Search results for: "Equanimity"
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- Concentration & Renunciation… We can’t have everything, and the need to develop good qualities in the mind has to take precedence—qualities like generosity, determination, patience, equanimity. Sometimes learning to do without a certain pleasure is like a trade. This is what renunciation is all about. It’s interesting that in the ten perfections, concentration is not listed. But it’s there under renunciation, because without …
- Suffering is an Addiction… In the Buddha’s instructions on how to help yourself through helping others—treating other people with goodwill and with sympathy, with patience and equanimity—the Buddha says it’s immediately good for them but it’s going to be good for you in the long run. It may go against your habits, but again, your habits are causing suffering. As for helping others …
- A Good Example for the World… But then there’s also the reflection on equanimity: All beings are the owners of their actions. This is our reality check, because we realize that the suffering of the world is just too much for us to go out and solve entirely. There are limits on our time and our energy, and we have no control over other people. After all, people are …
- One Foot in the Present… Two, develop thoughts of unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity directed to the person you harmed, directed to yourself, and directed to all beings. These attitudes help to ensure that you’ll be more likely to work from skillful motivations, skillful intentions as you act. This way, having the proper attitude toward the present moment, toward what comes up in the present moment …
- How to Be Self-Centered… The equanimity is for realizing that this will take time, so you’re willing to put in time and not get discouraged by the first couple of times you stumble, or when things are going well and all of a sudden there’s a dry patch and they’re not going well at all. As Ajaan Fuang would say, learn how to play at …
- Right Exertion at Play… This is why the Buddha encourages you not simply to let go and be equanimous. You work on developing good qualities in the mind. And in doing that, the mind isn’t empty- handed and it’s not going to start thinking up some really nifty things to distract itself in the wrong way. In other words, it’s not going to be developing …
- Bojjhanga: Discernment Fosters Concentration… That’s how you get to the qualities of rapture, calm, concentration, and equanimity. In other words, you get the mind to be willing to put its thoughts aside. And then you can be with the breath. And it’s through working with the breath that you can create that sense of refreshment or rapture, which in some cases may be strong, and in …
- Will Meditation Make You Grim & Dull?… You don’t want to have just a sense of equanimity as you go through life. You want to have a sense of positive enjoyment in how it feels to have a body. One of the reasons you work with the breath is so that you feel comfortable inside your body. No matter what the world outside may say about your body, you’re …
- Compassion for People on Fire… To make sure that that our goodwill and compassion don’t degenerate into sadness, we also have to practice equanimity: realizing that beings live in line with their karma. There are some beings we can help and a lot we can’t. So we focus on what we can do. Of course, the primary being we have to worry about is ourselves. We’re …
- Ups & Downs… It has to be based on a certain amount of equanimity and a certain amount of conviction. All too often we hear that Buddhism is a religion with no need for faith, no need for conviction, but the simple fact that you’re sitting here working with the mind requires some conviction. Especially when the downs go for a long time: You’ve got …
- The Brightness of Life… So what’s bright in life? The fact that there’s a path, the path leads to the end of suffering, and the end of suffering is not a blank-out or a dull state or just simply learning how to be equanimous about things. There really is another dimension that the mind can touch—a dimension in which there’s an awareness that …
- A Gift of Strength… And because that space you try to create inside—that space of equanimity or a sense of well-being—is something you can develop from within, it doesn’t need to depend on anyone else. It doesn’t have to take anything away from anyone else. That doesn’t mean you’re not being faithful to other people. There’s no human relationship that …
- Goodwill & Gratitude… goodwill without limit, compassion without limit, empathetic joy without limit—along with equanimity without limit to balance out our wish for happiness in cases where it simply is not going to happen right yet. Then you realize there’s no hypocrisy in these attitudes. If you’re looking for true happiness you have to look inside, so it’s not going to involve taking …
- Noble Wealth… So the Buddha asked him, “How do you practice breath meditation?” The monk replied, “I put aside all worries or concerns about the future, all memories of the past, and with equanimity, I breathe in and breathe out”—which sounds like the way breath meditation is taught a lot these days. But the Buddha said, “There is that kind of breath meditation, I don …
- Give of Yourself… those that go away simply when you look at them with equanimity, and those that go away only with fabrications of exertion. But which is which? He wouldn’t say. You have to observe for yourself. And what does it mean to exert a fabrication? In that context, he doesn’t say. He says in other places, and it’s up to you to …
- Responsibilities… But he also says that by helping others, you develop qualities that are good for you—qualities like goodwill, kindness, equanimity, and endurance. So learn to see that the responsibilities you take on *can *be part of your practice, in terms of the qualities you develop. But also remember that you want to keep everything in the context of “you, inside the body.” Don …
- Metta Meditation… The chant on happiness is accompanied by the chant on equanimity: All living beings are the owners of their actions. That’s to remind us that happiness is not simply a matter of affirmation, it’s something you actually have to do. It requires causes, actions that you have to do. And where do the actions come from? They come from the mind, from …
- The World of the Body… As for the perfections, starting with generosity and going down the list—generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, good will, and equanimity—whatever we can do to develop these qualities, they give meaning to life, because they’re the things that will be left when we have to leave the body. So this world we have inside: We put it to use …
- See Your Thoughts as Strange… The Thai ajaans talk about the mind settled in, at ease, at equanimity, as the normal state of mind, or the mind at normalcy—in the same way as when you’re observing the precepts, they say that your behavior is finally at normalcy. But for most of us, that’s not our sense of normal. Distraction is our normalcy. The desires that flow …
- An End to the Stories… When you realize that, you have to develop equanimity so that you can focus on what the real issues are: the ways in which you keep on churning up more issues inside. As the Buddha said, the craving that makes for becoming is a big issue. You make something from that becoming and then you become a being with needs to feed. You live …
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