Search results for: "Equanimity"
- Page 8
- Realizing Cessation… And when you attain the goal, there’s an equanimity that goes along with that. The goal itself is not equanimity. The goal, of course, as the Buddha said, is the highest happiness, the highest bliss. But then you look back at all the things that used to weigh the mind down and you can be equanimous about them. In the Buddha’s terms …
- Put Some Heart into Your Practice… As the Buddha says, when you look out for others, you develop qualities of goodwill, kindness, patience, equanimity. As he also said, patience is the highest form of austerity. In other words, it’s what burns away the mind’s unskillful attitudes. And equanimity is found in many of the lists of the qualities you’re trying to develop as you meditate—both in …
- Determination… That required a lot of equanimity along the way. So think of equanimity not as being resigned to things but as a kind of resilience, that if the opportunity doesn’t come now, it may come later, remembering that in the meantime you have developed your perfections. This world we live in is an imperfect world. Look around you. So many things that people …
- Ups & Downs… So you have to maintain a certain equanimity about the whole thing. Not that we’re not trying to get someplace. We definitely are. But in the Buddha’s teachings on making a determination, one of his determinations is that you try to maintain calm in the face of the ups and downs that are sure to come your way. Otherwise, you’re never …
- Brahmaviharas at the Breath… attitudes of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy or appreciation, and equanimity. You notice that the chant starts with extending these attitudes toward ourselves. One of the difficulties in learning how to master these attitudes is learning how to develop them at the right time, the right place. There are times when we have goodwill for ourselves and times when we don’t; when we have …
- Goodwill for Bad People… That’s where you have to exercise equanimity. The equanimity there helps save your goodwill from turning into burnout or disappointment or cynicism. You realize that, for the time being, that person just doesn’t want to get the message. Some people you can’t speak to about anything that has to do with true happiness because they simply won’t listen. That’s …
- Befriending the Breath… And then finally equanimity: If you find a certain parts of the breath energy that you can’t help in this way, just chalk it up to past kamma and focus on the areas where you can help. This is an important principle about equanimity. The Buddha’s not saying to be indifferent to everything. He says there are certain things that you simply …
- Old Kamma & New… As for the difficult things they do, learn how to have equanimity about them. Regardless. When good things happen to people you don’t like, learn how to have equanimity. When bad things happen to people you do like, learn how to have equanimity. Be able to draw on these things whenever you need them, because we live in a world where good things …
- Mindfulness Defined… Sometimes mindfulness is defined as “total acceptance” or “radical acceptance.” In the Buddha’s vocabulary, acceptance equals equanimity and patience. Equanimity means learning to put aside your preferences and just watch what’s actually there. Patience is the ability to stick with things even when the results don’t come as quickly as you’d like them to. But in the context of the …
- The Sublime Attitudes in Context… The nice pink cloud of universal goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity gets spread out in all directions, looks nice, feels nice, but it can hide a lot of things, like contrary attitudes that you don’t want to express to yourself. When the brahmaviharas are just a cloud like that, then when the time comes to actually act on these attitudes, you often …
- A Mind Bigger than Pain… Then finally there’s equanimity. A traditional way of developing equanimity is to think about karma: that we all have good karma; we all have bad karma. And if bad karma’s bearing fruit right now, remember that’s not the only thing you have in your past. There are lots of good potentials there as well. You don’t want to get worked …
- When Ill Will Is in Fashion… You develop it with directed thought and evaluation, with no directed thought and a modicum of evaluation, with no directed thought and no evaluation, with rapture, without rapture, with enjoyment, with equanimity. Then you do the same with the brahmavihāras:** You start with goodwill, then on to compassion, empathetic joy, and then equanimity with directed thought and evaluation, with no directed thought and a …
- Purifying Gold… It’s patient, equanimous. You want to be able to observe the mind with patience and equanimity so that you can know what’s really going on. As the Buddha said, you have to bring these three qualities to bear: right effort, right concentration, and equanimity, and you have to know which one to emphasize at which time. If you simply tried with right …
- The Ten Priorities… This is another area where you could bring in patience, but primarily equanimity. Equanimity is what keeps us going on the path. In other words, we see that it’s a long path, and it would be very easy to get worked up about that fact, to get frustrated. Especially on days that the meditation’s not going so well, equanimity helps us to …
- Dealing with Limitations… The limitation on equanimity is affection. The people you really love, to whom you’d like to give all you can, but who you can’t help as much as you’d like: They’re the ones for whom it’s hard to feel equanimity, but they’re also the ones who require your equanimity the most. That’s why you have to realize …
- Brahmaviharas on the Path… And there’s a passage where the Buddha says that passion is overcome in equanimity. If your mind is in a state of equanimity, it can’t be overcome by passion. If the passion does move in, that means your equanimity has been destroyed. It may not be totally impervious to passion, but it is a counterbalance. So if you see that you’re …
- Intent… As for equanimity, that’s something slightly different. But again, it’s something you want to develop so that you can tap into it when you need it to protect you from past bad kamma—and from creating more bad kamma right now. Equanimity is not in and of itself a good thing. As the Buddha said, there are cases when it can be …
- Where the Mind & Body Meet… Even when the mind gets to equanimity, he said this kind of equanimity is pleasant in a very subtle way because it’s equanimity combined with knowledge, awareness. So you develop this concentration because that’s the duty with regard to the path: It’s to be developed. You get better and better at maintaining this full-body awareness, with a sense of ease …
- Love is Conditional, Goodwill Is Not… thoughts of unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, and unlimited equanimity. You want to make these attitudes without measure. In other words, you’re not going to be measuring out your goodwill, saying “I’m going to give this much to that person, but a little bit less to this other person, and hardly anything to somebody else over there.” You want it …
- Enlarged Awareness… That’s the image of equanimity, a feeling of total ease. All these feelings—pleasure, equanimity—you should try to allow to fill the body as much as you can. In this way, you establish a really good solid foundation for your meditation, a good foundation for your concentration. If your concentration is one-pointed, then as soon as anything disturbs that one point …
- Load next page...
