Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Equanimity

"When we come to the meditation, the Buddha says that when there’s householder distress, you should try to cure it with renunciate distress. That’s a step a lot of us would like to skip. Renunciate distress there is realizing that there is a goal that other people have attained, it is possible, but you’re not there yet, and you think about all that needs to be done. Some people find this so discouraging that they aim for equanimity as something halfway between householder and renunciate joy, but they’re actually going back to householder equanimity. They comfort themselves with the idea that “Maybe there’s nothing to attain” or “If I try to have an attainment, I’m creating suffering and stress for myself right now. I’m getting upset over something I can’t see, so I might as well learn how to accept the way things are.” They try to anesthetize themselves to the distress, and end up with a very calm state, but again, it isn’t solidly based. It needs constant shoring up. You see th...

"The same with equanimity in the brahmaviharas: You start with goodwill [mettā] and compassion and empathetic joy. You don’t go straight to equanimity, because feelings of goodwill are nourishing. Feelings of compassion are nourishing. Feelings of empathetic joy: When you realize that you don’t need to feed on resentment anymore, you can actually feed off the happiness of other people. All of these attitudes are uplifting for the mind. But they have to be backed up by equanimity, and the equanimity needs them, too. Otherwise it gets dry. The reason they need to be backed up by equanimity is because often when you see people who are suffering, or other times when you are suffering and you can’t do anything about it, you can’t let yourself get worked up. Or there are cases where you see that people are happy, but you realize it’s not going to last. You realize there are cases where you have pleasures and happiness that are not going to last, and you have to meet that fact with equ...

Question: For Westerners, equanimity is often given a bad rap. It’s seen as kind of a sense of futility, a passive attitude, indifference, or even a weakness. Is this true? Can you give us some examples that would show that there is actually a noble, better understanding of this noble faculty? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Equanimity is basically accepting things that you realize you cannot change. And the reason why we have to accept them is because if we don’t, we waste a lot of energy trying to change things that we can’t. If you do develop equanimity toward those things, though, then you have the energy to change the things that you can. For example, suppose that someone in your family has a serious illness. You have to accept that fact with equanimity, and then from there you try to see what you can do to help. The acceptance is what allows you to think clearly. If you’re upset or disturbed by the illness, sometimes you actually make the condition worse. So, we’re not talking about a gene...

"Human history is filled with people doing disagreeable things. So drop the perception that you or your loved ones are being especially victimized. Mistreatment is a common thing, and anger is not going to help you deal with it effectively. You’ve got to clear your head if you want your response to injustice to have a good effect. So try to develop some equanimity around the fact that injustice is universal, and then see what you can do most effectively in response to this particular instance of it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "With Each & Every Breath: A Guide to Meditation"

"There’s the equanimity that’s part of the four brahmavihāras. This is the kind of equanimity that functions well together with goodwill [mettā] and compassion. You might call it the equanimity of a good doctor. Every good doctor has goodwill and compassion for the patient and wants the patient to be cured, but may find that there are some symptoms he cannot cure. But he doesn’t give up totally on the patient. He develops equanimity toward the symptoms he can’t cure so that he can focus on those he can — or at least on ways in which he can alleviate the patient’s pain and suffering. Instead of trying to force things in areas where he cannot make a difference, he channels his goodwill and compassion for the patient in other ways that are more fruitful and productive. In this way, he doesn’t waste his time and energy on areas where he cannot give help so that he will have the time and energy to focus on areas where he can be of help." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Good Heart, Goo...

"Equanimity is sometimes taught with a defeatist attitude. A defeatist attitude says, basically, that there’s no lasting happiness to be found in the world, so you might as well give up trying to find it. Just learn to accept things as they are and don’t hope for them to be better than what they are. When you give up on your search for happiness, you can be equanimous and content with what you’ve got. That, as I said, is a defeatist attitude. It’s equanimity tinged with regret, disappointment, and a sense of powerlessness. It’s heavy and narrow, a contentment found by lowering your standards for satisfaction. We bow down to the Buddha, though, because he actually has us raise our standards for satisfaction, to accept nothing less than the ultimate happiness. There’s nothing defeatist in his attitude at all. In fact, he called the noble eightfold path the path to victory: You can find a happiness that’s not subject to aging, illness, and death, that’s totally free of sorrow. You wi...

"There are some ideas about equanimity going around that give it a bad name. One is the idea that if you fight your negative emotions, fight your defilements, it’s going to be stressful — and the Buddha taught us not to cause stress, right? — so we shouldn’t put up a fight. That’s what they say. They tell you to develop equanimity around the fact that you’ve got greed, aversion, and delusion. These emotions come and go, and you learn to be okay with that, and learn to let go of any desire for anything better than this. As Ajaan Lee would say, that’s letting go like a pauper. You don’t have anything and you tell yourself, “Well, I’ll just let go of all that wealth that somebody else has.” You don’t gain anything from that, and you stay poor. You could also call it the equanimity of a loser, except that when you don’t even put up a fight, it’s hard to say that you’ve lost." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Equanimity of a Winner" (Meditations11)

"Through the practice of meditation, find which spot is your spot in the body, the spot that you can keep calm, the spot where you feel at home. Learn to treasure that spot. Learn to keep after it, keep looking after it. And when necessary, learn to hide out there. As that passage on equanimity reminds us, there are certain times where it’s simply the force of karma that the situations are going to be bad. There’s not much you can do about them. But the important things are that you maintain your equanimity and learn how to hide out. Come out when there are times you actually can make a difference, so that you don’t waste your energy on unnecessary battles." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Hunker Down"

"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." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Facing Danger & Hardship"

"[An awakened person] feels sympathy for others and seeks their well-being, experiencing a sense of satisfaction when they respond to [his/her] teachings, but otherwise [he/she] stays equanimous, untroubled, mindful, and alert. This passage shows that the even-mindedness of a fully awakened person is an attitude not of cold indifference, but rather of mental imperturbability. Such a person has found true happiness and would like others to share that happiness as well, but that happiness is not dependent on how others respond. This is the ideal state of mind for a person who truly works for the benefit of the world." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Wings to Awakening"

Question: I’ve come to meditation to help me bear the atrocities of the world. What is awakening? Is it a moment of conscience when one embraces all the sorrows of the world, and in that case means hello to all sorrows or is it on the contrary a state of total forgetfulness and egotism, in that case it would be hello to guilt? So, which is it? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Neither. Remember the image of feeding. Ordinarily, we feed on the world, both physically and mentally, in order to gain happiness and maintain our identity as beings. But when you gain full awakening, the mind no longer needs to feed because it already has enough in terms of its own happiness. When you’ve reached that state, you can engage in the world without having to feed on it. You can help those whom you can help, and you don’t have to suffer in cases where you can’t help. In this way, you’re neither embracing the sorrows of the world nor are you running away from them. Instead you have a different relati...

"We need equanimity in order to deal with difficult situations, but you don’t want to be equanimous about everything that comes along, “You know, the mind isn’t getting concentrated, well, I’ll be equanimous about it. Greed has moved in: I’ll be equanimous about it." Well, that doesn’t work. When things outside aren’t going well, the Buddha doesn’t say to replace them with more pleasant things outside or an I-don’t-care equanimity. He says to remind yourself that the real work, the real problem is inside. Replace householder grief with what he calls renunciate grief. In other words, when the situation outside is bad, you remind yourself that the real problem is not the situation outside. It’s the fact that you still have work to be done inside. That’s why you’re suffering. So that’s a case where you just can’t be equanimous about everything. This doesn’t mean that when situations aren’t going well outside that the other person may not be at fault. But the quest...

"In another sutta — Majjhima 137 — the Buddha talks about different ways of relating to pain, pleasure, and equanimity. There’s the pain, pleasure, and equanimity of a householder on the one side, and the pain, pleasure, and equanimity of a renunciate on the other. The pain of a householder is not getting what you want in terms of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and mental events. That’s householder pain. The pleasure of a householder is getting what you want in terms of the six senses. The equanimity of a householder is being determined that your mind will not be affected by any of the input of the six senses. Now, for most of us when we encounter householder pain, we try to find householder pleasures. But the Buddha said that a more skillful way of dealing with householder pain when you meet with it, is to go for renunciate pain, which is what I mentioned before: the desire to reach the goal, which at the moment is painful because you’re not there yet. The sa...

"When you decide that you don’t agree with society’s values, learn to do it in a way that’s not confrontational. After all, you’re going your own way. You’re not a permanent earthling. You’re not here to settle down for good. You’re here primarily to practice, to train your mind. If, having trained your mind, you can help other people, that’s fine. But if you can’t, make sure that at least you get your own mind in shape." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An Anthropologist from Mars"

"We hear about awakened people who are extremely equanimous. But it’s not the case that the equanimity is the essence of their attainment. After all, the Buddha didn’t say nirvana is the ultimate equanimity. He said it’s the ultimate happiness. But the fact that awakened people have a basis for their happiness that doesn’t depend on conditions: That allows them to look at conditioned reality with a lot more equanimity. They’re not trying to feed on it anymore; they don’t need it for their happiness. So the equanimity is a byproduct." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Equanimity Isn't Everything"

"No matter how much you feel that your desire to straighten other people out is a good desire, you’re looking in the wrong place. Remember the acrobats. You have to maintain your balance and in doing so, you help other people maintain theirs. If you’re reaching over to straighten out their balance, you’re leaning over. And of course, when you’re leaning over, it causes other people to lean over as well, and everybody falls down. Always remember that the problem is inside." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Look at Yourself"

"In the Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness,  you’re told at the first stage to subdue greed and distress with regard to the world: vineyya loke abhijjha-domanassam . In other words, you may not be able to stop these various worlds from happening in the present moment, but you can work at subduing any greed or distress with regard to them as they come through. In other words, try to be as equanimous as possible, as uninvolved as possible in the process. Stay with the breath as much as you consciously can. As you keep this up, after a while the storms begin to calm down. Then, if you’re holding onto the breath consistently enough, you can begin to see things a bit more precisely. You see more and more how much you’re conspiring with those various worlds coming in. But the initial principle is that whatever conscious decisions you’re making, make sure they’re decisions to stay with the breath. At the very least, don’t get involved in other things that come along, even if th...

"Karma’s in charge." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu From: "Happiness – Yours & Others’" by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Question: Dear Ajaan, could you please explain equanimity again? What is meditation on equanimity and how to practice it? Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Basically, equanimity is maintaining a stable emotional state with regard to things that are either very good or very bad. As a meditation practice, you can think of situations in your life where things are not going the way you want them to and you can’t do anything about them. You have to learn how to be equanimous toward them by reminding yourself that if you allow yourself to get upset by things of that sort, your mind won’t be clear enough to deal with the areas where you could make a difference. The traditional way of developing equanimity is to think of situations in the world that are beyond your control. Then remind yourself that the situations depend on the kamma of the people involved. In many cases, the nature of kamma is such that you cannot help them right now. This could be attributed either to their kamma or to your...

"There are times when you look around in your ordinary equanimity and it’s kind of narrow and confining. You’re accepting things even though you really don’t want to. You’ve got to give the mind a sense of joy, a sense of well-being, if you want your equanimity to be healthy. You can find it through insight, you can find it through concentration. Different people will find it in different ways, but there’s a certain range that everybody will have to go through. Some people emphasize the insight first; other people emphasize the concentration first. But look for ways to develop that sense of well-being in the mind. That creates a different kind of equanimity. It’s not forced on you. It comes from finding something better than what you’ve had all along. That’s why it’s safe." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Acceptance & Equanimity"