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...

"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...

"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"

"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"

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"

"There’s a real lightness that comes from being able to find happiness simply sitting here breathing. It means that your happiness is dependent on very few contingencies. The people with money, the people with investments, are the ones who have to read the newspapers every day to figure out what’s safe, what’s not safe out there in the world. But if your investment is in the skills of the mind, then no matter what the situation, you’re secure." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Wilderness Wealth"

"We’ve all made mistakes in the past, but we’ve all done some good things, too. Focus on the good things. Those are what give you strength to keep on doing more good things. If you focus on the bad things you’ve done, you just start spiraling down and it’s hard to pull yourself up. So focus on the good that you’ve done. Dedicate that to your future, dedicate that to the people you’ve harmed in the past, so that you can live in this world without a sense that you’ve got a big debt. You’re working on paying off your debts, so work at it every day, every day." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Focus on the Good"

"It’s interesting that Ajaan Lee focuses on what other people say as one of the tests for a mind that’s really at peace. The Buddha makes a similar point in one of the Dhammapada verses. “If, when other people say harsh things to you and you don’t reverberate — like a cracked gong — that’s a sign that you’ve attained true peace of mind.” This might seem strange. Why does the test lie in how you react to what other people say? The mind is very sensitive to this issue. We learn very early in our lives that our happiness is going to depend on how other people treat us. As children, we’re surrounded by people a lot more powerful than we are, so there’s always a sense of fear built into our relationships to the people around us. We become sensitive to other people’s moods, sensitive to what they might do, what they might say. As a result, our center of gravity is placed outside because we’re afraid of them, and we try to put up a wall outside ourselves to protect ourselves from them....

"So when you extend thoughts of goodwill [mettā] to others, you’re not thinking, “May you be happy doing whatever you’re doing.” You’re thinking, “May you understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” This is an attitude you can extend to all beings, without hypocrisy, regardless of how they’ve behaved in the past. Now, in some cases — where people have been particularly cruel — this may be difficult. You might feel that justice requires that they suffer first before they change their ways. But you have to remind yourself that people rarely see the connection between their misbehavior and their suffering, so wishing for them to suffer — even when it seems to serve the cause of justice — would rarely foster the causes for true happiness in the world. It’s better to wish that people come to their senses and have a change of heart on their own, and that you’d be willing to aid them in that process in whatever way you can. After all, wouldn’t you...

"The fourth brahma-vihāra is equanimity. Equanimity is expressed in a different manner from the other three. The first three are expressed with the phrase, “May all beings be happy” and “May they do this” and “May they do that.” In other words, it’s a wish. Equanimity is expressed by a statement of fact. “All living beings are the owners of their actions, heir to their actions, and so forth.” This is not a wish; it’s a statement of fact. There’s no “may” there at all. Equanimity is the appropriate emotion to feel when you see that there are beings who are doing things that will cause suffering and that no matter what you do, they will not stop. Or they are suffering from something in their past actions, and no matter how hard you try to help them you cannot stop that suffering. This is when the Buddha has you reflect on the fact of kamma: All beings are owners of their actions, and there are some cases where their actions prevent you from helping them or your own lack of skill p...

"Sometimes we’re told that in our practice of meditation, and in our approach to practice of the Buddha’s teachings as a whole, we shouldn’t be attached to results. Now, this statement can be taken in a wrong way and a right way. The wrong way would be that we don’t care about the results, that we just do what we want to do and let the chips fall where they may, convinced in the rightness of our intentions. That’s a recipe for disaster, because one of the first things we have to learn is that we can’t totally trust our intentions. After all, we’re here to learn what our intentions are, and the best way for testing them is to see how they bear out in action, what results they give. If something seems like a good intention, you follow it, and then you watch to see what the results are. Many times the results turn out different from what you expected, in which case there was something wrong with the intention. It wasn’t skillful enough. So this statement of not being attached to the ...

"If you have trouble feeling goodwill [mettā] for yourself, ask yourself why. You might respond, “Well, I’m not a good person,” or whatever, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not because people are good that you spread goodwill to them. It’s because you don’t want to harm them. And this desire should apply to yourself as well." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Unsentimental Goodwill"

"The more limited, the more narrow our concerns are, the bigger the sufferings in life are going to seem, and the more overwhelming. If we’re going to work on them, we have to make sure they don’t seem so overwhelming. We have to make our mind larger than they are so they don’t consume all our attention. Think about other beings: They have their sufferings as well. They want happiness as well. So in one sense, we’re all in this together, and you have to think about how your sufferings fit in with the rest of the sufferings of the world. To what extent are you actually causing other people to suffer? Also, remember that there are a lot of people out there who are suffering a lot more than you are right now. Even though you don’t feel their sufferings, at least it’s important to remember them to get a sense of perspective on where you are and what your problems are so that you can tackle them with more confidence — realizing as you’re sitting here meditating, it’s not just your iss...

"It’s easy to be equanimous about some things but not about others. If a stranger in foreign land gets sick, you may feel a little compassion, but it’s easy for the mind to switch to equanimity: This is the way of the world. It happens every day. But if someone you deeply love gets sick, it’s hard to stay equanimous. Yet at times like that, if you really want to be of help to that person, you have to develop some equanimity, to get the mind to calm down so that you can think clearly about what’s the most helpful thing to do." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Sublime Determinations: a Retreat on the Brahmavihāras"

"There’s also resolve on non-ill will: in other words, resolve on goodwill [mettā] or equanimity, as may be appropriate, trying to have goodwill for all, even people who are really difficult. The purpose of this is to pull you out of the different sides of conflicts in a way that’s not escapist, in a way that actually is good for the people involved in the conflict. If you can help get them out, too, then you’re happy to do it." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Birth is Suffering"

"When you’re dealing with other people, there are going to be a lot of things you don’t like. You can’t let your likes and dislikes get in the way of your doing what’s skillful. If you treat the people you like well but treat the people you dislike in a shabby way, that becomes your karma. It’s not good for you. So you have to remember, you’re not treating people well because they deserve it. You’re treating people well because it’s part of your training. It’s part of your safety, your protection. The Buddha talks again and again about goodwill [mettā] as a form of protection. And goodwill always has to be accompanied by equanimity, just as equanimity has to be accompanied by goodwill. If we have just equanimity without the goodwill, we become indifferent, callous. We become apathetic. There’s that great story of the storm that went through Ajaan Chah’s monastery once. The next day, Ajaan Chah went around the monastery checking up on the damage, and he found one monk sitting in a...

"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...