Search results for: "Equanimity"
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- Adjusting the Flame… In other words, you try to develop as much calm, concentration, and equanimity as you can—equanimity toward things outside, equanimity toward the situation right now in your body. This is what you’ve got to work with. How can you best settle down? That’s what the calm and concentration are for. What can you do to get things to settle down? You …
- Like a River Full of Water… As for areas where you can’t be of help, that’s where you develop equanimity. This applies to yourself, to other people, or to situations that you don’t want to see happen but it’s just the way things are. You can’t make a difference in some cases, so you want to be able to develop equanimity in every situation where …
- Lessons in Happiness… things that can be known by simply watching with total equanimity, so that he ultimately relinquished even the equanimity. That’s mature letting go. It comes from developing your sensitivity, learning the lessons of happiness, learning the lessons of pleasure that the breath has to offer. You look in the texts and you see that breath meditation and the development of the goodwill, the …
- Beginning the Rains… This is the true role of equanimity in the practice—not that you’re equanimous about whether you’re going to fail or succeed. You’re very much determined that you do want to succeed in this determination. But when there are setbacks, you don’t let them wound you. You don’t get worked up about them. You find some way around them …
- Potentials Past & Present… As for the things that can’t be changed, that’s where you have to develop equanimity. The Buddha taught four attitudes called brahmaviharas—the sublime attitudes. There’s goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Goodwill is a wish for happiness. Compassion is connected to goodwill, in the sense that if you see somebody suffering or creating the causes for suffering, your attitude is …
- Here to Learn… You start out with goodwill, compassion, and empathetic joy, but there will be cases where you have to develop equanimity as well. You don’t go straight to the equanimity. You maintain the goodwill, but there are times when you have to fall back on equanimity for your own peace of mind. So, you’re here to learn, and if you can maintain that …
- Anger… And the attitude the Buddha recommends most is equanimity: equanimity in the sense of stepping back from the situation and seeing it as part of a universal pattern, not just as something personal between you and the person you’re angry with. One of the traditional ways to develop equanimity is to contemplate the principle of karma: that what you do is important. Particularly …
- Remorse… Equanimity for yourself, equanimity for everyone. Yet he also says you have to develop discernment. After all, sometimes you can do very unskillful things based on what you think is the compassionate thing to do, but you can’t simply trust your loving heart to tell you what to do in a given situation, thinking that where there’s a lot of love, that …
- Generosity & Virtue as Skills… Ehis is a matter of watching yourself, learning how to step back from what you’re doing and judge it with a certain amount of equanimity and patience. There was a famous teacher in Thailand who had a lot of Western students, and he realized that these were the two qualities that they were most lacking in: equanimity and patience. Again, it was probably …
- Faith in Karma… But the reflection on everyone’s karma is also a reflection to induce equanimity for the things that you can’t change, particularly the things that you’ve already done in the past or the results of things that you’ve done in the past. Not only things that you’ve done, but also things that other people have done. There are people who …
- Strengthening Discernment… Some people think the path is just being equanimous, learning how to watch things arise and pass, pass, pass away, and not get involved. But equanimity, it turns out, is also a kind of fabrication, and you need more than just equanimity in order to really understand fabrications. One of the best ways to develop discernment around fabrications is to actually put the factors …
- The Brahmaviharas on the Path… Part of the discernment also lies in the exercise of equanimity, realizing when it’s appropriate to develop equanimity as an act of kindness to yourself and to others as opposed to when you focus more directly on the other brahmaviharas. But you also have to understand what it means to wish for people to be happy. You want them to do things that …
- Turtle Meditation… That’s when you exercise equanimity. If there are parts of the body that are painful and the breath can’t do anything for the pain, you learn how to exercise equanimity there. This way you’re getting practice in the brahmaviharas, learning how to develop a goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity that are universal, limitless. Then you learn how to apply these …
- Breath Teaches the Bramaviharas… It’s because of this freedom of choice we need to have equanimity. You learn equanimity as you’re working with the breath. You realize that some parts of the body won’t change no matter how well you breathe, no matter where you focus, no matter how strong your concentration—but you can work around them. You don’t have to let them …
- The Questions of Suffering… The Buddha says that’s the lowest level of equanimity. He calls it “house based equanimity,” where you just learn how to be patient and endure and try not to be reactive as things come and go, whether they’re pleasant sounds or unpleasant sounds; pleasant sights or unpleasant sights. Trying to keep the mind non-reactive: That’s the lowest level of equanimity …
- Metta… compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Compassion is what goodwill feels on seeing people who are suffering, or who are doing actions that would cause suffering. Notice one of those phrases in the chant just now: “May no beings despise anybody. May no beings harm anybody.” In other words, we don’t want anybody to act in ways that will cause harm, harming others by …
- Seriously Happy… They made the mistake of expressing equanimity as saying, “May all beings be the owners of their actions.” Which, when you think about it, sounds like a curse. Equanimity is more a statement of fact. It’s the reality check. Even though you wish for all beings to be happy, you have to realize you can’t make them happy. They themselves will have …
- Lust… Because after all, equanimity and mindfulness are fabrications too. They’re very subtle fabrications, equanimity in particular. There’s a belief—you hear it sometimes—that mindfulness and equanimity are unfabricated. But that’s not the case. They’re part of the path. They’re something you do, something you work on developing. And at an advanced stage in the practice, you do let …
- Can All Beings Be Happy?… That’s where equanimity has to come in. Remember, goodwill and compassion aren’t just there on their own, they have to be coupled with empathetic joy and equanimity. Actually the goodwill, the compassion, and the empathetic joy all go together. Goodwill is the wish for true happiness. When you see beings are suffering, you want them to be released from their suffering—that …
- Death World… So in areas that are beyond your control—or that you could control, but you realize that it would pull you away from things that are more important—that’s where you need to develop equanimity, that that’s just the way things are. Equanimity functions to keep your focus in the proper place, back on your actions. Even more so with the second …
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