Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Equanimity

"Remember that when you’re reacting strongly to something outside, or even just reacting to little things that come in throughout the course of the day, it’s not that they’re moving in on you. You’re going out and feeding on them. The earth doesn’t feed. The earth just notices and stays solid. When the breath energy in the body is solid, it helps give you that quality of mind that’s like earth. Again, this doesn’t mean you sit there and just take whatever comes. But you’re in a much better position to see what really needs to be dealt with and what doesn’t, which issues are important and which are not. In particular, you get to see your own mind in action. Because there will be parts of the mind that are still not like earth, and they’ll want to react. But if you can side with the earth side of the mind, you can see those reactions for what they are. See how they’re a waste of energy; see how they muddy up your thinking, muddy up your powers of observation. So when the Buddha talk...

"We often think that equanimity is simply accepting things and having no reaction at all, but that’s not what equanimity means. It means looking at things from a larger perspective and getting a sense of your priorities — i.e., what’s important, what’s not important — and developing equanimity for the unimportant things, where you can’t make a difference, so that you can focus on areas where you can. It also involves reminding yourself that when you do respond to a situation, it’s going to have consequences in the long term, so you want your response to be focused and wise. In order to remind yourself of that fact, the Buddha has you look at the human situation from a larger perspective. One of his passages for dealing with anger against someone is to think, “This person has done something bad to me in the past. But what should I expect?” “This person has done something bad to people I love. What should I expect?” “This person has done something good to people I hate. What should ...

"There’s a story they tell about a monk who once stayed with Ajaan Chah during the rains retreat. Half of the roof of his hut blew off in a rain storm, and as Ajaan Chah was later walking around the monastery to check on the storm damage, he noticed that half of the roof had blown off and that the monk was simply sleeping in that half of the hut that was still roofed. Ajaan Chah asked him, “Why are you doing this? Why aren’t you fixing your hut?” The monk said, ”I’m trying to practice equanimity.” Ajaan Chah’s response was: “That’s not the equanimity that the Buddha taught, that’s the equanimity of a water buffalo,” or we in English would say, it’s the equanimity of a cow. The point here is that the Buddha didn’t teach us just to be passive about things, or just to accept things. The basic concept of the path is the difference between skillful and unskillful, and there are times when simple equanimity is not skillful." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Equanimity of a Cow...

"The teachings on equanimity are there to teach you about action — to take a mature attitude toward your actions, seeing where you’ve made a mistake, where things are not going well, and what you can do to change. One of the definitions of maturity is being able to admit a mistake. If you don’t admit your mistakes, you’re never going to learn from them because you can’t even see them. That closes off all possibility of improvement. So that’s something we have to be equanimous about as well: the fact that we’ve made mistakes. We’ve done unskillful actions, but we have the opportunity right now to do something more skillful. We can learn. So equanimity is not just acceptance and it’s not just passivity. It’s directly related to appropriate attention. If there’s something wrong, look at your intentions. If there’s something wrong, look at what you’re doing. Your intentions may be good, but the means may be wrong. Or your intention may be corrupted and, in that case, no matter how goo...

"If you see there’s an injustice, you want to be effective in putting an end to it: not just lashing out in line with your emotions, but actually finding the right word, finding the right thing to do. And doing it with as much skill as you can. So even though equanimity is encouraged in the practice, passivity is not. It’s not a value in and of itself. Think of it more as a strategy. There are times when you do have to be very still and very quiet, and other times when you should act decisively. Only when the mind is able to develop equanimity whenever it needs it will you be in a position to find out what the decisive action would be, the decisive word would be, because your ability to see the situation is a lot clearer." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Injustice"

"You come across incidents in your life where you can’t gain the happiness you’d like. There’s a karmic block there. So you learn to accept it with equanimity. That doesn’t mean that you give up and become totally passive and indifferent. You look for the areas where your actions can make a difference. Don’t waste your time and energy, butting your head against the wall in areas where you can’t make any change. Focus on the areas where you can. So equanimity is not hopelessness, it’s not passive indifference. It’s there to redirect your energies in the proper direction, to the areas where you can act for your own well-being and for the well-being of others." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "The Sublime Attitudes" (Meditations2)

"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...

"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"

"If you see there’s an injustice, you want to be effective in putting an end to it: not just lashing out in line with your emotions, but actually finding the right word, finding the right thing to do. And doing it with as much skill as you can. So even though equanimity is encouraged in the practice, passivity is not. It’s not a value in and of itself. Think of it more as a strategy. There are times when you do have to be very still and very quiet, and other times when you should act decisively. Only when the mind is able to develop equanimity whenever it needs it will you be in a position to find out what the decisive action would be, the decisive word would be, because your ability to see the situation is a lot clearer." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Injustice"