Summary of May 19, 2024 Live Session: Dear Friends. It was good to be with you today for our Live session. The theme was ‘Cultivating equanimity in the face of life’s eight worldly winds.’ Here are some of the main themes, poems, and quotes from today’s session:
I began by reviewing some of the main themes from our last session, including:
• The important role that equanimity plays within the Buddha’s teachings as one of the four heart practices (brahma viharas, or ‘divine abodes’): loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity; and as the seventh of the ‘awakening factors’—qualities that lead us to freedom and the end of suffering: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity.
• How with equanimity, the mind can become our greatest friend, rather than a source of suffering for us—and can allow us to meet life’s ‘ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows,’ with a balanced and steady mind that is free of clinging and resistance.
I highlighted a central Buddhist teaching on equanimity, called the Lokavipatti Sutta, or ‘Discourse on the failings of the world.’ In this teaching, the Buddha taught that the world is beset by eight worldly conditions: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute. These conditions, also known as the ‘eight worldly winds,’ affect everyone, even the Buddha. But not everyone suffers in the face of these conditions.
The Buddha explained the difference between the response of a run-of-the-mill person and a dedicated follower of the Buddha’s teachings. The former, without training, tends to cling to the pleasant—gain, praise, pleasure, and fame—and resist what most people see as negative conditions—pain, loss, blame, and disrepute. In resisting life as it is, they experience contraction and suffering.
The trained follower of the dharma also experiences these conditions but does not cling to the pleasant, nor resist the unpleasant or difficult, and hence, does not suffer. They see the impermanence of all things and find peace in the midst of the joys and the sorrows of life.
There is not any problem in enjoying pleasant experiences or changing difficult or unpleasant ones where it’s wise to do so. The ‘problem’ arises when we cling to how we want things to be and resist life as it is. For example, if we experience pain and can open to how it feels, letting it come and go and knowing its impermanence, it may still be difficult, but we are not adding resistance to the experience. When we resist, we add a ‘second arrow’ of suffering to the first arrow of pain. As the aphorism goes, ‘pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.’
We find peace in the midst of life’s pleasures and pains when we open to our experience just as it is—to all that is arising in the body, heart, and mind, without resistance. In the words of Dorothy Hunt, “Peace is this moment without judgment // This moment in the heart space // Where everything that is is welcome.”
We can also cultivate equanimity in meditation--and in daily life--using phrases such as: “Breathing in, I calm my body… Breathing out, I calm my mind… May I be balanced. May I be at peace… May I learn to see the arising and passing of all things with equanimity and balance. May I be open and balanced and peaceful…” (These phrases are taken from Jack Kornfield’s book, The Art of Forgiveness, Loving-kindness, and Peace.)
Poems and quotes I shared include:
• A story of Ajahn Chah saying of a cup he liked to drink from, ‘I see this cup as already broken.’ So when it breaks or cracks, there is no suffering. It is simply the impermanence of life.
• William Blake’s poem Eternity: “He who binds to himself a joy // Does the winged life destroy // He who kisses the joy as it flies // Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
• The comparison of equanimity to a mountain that experiences rain, hail, sleet and snow, but remains unmoved: “Just as a rocky mountain is not moved by storms, so sights, sounds, tastes, smells, contacts and ideas, whether desirable or undesirable, will never stir one of steady nature, whose mind is firm and free.” (Anguttara Nikaya)
• And a verse from early Buddhist awakened nuns:
“If your mind becomes firm like a rock
and no longer shakes
In a world where everything is shaking
Your mind will be your greatest friend
and suffering will not come your way.”
Wishing you a good week ahead and I’ll see you next on Sunday, June 9 at 9am eastern time—I’ve uploaded some new live sessions that should be on the Insight Timer app in the coming days. Warmly, Hugh
