Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Equanimity

"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...

"[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"

"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"

"[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"

"In our practice, we try to have goodwill [mettā] for all beings, which means that we not only wish that they be happy, but also that they create the causes for true happiness. Otherwise, the happiness is not going to happen. You have to understand happiness in the context of karma. Our goodwill for all beings doesn’t mean that they will all act in good ways or that they will all be happy. We’re trying to make that our underlying intention as we deal with our own mind, as we deal with other people so that all our actions come from a skillful motivation. An important part of this training is to realize that the opposite of goodwill should not be ill will. In other words, when people are not acting in ways that are conducive to happiness, we don’t have ill will for them. The alternative should be equanimity, which doesn’t mean indifference. It means learning to put certain things aside, learning to put your hopes and preferences aside, and to look at the situation: Wha...

"Two points about limitless equanimity: 1) When skillful, it’s not a generalized indifference to everything. Instead, it’s meant to focus your efforts on areas that will pay off in terms of true happiness. 2) It’s not the goal. Instead, it’s a useful emotion to develop on the way to something much higher and more satisfying." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Meditation in Practice"

"About a year after I returned to America, I was teaching meditation to a group up in Orange County and I gave my first interviews. One of the people in the retreat started her interview out by saying, “Buddhism: It’s all about love isn’t it?” I was taken aback. I said, “Well, no, it’s all about freedom.” She was taken aback. We come from a culture in which love is very highly valued — not only as a social virtue, but also as a religious one. So it’s a little shocking when we come to another tradition where it’s not valued so highly. The Buddha talks about dispassion, disenchantment, equanimity — and to us it sounds cold. But everything in the Buddha’s teachings is put in the service of freedom. As the Buddha once said, all of his teachings have a single taste: the taste of release. This means that all of his teachings on goodwill on the one hand, and equanimity, dispassion, disenchantment on the other, are all put in the service of freedom — realizing, on the one ha...

"[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"

"[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"

"In our practice, we try to have goodwill [mettā] for all beings, which means that we not only wish that they be happy, but also that they create the causes for true happiness. Otherwise, the happiness is not going to happen. You have to understand happiness in the context of karma. Our goodwill for all beings doesn’t mean that they will all act in good ways or that they will all be happy. We’re trying to make that our underlying intention as we deal with our own mind, as we deal with other people so that all our actions come from a skillful motivation. An important part of this training is to realize that the opposite of goodwill should not be ill will. In other words, when people are not acting in ways that are conducive to happiness, we don’t have ill will for them. The alternative should be equanimity, which doesn’t mean indifference. It means learning to put certain things aside, learning to put your hopes and preferences aside, and to look at the situation: What can be done...

 "There are things that we like, things that we don’t like. Even the Buddha: There were things he liked and things he didn’t like. But he learned how to keep his mind from being overwhelmed by them. When people would come to study with him, some of them would listen to him but they wouldn’t follow through with his teaching, and they didn’t get the results. Of course, he didn’t like that. But he said he established mindfulness so that his mind was not overtaken by his sense of dissatisfaction. When the students did follow his teachings, and did gain awakening, it’s not that he didn’t like that. He did like it, but he didn’t allow the sense of satisfaction to overcome his mind. What this means is that the mind has to learn how to look at these things and not get sucked into them." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Caring Without Clinging"

"[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"

"Two points about limitless equanimity: 1) When skillful, it’s not a generalized indifference to everything. Instead, it’s meant to focus your efforts on areas that will pay off in terms of true happiness. 2) It’s not the goal. Instead, it’s a useful emotion to develop on the way to something much higher and more satisfying." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Meditation in Practice"

"About a year after I returned to America, I was teaching meditation to a group up in Orange County and I gave my first interviews. One of the people in the retreat started her interview out by saying, “Buddhism: It’s all about love isn’t it?” I was taken aback. I said, “Well, no, it’s all about freedom.” She was taken aback. We come from a culture in which love is very highly valued — not only as a social virtue, but also as a religious one. So it’s a little shocking when we come to another tradition where it’s not valued so highly. The Buddha talks about dispassion, disenchantment, equanimity — and to us it sounds cold. But everything in the Buddha’s teachings is put in the service of freedom. As the Buddha once said, all of his teachings have a single taste: the taste of release. This means that all of his teachings on goodwill on the one hand, and equanimity, dispassion, disenchantment on the other, are all put in the service of freedom — realizing, on the one hand, that we ...

"[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"

"[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"