Not all equanimity is skillful. Indifference is not skillful; just giving up is not skillful. You have to work on your mind.

"There’s a passage where Ven. Sariputta talks about recollecting the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. And it’s interesting for several reasons: One, he says if you’re being attacked, you should remember the Buddha’s teaching on what to do when you’re attacked. Even if bandits were sawing off your limbs with a two handled saw, you should not have ill will for them. Even for them, you should have goodwill. And so, you should make a resolve, “I’m going to follow the Buddha’s teachings.” And Sariputta says you also try to develop what he called skillful equanimity. Notice he places a condition on it: It has to be skillful.

Not all equanimity is skillful. Indifference is not skillful; just giving up is not skillful, saying, “Well, I’ll just have to accept whatever.” Even if you have to submit physically to danger, you have to work on your mind. And as the Buddha says elsewhere, if there are ways that you can escape the danger, go for them. But you do it in a way that’s skillful. But still, it’s largely a matter of training your mind. And Sariputta talks about four qualities that are worth training in.

You try to develop your mindfulness and keep it relentless. In other words, always keep in mind the Buddha’s teachings on how to deal with hardships. Second, try to make your concentration well-established. Third, develop tranquility, and fourth, put forth effort. It’s interesting that tranquility and effort go together there, but sometimes it requires a lot of effort to remain tranquil in the midst of dangerous situations. So mindfulness, concentration, tranquility, effort — this is how you create a skillful state of equanimity.

This is the equanimity of a warrior who faces the fact that, yes, there are going to be setbacks, there are going to be hardships on the way to victory, but you don’t let your mind get knocked out of alignment because of them. Remember that your primary duty is to maintain the state of your mind, because even if you have to die, the state of the mind is the one thing you’ve got that doesn’t have to be lost when you die. Now, if you let your state of mind get ruined by how you die, you’ve lost everything. You’ve lost your body, and you’ve lost your mind.

So you have to remember what’s important here. Keep your priorities straight. Sariputta goes on to say that if you can’t develop that kind of skillful equanimity, then you should have a sense of apprehension and samvega. Remember, samvega sometimes means dismay, and sometimes it means terror. In a case like this where you’re facing danger, the fact that you cannot maintain your mind — that’s really serious. It’s terrifying. This is a way of motivating even more effort to develop that skillful state of equanimity. So notice: You regard defeat as the real danger, defeat of the state of your mind. And you’ll do everything you can to avoid that. You see it as a real danger. That’s where the real danger in death lies, in the possibility that the state of the mind gets destroyed.

What all this points to is the importance of your mind, and how you should be willing to make other sacrifices for the sake of maintaining the state of your mind, because this is your true belonging. This, Sariputta says, is what it means to recollect the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Facing Danger & Hardship"

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