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Guided Meditation: Equanimity; Dharmette: Equanimity - Liz Powell

The following talk was given by Liz Powell at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 29, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Equanimity

Good day, everyone. It's wonderful to see all your greetings in the chat. Our week of Brahmavihāra¹ practices is coming to its completion today with the fourth and very indispensable divine abode: equanimity. Equanimity is an unshakable balance of mind, and it develops through these other Brahmavihāras, and also from insight and from mindfulness practice. Looking at the world around us and how life goes, we really get to see how difficult it is to attain and maintain balance of mind. We can see life has its ups and downs and swings between extremes: sometimes pleasure and pain, success and failure, loss and gain, praise and blame. We are naturally affected emotionally. We respond with happiness and sorrow, delight, despair, disappointment, satisfaction, hope, and fear. We find ourselves experiencing waves of emotion taking us on these ups and downs. No sooner do we think we've come to more stability—you know, we're going along just fine—and then we find ourselves caught again.

So equanimity is the wholesome state of mind that will help to stabilize us in the face of all of these experiences. This balance of mind can help us be with any difficulty that comes our way and give us the resolve to keep coming back to mindfulness again and again, rather than being pushed around and pulled around by the human condition. Equanimity can nourish an inner strength that offers strength to others in the face of all of the events that give rise to each of our dissatisfaction, stress, and suffering, both in our lives individually and also as a planet. Equanimity can help us live valiantly despite the inevitability of loss, sickness, aging, and death.

So this morning I'll offer an equanimity practice. If that fits for you today. If it doesn't fit for you, feel free to let my voice fade into the background and continue with whatever practice is most helpful to you. For those who'd like to practice equanimity, you can offer it to yourself if you're going through times that have you up and down or you're experiencing some difficulty, or you can offer it to another person you know that is having a hard time coping with difficulties. And this doesn't have to be the most difficult person in your life; it's better if it's not. You can pick someone whose difficulties aren't affecting you in such a way that it would create emotional reactivity in you.

As we begin the meditation, receiving and recognizing how you are in this moment. Perhaps scanning the body head to toe, and allowing the in-breath to bring calm energy to each area of the body, and the out-breath to release any stress or tension. Taking deeper breaths if that's helpful. Gently aware of any area that cannot be softened, being present with it just as it is.

And then when you're ready, bringing to mind your own difficulty that has you off balance, or someone else in your life whose difficulties are leaving them in a struggle. It could be that the person you're offering the meditation to is challenging for you because you're close. Sometimes we know someone's struggle very well, but if we offer help, they may seem to rebuff that help. Or this could be someone—a family member or friend you see during the holidays—whose political opinions vary greatly from yours, and with whom a calm discussion seems impossible. Perhaps this is someone whose response to challenges in their life is so very different from yours that you have a hard time understanding them.

Whether it's you or someone else, allowing yourself time to remember this person's fundamental good intentions, seeing that they are doing their best to make their life work well, and also witnessing the ways that they are struggling.

And I'll offer some phrases that you might simply take in. Allow yourself to hear them and see which ones fit for you. And if you find some that do fit for you, you can silently whisper them in your mind, feel them in your heart, whatever works best for you:

"I care for you, but I cannot control your happiness or unhappiness." "Things are just as they are right now." "Whether I understand it or not, things are unfolding according to the way they naturally unfold, or according to the laws of nature."

Remembering that inclining the mind in this way is not a demand for the other person to change, nor an expectation, nor an agenda. And with equanimity phrases, you can be inclining the phrases towards the person, or towards your difficulty with their being off balance, or to both.

"Joy and sorrow arise and pass away. This is a natural part of life's journey." "No matter how I might wish things to be otherwise, things are as they are." "I wish you happiness, but cannot make your choices for you." "It is what it is right now."

Repeating these phrases, or others that work well for you:

"I care for you, but I cannot control your happiness or unhappiness." "Things are just as they are right now." "Whether I understand it or not, things are unfolding according to the laws of nature." "No matter how I might wish things to be otherwise, things are as they are."

Dharmette: Equanimity

So, as goodwill encounters strong emotions in ourselves and others, it may become compassion when it sees suffering, sympathetic joy when it sees happiness, and equanimity helps balance any suffering by including warmth and care. It is really important to know that equanimity is not indifferent or apathetic in the face of emotions or in the face of suffering. When we meet all experience with mindfulness, we can develop a perspective or an overview that knows the strong emotions without being caught up in the stories around them, and in the things that get us caught.

We can cultivate this jewel of equanimity, which is an even-minded caring for anyone who is struggling, an even-minded happiness for anyone who's experiencing good fortune. It doesn't look down on emotions or struggles as if unaffected. The same way as I mentioned with compassion practice, the proper practice of the Brahmavihāras includes this knowledge that if we had exactly the same set of conditions as the person to whom we're sending our wishes, we too would be having the same experience as they. So we radiate or offer wishes of goodwill, compassion, sympathetic joy, or equanimity from that standpoint of knowing that this too could be something we could be going through.

When equanimity is available, we can see events with understanding, and we can investigate the kinds of emotional events that lead to reactivity. We can see it. Of course, this takes time and plenty of practice—seeing mindfully, seeing clearly again and again, to begin to understand the way that clinging, resistance, and delusion distort the mind in the presence of anger, fear, sorrow, and the whole gamut of human emotions. So to see the way we get caught in emotions, it takes time to see unwholesome behavior and wholesome behavior as a separate matter from the person or yourself.

Equanimity balances goodwill that wishes for everyone to come to the end of suffering; it balances that with the realization that we don't have control over how others behave or over the timetable for coming to the end of suffering. Equanimity balances that. And hand-in-hand with compassion, it can help us decide when to take action. So we can cultivate an ability to be open and present with anything that's happening, and discern when something is harmful and it's time to step in and take action to stop it.

Sometimes when people hear the word equanimity, they believe they have to be devoid of emotion. But those of us living the so-called householder life can feel emotion, and without dropping down into being mired with them or stuck in them, the heart and the mind can be moved, can care a great deal, and still retain this level of objectivity and balance that's offered with equanimity.

With mindfulness and with plenty of practice of the Brahmavihāras, or with a lot of mindfulness practice, the head and the heart come together. And the wishes that we send or incline towards well-being, towards safety, happiness, freedom—freedom from suffering and the continued happiness of others—these things become heartfelt instead of just words. And we're better able to access equanimity as well as the heartfelt quality of all of this.

So as we see the benefit of these wholesome inclinations of mind, the heart gradually opens. It takes time for the heart to know it. In the process, it grows the capacity to be with suffering in a caring way, instead of avoiding it, or pitying it, or keeping it at arm's length. And this balance of mind, this equanimity, makes a really important contribution: we learn not to suffer about suffering.

When there's equanimity, the presence of it does not mean, by the way, that we agree with or are passive about harm that's happening in the world. It means we see that harm is happening, we know that causes and conditions have led to suffering, and we have enough confidence in the practice of mindfulness to face things as they have come to be.

The Pali word upekkhā² is the word that's translated as equanimity. And as one of the Brahmavihāras, it actually acts as a check or a balance on the other three. You know it's functioning well when it stays connected to mettā³ (or goodwill), to karuṇā⁴ (or compassion), and to muditā⁵ (sympathetic joy), instead of being indifferent.

Indifference is called the near enemy of equanimity, because it could seem like it, but it's not the same at all. It actually prevents goodwill or mettā from veering into its near enemy, which is attachment, and it prevents compassion from lapsing into its near enemy, which is pity. Equanimity prevents additional suffering from arising when we see suffering, when we feel it and see what's going on. It balances happiness that wells up in the presence of other people's happiness, and it prevents the near enemy of joy, which is becoming overly excited—which is kind of getting hooked into other people's happiness or your own happiness to a degree that's no longer balanced.

Equanimity remains caring through the development of the other Brahmavihāras, instead of hardening into indifference. The mind and the heart know enough about how causes and conditions result in painful experience, and equanimity can maintain a neutrality, an emotional balance with a gentle heart and a wise mind that develop as we practice mindfulness and as we practice the Brahmavihāras.

No matter how much we cultivate limitless loving-kindness and goodwill, there will be people whose actions are harmful, and those who cannot change, will not change. As I mentioned in the meditation, when we offer these wishes, these are not agendas for other people to change. They're not magical thinking that because I wish it, someone else is going to change. We can see clearly what the options are, what the prospects are, or the potential, and we can even work towards change, but we are still balanced and even-minded with equanimity.

This is a quality that clearly sees kamma⁶. And kamma (or karma) in this case means only that actions lead to consequences, that causes and conditions unfold in certain ways. So no matter how desperately we might wish for things not to be the way they are, the mature heart and mind that have matured by witnessing the way things come to be again and again—witnessing actions and consequences—the mature heart and mind come to some ability to see the reality, the truth of things in a balanced way.

By seeing with awareness the arising and passing of myriad human experiences, we come to know that our conditioned life is marked by the three characteristics of conditioned existence: inconstancy⁷ (which is sometimes called impermanence), the unsatisfactoriness⁸ of things that we cannot rely on them partly because they change and they're impermanent, and then that of what's sometimes called no-self⁹, which means that neither we nor anyone else nor anything has a fixed character that's always going to be the same. There are different facets of knowing that things change, whether in the short term or the long term.

So equanimity allows us to be effective with what we cannot change. For example, if someone close to you is dying of a terminal illness, being upset, protesting—none of that is going to help them or you. But you can let equanimity, this balance of mind, help you relinquish or give up your desire that it not be true. Give up the fighting against it. Give up the wish, "this can't be happening," and instead focus on where you can be of support. So this is the ultimate in responsiveness instead of reactivity.

Reading: On Giving by Kahlil Gibran

I'd like to end with a reading by Kahlil Gibran¹⁰ that's kind of interesting with respect to this week:

Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving." And he answered: You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow? And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city? And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have—and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving. And is there aught you would withhold? All you have shall someday be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors'.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you. And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream. And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving. For in truth it is life that gives unto life—while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

And you receivers—and you are all receivers—assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.

So I love this encouragement to give, which is at the basis of our sending wishes to others for goodwill, and to ourselves for goodwill, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. Wishing you all the benefits of the Brahmavihāras. Hope to see any of you who would like to come to happy hour on weeknights from 6:00 to 7:00 to continue to cultivate these. And thank you so much for your practice this week. Wishing you all continued beautiful practice. Bye.