Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Equanimity

"As we go through life, we have to develop a lot of equanimity. But the Buddha said there’s what he calls household equanimity, where you have to will yourself to be equanimous, and then there’s renunciate equanimity, which comes from getting the mind firmly concentrated. Ajaan Fuang would make a distinction between what he called small-hearted equanimity and large-hearted. Small-hearted is when you basically give up on things: You don’t see anything better, and you don’t see that things are worth getting worked up about. It’s a mild form of depression, and that’s not what we want. We want equanimity that comes from a sense of being solidly based: The energy needs in the body are satisfied; your alertness is full, spreads wide around, doesn’t feel much restriction at all — just that need to stay balanced. ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Steps in Concentration"

"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...

"Most of us spend our lives feeding off our moods, looking for happy moods because those are the fun ones to feed on. But once you’ve put the mind in a position of feeding off its moods, you find that it’s got a lot of other things to feed on as well, such as depression or sorrow. Once you create that kind of mouth and stomach for the mind, hoping to feed off the good moods, it’s open to take in the sad moods as well. This happens in your daily life and in your meditation, too. The reason we keep doing this is because we feel that moods at least create the spice of life. If the mind didn’t have moods, we’d feel like we were robots. The idea of a mind without moods sounds like oatmeal nothing added to it, i.e. pretty miserable, pretty dull. But stop and think about the dangers of our moods. They can induce us to do all kinds of unskillful things. If we get really depressed, we get apathetic. Nothing seems to matter — you lose any sense of concern for the results of you...

"And equanimity, too, is something you have to will — the ability to stay unperturbed with the things you like and the things you don’t like; not getting excited when things go well, not getting depressed when they don’t. In other words, you train yourself to have a certain amount of independence. Discernment is needed to perfect and understand this quality, and the equanimity helps foster the discernment, allowing you to see things more clearly, as well. The two qualities go hand-in-hand. There are times in the meditation where you do simply have to sit and watch. Some of your defilements really will go away just when you watch them — but not all of them. One of the points of developing equanimity is so you begin to see where the difference lies. So the Buddha is not recommending a blanket passivity here. He’s telling you to develop equanimity when it’s appropriate. You develop equanimity when you need to see things that you don’t yet understand. When you understand, sometimes eq...

"We’re here to arrive at the ultimate happiness. Equanimity, as part of the path, helps get you there. But it’s not the whole path, and it’s not the essence of where we want to go. Always keep these points in mind so that you can develop the skillful kind of equanimity that helps you. Stay away from the unskillful kinds: the kinds that are lazy or defeatist or — in Ajaan Fuang’s terminology — the small-hearted equanimity that just gets depressed and gives up. Those are not the equanimities that the Buddha was teaching. He was teaching large-hearted equanimity, in Ajaan Fuang’s phrase, that has space for the effort that needs to be put into the practice. And happiness is going to result, both along the way and when you arrive at the goal." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Equanimity as a Skill" (Meditations10)

"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...

"Most of us spend our lives feeding off our moods, looking for happy moods because those are the fun ones to feed on. But once you’ve put the mind in a position of feeding off its moods, you find that it’s got a lot of other things to feed on as well, such as depression or sorrow. Once you create that kind of mouth and stomach for the mind, hoping to feed off the good moods, it’s open to take in the sad moods as well. This happens in your daily life and in your meditation, too. The reason we keep doing this is because we feel that moods at least create the spice of life. If the mind didn’t have moods, we’d feel like we were robots. The idea of a mind without moods sounds like oatmeal nothing added to it, i.e. pretty miserable, pretty dull. But stop and think about the dangers of our moods. They can induce us to do all kinds of unskillful things. If we get really depressed, we get apathetic. Nothing seems to matter — you lose any sense of concern for the results of your actions. Wh...