When attachment does not occur when someone gives flowers, and no abhorrence occurs when someone throws stones, that is considered equanimity.
— DADA BHAGAWAN
When I first started to practice meditation, I brought along old misinterpretations of my early Catholic faith. I had learned from my churchgoing days the view of “‘being in the world but not of it.” That is a beautiful and elusive teaching. Hearing the Buddha’s teaching on renunciation sounded surprisingly familiar. I mistakenly took it as license to unconsciously reject things in myself I thought the church considered unholy. This led me to reject the wilder, passionate, unruly parts of my being. Unfortunately, that meant I also cut off the playful and creative parts of myself, which included abruptly ending my phase as a spirited punk rocker, someone who made his own gaudy clothes, dyed his mohawk white, wore crazy earrings, and squatted in empty houses. That vivacious, wild side got sadly buried.
I let go of a lot in order to become what I thought was a “good Buddhist,” which repeated my youthful attempts to win approval by being a “good Christian.” I shut down parts of myself to fulfill some false notion of being calm and collected, of what I imagined detachment and equanimity to be. But what I really engaged in was repression and what some call a “spiritual bypass.” This led to long years where my vitality went underground. It wasn’t until I went to Burning Man in the deserts of Nevada that I rediscovered that more creative, playful, and wild part of myself.
People often equate equanimity with being uncaring or coolness, as if it means becoming like a cold statue, like the ones we may see in temples and monasteries. Far from being aloof, equanimity refers to a connected presence that allows us to meet any experience with grounded balance. It’s the steadiness of heart that helps us not get lost in reactivity. Given the ceaseless demands and challenges of life, who wouldn’t want that quality?
Mindfulness meditation is like a training ground in which we get to practice how to meet an extensive range of experience in our body, heart, and mind. We sit still and bear witness to whatever happens, with the intention to be present with curiosity and openness. That is not as easy as it sounds, given the intensity of physical pain that can happen, or the waves of grief that flow, or the anxious, frenetic thoughts that can assault us.
Typically, when we don’t like what is happening in life, we try to avoid it, ignore it, or do something else, like switching TV channels. This habit can leave us with an impatient mind, unwilling to tolerate even the mildest unpleasantness. As my friend and colleague Howard Cohn amusingly asks students during his lectures: “What is it we practice in daily life? Follow every thought, chase every desire, get rid of everything you don’t like, avoid pain, and try to control experiences and people around you!” Not only is this exhausting, it is impossible. It fails to equip us to respond appropriately to life. It does not prepare us for things we have no control over, like our variable health, the rapidly changing economy, the instability of relationships, and the uncertainty of our work.
Mindfulness offers a different orientation, one that develops a steady heart to face life’s inevitable ups and downs. This balanced attention helps us respond to what are known as the “eight worldly winds.” These are the polarities of experience that are inherent in life: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, success and failure, and praise and blame. These storms are forever blowing and create uncertainty at every step. They make it hard to find stable ground, since they represent the unpredictable, changing fortunes of experience, and not a day goes by when we don’t experience one or more. In Zen, the perennial highs and lows of experience are called the “ten thousand joys and sorrows.” They remind me of a poem by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova:
Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold.
Death’s great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Then why do we not despair?
By day, from the surrounding woods,
Cherries blow summer into town;
At night the deep transparent skies
Glitter with new galaxies.
Life is this fluctuating sea of change. It is rarely just one thing or the other. It is seldom just wretched or exquisite but often both and everything in between, even in the space of one day or a single moment.
We can see this polarity everywhere we look. There is beauty and horror in the lives of children, whether they come from the wealthiest families or the poorest. People can be magnificently kind and coldly cruel to one another. The economy surges and crashes on a dime. Love blooms only to be followed by betrayal. As one species is saved from extinction, another is lost. One minute we are praised for our accomplishments, and in the next we are torn down for our mistakes.
How do we manage this constant array of swings and roundabouts, of highs and lows? We can do so through equanimity, the principle of meeting all experience with balance. In mindfulness practice we learn to turn toward the truth of what is with clarity and acceptance, similar to the way rocks on the shoreline stand steady, unmoving, against the relentless onslaught of the waves. That quality of steadfastness is informed by the wisdom that knows that, however intense experience can be, it is transient and can change in any moment.
Research seems to support this notion. In one 2007 study, researchers found that people who had even minimal experience with mindfulness practice were more capable of dealing with pain than people with no training. The study suggested that mindfulness practitioners were more aware of pain’s fleeting nature and more able to release any distress that came with it.
Similarly, by embracing both joy and sorrow, we grow our capacity to be with either. Being able to enjoy pleasure knowing full well that it will fade is what also allows us to meet pain, for we know that it too will change, morph, and release. Equanimity does not mean we turn away, become numb, or are indifferent. It means we delight in the joys of spring daffodils and the first steps of our children, and we also have some capacity to embrace the pain of losing a loved one and the decline of our health as we age. Equanimity doesn’t necessarily make painful things easy, but it’s the understanding that to resist or contract around pain simply makes matters worse.
In the same way, this balanced presence holds lightly all the praise that comes our way, not letting it go to our head or inspire us to build a new identity around it. For we know too well that just as praise comes, critique or blame may be close on its heels. The more we build our pedestal on the shaky foundation of praise, the farther we will fall when it inevitably fades. Similarly, our pride can bloom with the fame that comes with success, only to have our name later smeared by some accusation.
Equanimity looks upon this whole show of life with the gaze of a grandmother watching her grandchildren play. She sees how they squeal with delight, fight with vengeance, and cry with loss all in the space of an hour, yet with the wisdom of age and perspective, she gazes upon them all fondly. She has strong feelings, and she takes appropriate action to help solve problems, correct mistakes, and discipline misbehavior. But under all of those feelings and responses, she sees the big picture: the nature of this world is unceasing change, ups and downs, and her grandchildren need love and guidance to help meet this reality.
This is equanimity, the balance that guides amidst the turbulence of life. What erodes our ability to abide in such a state? Most commonly, it is our resistance to or rejection of what is, when we are attached to a view that something is unfair or wrong or “should not” be happening. Or we are caught in blaming and judging someone or something for the problem. Many things in life can seem unfair or cruel, such as childhood cancer or a car accident killing a loved one. However, nature or the universe is neither fair nor just. It simply moves in accordance with natural laws. Sometimes the most innocent are harmed, the most generous lose everything, and the most loving lose the very people they cherish.
Equanimity asks us to meet such hardships with acceptance and discernment, since complaints and resistance can be counterproductive. This does not mean our response should be passive. Nor does it mean we tolerate anything that is harmful to self or others or the planet. Of course, the appropriate response to tragedy and intense pain includes helping and caring in all the ways we can — whether the misfortune is ours or someone else’s, and whether what happens is fair or not. Indeed, focusing on “unfairness” can lead to a sense of victimization or hopelessness, which can make us less able to respond.
Further, equanimity doesn’t mean that we like what has happened, that we want it to have happened, or that we ever want to experience it again. It simply asks that we turn our attention toward, and unconditionally allow, the truth of our experience. From that clarity, we can then respond wisely and appropriately.
Lastly, we can also bring equanimity to our own resistance and judgment, which at times are unavoidable. When equanimity is not our first response to pain, we can practice and learn to be tolerant and accepting of our own limitations. We can acknowledge our reaction, bring warm attention to what is hard and unwanted, and let this compassionate attitude ease the suffering that arises from our reactivity.
By riding with life’s ups and downs, we learn to act with fluidity in the same way water flows downstream. As water encounters obstacles, it adapts, yields, and shifts in an ever-responsive movement. The poet Wendell Berry wisely wrote: “It is the impeded stream that sings.” Without the obstacles, creeks would not make the delightful sounds we so enjoy. The same is perhaps true with life. It is so often the hard places that encourage us to grow and find the strengths, tenacity, and gifts we may have believed we never had.
• PRACTICE •
This meditation explores developing equanimity. To do so, we practice meeting what is with balance, steadiness, and acceptance. This doesn’t mean we like or want what we meet or that our response is passive. But equanimity asks that we first open to whatever exists.
To begin, sit comfortably, take some deep breaths, and settle your attention on your posture and physical experience. Invite a quality of relaxation and ease. Then call to mind something hard in your life that you resist. Anything is fine: conflict with a partner or coworker, aches in your body, political or societal dramas, or even bad weather. Call this issue to mind and explore this experience. What do you notice in your mind, heart, and body? Let yourself feel both the experience that is difficult and your reaction to it.
Now become present to your own awareness. Observe how that presence is like a space that makes room for an experience to unfold. When we can abide in awareness, rather than get caught up in the experience itself and our reaction to it, it allows breathing room to accommodate whatever is happening. This is like a child’s inflatable castle. Inside the walls of the castle, experience happens. Kids can scream and be as wild as they like, and it is all accommodated.
Then notice your thoughts or views about the difficult experience. Pay attention to judgments (I shouldn’t have let this happen) and a sense of injustice (What’s happening is unfair). Such beliefs compound the difficulty and only add fuel to the fire of reactivity. Hold these thoughts in awareness and try to let them go, then return your attention to the actual experience.
See if you can let your attention be fully present without these views interfering. Simply witness the experience rather than resist or avoid it, and notice if this makes it easier to be with. You may never like it, but you may find more capacity to hold it. And if there is resistance, know that you can bring the same spacious awareness to that experience also. Imagine your mind is like the sky and has the capacity to hold any cloud-like experience.
Then remember that every experience is fleeting and transient and will eventually change, no matter how painful or challenging. Reflecting on impermanence is an important support for developing a steady heart. This helps develop tolerance. Thinking that pain will last forever makes it much harder to accept, but understanding that nothing lasts helps us be less reactive and more patient with difficulty.
The final key is to bring kindness to the difficulty. Try to bring a warm, friendly attitude to this experience. Notice how that can melt some of the rigidity or contraction that arises with reacting to what is hard to bear.
As you bring this practice to a close, make a commitment to apply these principles to any reactivity or challenging situation that occurs during your day. Notice how this approach can increase your capacity to stay steady in the midst of any experience.
• • •