Search results for: "Equanimity"
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- The Path of Happiness… Its mindfulness is pure; its equanimity is pure; and it can see very clearly what’s going on—see what’s skillful, see what’s not. So the sense of pleasure is an important part of the path. As long as you see it as a means to a further end, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes you see in modern teachings …
- Wide-open Awareness… But when you learn how to bring some compassion to the whole process of opening up to yourself, when you learn how to bring some understanding and maturity and equanimity to the process, you find that you’re much better off working through these things than you were when you tried to keep them hidden. You’ve now got the tools where you can …
- Conviction & Confidence… Pose the question in your mind and just watch, try different approaches, because the Buddha didn’t stop his meditation instructions with equanimity and patience. He went on to teach the 16 steps of breath meditation, most of which involve training, experimenting, and using your ingenuity. There’s an intentional element to this practice. You’re trying to figure out a skill, sensitize yourself …
- Safety… And then, he says, you develop this concentration with directed thought and evaluation, with a modicum of directed thought, with no directed thought, no evaluation, with pleasure, with ease, with rapture, with equanimity. In other words, he’s talking about jhana, right concentration. So this is your safe space, your safe territory: getting the mind settled in right here. It’s not totally safe …
- A Better Place to Feed… One is developing attitudes of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity in a really expansive way, extending them to yourself and to all other people, all other beings. He doesn’t say to start with yourself, but later commentators say it’s good to start with yourself because all too often, when we think about goodwill for everybody, we tend to forget ourselves. We …
- Practicing for Dispassion… We develop thoughts of goodwill, thoughts of equanimity to cut through ill will. We work with all the techniques for giving rise to energy when we’re sleepy, and ways of talking to ourselves when we feel restless or anxious or overcome with uncertainty. We have to realize that no matter what’s going to happen in the future, things are very uncertain. You …
- Balancing Tranquility & Insight… When the pleasure seems superfluous, and you simply want to settle in and be very, very still, you get the mind to a state of equanimity. What you are doing is allowing the mental fabrication of feeling to calm down. At the same time, you allow your perceptions to calm down, and this can actually take you deeper into the formless jhanas. If you …
- Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog… We may have an idea that we want a particular insight, great insights into anicca, upekkha, impermanence, equanimity, dependent co-arising, but you don’t get there unless you focus on the nitty-gritty of everyday life. When greed arises, how does it arise? If you want to understand dependent co-arising, you’ve got to look at your greed. You’ve got to …
- Reflections on Kamma… In one context, it’s listed as a reflection for equanimity. What this means is that there are times when you want to help somebody and you can’t. Either they refuse the help, or no matter how much you try to help them and no matter how much they’re willing to get your help, something still gets in the way. That’s …
- Read the Breath… having abandoned unskillful qualities in the mind, you can settle down until you develop pure equanimity and mindfulness. As the Buddha said, there’s no right concentration without a certain amount of insight, a certain amount of understanding. You can’t get the mind to settle down unless you understand it. So all these factors that go into right concentration—right effort, right mindfulness …
- Present Kamma… When your mind is well-trained, you can have thoughts of goodwill for all beings, compassion for all beings—without limit; equanimity in all cases where you need it, without limit. That enlarges the mind. As for training in overcoming pleasure and pain, we learn to do that as we meditate. If pains come up in the meditation, you learn how to deal with …
- The Same but Different, but the Same… You teach the mind to feed on this pleasure—the rapture, the pleasure, the ease, and ultimately just the equanimity that come as the mind settles down, gets more expansive. You feed on that so that you can then look at your other old ways of feeding, and you develop a sense of dispassion for them. Dispassion doesn’t mean that you hate them …
- The Choice Not to Suffer… rapture, serenity, concentration, and equanimity. These are the qualities you need to gain the strength not to get sucked in, so that you can maintain that stance of learning how to abandon anything that’s unskillful. You have your own separate place to stay so that when suffering or stress—any kind of dis-ease—comes up in the mind, you don’t have …
- Anupassana… Then use the perceptions that calm the sense of rapture down, that give rise more to a state of equanimity, so you can see to what extent you really are fabricating things right now. Those are the fabrications you want to gain insight into. Which are the ones you want to hold on to? Which ones are the ones you don’t want to …
- Fire Escapes… The four brahma-viharas are another way of getting the mind into jhana, because even with them, you have to practice developing concentration with directed thought and evaluation, without directed thought and evaluation, with a sense of pleasure, with a sense of rapture, with a sense of equanimity. In other words, you take these attitudes through the jhanas. The three formless attainments—infinite space …
- Looking at Your Life… But you’ve also got to develop an attitude of calmness or equanimity toward the fact that there will be difficult things to do, difficult things to give up if you really want to make the best use of your time. So you learn to accept that fact and take it in stride. Sometimes the things you have to give up are things you …
- When it’s Hard to Settle Down… goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity—learning to extend these attitudes to all people, all beings, both for their benefit and for yours. For their benefit, sometimes you simply extend goodwill to other beings and they’ll feel it. There are other times when they won’t feel it, but at least the fact of having developed that attitude within yourself means you’re …
- Willing & Observing… It wasn’t until the Buddha got all the way into the fourth jhana—where purity of mindfulness and purity of equanimity allowed him to gauge things for what they really were—that he was able to see things clearly in his mind. If you haven’t reached that level of stillness, you’re not in a position where you can see things clearly …
- Appropriate Attention… There’s less personal recrimination and more of a balanced, equanimous, objective view. And not just that. The questions you’re bringing into the present moment depend on what your larger view is. Often we hear that mindfulness is enough. Like the Beatles’ old song: All you need is love. The refrain in a lot of Buddhist circles is: All you need is mindfulness …
- Training for Dispassion… We’re not here just to accept or just to be equanimous about what arises. We have to change our attitudes and develop the desire to foster good qualities in their place. When the Buddha taught Rahula how to be observant, he said, “Observe your intentions. If you anticipate that an intention, if you followed it, would lead to any harm for yourself or …
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