Thanissaro Bhikkhu on Equanimity

"The second form of right resolve is to get rid of ill-will, which is the desire to see other people suffer. You have to look at why you would want them to suffer, and how you justify that desire to yourself. Go down the list of people you would like to see suffer and ask yourself: “What would you gain from their suffering?” There may be thoughts of revenge or thoughts of justice, you might say. It’s not fair that these people get away with all the horrible things they’re doing in the world. But why do you have to get involved in that? Why do you have to be the one who’s passing judgment on others in that way? It enflames the mind. There’s no real happiness there at all. And it leads you eventually to doing unskillful things. When the Buddha talks about developing thoughts of goodwill [mettā], it’s precisely because you need that motivation to nourish your own good actions. You want to be happy and you realize your happiness cannot depend on the misery of other people. So you ha...

"As the Buddha said, “You don’t go to heaven or hell because of other people’s actions. You go because of your own actions.” Those can take you to heaven; they can take you to hell. So why are you taking yourself to hell? And why are you upset with what other people are doing, which really has nothing to do, really, with you? It’s your actions that make all the difference." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Look at Yourself"

"You’ve got to develop the brahmavihāras, all four of them, [including equanimity], both toward other people and toward yourself. You have goodwill [mettā] for them. You have compassion and empathetic joy, but you realize that there are times when their behavior is their behavior, and you can’t do much about it. Or even if you could do something about it, you’d lose your focus. It might be misdirected, especially if you still have that same problem within yourself." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "How to Be Self-Centered" (Meditations11)

"Anger often presents itself as being justified, that someone has done something outrageous or said something outrageous. It’s beyond the pale. It can’t be. You can’t stand it — and that right there is the crux of the problem: your own lack of endurance, your inability to see the larger picture. Given that people will do things you don’t like, how can you live in this world in a skillful way, not letting your anger to take over?" ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Anger"

"If you’ve been the recipient of some unfair treatment, just let it stop there. Tell yourself: The fact that you have ears to hear things and have a body that can be hit puts you in an unsafe position. They’re open to attack at any time. Can you find a happiness that doesn’t depend on those things? And where are you going to find that? You find it inside, right here in the present moment where you’re near the breath. When it’s going to open up, that’s where it’s going to open up." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "An End to the Stories"

"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"

"When you take the long, long view like this, it makes a lot of your problems in your present lifetime seem pretty small. It helps give you some equanimity, gives you some patience. Because there are a lot of things in life that, if you thought, “This is your one lifetime, this is your one chance,” would strike you as very unfair. It would be hard to live with the idea that, say, someone smeared your name and you couldn’t get it un-smeared. Other people who don’t seem to have any right to power have taken over a lot of power. But if you take the long view of things, you realize that this is going to pass, and this is not your only chance. It makes it a lot easier to live with the things you can’t change, and focus on the ones you can." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Patience & Hope"

"As the Buddha said, “You don’t go to heaven or hell because of other people’s actions. You go because of your own actions.” Those can take you to heaven; they can take you to hell. So why are you taking yourself to hell? And why are you upset with what other people are doing, which really has nothing to do, really, with you? It’s your actions that make all the difference." ~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Look at Yourself"

"We start the meditation with thoughts of goodwill [mettā] to clean out our minds from all the stories of the day: “ This person did that, that person did this.” Or the stories of the year or the stories of your lifetime. Think about that statement at the end of the chant just now: “Those who are capable of making an end.” That’s what we’re trying to do: Put an end to suffering. It means putting an end to a lot of stories we keep dragging out. After all, those stories are what keep us going, especially if they involve some wrong that we want to right. That would mean we’d have to come back. And, of course, what usually happens when a wrong gets righted is that some more wrong gets done. Then the other side decides that they’ve been unfairly treated, and it goes back and forth like this. There are many stories in the commentaries about issues going back and forth to the point where you lose track of who started it. So it’s best to think in ways that can put an end. One of the be...