 A Time for Equanimity
Tutorial for February 2021 When you look around at your self and your world you see all sorts of people and things, with some you feel an attraction, and with others you do not feel an attraction. You naturally gravitate towards the people and things that bring you joy and comfort, and naturally try to avoid those things that bring you pain and unease. It is easy to develop a strategy for living life based on indulging in what you perceive will bring the greatest joy, and avoiding what you perceive will be challenging or painful. This is the strategy most people employ without consciously knowing they are using it. This is the strategy that uses desire as the greatest motivator for the creation of your experiences. You desire or want this, so you go after it. You don’t want this, so you reject it and anything that resembles it. This is a flawed strategy principally because it is mostly about the ego taking charge seeking aggrandizement and protection. The ego is a mental construct, an idea, that can be useful for navigating the relative world, but is not a reliable substitute for being motivated and informed by the conscious realization of the insubstantial and impermanent nature of reality. In other words, if you are motivated primarily by your ego, you will toss about in an endless sea of reactivity and attachment. If equanimity is at the root of your experiencing life, you will cultivate a calmness and balance that does not fall apart on waves of aversion and attraction. Some of you may think the idea of equanimity is defined by an aloofness and coldness or lack of passion. Quite the contrary, equanimity is mindfulness and acceptance of what is happening in the present moment, allowing you to fully experience the now moment with unshakeable freedom of mind and releases you from getting stuck in the ego’s constantly changing cravings. Equanimity enhances the spaciousness of the mind and the ability to see the bigger picture—what we call One Life Awareness. It is an all-embracing seeing with understanding and patience that comes from inner strength, calm, and stability. In times that are challenging, equanimity developed from the accumulation of mindfulness in daily life encounters can keep you feeling balanced and positive. If you start to become aware of when you are being distracted by your desires, or by your ego’s demand for attention, you will develop equanimity naturally. Your most natural state is equanimity. All other states are deviations from the natural state. There is nothing wrong or right about these states, just allow them to pass through you rather than trying to avoid or hold on to them. If you simply notice when you are following desire or following the ego, quite easily the natural state of equanimity will arise to encompass your being and radiate a peaceful sense of calmness that carries you beyond any unstable or unbalanced experience. Be willing to experience life from all sides, in all directions, and with the sense of balance that equanimity provides, feel the peace within you. A graceful knowing of One Life, that you and everything that you may believe is not you is truly One Life. This is a knowing that supports equanimity as equanimity supports the knowing. There is no one-to-one causality here, everything causes everything at all times. You have the opportunity to sense this in every moment, and by not engaging in the distraction of trying to know what you want to go after, and what you want to avoid, embrace all of life. Let it all be, and let it all arise from equanimity.
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