Search results for: "Equanimity"

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  2. From Compunction to Release
     … Now, there are cases where you have to be equanimous about efforts you’re putting put in and that are not getting results yet. But the whole teaching revolves around the attitude that you’re acting because you want certain results. You realize that some actions lead to better results than others, and it would be foolish to act in ways that you know … 
  3. How the Tree Leans
     … Thoughts of renunciation, non-ill will, i.e., goodwill or equanimity, harmlessness, compassion or equanimity: Those bend you in a good direction. There are the four wrong courses, when you’re biased because of favoritism, biased because of antagonism, biased because of delusion, or biased because of fear. Those are directions you don’t want to go. Whereas if you develop the treasures of … 
  4. The True Cause of Suffering
     … And finally the Buddha has you develop equanimity in order to overcome feelings of irritation, that little sense of dislike inside. You have to keep reminding yourself that other people’s bad habits really shouldn’t impinge on your happiness. They shouldn’t have an impact. The little things that people do to irritate you—whether they do them intentionally to irritate you or … 
  5. Serenity
     … immeasurable goodwill, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable empathetic joy, immeasurable equanimity. These thoughts are soothing to the mind. In the beginning, you have to work through them. Ask yourself, “Is there anybody out there for whom you cannot feel goodwill?” And certain faces will probably appear in your mind. You have to remind yourself: Nobody benefits from seeing those people suffer. Often, if they suffer, they … 
  6. Balance & Release
     … The calming factors are calm, concentration, and equanimity. Because these terms are abstract and general, it’s up to each meditator to find specific or personal techniques that work for each factor. For example, find some way to get interested in the breath. It helps gladden the mind to remember that it’s working on something worthwhile. I found it really helpful when I … 
  7. Taking a Stance
     … That’s equanimity. If you learn to relate to your own breath in these ways, it becomes a lot easier to relate to events and people outside with the same qualities. If there’s a turmoil inside, then the turmoil tends to affect your relationships with other people. The way you relate to yourself inside forms the pattern, the template, for how you relate … 
  8. Think Like a Thief
     … As the Buddha said, in equanimity and non-reactivity there is what he calls the asava, or effluent, of ignorance. Even though we think that we’re being very calm, we still don’t see anything because there’s more deluded energy going out our eyes than there is information coming in. As with so many things in the Buddha’s path, what we … 
  9. What You Sense Directly
     … And it’s interesting when the Buddha defines different jhanas, he doesn’t say the first jhana is accompanied by pleasure or rapture, or the fourth jhana is accompanied by equanimity. He says, “First jhana: pleasure and rapture accompanied by directed thought and evaluation.” The pleasure and rapture are the primary parts of the experience, just as the equanimity is a primary part of … 
  10. The Buddha’s Eight Principles
     … Even when the Buddha talks about equanimity, he never teaches equanimity on its own. It’s always taught together with other qualities, so that you know when to accept and when not to accept things; when to be content, when not to be content. So there’s some nuance there. And in line with the teaching on karma, the basic test for what’s … 
  11. To Take Danger in Stride
     … Attitudes of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, learning how to develop those in all situations where they’re needed: Those are survival skills, too. As a famous philosopher once said, we live forward but understand backward. We’re going to live in the world and we’re going to have to make choices about what to do. And a lot of those choices are … 
  12. Solid Inside
     … Then there’s the attitude of equanimity. You’ll find that there are some things in the body that you can’t change, no matter how skillfully you look at the present moment. No matter how skillfully you work with the breath, there are certain patterns of tension that may take a while to work through. So you simply let them be for the … 
  13. The Third Frame of Reference
     … If, when you’ve learned how to bring the mind to equanimity, you just stay in equanimity, you’re missing out on a lot of things that you need. Things begin to run out. The mind can get depleted; the body can get malnourished in terms of breath energy. So you go back and pick up a little bit of rapture, a little bit … 
  14. The Fourth Frame of Reference
     … In cases like that, you don’t want to emphasize qualities like serenity or concentration or equanimity. You want to emphasize more active qualities. Get the mind moving again. Analyze things as to what’s skillful and unskillful, and then put in whatever effort is needed to get rid of the unskillful qualities and develop the skillful ones. In taking this more active role … 
  15. The Demands of Goodwill
     … Then, as I pointed out, you can bring the mind to fairly deep states of concentration with the practice of goodwill, even deeper states with equanimity—and then you have to analyze them. One, use the power of your concentration to look at your fascination with sensual pleasures. See why it is that you go for those things. See what the allure is, see … 
  16. Single-minded Determination
     … It’s called narrow equanimity, small minded equanimity. In other words, you get disenchanted with everything, but the disenchantment doesn’t lead to the opening to the Deathless. You stay stuck there on the disenchanted side. If you stay stuck there, it’s easy to get hopeless, apathetic, depressed. But the Buddha pointed out another side to conditioned things, too. A potential for true … 
  17. Right Next to Ignorance
     … It’s just equanimity, and you can get fixated on the equanimity. But again, ignorance is right there, right nearby. So this is one of the ways you get close to ignorance so that you can see it. There’s that other analysis which is that ignorance is kept going by the hindrances, which means that if you understand the processes by which the … 
  18. Fighting Attitude
     … And although patience and equanimity are virtues, they’re virtues with a proper time and a proper place. If you’re in a situation where you simply cannot figure out what to do with an unskillful state that comes into the mind, then you watch patiently to see if you can detect something you haven’t detected before. But a lot of these hindrances … 
  19. De-domesticated
     … So you have to use a lot of goodwill, a lot of compassion, a lot of empathetic joy, and a lot of equanimity. In other words, develop the brahmaviharas as much as you can. But at the same time, maintain your sense of values. As meditators, we’re dealing with a part of ourselves that we don’t share with other people, in a … 
  20. The Energy to Be Generous
    We talked earlier about the issue of when to be compassionate to others and when to show equanimity. But it’s not really an issue of compassion versus equanimity. Goodwill, compassion: These are things that we should develop at all times with all beings. The issue is the distinction between compassion and generosity. You can have compassion for all beings but you can’t … 
  21. The Goldsmith
     … There’s effort, concentration, and equanimity. Effort is when you keep at the mind. It’s not obeying you, but you keep at it, keep trying, trying, trying to get it to settle down. That’s like putting the gold in the fire. You have to heat the mind a bit. You can’t just let it wander as it likes. You have to … 
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