Byrne - May 10, 2026 - Equanimity

Live Session Summary, Sunday, May 10, 2026: It was good to be with you for our live session today. The theme of the session was ‘Cultivating equanimity to meet these difficult times with balance and peace.’ 

Here are some of the main themes, poems, and quotes from the live session:

I reviewed some of the main elements of the four ‘divine abodes’ (Brahma Viharas)—the Buddha’s heart practices of loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. 

These qualities are described as unconditional since when they are present in their authentic form, all beings are included in our wishes of happiness and peace and nothing is expected in return; and immeasurable, in that there is no limit to the number or range of people who are included in our wishes for their well-being. 

We all have the potential to cultivate these qualities. Buddhist meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg said, ‘Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are the results of what we do with our minds. We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation.” (Salzberg, ’Loving-kindness’, p89)

I focused on the fourth of the heart practices, equanimity, as a powerful support in difficult times. Equanimity is a quality of steadiness, balance, and evenness of heart and mind that helps us meet the ups and downs of life—life’s ‘ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows’—without being swept up or overwhelmed in strong emotions and mind states. 

Teaching on equanimity, the Buddha said, ‘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.’

Some other descriptions of equanimity from Buddhist teachers include:

• ‘Equanimity describes a complete openness to experience, without being lost in reactions of love and hate.’ (Shaila Catherine)

• ‘A simple definition of equanimity… is the capacity to not be caught up with what happens to us.’ (Gil Fronsdal, Tricycle, Winter 2005)

• ‘Equanimity is a spacious stillness of the mind, a radiant calm that allows us to be present fully with all the different changing experiences that constitute our world and our lives.’ (Salzberg, ‘Loving-kindness’, p139)

Equanimity helps balance the other three heart qualities, preventing loving-kindness from becoming attachment, compassion from becoming pity, appreciative joy from becoming an unbalanced exuberance, and as equanimity deepens we avoid the tendency for non-attachment to become indifference.

It is the nature of life that we will all inevitably experience joys and sorrows and a range of other pleasant and unpleasant conditions. Our happiness and freedom depend not on getting more of the pleasant and less of the unpleasant, but on meeting the ups and downs of life with balance and steadiness, and without craving, aversion, or delusion.

The Buddha said the world spins around eight ‘worldly winds’ or conditions—pleasure and pain, success and failure, gain and loss, and praise and blame. We will all experience these conditions in our life. The untrained person, or ‘uninstructed worldling’, will be happy when they experience pleasant feelings, gain, success, and praise, and will be unhappy when they experience pain, loss, failure, and blame.

A dedicated dharma practitioner, or ‘well-instructed follower’ of the teachings will experience pain and pleasure, gain and loss, success and failure, and praise and blame and will see them all as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not ‘me’ or ‘mine’, and doesn’t cling to the pleasant or fight against the unpleasant. The difference in response between the trained and untrained person is the difference between freedom and suffering. 

The equanimity phrases I shared in the meditation were: ‘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 peace.’

The poems I shared were; ‘Fluent’ by John O’Donohue; ‘Prayer of Shantideva; and an excerpt from Dorothy Hunt’s ‘Peace is this moment without judgment.’

Wishing you a good week ahead and see you for our next regular Sunday live session on May 24 at 9am eastern and for a special two-hour session on Saturday, June 6, 12-2 pm eastern on ‘The power of cultivating equanimity in these challenging times.’ Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Turtle Mind | dhammatalks.org

Turtle Mind | dhammatalks.org

On equanimity and on craving, on the gaining idea, the striving mind

Hugh Byrne - May 19, 2024 - on Equanimity

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

Foundational Freedom

This talk is about Foundational freedom: the freedom to choose one's attitude. V Frankl

An inner freedom  not limited by external conditions...can be free even if one is in prison.  Nelson Mandela.  Transformed his inner life. to be able to see the humanity in the being of those who were oppressing him and all people of color. 
cultivating his own equanimity and his inner freedom helped move South Africa to a more peaceful society.

Cultivate our own hearts in order to be happy in a world in turmoil.

Ability to meet life's hardships and joys with inner peace. freeing our own hearts. 

Near & Far Enemies of the Brahmaviharas

Live Session Summary, Sunday, November 26, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session today. The theme of the session was the ‘near and far enemies’ of loving-kindness and the other heart practices—with the focus on the ‘near enemies.’

Here are some of the main themes, quotes, and poems:

I began by reviewing the Buddha’s heart practices (Brahma Viharas, or ‘divine abodes’): loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity, which are states of heart and mind that reflect an ‘attitudinal commitment’ of friendliness and kindness to all beings and experiences. (Christina Feldman, ‘The Boundless Heart’). 

The Buddha said we should always live in one or more of these states, which are described as ‘boundless and immeasurable’ since there are no limits to how far they can extend or who can be included when we cultivate and deepen these states.

A helpful Buddhist teaching points to states that are the opposite of the four heart qualities—known as ‘far enemies’—and those that appear similar to the heart qualities but actually involve some form of clinging or separation—known as ‘near enemies.’ 

Far enemies of the heart practices are: 1) Loving-kindness: Far enemy—Hatred ; 2) Compassion: Far enemy—Cruelty; 3) Appreciative Joy (joy in another’s happiness): Far enemy—Envy; and 4) Equanimity: Far enemy—Aversion or clinging.  

Near enemies of these four qualities are: 1) Loving-kindness: Near enemy—Attachment ; 2) Compassion: Near enemy—Pity; 3) Appreciative Joy (joy in another’s happiness): Near enemy— Happiness tinged with attachment (e.g., to ‘my team’); and 4) Equanimity: Near enemy—Indifference.  

With each of the near enemies there is typically a resemblance to the genuine heart quality, but accompanied by an afflictive state of mind, like clinging, aversion, or judgment. So, indifference may appear like equanimity—e.g., remaining calm or unaffected amidst difficult conditions—but it incorporates distancing or separation from experience, or from the suffering of others. In the same way, pity may superficially appear like compassion, but involves separation, a sense of ‘above’ and ‘below’ or reaching down to another or others; and attachment may look like loving-kindness but incorporates an agenda of getting or expecting something.

The concept of ‘near enemies’ can be helpful in our practice in making us more aware when a genuine heart quality (e.g., loving-kindness, compassion, etc.) has shifted into a near enemy through lack of awareness or a habitual tendency of the mind—or where we think our intentions are wholesome but may contain a ‘sting in the tail’, for example, clinging or expecting something in return. 

I concluded with a personal story involving a gift I gave on retreat that I thought was motivated by loving-kindness and generosity, but came to see the giving contained a wish or expectation about outcome—and what this experience helped teach me about the near enemies of the four heart qualities. 

I shared a quote from Sri Nisargadatta, 20th century Indian spiritual teacher: ‘Wisdom tells me I’m nothing, Love tells me I’m everything. Between these two, my life flows’; poems, including ‘Small Kindnesses’ by Danusha Lameris; an excerpt from ‘There was a time I would reject those…’ by Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi; and some lines from ‘The Guest House’ by Rumi.

Wishing you a heart-opening week ahead. See you in two weeks, on Sunday, December 10 at 9am eastern for our next live session. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Hugh Byrne - Nov 19, 2023 - on Equanimity

Being equanimous in the midst of small things: a balanced way with the small things at first.
Training the mind to be equanimous in the face of the 8 worldly winds...we can train the mind. 
The Zen farmer story: --> Bad luck, Good luck? who knows? said the farmer

Foundation for equanimity is 'wisdom'...seeing what causes clinging...letting go of clinging...then we will naturally find ease...we will find our way to equanimity, find our way to ease

3 marks of existence:  anicca, impermanence, dukkha: unsatisfactoriness, and anatta: non-self

Impermanence - all conditions of our lives come and go..empires come and go 

• Seeing these truths on personal, and celestial levels...helps bring us to Equanimity
• Holding on to things, we suffer...nothing can be held on to. nothing can provide 'satisfactoriness'
• don't cling ...if so, we suffer. like water we can't hold on to anything
• we can find ease knowing that everything comes and goes. 
• enjoy life without clinging.. 'welcoming the guests'... no matter the guest
• Blake's 'Eternity' poem ...he who binds to himself as a joy as it flies, does the winged life destroy, but he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise.
• Enjoy what we can ...being in a fluid relationship with life...we can be happy. amidst the ups and downs.
• Anicca: we are always changing...the way we live our lives is always changing.

Near enemy of lovingkindness: is attachment, love w/ a clinging quality

Near enemy of Equanimity: is indifference...a pushing away of suffering, of life..  aka 'spiritual bypassing' ..avoiding painful feelings, wounds we haven't addressed.  we can use meditation as a route to spiritual bypassing.  

** We will enjoy not a deep calm from meditation if we are  not opening to our suffering. The invitation is to let everything in ** ...Equanimity is fully opening to our experience. Expand the window of tolerance....opening to all our experience but not clinging. 

TS Eliott: 'Ash Wednesday': Teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still. ie,'Not caring' means to find a way to process our experience without the holding, the clinging. 

Resting in the middleness, seeing the balance...the successes, the failures. all 8 winds will arise in our minds. How do I deal w/ the ups and downs...Can I find peace in the midst of it all? This is a quality I can devleop. We can train our minds in this way. It's not a 'one and done' ...we have to practice. 

PRACTICE with whatever is present, s/ judgement, w/ acceptance. Including pain, physical 

Focus our attention on equanimity: breathing in, calming the body, breathing  out, calming the mind...may I be balanced, may I  be at peace. Inviting that quality of peace of calm of steadiness, of balance...amidst the ups/downs, arising/passing of everything...emotions, breath, thoughts all come and go. all in its own time...let it come, let it be, let it go. when it's ready to go. 

Wumen-

10,000 flowers in Spring

Ten thousand flowers in Spring, 

the Moon in autumn

by Wu Men Hui-k'ai

English version by Stephen Mitchell
Original Language Chinese

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

Byrne on Nov 12, 2023 - on not setting this against that

Live Session Summary, Sunday, November 12, 2023: It was good to be with you for our Live session. In today’s session we continued the discussion of how the Buddha’s teachings can support us in these difficult times, focusing on the role the Buddha’s heart practices—loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity. 

Here are some of the main themes, quotes, and poems I shared:

I began by sharing the simile used in Buddhism of the ‘two wings of the bird’: Just as a bird needs two wings to fly, so our practice requires two wings—the wing of wisdom (awareness, understanding, insight) and the wing of compassion (kindness, care, love, connection). I reviewed briefly our discussion from two weeks ago on the role of practices of awareness (the first ‘wing’) in helping us let go of the clinging and aversion that we can easily be caught up in during these times. I shared these quotes: 

“Wisdom tells me I’m nothing. Love tells me I’m everything. And between the two my life flows.” (Sri Nisargadata, 20th Century Indian spiritual teacher)

“Anything unconscious dissolves when you shine the light of consciousness on it.” (Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now)

“You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection—you cannot cope with the future.” (Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now)

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” (Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher, 1623-1662)

I highlighted the role that the ‘heart practices’ can play in providing support, particularly when we find ourselves swept up in fear, anger, debilitating grief, powerlessness, despair, self-judgment, guilt, and many other challenging emotions and mind states. The four heart practices are described by Insight meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal as ‘four faces of love’—one overarching quality of kindness and friendliness that takes on different forms depending on the circumstances and conditions we meet. 

We focused on three of the four heart practices—loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity—as particularly powerful supports for these times. 

At the heart of these teachings is the understanding that these are not qualities that we either have or don’t have, but rather, qualities that we can cultivate through the diligent practice of inclining our mind towards compassion, kindness, and care for all beings. Sharon Salzberg shared this perspective: 

• “Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are the results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation.” (Salzberg, Loving-Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness)

Loving-kindness invites us to meet all beings—without exception—with understanding and kindness. Christina Feldman expressed this intention and commitment as “cultivating an attitudinal commitment of friendliness towards all beings and all experience.” (Feldman, Boundless Heart)

Compassion is the quality that arises when an open heart meets suffering. It’s been described as ‘the quivering of the heart in the face of suffering.” Compassion incorporates two central responses: 1) empathy—caring for the suffering of another (or oneself); and 2) the wish to alleviate the suffering. We begin by acknowledging our own or another’s suffering: 

• “The first step in developing true compassion is being able to recognize, to open to, and to acknowledge that pain and sorrow exist. Everywhere, absolutely everywhere, in one way or another, beings are suffering.” (Salzberg, Loving Kindness)

• “Compassion in its deepest sense is immeasurable. It embraces the most difficult people in our lives, the most brutal people in the world. Compassion is concerned with meeting suffering and uprooting the causes of suffering: the greed, hatred, and confusion that scars the lives and hearts of too many in this world.” (Feldman, Boundless Heart)

We finished by discussing the quality and practice of equanimity, which is the invitation to meet all experience without clinging to what’s pleasant or resisting or pulling away from what is difficult or unpleasant. The Buddha spoke of ‘eight worldly winds’ that are an inevitable part of our human existence:

• “Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, success and failure are the eight worldly winds. They ceaselessly change. As a mountain is unshaken by the wind, so the heart of a wise person is steady amidst all the changes on this earth.” (Lokavipatti Sutta: ‘The Failings of the World’)   

I emphasized that equanimity is not indifference to suffering, or aloofness, or not caring. With equanimity, our heart remains open and caring, but without clinging or resistance. T.S. Eliot in his poem ‘Ash Wednesday’ said, “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.” Caring without clinging. 

I shared a quote from ‘The Mind of Absolute Trust’ by the 3rd Zen Patriarch, Tsin Tsin Ming: 

“The Great Way is not difficult 

for those who have no preferences. 

When love and hate are both absent 

everything becomes clear and undisguised. 

Make the smallest distinction, however, 

and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart….

If you wish to see the truth 

then hold no opinions for or against anything. 

To set up what you like against what you dislike 

is the disease of the mind.”

-------------------------------------------------------------

I finished the meditation with the poem ‘School Prayer’ by Diane Ackerman. 

This is a longer summary. I hope the review and quotes are helpful to you. Have a peaceful week and see you next Sunday, November 19 at 9am Eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Barn's burnt down...

“My storehouse having been burnt down, nothing obstructs my view of the bright moon.” 

Masahide, Zen poet

'Walker' by Antonio Machado

 

Antonio Machado: "Walker"

Walker, your footsteps

are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

Walking you make the road,

and turning to look behind

you see the path you never

again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road,

only foam trails on the sea.

"Walker" by Antonio Machado, from Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, edited and translated from the Spanish by Willis Barnstone. © Copper Canyon Press, 2003.

This poem read tonight with 'I am home, I have arrived' gatha.

Gems of Chinese Literature/Liu Tsung-yüan-Pas Trop Gouverner - Wikisource, the free online library

Gems of Chinese Literature/Liu Tsung-yüan-Pas Trop Gouverner - Wikisource, the free online library

Wonderful text on letting be, letting go, equanimity...not pushing the river. 

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye - Poems | Academy of American Poets

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye - Poems | Academy of American Poets

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952-

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
 feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Anger, malfeasance, resentment and retrieving equanimity

Regarde la nature même du mal qu'on t'inflige. Elle est aussi insaisissable qu'un dessin tracé sur l'eau. Laisse le ressentiment s'effacer de lui-même. Lorsque les vagues tempétueuses des pensées se sont évanouies, l'esprit redevient comme le ciel sans nuage qui n'a rien à perdre ni à gagner.

SHECHEN GYALTSAP (1871-1926)
Shechen Guialtsap, theg pa chen po'i blo sbyong gi man ngag zab don sbrang rtsi'i bum bzang, p. 441-444.

Pensée de la semaine - 53 - détachement

La compassion et la générosité doivent s'accompagner de détachement. Attendre de ces deux attitudes quelque chose en retour s'apparente à du commerce. Si le propriétaire d'un restaurant est tout sourire avec ses clients, ce n'est pas parce qu'il les aime véritablement mais parce qu'il veut augmenter son chiffre d'affaires. On ne doit pas non plus aimer les êtres et les aider parce que l'on trouve tel ou tel d'entre eux sympathique, mais parce qu'on voit que tous les êtres, peu importe que nous les considérions comme amis ou ennemis, désirent le bonheur et ont le droit de le trouver.

FOURTEENTH DALAI LAMA, TENZIN GYATSO (B. 1936)  Enseignements oraux donnés à Schvenedingen en Allemagne, 1998.

Pensée de la semaine - Ricard - Dharma benefits - karma

La bonne chère, la danse, le chant et les autres plaisirs sensoriels ne nous satisfont jamais totalement. [...] D'abord, ces plaisirs ne comblent pas à la fois le corps et de l'esprit. Ensuite, ils dépendent de circonstances extérieures dont nous n'avons jamais le contrôle absolu, et ne sont donc pas toujours accessibles sur-le-champ, pas plus qu'ils ne sont disponibles partout et chaque fois qu'on les désire. [...] À bien y réfléchir, les plaisirs sont causes de grandes frustrations et de souffrances répétées. [...] En revanche, le bonheur procuré par le Dharma est tout différent. Il imprègne le corps et l'esprit à tout moment et en toute circonstances. [...] Aucun ennemi ni aucun événement ne peuvent nous le ravir, et ses bienfaits s'étendent jusque dans nos vies futures. En cela, il représente un but ultime à réaliser.

ASANGA (sixth century)
Asanga, extrait du gdams ngag rin po che'i mdzod, rassemblé et édité par Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Thayé ('jam mgon kong sprul blo gros mtha' yas, 1813-1899), Shechen Publications, Inde, 1999, vol.3, p. 458-9.

https://www.matthieuricard.org/pensees/38

Good food, dancing, singing and other sensory pleasures never fully satisfy us. [...] First, these pleasures do not satisfy both body and mind. Second, they depend on external circumstances over which we never have absolute control, and are therefore not always immediately accessible, nor are they available everywhere and whenever we want them. [...] Come to think of it, pleasures are the cause of great frustration and repeated suffering. [...] On the other hand, the happiness procured by the Dharma is quite different. It permeates body and mind at all times and in all circumstances. [...] No enemy or event can snatch it from us, and its benefits extend even into our future lives. In this, it represents an ultimate goal to be achieved.

"The most noble forms of human consciousness are embodied in four areas: metta, karuna, mudit and uppekha (equanimity)..."see Christopher Titmus' essay, 'Practicing with Passion', Fall, 1991 in Turning Wheel, pp19-20 .. orignally published as 'A passion for the Dharma'

Equanimity is being present with whatever is happe...

Equanimity is being present with whatever is happening without believing your judgements about it. ~ Ezra Bayda

The habits of happiness | Matthieu Ricard - YouTube

The habits of happiness | Matthieu Ricard - YouTube

Minute 13:00, antidote and alternatives to obsession, to looking outwardly, to being hooked by triggers...
'Turn around the light to look within, then just return'....

lookng at anger, and it will vanish like frost in sunlight. ....as opposed to nurturing the anger by staring at the object of your anger.

Doing, Being and the Great In-Between

Doing, Being and the Great In-Between
by Christina Feldman (published in Tricycle Magazine)

We all want our lives to have meaning—but sometimes we’re unsure what that is. This question of meaning has many significant threads: it’s a question that touches upon our sense of identity and worthiness, and asks us to explore what we’re committed to in this life. George Eliot once wrote, “It seems to me that we can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good and we must hunger for them.”

I would suggest that it is the beautiful and the good that we aspire to and value above all else. In the midst of the beautiful and the good, we feel most alive, most awake, and most present. The Buddha’s teachings are about cultivating the beautiful and the good, the seeds of possibility that live in every human heart: generosity, kindness, and compassion. These qualities ennoble our hearts and leave no residue of regret in our minds.

A few weeks ago I was in a conversation with a woman I mentor, a woman who has achieved many things. She develops mindfulness treatments for cancer patients, writes books, and teaches. She lives an incredibly worthy life by any standard. She talked about being of an age at which it is time for her to pull back and to give up some of that activity, but she found herself questioning how much meaning her life would have as she retreated from her essential work. It became apparent how complex the word meaning is—how that longing to live a meaningful, creative, fulfilling life is such a powerful aspiration.

In our culture, the idea of meaning is weighty. We ask children what they’re going to do when they grow up rather than who they’ll be. Early in our lives, the seeds are planted to imagine that the meaning of our lives is going to be defined by what we do or by how we are perceived by others.

I’ve met so many people who, when they wake up without a plan or project for the day, feel that this renders their life meaningless. At the same time I’m increasingly aware of how we live in a culture of exhausted people. This includes dharma teachers! I’m embarrassed when we get together and everybody reports how tired they are. Some of you may sense this when you go on retreat. It feels as if the reservoir is empty. You spend the first two days of retreat simply recovering from life. Thomas Merton spoke about the contemporary violence of our times: being answerable to too many people, saying yes to too many things, taking on too much. But in our culture even the exhaustion can seem admirable because we’re so needed. For some the luxury of waking up to a “don’t-know” day, a day empty of projects, is a distant memory. (I do appreciate that for those who are prone to low moods, “don’t-know” days can feel very bleak and depressing.)

In the Buddha’s teaching, desire is a very interesting word. In fact, it’s not one word alone; there are a number of words in Pali that might be translated as “desire.” The Buddha teaches that there are many wholesome desires: the desire to serve, the desire to give, the desire to be free, the desire to cultivate qualities of heart that ennoble our lives and lead us to connect with others. It’s desire that causes us to seek depth and understanding. It is desire that brings about wholesome social change and justice. Our desires are catalysts for all change and transformation, both outwardly and inwardly. They are at the root of skillful effort.

Yet there are also desires that aren’t so noble. These are the insatiable appetites that create stress. One of the subtlest of these desires is called bhavatanha, which may be translated as “the craving to become.” This is the endless desire to become the kind of person who only has pleasant experiences, who is admired and applauded and loved. It’s a desire to become the kind of person who is secure and safe; a person without blemish or imperfection; a person who never fails, who’s never criticized, who’s never judged. Often we’re barely aware of how powerful and compulsive this craving to become is, the degree to which it organizes our world, our relationships, and our choices. It makes us really busy. In order to become this person, we have to engage in many activities and rearrange the conditions of our lives. The pursuit of this desire is equated with success. It’s about finding an identity, which in turn is about worthiness. If I become a person who has only good meditations, who gets only positive feedback, who is successful, and who manages to defend against the unpleasant, then I’ve reached a state of worthiness. I believe my life will have meaning.

If we look at bhavatanha from a reasonable point of view, we might ask, “Is it possible?” From a rational perspective, we would say “No.” None of us has the power to control and re-arrange the conditions of our lives so that we have only pleasant experiences. The Buddha suggested that bhavatanha, the eternal quest for perfection and the ideal self, is the source of the greatest suffering in our lives. But we may find ourselves wondering: What would we do without bhavatanha? What would motivate us? What would give meaning to our lives if we weren’t always striving to become?

From the angle of contemplative practice, it’s really helpful to release the word “meaning” as we usually understand it and to explore the word “meaningfulness.” There’s a vast difference between these two. Meaningfulness is not about great achievement or success; it’s not about grand identities or roles. It’s about how we live our moments. It’s about how we attend to the details of our lives. As I was sitting in conversation with my mentee, the thought came to me: “Why isn’t it considered meaningful to look out my window and appreciate the camellia blooming? Why isn’t this as meaningful as finishing a grand project or becoming someone?” It was clear to me in that moment that if I attended to the camellia wholeheartedly, the moment filled with appreciation and beauty. Right then, there was no sense of lack and no need to improve upon the moment. There was no need to be anyone. The camellia didn’t affirm a “me,” but by observing it with my whole being it affirmed a capacity for stillness, receptivity, and appreciation. It didn’t mean that I was going to sit in that chair forever. I wasn’t going to tell my publisher that my book would never be finished or my children that I’d retired as a mother. But it pointed to the way we dichotomize doing and being.

“It’s a desire to become the kind of person who is secure and safe; a person without blemish or imperfection; a person who never fails, who’s never criticized, who’s never judged.”
What do I mean by being? In the exhaustion of our busyness, the thought of “just being” sounds attractive. I hear people say, “I don’t want to expend any more effort to settle my mind, to be mindful, to be awake. I just want to be.” I understand why this sentiment arises, but we need to be careful. The Buddha’s teaching is a profoundly aspirational one. It points to the deep and transformational possibilities that live in every human heart. The Buddha pointed out that the seeds of liberative understanding and clarity, of kindness and compassion, lie within each of us. And the path to their fruition lies in our commitment. These intentions translate into an embodied way of being. It’s said that the whole of this path rests upon the head of the pin of intention, but “effort” is one of the most frequently used words in the Pali canon. Effort sets us on a path to awakening.

And yet in our practice, we discover how our intentions can slide into becoming another project. So often, I hear the word “work” mentioned these days. Everybody’s working on something! Is this what the practice is about? Be aware of how we translate this desire “to become” into our practice. Have you ever wondered where the end of that work is? If the core sense of self remains unquestioned, it’s always going to find something new to work on. We arrive on retreat with a project of what we have to work on and find ourselves engaged in another quest for identity, worthiness, and meaning with a capital M. We want to be a good meditator. We want a perfectly collected mind and to be eternally mindful, compassionate, and kind. When it’s elusive, we tell ourselves to sit more. But just sitting won’t bring aspiration to embodiment and fulfillment—only understanding and commitment can do that. This includes the commitment to relinquish the endless search for becoming that governs our lives. When that desire “to become” remains empty and unfulfilled, we think, “Maybe it’s just not possible for me.” When we collapse into that exhaustion, then “just being” suddenly looks good.

But we need to be aware of this ideology of “just being,” too. With an attachment to “just being,” how easy it is to yield our hunger for the beautiful and the good. “Just being” can be a yielding to doubt. The toxic companion of the craving to become is the craving for non-becoming. This is when we push away everything that delivers an identity we don’t want: difficult thoughts, bodily experiences, events, and even challenging meditations. We try to annihilate the identity we don’t want, annihilating our sense of aspiration in the process. We flounder and despair, convincing ourselves of impossibility and meaninglessness.

It’s difficult to find an equivalent word for being in Pali. Instead, there are phrases that point to a way of being present and inhabiting this life. One phrase the Buddha uses is “calm abiding” [shamatha]. Another is “equanimity” [upekkha]. He uses the word stillness [passaddhi]. as a way of being present within all moments when there is de-centering of “me,” of self, of identity. These phrases are worthy of deep contemplation and exploration.

When I looked at the camellia, for example, a door opened. I saw what it meant to rest in a quality of profound easefulness where I’m alive and dynamic. There’s a clear sense of not-wanting and sufficiency. The meaningfulness is not in the object—the meaningfulness is in the seeing. Buddhist practice is constantly inviting us to explore that calm abiding. In this way, we may discover that doing and being aren’t so polarized. They work in unison, cooperating to allow a wakeful presence in all the moments and details of our lives. This presence is responsive and creative, a way of being that isn’t born of wanting or not wanting, but of stillness.

Craving “to become” is an impulse that makes us lean forward, away from here, into a better moment, a better self. When we do so, we separate that idealized moment from the actuality of what is just here. It’s only when we learn to end the separation of the possible and the actual that we also learn to end this dichotomy between doing and being. Calm abiding is a present-tense phrase, a way of being in the midst of our lives. We learn to calmly abide in the body, in the mind, in the midst of reactivity. Nothing has to go away. It’s the camellia blooming outside the window again. It’s the shift from the object orientation to the seeing orientation. All of our likes and all of our dislikes, our wanting and not wanting, are born of object orientation. This object orientation—defining identity by objects (including the contents of our consciousness)—limits us. We’ll always have a sense of unease within it.

[IMAGE] The Meaning Between Doing and Being
Beyond the View, No. 2, 2009. © Helen Sear, courtesy Klompching Gallery, New York.

We find ourselves feeling that praise will make me a better self and blame will make me a worse self. A good meditation, whatever that is, says something important about who I am. And a so-called bad meditation really is that: just affirming a sense of unworthiness or failure in capacity. We see how easily we define ourselves by the contents of experience and our minds. In the search for this idealized self, we look at the world through self-referential eyes: “What does this mean to me?” If it means something positive based on the past, my life somehow becomes meaningful. If I look at the world and receive something that challenges or shakes my identity, life becomes impossible and bleak.

Calm abiding is something different. It’s a deep knowing of the ways in which events come and go, both unlovely and lovely. It’s knowing that we can’t control or define ourselves by those events. It’s learning to rest in a non-preferential, non-reactive relationship that is sensitive, receptive, and free from the demand that things go one way or another. Calm abiding is established through intention and commitment. It limits the tide of events and experience. As the Buddha put it, it is knowing “This does not belong to me. This is not who I am. This is not me.”

As we learn to rest in that state of calm abiding amid the river of events and experience, we learn to attend to the details. Leonard Cohen once said, “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light comes in.” By learning to rest in this caring, sensitive, friendly seeing, we get a taste of upekkha, equanimity, which the Buddha uses interchangeably with nibbana, or liberation, in the Udana Sutta. In the Pali canon there is discourse in praise of equanimity where the Buddha says, “For one who clings, motion exists, but for one who does not cling, there is no motion. Where no motion is, there is stillness. Where stillness is, there no craving is, there is neither coming nor going. Where no coming or going is, there is no arising or passing away. There is neither this world, nor a world beyond, nor a state between. This verily is the end of suffering.”

When we rest, we begin to see the interwoven nature of how events and identity bind together through misperception and clinging to create suffering. We learn to unbind from that perpetual contractedness through awareness. We are less prone to launch ourselves into the compulsive and agitated activities of doing and fixing, getting rid of, in the endless search for the ideal self. We learn to befriend not-knowing, to be still and learn responsiveness, and to foster an intention to bring to each moment just what is needed. It doesn’t mean that there are no objects or events, but that we explore the landscape of meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is found not only in the dramatic and the intense but also in the small moments, illuminated by a curious awareness. We discover that meaningfulness is in our being present. We don’t need to seek meaning, but to understand our capacity to be present in this responsive, still way. It’s in how our foot touches the ground, how we meet another person, how we meet ourselves. The camellia is actually enough. There’s nothing as impoverished as the deeply unawakened heart; and nothing enriches us more, and brings more life and meaningfulness, than the awakened heart.

Equanimity

You will receive both praise and blame, but do not let either affect the poise of the mind. ~ Sutta Nipata

Equanimity

Equanimity is being present with whatever is happening without believing your judgements about it. ~ Ezra Bayda

The barn

“Barn's burnt down--now I can see the moon.” 
― Masahide

from a page at goodreads.com