Search results for: "Equanimity"

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  2. Shaping the Present
     … As for equanimity, that deals with two things. Any thoughts come up with regard to the world outside, you want to be equanimous toward them right now. In other words, you don’t get involved; just leave them there. They’re not what you want right now. Then, as the mind gets deeper and deeper into concentration, you find that there’s less you … 
  3. Finding Balance
     … It might be goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, or equanimity. Or you can recollect the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha—anything that you find to be a congenial topic for right now. And again, you want a topic that’s a good antidote for whatever imbalance there may be in the mind. When you feel lazy, it’s good to reflect on death. Death can … 
  4. The Karma of Meditation
     … As the sense of well-being gets more developed, you can approach pains in the body with a lot more equanimity. When you can develop that equanimity, you don’t feel so threatened by things. You can actually look into them. That’s what the Buddha calls the duty with regard to suffering: to comprehend it. Primarily he’s focusing on the suffering of … 
  5. Write It Down in Your Heart
     … The first two monks said, “You should practice equanimity.” When it came Ajaan Chah’s turn, he said, “Well, you do have to be equanimous, but you have to be equanimous with wisdom.” In other words, it’s not just a case of letting go. Ajaan MahaBua was famous for being strict, talking about going out and just punching out the defilements. But he … 
  6. Pissing on Palaces
     … This is where you have to develop your equanimity, so you can detach yourself from anti-Dhamma ideas. You need compassion and goodwill so that your detachment doesn’t become cold, indifferent, or hard-hearted. But you also need the detachment of equanimity so that you can step back a bit and not get sucked into the ways of the world. Because what do … 
  7. Being Your Own Teacher
     … You get a nice state of equanimity and you feel it’s going to take care of you. But as the Buddha points out, you can get stuck on equanimity. It leads to a long rebirth in a nice place, but even those nice places are places you’ll ultimately have to leave. When you leave them, the number of people who go on … 
  8. Samvega First
     … Particularly the chants on goodwill and equanimity: To fend off any thoughts of people who have wronged you in the past, or people you’ve wronged, things that you’d like to go back and change but you can’t, you try to develop thoughts of goodwill and equanimity beforehand… You remind yourself, “Well, I’m trying to have goodwill for everyone, trying to … 
  9. Accepting the Way Out
     … A couple months back I was talking to a group of people about equanimity. Someone was saying that teaching people equanimity is pretty hardhearted. Suppose someone lost a child through murder or suffered some other unjustice: You’re telling them they have to be equanimous? And no, the answer is they don’t have to be equanimous. But the Buddha is saying you don … 
  10. Compassion Without Clinging
     … Those are cases where you have to have equanimity. But goodwill is something that can be universal. This is why it’s a Brahma attitude, a brahmavihara. Brahmas have goodwill for everybody. Compassion for everybody. Empathetic joy for everybody. But also equanimity for everybody, when it’s called for. Now, love is something else. Love is partial, as the Buddha points out. If there … 
  11. Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation
     … the pleasure, the rapture, the equanimity that you can develop as you get the mind into concentration. This is much better than any high and luxurious bed that the world outside could offer. What this means of course, is that when you’re giving up your pursuit of pleasure in thoughts of sensuality, you’ve got to replace it with skill: the skill of … 
  12. A Mind Larger than the World
     … Finally, there’s calm, which covers endurance and equanimity. These two are related, but they’re not quite the same thing. Equanimity is an evenness in your attitude in the face of good and bad things. Endurance is the ability to put up with bad things and not retaliate. There are a lot of things we have to endure in this life. You want … 
  13. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … Then the mind can settle into a state of equanimity that’s really solid, because it’s well-fed. You’re not just telling yourself to be equanimous. You’ve got good reason to be equanimous. You’re well-fed, well-provided for. Then you can watch what’s going on in the mind a lot more clearly and with a lot more objectivity … 
  14. Training Your Selves
     … If you just resign yourself to these things, you may be equanimous, you may be accepting, but it’s like that line from Thoreau: people living their lives of quiet desperation. It’s equanimous desperation, accepting desperation. But the Buddha was not the kind of person who would leave you there in desperation. He said that as long as you define yourself as a … 
  15. True Protection for the World
     … Then there’s equanimity. When you realize that certain things are beyond your control, either because of that person’s past karma or your past karma—people for whom you wish well but they keep on doing unskillful things or they are suffering in ways that you can’t stop—you have to have equanimity there so that you don’t waste your time … 
  16. Dedicating Merit
     … You’ve had to develop some patience, you’ve had to develop some equanimity, some kindness for yourself. You’ve had to develop the ability to hold your thoughts in check, to exercise some restraint. Well, try to bring these qualities into your day-to-day interactions with other people. Learn some restraint, learn some equanimity. If you’ve been meditating properly, you’ve … 
  17. Limitations
    The chants we had just now on developing an attitude of unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited equanimity: Those are among the few ways the mind really can be without limit. When you realize that your true happiness doesn’t have to depend on causing anybody any suffering, then it is possible to have unlimited goodwill, wishing all beings happiness. If … 
  18. Withstanding Pleasure & Pain
     … You’ve gotten past pain, you’ve gotten past pleasure, and the mind gets more and more into the state of equanimity. Now, it’s a nice state; it’s an enjoyable state of equanimity, but it’s much more subtle than the pleasure you’ve gotten past. This is how you get the mind deeper into concentration. You’ve got to learn how … 
  19. Our Variegated Minds
     … As for the people who never seem to want to learn from their mistakes in the search for happiness, that’s where you have to exercise a lot of equanimity. This, too, is a skillful mental state that you have to learn how to exercise when it’s necessary. This is what the brahmavihāras are all about. They’re not just feelings of goodwill … 
  20. Justice vs. Skillfulness
     … Skillfulness July 31, 2016 When we develop the brahma-viharas—attitudes of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity—we try to make them unlimited. In other words, we develop goodwill for all beings, compassion for all, empathetic joy for all, and we have to learn how to apply thoughts of equanimity to all when necessary. The problem is that although our attitudes may be unlimited … 
  21. Right & Wrong Decisions
     … goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Goodwill is a wish for happiness. Compassion is when you see suffering and you want to learn how to put an end to that suffering. Empathetic joy is when you see there already is happiness and you don’t resent other people’s happiness, and you value your own happiness, you try to keep it going. Equanimity is … 
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