Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Equanimity

"The important thing is that you not get overwhelmed by the fact that things are not going well — because look at human life as a whole. Things don’t go well in human life. The body ages, gets sick, and dies. Nobody wants that, but it happens. We have to develop the kind of habit that’s not fazed by aging, not fazed by illness, not even fazed by death. You try to develop the warrior spirit that’s not overwhelmed by anything. When the battle’s not going well, the people who run away are sure to lose. It’s not that great soldiers never have setbacks. They have setbacks, but they learn how not to get overwhelmed by them. They take them as a challenge. Aging is a setback. Illness is a setback. Death is the ultimate one, but you don’t have to be overwhelmed by it. This is the good news offered by the Buddha: that you can train the mind so that none of these things will faze you. None of them will overwhelm you. So you keep working away and away and away at this habit of b...

"The important thing is that you not get overwhelmed by the fact that things are not going well — because look at human life as a whole. Things don’t go well in human life. The body ages, gets sick, and dies. Nobody wants that, but it happens. We have to develop the kind of habit that’s not fazed by aging, not fazed by illness, not even fazed by death. You try to develop the warrior spirit that’s not overwhelmed by anything. When the battle’s not going well, the people who run away are sure to lose. It’s not that great soldiers never have setbacks. They have setbacks, but they learn how not to get overwhelmed by them. They take them as a challenge. Aging is a setback. Illness is a setback. Death is the ultimate one, but you don’t have to be overwhelmed by it. This is the good news offered by the Buddha: that you can train the mind so that none of these things will faze you. None of them will overwhelm you. So you keep working away and away and away at this habit of being truthful,...

"If you look deep into the mind, you find that there is a quality of just knowingness — that it doesn’t matter what happens, there’s a knowing. Things can come falling down all around you and there’s still that knowing. Our problem is that we identify with all the things that can fall down — that can be shaken, perturbed. And so in the meditation we’re trying to find our way to that spot of unperturbed knowing. Even though it may not be the deathless, it’s a good place to be: good, strong equanimity; a good, solid foundation inside. And we’re taught our lesson about that property of knowingness by looking at the properties in the body. You’ve got the earth, water, fire, the energy of the breath. These are basic properties that let you know that you’ve got a body here. And they’re always there. Sometimes one may be more predominant than the others, but they’re always there all the time. So when you see that the breath is constant — even when it’s still, there’s an element of still ...