Search results for: "Equanimity"
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- True Honesty… Recently I’ve been reading some Dhamma talks where the teacher seems to think that the great part of honesty is to be honest about what a miserable meditator he is—and that the difficulty seems to lie in learning how to have equanimity about that. Be equanimous about the way things are, they say, “Well, this is what experience is. No experience is …
- Heedfulness Is Auspicious… That’s what you want to develop, and of those skills, thoughts of universal goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity are really important. As you encounter thoughts of what things you did that were not skillful, or things that other people did to you that were not skillful, the Buddha has you think, in both cases, in larger terms. Things that other people do …
- Meditation Prep… As for feelings of equanimity, these are meant to counteract feelings of irritation. You want to be equanimous toward irritating things so that irritation doesn’t build up to the point where it makes you do something stupid. In each of these cases, you want to be skilled at giving rise to skillful attitudes when you need them so that you don’t just …
- Thinking & Evaluating… Things are not fair, there are issues where it’s hard to develop equanimity. So you have to think in ways that will allow you to develop that equanimity. I noticed, when I was living with Ajaan Fuang, sometimes I’d ask him a Dhamma question and I’d get a one-word, two-word answer. That was it. I realized that what he …
- Between You and Your Eyes… You don’t want to go to equanimity until you’ve got some basic skills in how to use the breath as a source of pleasure. This involves getting acquainted with your sense of the body sitting here in the present moment. Again, this is something else we tend to be ignorant of. We use the body for various things. Not only when we …
- Not Just a Witness… As the Buddha says, when you get that consciousness really equanimous, then you can apply the equanimity to higher and higher formless states. It would last a long time, but it would still be constructed. You have to ask yourself, “Is it worth it if it all falls apart? Is there something that doesn’t fall apart?” Now, these are questions you ask when …
- To Know the Unconditioned… You drop the perception of consciousness, and there’s equanimity. In equanimity, you realize that it, too, is fabricated. You have to drop your passion for that. In other cases, they simply describe the layers or levels of jhana and then the formless of states. The whole purpose, however you conceive the layers, is to get the mind more and more still, peel away …
- Maintenance Work… There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about a meditator whose mind has attained a really solid stage of equanimity. When you’re solid in your equanimity, you realize that you can apply it to different things. You can apply it to the sense of infinite space. You can apply it to the sense of infinite consciousness or nothingness. Once you recognize precisely …
- Factors for Awakening… The mind will settle down in a state of equanimity. See if you can maintain that. Those are the seven factors for awakening: mindfulness, analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. That’s one of the ways the Buddha describes them. He sets them up in a line, saying that you start with number one and you go through the list up through …
- The Four Noble Truths… The Buddha never taught there was just one thing to do in the present—just to be equanimous or just to be non-reactive or just to go with the flow or whatever. There’s no “just do this” in any of his teachings with regard to what you do to the present. There are different things that you might want to focus on …
- Solo Practice… Try to develop a sense of equanimity toward whatever comes up: good thoughts, bad thoughts, good breaths, bad breaths, whatever. Just be equanimous. Don’t be too active in your thinking. And how do you know which time to use the more active factors and which time to use the more calming ones? You’ve just got to learn through practice, through trial and …
- Goodwill & Kamma… If your mind is narrow, your goodwill is narrow, your compassion is narrow, your empathetic joy is narrow, your equanimity is narrow. Your ability to deal with pain and not be overcome by it, your ability to deal with pleasure and not be overcome by it: Those are narrow as well. And as a result, any little act of bad kamma from the past …
- Exploring Fabrication… I try to be equanimous toward the present as I breathe in and as I breathe out.” The Buddha said, “Well, there is that kind of breath meditation, but it’s not how you get the most out of breath meditation.” Then he described the sixteen steps, four tetrads of four steps each. What’s interesting about the steps is how much they focus …
- Training in Right Resolve… As for harmlessness, that’s basically thoughts of either compassion or equanimity. That’s for cases where you see that somebody’s down. They’re in a weak position, and you’re not going to try to take advantage of that weak position to harm them. Either you develop thoughts of equanimity toward them or actively try to develop compassion. These are the standards …
- Patient & Inquisitive… He’s basically teaching him patience, equanimity, but then he applies it to instructions on breath meditation. And his instructions on breath meditation are not just to be patient with the breath, be equanimous about the breath. You actively take an interest in the breath to see what you can do with it. So when he’s saying to be like earth, he’s …
- Streams of Anger… We’ve heard many, many times that the antidote for anger and irritation is goodwill combined with equanimity. But just thinking thoughts of goodwill and equanimity won’t be enough. You have to learn how to think more precisely when you’re feeling irritated, feeling angry: You’ve got something you’ve got to take apart—the feeling of anger itself. The Buddha recommends …
- An Island of Concentration… goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity. What’s interesting is when the Buddha talked about the establishing of mindfulness to this monk, he said that when you’re focused on the breath this way, being mindful of the breath this way, you develop the concentration with rapture, with pleasure, without rapture, without pleasure, with directed thought, without directed thought. In other words he was talking …
- When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath… calm, concentration, equanimity. In other cases, though, he treats the factors for awakening in a linear way. You start out mindful and alert and then you go straight for the analysis of qualities—analyzing what’s skillful and unskillful in your mind—and then make an effort to give rise to what’s skillful in a way that gives rise to rapture. That would …
- Chronic Pain… You don’t view it with equanimity. As the Buddha said, he taught suffering and the end of suffering, and he offered the end of suffering as something you would want. It’s okay to want to put an end to suffering, but you have to do it wisely. You have to attack the problem at the cause. We’d like to get rid …
- Judging Your Meditation… It helps you to be more patient, more equanimous. It strengthens your powers of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, and allows you to tap into sources of happiness and well-being that you might not be able to tap into otherwise. Yet often, when you begin to meditate, you’re told that there’s no such thing as good meditation or bad meditation, that you …
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