Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Equanimity

"About a year after I returned to America, I was teaching meditation to a group up in Orange County and I gave my first interviews. One of the people in the retreat started her interview out by saying, “Buddhism: It’s all about love isn’t it?” I was taken aback. I said, “Well, no, it’s all about freedom.” She was taken aback. We come from a culture in which love is very highly valued — not only as a social virtue, but also as a religious one. So it’s a little shocking when we come to another tradition where it’s not valued so highly. The Buddha talks about dispassion, disenchantment, equanimity — and to us it sounds cold. But everything in the Buddha’s teachings is put in the service of freedom. As the Buddha once said, all of his teachings have a single taste: the taste of release. This means that all of his teachings on goodwill on the one hand, and equanimity, dispassion, disenchantment on the other, are all put in the service of freedom — realizing, on the one hand, that we ...

"The equanimity of the Buddha is the equanimity that says, “Things may be going poorly but I’m not going to let that sap my strength. I’m going to figure out what *can* be done here.” Simply accept the fact that things go well sometimes and not so well other times, and look inside to find strength in either situation. That’s strong equanimity or the equanimity of strength — which means, of course, that if you’re going to develop that kind of equanimity, you have to strengthen yourself." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Equanimity that Doesn't Give Up"

"The reflection on everyone’s karma is also a reflection to induce equanimity for the things that you can’t change, particularly the things that you’ve already done in the past or the results of things that you’ve done in the past. Not only things that you’ve done, but also things that other people have done. There are people who you want to help but you can’t help them because of their karma. Sometimes you can’t help them because of your karma. So instead of banging your head against the wall, against things you can’t change, you learn to regard them with equanimity, and look around to see, “Well, what CAN I change?” " ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Faith in Karma"

"The Buddha never told us just to sit there and accept things. You accept the way things function in terms of your actions and then you train the mind to use that principle of cause and effect to create a path. The equanimity is part of that path, but it’s not the whole path — and it’s not the goal. Recently I heard of a monk trained in the forest tradition saying that equanimity was the goal and we’re here to arrive at right view, accepting the fact that everything is inconstant, arises and passes away, and just be okay with that — which is appalling. The Buddha never taught that, nor did the great ajaans. His images, their images, for people on the path are never images of people who just sit back and accept. They’re people who are searching, people who are engaged in a battle, people who are trying to develop skills. Now, equanimity has a role in developing a skill. It has a role in battles. It has a role in searches. In other words, you look and look and look and when you don’...

"Then there’s also the reflection on equanimity: All beings are the owners of their actions. This is our reality check, because we realize that the suffering of the world is just too much for us to go out and solve entirely. There are limits on our time and our energy, and we have no control over other people. After all, people are going to be happy, they’re going to suffer, based on their actions . Even in a small group of people, you can’t get everybody to agree on what the path to happiness is going to be. Or even if they do agree, you can’t get everybody to practice the way you think they should practice. The world is going to go its way. We can either make that a source of suffering or we can decide that we have to accept that fact and then focus on what we can accomplish. After all, the Buddha couldn’t teach everybody. There were lots of people who would listen to him and didn’t agree and went off their own way. But he did something really remarkable. Instead of letting tha...

"You forgive people for being different. And not just different: There are people who really do have ill will; there are people who really are motivated by very unskillful desires. You have to accept that that’s part of the human realm. But you can’t let that aggravate the mind. You realize that’s their business. It’s a sorry thing that that’s the way they are. If you can help them change their ways, you try. But if they’re resistant to your help, you just have to let them go. Work on developing wisdom in your own attitude. Just because someone else’s been unskillful is not an excuse for you to be unskillful, too — and it’s also not an excuse for you to get your mind all worked up. You’ve got to look after the quality of your mind, because the quality of your mind is what determines what you’re going to do. If you let other people’s attitudes infect your attitude, you’re behaving irresponsibly. So think in those terms until you get the mind ready to settle down." ~ Thanissaro...

"Realize that the kind of speech that human beings engage in is sometimes well meaning and sometimes not well meaning. Sometimes it’s true and sometimes it’s false. Sometime it’s gentle; sometimes it’s harsh. Sometimes it’s outrageous. So when someone says something outrageous to you, that’s not the first time that’s happened in the world. You’re not the only person who’s being subjected to that. Everybody, even the Buddha, was subjected to criticism – totally unfair. Just chalk that up to the fact that you were born as a human being and this is the kind of stuff that human beings are subject to. This reflection is not meant to make you totally passive, but at least it gets you emotionally out of the issue. Then you can look at it from a more objective standard. What would be an effective thing to say right now?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Deconstruct Your Emotions"