriously.

And people around me really appreciate that.

So that kind of,

When we open up,

When we practice,

When we deepen into what these teachings make available,

When we apply them,

One beautiful thing that happens,

Really profound,

Is that we take ourselves less seriously.

Because in a way,

There's less of that solid self to take.

Because we assume imperfection.

So when it arises,

It's less of a big deal,

And it's less personal.

And because we see the conditions that are coming together,

Or we teach ourselves to look that way,

Conditions coming together.

Not so personal,

Not so serious,

Not so heavy.

And then we have a great laugh with Joseph.

And all of these are attitudes or shades,

Aspects of equanimity,

That we've been exploring today.

Assuming imperfection is a practice of equanimity.

Seeing the conditioned nature of our experience is a practice of equanimity,

Or supports equanimity.

Because things are coming together.

And we can see that,

And we can see that those habits of.

.

.

Sorry.

How's this?

A little bit better.

Okay.

So these habits of trying to control,

Trying to shape,

According to our preference.

Kind of lose some of their momentum and their power.

When we see that things are coming together,

And what is going to happen next?

What's going to happen next?

That interest.

So these are all shades,

Aspects,

Manifestations,

Practices of equanimity.

And they're also practices of insight.

Someone luckily reminded me today that we said we'd come back to this wonderful question of the relationship between the Brahma Viharas and insight.

Hopefully we have been speaking to that all the time.

Hopefully that's been clear.

But do you see where these come together?

I'm going to speak more about it.

But that looking at our experience and seeing the coming together,

Seeing the flow through,

Seeing the conditionality,

That is insight.

And it's also equanimity.

Also equanimity.

And seeing that conditionality of things supports equanimity.

And inclining to equanimity supports us to see,

Because we have space.

We're pushing and pulling a little bit more.

We can see more clearly how things are shaped,

How they're coming together.

So mutually supportive.

Is that clear at this moment?

Or a little bit confusing?

Or a lot confusing?

I'll give you several options.

Hopefully I'll come back to it and unpack a little bit more.

But I can't promise.

Because I'm not in control.

At least,

You know,

Not fully.

I'm going to also highlight more aspects of equanimity.

I think Jenny said this morning,

And actually we've been saying this to each other a few times today,

That equanimity is such a profound,

Multifaceted thing.

Appearance.

It's got so many layers to it.

And language really gets problematic.

It doesn't do it justice.

And so we could unpack it over probably at least a whole week long retreat,

If not longer.

But yeah,

Jenny touched on a lot of it this morning,

And I want to kind of pull out some more of the threads,

Highlight some more aspects of equanimity this evening.

So the first one,

And I'm going to use quite a lot of images and kind of one-liners that I've kind of fallen in love with over the years of practice,

Because they really help me to often get a sense.

So instead of a lot of words,

Sometimes an image or just one line,

Which might be more poetic,

Can give us a sense.

So I'm going to use a lot of those,

And hopefully they'll be useful.

If they confuse you,

Then please,

Please let them go.

Don't try to figure out too hard what they mean.

So the first aspect of equanimity that we touched on this morning is balance.

That sense of balance with the ebbs and flows of life,

With the winds of life,

With the storms of life.

We can use a lot of different imagery here.

And one image that's used traditionally is equanimity,

Like the ballast of a ship that keeps the ship steady in the sea when the winds come,

When the waves come.

It just keeps writing it back,

Writing it back so that it stays on course,

It stays above the water,

Doesn't drown.

So that quality of balance,

It doesn't,

Yeah,

I'll get to that later.

Just that quality of balance.

That is really key to us.

A second quality that,

Again,

We touched on this morning is often spoken of as evenness,

A sense of being,

Of some even-mindedness or evenness.

And Jenny mentioned the word in Tibetan this morning of being equally near.

It gets a really good sense of this aspect.

Equally close to all things.

So a sense of being equally close to all things,

To the things I like and the things I don't like and the things that I'm neutral about,

I don't have a strong tendency towards.

When I'm equally close,

So there's that intimacy,

But less of that sense of preference and less reactivity.

And again,

This is something that we nourish as we practice.

So in our mindfulness practice,

When we are with the object of meditation and we keep coming back to it,

Yeah,

We are lessening reactivity,

Right?

And not following the habitual preferences,

Just coming back.

And it can often feel like this is going against,

And it does go against,

Some very strong tendencies of preferring certain things to others,

Wanting the pleasant and not the unpleasant.

Wanting to be liked rather than kind of transparent.

Yeah.

And wanting to succeed and not to fail.

Yeah.

All these tendencies that we have in the human heart and mind.

This sense of being equally close can feel like,

Ah,

That's a transformation of these tendencies that are so common to us.

So another aspect or flavor of equanimity is this wide view or wide perspective or wide understanding.

Often,

Upaka,

I think Jenny said it this morning,

Translated as to look over.

So having a sense of a wide view and that image that we can have of being somewhere very high and looking over things.

Yeah,

We have a huge view.

And I think that image is really useful because it gives us also a felt sense of what that feels like.

That sense of openness and spaciousness that comes with that big view.

So to look over things and then colloquially,

Apparently,

This is what I read,

Upaka,

The colloquial,

The kind of everyday use of it in India was to see with patience or to see with understanding.

So having that sense of spaciousness also over time.

Yeah.

So it's not just that we see very far as far as the material seeing,

But we also have a sense of patience.

We're not in a rush.

Again,

That not taking things so personally.

And also within that,

That wide view and perspective brings us back to seeing the causes and conditions that are at play.

The fact that there's causes and conditions that are at play.

Yeah.

And so I'm not seeing even everything because that's impossible.

Just having that wide view.

There's so much going on here.

That's coming together in this particular interaction or event.

Or manifestation in the body or the mind or heart.

And all of this doesn't mean that we're not responsive.

I'm going to say more about that,

But I want to say already now all of these do not mean,

You know,

The balance,

The evenness,

The having the wide view,

The perspective doesn't mean that we're not responsive.

We do not respond.

Yeah,

Which means there's more openness and perspective in what we can see.

So another aspect or flavor of equanimity is an increased sense of confidence in the workability of things.

That things are workable.

It's a really beautiful one that often we don't associate with equanimity.

But it's that sense of,

Okay,

This may be really difficult right now.

And yet I can have the confidence that I will find a way that a way will arise to work with us to grow from this again is connects to the scene with patients that we spoke of.

You know,

This is how it is right now but conditions come together,

Change happens.

It's not the end of the story.

It's part of where this confidence or this faith can come from.

Not the end of the story.

It's just how things are appearing right now.

And this also is an increased sense,

This increased sense of workability that things are workable also relates to or comes through with another kind of confidence or faith.

And that's the faith that our intentions and our responses to what arises in life.

They matter,

They're significant,

They're meaningful.

And at the same time they don't promise,

They don't guarantee particular results.

Okay,

So that kind of,

What I can do matters.

It's important to respond and yet that needs to come together with an openness around results and outcomes.

I'm going to give an example in a moment but I just want to pause and check if what I've made,

I've said so far makes sense.

I had an image come together,

Come in one of the interviews today of this last part which was something I never do which is juggling two balls.

And it felt like this sense of,

You know,

We juggle one ball,

We keep throwing one ball in the air which is our actions and the wish to respond well to life.

We keep throwing that one in the air.

And then in the other hand,

I can't even do that when I'm pretending,

Throwing the other,

In the other hand we're throwing the ball of letting go of attachment to results.

So I'm throwing with both hands one ball.

I keep responding to life.

I keep responding to life and I keep staying open.

I don't know,

I don't know how this will manifest.

And of course,

If you're me,

Most of us,

The balls will fall down all the time,

We're not going to catch them.

And that's part,

You know,

So then we do that and we pick them up again.

Yeah,

And we come back to the practice.

Yeah,

And we keep doing that.

And over time we get better.

Yeah,

We get better in having that confidence that our intentions,

Our responses to our lives and to the lives of others.

That is meaningful.

Yeah,

That is worthwhile.

That matters.

And we also get better at throwing our expectations for outcome into the air and catching it again.

So that keeps being that play between the two.

So sometimes the images I get only make sense to me.

But hopefully it was at least a little bit amusing,

Especially to see that I can't actually do that even when I'm pretending to.

So can you imagine what would happen if I actually had two balls here and I was trying to get quite dangerous,

Then if health and safety would have approved.

So I want to give another example of this.

This and I think this quality of keeping going.

Yeah,

Of just keeping doing,

Keeping on doing what we know needs to be done.

Yeah,

It's more close to us than we think it is.

Yeah,

It's something that as human beings we do quite a lot,

But often we don't see it,

Except in more extreme circumstances.

And this example is from a friend of mine whose 19 year old son was arrested.

He was in prison awaiting trial and through his trial and she was a nursing student.

He was just about to finish his first year of nursing school when he was arrested.

And what he kept asking his mother to bring him when she came to visit him was his his study books from university because he wanted to.

He wanted to.

He was both very bored and he wanted to keep studying because he had,

You know,

In the hopes that he would get out soon and be able to go back to school.

And she would carry those books.

He had a long journey every time to go and visit him.

She could only go and visit every month or two.

And she had a long journey every time to go there and every time she would carry those books and every time the prison authorities would say she couldn't bring them in.

And and and yet she kept hoping that next time something would change.

So she just kept going,

Kept persevering with that.

Also as a symbol,

I think,

And it's one of the only things she could do to show her care and her love for her son.

So sometimes our actions,

They carry so much more than just what they are.

Yeah,

We can see that.

We can see that.

And the beautiful thing was that eventually after a few months and this happening again and again.

What he what this young man realized was,

OK,

So what's going on?

I'm bored and I want to use my mind and I want to do something that's good for others like be a nurse.

So what can I do in this situation right now?

So he started teaching the other prisoners English and first aid.

And for me,

That was very related to this ongoing act of love of his mother.

Yeah,

That kind of movement of not giving up,

Not giving up,

Which was more meaningful,

I think,

To him than if he had gotten those books.

Right.

What that models.

In the world.

Yeah,

A long journey.

Once a month with these heavy books,

Because that's what I can do as an act of love and support.

And then that has a meaning that flows on and that has a ripple for other people.

Yeah,

For all those other young men.

So we can see sometimes that juggling,

You know,

We don't know.

We don't know.

All we know is our intention.

Now we know is that part in us that can stay alive and responsive to life.

So that faith,

That confidence in the workability of things and in the meaning of what we can do,

The meaning of our intentions and our actions.

Without or with holding lightly the attachment to outcomes.

So I'm aware that I'm kind of as I'm as I'm speaking and I'm unpacking these different aspects of equanimity.

Some are more kind of practices and some of them are also manifestations of equanimity,

Kind of how it actually looks,

How it shows itself in us.

And so they're both things that we can intentionally cultivate or notice,

Look for in our experience in the way we're responding to life.

And they're kind of when they're there,

We can say,

Ah,

Here it is.

Yeah.

This thing,

This weird word equanimity.

Yeah,

Here it is.

It's it's present in this way in me.

And so the next flavor of equanimity I'd like to touch on is resilience.

Resilience,

Strength,

Unshakability,

Sometimes referred to unshakability.

That part of ourselves that stays steady,

That stays present within that,

Again,

Those storms of life.

But it has rootedness and it has strength,

It has power,

It's connected to the balance,

But it's more than that.

And the image that I've had for many years of this is bamboo.

If we think of bamboo,

So flexible and so strong,

The strongest materials on the planet.

So the resilience of equanimity is rooted in flexibility and seeing that conditioned changing coming together,

Flow through nature of our experience,

Which is flexible.

And it's also rooted very much in meta,

Very rooted in meta,

In friendliness,

In love and compassion.

And these nourish us,

Support us to take things more,

To take things less personally as they appear.

And as we take things less personally,

Our possibilities of response grow,

Possibilities of attending to what needs attention.

Yeah,

That grows.

And again,

As we tune in to that capacity,

Yeah,

For flexibility,

For being rooted in meta with this coming and going of events and of staying open,

Often unexpected gifts can come from that,

Which again,

Then nourish that sense of faith,

Of confidence and of resilience,

Of strength in us.

I want to give an example here of something that a student shared with me a few years ago.

And she,

From when she remembers herself,

She always was very moved by the suffering in the world and had a strong wish to work towards the alleviation of suffering.

So she made choices accordingly.

She studied and found employment in the area of humanitarian aid.

And her particular role was around research.

So she was less,

She less worked on the ground,

But she more worked on research of finding out what was needed and what could provide the response to those needs.

But very early on in her career,

She had a very difficult experience of going to do some research with a community somewhere in the world and getting quite a close connection with the people in those community,

In that community.

And then submitting her research and the decision what to do was not hers.

And so the decision was to not offer the help that that particular community was asking for.

I don't know the details.

And for her,

This was really heartbreaking.

Really,

Really heartbreaking because there was this closeness and this firsthand knowledge of the suffering and then the sense that she had disappointed and raised expectations by her,

By being there by her work.

And this was really,

Really heartbreaking for her.

And so,

As a result,

You know,

Her compassion and her wish to act continued.

So she carried on with this work,

But she kept her distance from meeting the communities,

Meeting the people for whom she was actually doing this work.

So she would stay in London,

In the main office doing her research.

And there was a lot of pain that was unhealed and also a lot of kind of burnout because that wish to alleviate wasn't she wasn't seeing,

She wasn't meeting the effect of her work at all.

And so she worked on this for quite some time in her practice.

And eventually,

The opportunity arose,

She was she was really asked by some people in her organization to go and visit a community in Africa that they were going to work with.

And she felt strong enough.

Yeah,

There was enough resilience in the system to go and give this another try.

To go and give this another try.

And she was very clear within herself.

And when she arrived in this community,

She was also very clear with them saying,

I'm just collecting information.

Yeah,

I'm just collecting it's not my job to make the decisions.

I can't promise you anything very clear within herself also very clear with them.

And she she went the project was in an area of Africa,

I don't remember which which part but which has been really affected by the change in rainfall and had turned into a desert.

Nothing was growing.

And the young men and women in the community that didn't have women that didn't have young children,

They would need to go out for hours,

Every day go really far to bring water and firewood is very,

Very difficult situation to be to to witness.

And so when she went there,

She mostly spent time with the elders of the community,

And the children and the women who had young children that was the people that she spoke to,

And spent time with with an interpreter.

And it was a very fruitful encounter.

And just before she was about to leave,

She found herself really moved to ask the question that she had promised herself she would never ask.

And there was enough resilience and courage and strength to ask that.

And she asked them.

She said I can't control what the organization will decide to do.

But if you could ask me anything.

Yeah,

If you could ask me to do anything for you,

What would you ask.

And at that point,

One of the elderly gentleman got very excited very kind of animated.

Yeah,

And he started talking very fast and very loudly and pointing to his eyes.

And a lot of the other people in the community also kind of joined in.

And she was kind of trying to figure out,

You know,

The interpreter couldn't couldn't keep up she was trying to figure out what what they were trying to say to her and finally calm down a bit.

And she asked the interpreter what what was he saying.

What was he saying.

And the interpreter said and he himself was in tears.

They're asking you to see them.

They're asking you to see them.

And to tell others what you've seen.

So,

I think for all of us I think many of us can feel this right now.

The impact of that.

And sometimes that strength that resilience which is rooted in the impact of that.

Yeah.

And sometimes that strength that resilience which is rooted in equanimity and in compassion and in matter and enjoy that supports us to do what is difficult.

That supports us to go out into the world and to ask questions that are difficult to ask.

And what we receive back is often surprising.

And yet also not.

Because when we think of our own experience.

What is it that we value most,

But to be seen and heard.

Yeah.

And so that experience was a great healing.

For her for us.

And it leads us into the next aspect of equanimity that I've touched on that is integrated is interwoven with compassion with matter with joy is not a disconnected quality.

It's tender.

And it's caring.

And my favorite way of feeling equanimity is unshakable tenderness.

Unshakable tenderness.

Tenderness of our heart and our being.

Together with the steadiness,

Together with the resilience together with a balance.

And the Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as abundant,

Exalted,

Immeasurable,

Of course,

Without hostility and without ill will.

So the near enemies of equanimity as we touched on today are indifference,

Detachment,

Passivity.

I was speaking to somebody today.

Yeah,

We can condone this.

We can confuse them for equanimity sometimes,

But they're not near at all.

Very,

Very different.

Very,

Very different.

When we are unshaken or unmoved by things because we are protected,

Because we put up some barriers,

Because we don't care.

Or because we give up.

We forget that our intentions and our actions have an impact that they also matter.

That we can respond.

Equanimity is not complacent.

It's tender.

It's responsive.

Very vast and yet very connected.

Very in resonance with others and with all aspects of experience.

I want to try and share an experience of mine around this,

Around that interwoven aspect of equanimity,

Interwoven with joy and metta and compassion.

And also that responsiveness,

That aliveness of it.

Which hopefully I'll be able to do.

It's a little bit fresh.

And so a couple of months ago I went to a celebration to celebrate the release of my friend's son,

Who I spoke of earlier,

From prison after 13 and a half months.

And in that celebration,

It was a celebration of family.

But not a family that was related by blood or nationality or place of birth.

But a family that was related by these attitudes,

By these immeasurables.

And a family that had gone on a journey of many years together.

Through sorrow and through friendship.

And that family had Israelis and Palestinians together.

So myself and other friends in the Israeli sangha,

Israeli meditation community.

And our brothers and sisters in Palestine who share that same aspiration to live with these qualities,

To live from these qualities,

To live rooted in compassion.

And we had met this particular family.

There's kind of different permutations of this family.

But this particular one we had met when this friend that I've spoken about,

When her youngest daughter had bone cancer at the age of nine.

That was about seven years ago.

And some Israeli friends got together to support the family with a lot of things that they needed because of the particular situation of living in Palestine and getting treatment in Israel.

Which is what happens if you're Palestinian and have cancer.

There's no treatment in Palestine.

So we had gone through that journey,

Through that illness and recovery and health.

This young lady is 16 years old and currently on an exchange program in the US.

She's very courageous.

And then through many other ups and downs for different people,

Both Israelis and Palestinians.

And then this arrest had come,

Unexpected,

Unjustifiable.

And that journey again through that period of time,

Which taught all of us more deeply about friendship and about compassion and about joy and about equanimity.

And I can remember,

I was remembering today phone calls with my friend when I would phone to say,

Oh,

You know,

How's it going?

Has there been a hearing?

What happened?

And every time the hearings would move or the expectation of what the jail sentence would be.

And she would say things like,

Oh,

We were hoping he would be home in three months and then we were hoping it would be six months.

And now we're hoping it's going to be a year and it's going to be OK.

Yeah.

So that strength,

That strength of that equanimity,

That possibility,

Which is rooted in love because this is not her only son.

So she also the love for her other children,

For her husband,

Strong.

But I want to get back to the celebration.

So two weeks after he was released and I said,

I've known he's now 20,

Known him since he was 13.

One of the most charming,

Happy,

Good hearted people I know.

And when we came to their house that day,

Seeing that 13 and a half months in prison hadn't changed him at all.

And that's the power.

That's the resilience of the human heart.

And the joy that we all had that day of seeing his parents so happy and seeing him so happy and feeling ourselves so happy.

Felt magnified a million times because because of that journey,

Which includes it all.

The compassion,

The meta held in equanimity.

And I have to say that for myself and I know for some of the other friends that we spoke about this later,

That joy stayed with me for weeks.

Yeah.

For weeks.

Yeah.

That sense of what is possible takes us back to that faith,

That confidence that things are workable.

Doesn't matter what we encounter.

When there's friendship,

When there's compassion,

When there's joy,

When there's equanimity,

Things are workable for us.

So equanimity is not a not something that separates us from life.

We can access it in the midst of the storms of life.

And the last image I want to share,

Another one of my favorites,

The eye in the storm.

When there's a storm,

A big storm in the middle of that storm,

There is calm.

So that equanimity,

Which gives us balance,

Which gives us intimacy with everything,

That gives us resilience,

That gives us faith that things are workable.

It's within the storms of life.

Yeah,

We don't need to be outside of them to find it.

It's a path to be lived in all areas of our lives.

And there's many ways to practice it.

There's many ways to practice it.

And we've touched on a few already.

There's opening again and again to what shapes experience,

To noticing,

Opening to the fact that whatever is present right now is conditioned by countless conditions that are in flow and change.

There's a practice of assuming imperfection,

Which I touched on,

Very valuable.

There's the equanimity phrases that we've been using today.

There's the meditation that Nathan did this afternoon,

I think,

Of opening to all experience with a sense of friendliness.

And as we do this and develop,

We develop more insight into our experience,

Into what shapes it.

And we also develop the different aspects of equanimity along with the other immeasurables.

They all become stronger.

And so I'll just end with a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh,

Which says something we've said,

I think,

Many times,

But I just love the way he says things.

And he says,

The teachings on the immeasurables,

As given by the Buddha,

Are clear and applicable.

Metta,

Compassion,

Joy and equanimity are the very nature of an awakened mind.

They are the four aspects of true love within ourselves and within everyone and everything.

So let's have a quiet minute to close.

So once again,

We can feel what's shaping experience right now.

Can we open and make space for that,

For whatever is arising?

Hold it in the vast space,

The big view of equanimity,

Of metta,

Compassion and joy.

So may our practice together deepen our wisdom,

Our insight and our embodiment of the immeasurables.

And may that be for the benefit and the welfare of all beings everywhere.

So thank you for your listening,

Your presence and your co-creation of the teachings this evening.

May they be of benefit.

Reviews

So wonderful to hear and open to your teachings 🙏💜🙏 thank you!

Taken on a journey to the Deepest essence of us. Thank you.

Beautiful!

Thank you especially for the teaching and examples on equanimity.

A tender, beautiful reminder to open to everything. Grateful for the experience🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Thank you kindly for this❤🌠🕯🌹🦋
Namaste 🙏🏼⚘️🦋
🤍🕊🕯

Wonderful. ❤

Hello
That was an illuminating wise and most beneficial.
Thank you very much.
🌀
Orly
Israel

Really helpful to hear about practices that promote equanimity. I’d never really heard about that before. Thank you!

To listen is a special experience 🙏

Wonderful 🙏 the calmness with which you teach allows for a gentle deep profundity 🙏 thank you 🙏

Very profound! Thank you.

Thank you for all your kindness to share such vital topics... to remain unshakable and not pushed over the edge during these challenging times in our lives is what I aspire to do. Peace, love and lightness...

Excellent. Thank you.

This was just what I needed at this time. I am grateful.

Beautiful and so illuminating—thank you so much, Zohar. 🙏🏻❤️

Wonderful, but cut off midway. After “bamboo- one of the strongest substances on the planet.”
2/11: Still not playing, after ~23 minutes.

Outstanding in understanding the different aspects of equanimity,,, each one as equally important.

Nice pace. Glad I can hit rewind when something caught my attention. "Expect imperfection" wonderfully resonated....I was listening via earbuds as I shoveled 6" of snow off the drive....and the street plow came through - giving me more time to spend outside and exercise! In any case, "expect imperfection" gave me cause to not only smile, but to enjoy the thought the trees and I were sharing a breath. Thank you.

Outstanding. Thank you.