This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Allowing; Talk : Equanimity? Now?. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Andrea Fella at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
So settling into your body. Just connecting with how you are in this moment. Can there be a sense of allowing yourself to be just as you are?
Sometimes I feel like meditation and mindfulness can be like a dear friend who comes and sits with you and is really curious, open, wanting to be there with you and saying, “How are you? How are you right now?” And that friend is not judging how you are, not trying to fix or change anything about you. Just willing to be with you. “I’m here. I’m here with you.”
Mindfulness can be like that friend in a very deep way, opening to this experience. The body with its sensations and feelings, with the breath. And the mind receiving, experiencing.
How are you in this moment? Can there be that friendliness of connecting with how things already are in this moment? Receiving whatever is simple, easy to connect with in this moment. For many of you, that may be the breath or body sensations, receiving what’s here.
What has come to be? Body sensations as they have come to be. The breath as it has come to be. Emotions, perhaps even thoughts can be recognized as they have come to be. All of our experiences arising lawfully in dependence on conditions. What has come to be has come to be in dependence on everything that’s led up to this moment and how we are relating to it in this moment.
So receiving what’s here? What’s obvious? Easy to connect with.
At times our mind settles and connects with an experience like the breath for a period of time. And the attention is often also drawn to other experiences. We can notice that shift of attention. Recognize that the attention has been drawn to some other experience and then just know that, receive that. That’s what has come to be. It may be something that’s lasting for a short time, such as a sound that comes and goes. Or it may linger a little bit and hold the attention for a little while.
This friendly receiving, recognizing this is what’s here. This is what has come to be. And for many of you, the attention may also gravitate back to the breath. And that’s fine. Just receiving how you are in this moment.
Another piece of how we are in this moment is noticing, recognizing what our relationship is to this moment’s experience. So often our habits of mind of wanting things to be a certain way, of wanting to hold on to things that are pleasant, get rid of things that are unpleasant, of confusion or perhaps ideas or beliefs about what should be happening. So often those habits of mind are so familiar that we don’t recognize them. They kind of come up behind the scenes and start evaluating and judging what’s happening without our consciously recognizing it.
And so it’s useful from time to time to check in. How am I with what is happening? Not just what is happening, but how am I? Is there a wanting something to happen? A wanting something to stop happening, a confusion, an idea? Or perhaps there could be a relationship to the experience of allowing. It’s okay. What’s here?
If we notice a relationship of wanting or resisting, the very noticing of that, the exploration as a friend. “Oh, that’s what’s going on for you right now. That’s okay. Something unpleasant is happening and resistance is happening. That’s what’s going on right now.” What begins to open us to an allowing attitude to even resistance and wanting and confusion.
It can be quite interesting to see what happens when we become aware of wanting or resistance or confusion and know it like that friend. “Oh yeah, that’s what’s here. I can be with you with that.” There can be some spaciousness and ease that holds that experience. And we can be in a space of seeing how does that relationship then change or transform through the simple meeting of experience. That’s what’s happening right now. That’s what has come to be.
And then we can touch into and recognize the experience of the allowing. This is what it feels like to not be in conflict with what is happening. Our hearts understand this is a helpful direction. In that space, there’s learning that happens around what has come to be. Understanding that begins to arise that helps the mind to begin to transform in the space of that friendly attention.
Resistance and wanting held in that space of friendly attention, they begin to fade, begin to weaken, get a little thinner. And in that space of friendly attention, the qualities that come along with allowing attention—warmth, friendliness, wisdom, patience, compassion—they strengthen.
And there are definitely times when something comes up so strongly—an aversion, a resistance, a fear, a confusion—that it’s really challenging to just simply meet it with allowing. It’s like it overwhelms the mind. And when that happens, simply allowing is often not actually the right thing because in that space, we can just get pulled into the rabbit hole, the whirlpool of that reactivity and get lost.
And so we have to know with wisdom when we can be with something with that allowing attention and when it’s too strong. And when it’s too strong, we have some skillful means: redirecting the attention away from that difficult experience to something that’s easier to connect with. That may be the breath. It may be a more general sense of the body sitting here. It may be opening to the experience of hearing. Something that lets you connect and stay present. Not by pushing away or fighting, resisting or repressing the difficulty. It’s more just of a redirect, a turn to another experience.
Basically our practice is really simple. We sit and receive experience. For many of you, receiving the breath in a simple way. Noticing the experience. Holding the possibility of a friendly, allowing perspective that meets what’s happening. Mindfulness being like that friend. “I’m here. I’m happy to sit with you. Whatever is going on.”
I’m happy to hear that the topic for the mindful parenting group is equanimity. That is also my topic. Completely unplanned. We did not coordinate this.
The topic of equanimity. Sometimes in these conversations I’m having with people these days, there’s the question, “How do I cultivate equanimity with things as they are, with the world as it is right now?” How do I cultivate that equanimity? And then there also might be the question, “Do I want to cultivate equanimity?” So I want to talk to that today. Talk a little about what equanimity is, what it isn’t, and maybe offer a slightly different perspective on equanimity that may shift your thinking about, hopefully, maybe shift your thinking about, “Do I want to cultivate equanimity right now?”
So the quality of equanimity, one of the Pali words, Upekkha1, is often translated as equanimity. There’s a lot of words that we use maybe kind of synonymously with that. So, you know, equanimity isn’t a word that’s frequently used in our everyday life, but words like allowing, accepting, balance of mind, non-reactivity, non-conflict. Those are words that can evoke some of the quality of equanimity. Joseph Goldstein brings in the phrase “impartiality,” not towards or against anything.
And so some of those words kind of have the sense of, like accepting, allowing. They have this sense of just kind of almost the flavor of, “I have to be okay with things as they are.” And I’m going to talk a little more about that in a moment. But I want to also speak a little bit about what equanimity is not.
So those some of those flavors, like impartiality, can have a little bit of the flavor of a little bit of stepped back, disconnected. And that’s not what equanimity is. It’s not stepped back. It’s not disconnected. In fact, equanimity can bring us closer to what’s actually happening. It’s not indifference or apathy. Those we could think of as kind of maybe the near enemy of equanimity. They kind of sort of have the flavor of equanimity that “I’m okay with things as they are,” but it’s got a quality of being detached and not connected. Fundamentally, equanimity is a quality of being connected with what’s here and fully acknowledging what’s here is what’s here.
And that’s the piece I’d like to spend a little time with because my understanding of equanimity is that it’s a state of mind that comes from a space of very deep wisdom that understands what has come to be as what has come to be. It’s not fighting what has come to be. It’s not denying what has come to be. It’s fully recognizing what has come to be. What’s happening in this mind, in this body, what’s happening out there in the world. Conditions have led to that. It has come to be. It has already come to be. It’s happening already.
So the state of the world, everything that’s going on, it is happening. Equanimity understands that what is arising now, what is happening now has come to be in a lawful way based on conditions. We may not like what has come to be. And I think too that this quality of equanimity, it’s not about liking or not liking what has come to be. It is really about that clear-eyed recognition. This is what is here. This is what is happening.
So it understands equanimity comes from the wisdom that understands the conditioned nature of experience. Conditions have led to this moment. Some of those conditions are related to human hearts and minds. This is the teaching on karma that when greed, aversion and delusion arise in the mind, it tends to create more conditions for greed, aversion, delusion in this mind. But it also puts greed, aversion and delusion into the field. It puts anger, hostility, hatred into the field. It puts desire, wanting, craving, clinging into the field. We are not only a product of the craving and clinging and aversion and greed and everything that’s arising in this mind, but we also receive it from the world and contribute it to the world when that’s what’s happening. And so this is a piece of the world. This is a piece of what goes on is that there’s this arising of our human conditioning and we don’t just condition ourselves, we condition each other. There’s a back and forth kind of conditioning that goes on.
There’s also the conditions in nature, you know, the weather, conditions of genetics, conditions of the laws of physics. All of that, what’s happening right now is arising based on lawful conditions. And so equanimity, one piece of equanimity, one aspect of equanimity is understanding and recognizing that what has come to be is what has come to be based on lawful conditions.
And resisting or fighting what has come to be kind of binds up energy, kind of creates a kind of tension in the system that… and it also, resistance, aversion, greed to what’s happening, you know, creates a tension and a binding up of energy in our own hearts and minds. And it also tends to put that resistance, that anger, that frustration, that wanting, that greed, that confusion out into the world.
And so with the mind that understands this is what has come to be, kind of like in this moment, there’s no point resisting what is already here because it’s already here. And if we resist it, resistance, aversion, greed, they take so much energy. If we explore the possibility of understanding that, not fighting what has come to be—again I’m talking about what has come to be up to this moment—not fighting what has come to be, because I think when we fight what has come to be to this moment, we’re often like we’re fighting the past. It’s like we’re trying to figure out how can I change the past.
If we can open to the space of, “Okay, this is what has come to be,” without resistance, with a clear-eyed recognition, “Yep, this is what’s here,” that creates space for wisdom to arise that can step forward into the next moment with wise action. And that wise action can arise when the mind is not fighting, conflicted. That wise action can arise connected with compassion, with wisdom, with kindness, with ethics, with the understanding of non-harming as a ground.
These qualities come more easily when we’re not resisting what has come to be. I think sometimes we have the idea that equanimity, especially with the words like allowing, accepting, we have the idea that equanimity means non-action. But what a space of equanimity can do, that really fully accepts and understands this is what has come to be, that space of wisdom then also understands that the conditioning going forward… you know, what’s happened up to the past until now, that has been lawfully conditioned. And what will move forward from this moment is also lawfully conditioned. Putting more greed, aversion, and delusion into the world is going to create more greed, aversion, and delusion in the world.
And so the wisdom that equanimity is grounded in not only understands that what has arisen to this moment is conditioned, but that what comes next conditions what happens. And the teachings of the Buddha point to compassion, wisdom, kindness, being motivators of action.
I think we often think, you know, we have this kind of sense of action coming from… so much of our action comes from habitual spaces of greed, aversion, and confusion, delusion. And we might have the feeling that if I didn’t want something to happen, why would I do anything? If I didn’t want to get rid of something, why would I do anything? Those mind states which are so human, we all of us share these motivations of greed and aversion and and act on them.
And when we are acting on them, when greed is acting on itself, when greed is acting in our hearts and minds, it cannot understand the perspective of another possibility of something else that might be able to act in its place. So greed and aversion, when we are caught by those states of mind, they cannot fathom that there’s another quality in the heart—compassion, wisdom—that want to act also, not out of hatred, not out of confusion, not out of fear, not out of desire, but out of wanting to alleviate suffering.
So equanimity is the mind state that’s based in the wisdom, understanding deeply conditioning, not only the conditioning that has come to this moment but also the conditioning going forward. I think that wisdom also understands, you know, even acting out of compassion, acting out of wisdom, taking skillful action, that there’s so many conditions going on in the world, so many different… you know, the Buddha talks about just in terms of the conditions around karma, the Buddha says that the web of the conditioning around karma is so vast that if you try to contemplate it, you will go mad. You can’t follow back and say, “Where did this event come from?” You know, like you can follow some of it. You can get some of a sense of where this came from. But it’s such a vast interconnected web that the Buddha says it’s one of the things that can’t be fully contemplated.
And so there’s so much conditioning, not only in karma but also in the laws of the world of nature, that this wisdom also understands that actions that are put into the world, they may or may not have the effect we want and the effect when we want them. But that doesn’t stop us from continuing to be motivated to try to alleviate suffering. It doesn’t stop wisdom and compassion from being motivated to try to alleviate suffering, to try to create conditions of well-being internally and in the world.
So I think there’s some similarities in a way between what we cultivate when we cultivate equanimity in our own hearts and minds. One of the key ways to cultivate equanimity is to notice what’s getting in its way. To notice the reactivity. To notice the tightness, the constriction, the confusion. And so when we meet that, often, you know, when there’s confusion, constriction, tightness, fears arising, aversions arising, unpleasant experiences arising, pain is arising, we often experience a resistance to that.
Internally what we can explore there, as I mentioned in the guided meditation, is we can explore the possibility of first of all recognizing, because habitually our minds will go to aversion when something’s unpleasant, and it will tend to go towards wanting and leaning into when something’s pleasant. And so those things come kind of quietly. They often are kind of hidden behind the scenes in our minds and so we don’t clearly consciously recognize them. And so we may begin cultivating equanimity, cultivating this quality of understanding the conditions by recognizing that there is the unpleasantness in this example. You know, there’s unpleasantness of pain for example and there’s an aversion to it. When we can recognize by checking, “How am I with something? How am I with this experience?” In our meditation, this is in our internal experience, “How am I with this experience?” “Oh, there’s not liking, there’s aversion.”
Sometimes when that aversion is clearly seen, there’s the allowing of that. The mind can be balanced with that. “Oh right, that’s what’s happening. There’s painful experience and there’s aversion.” Over and over again I’ve seen when I’ve noticed that, “Oh right, aversion, that’s what’s happening,” there can be a relaxation in the heart and mind. There’s a kind of a sense of, “Okay yeah, that’s what’s going on.” This is the quality of equanimity that allows the mind to clearly recognize, “Yes, this is what’s here. There’s pain and there’s resistance to it.” The seeing of it helps the mind to have some balance with it. And then in that space in our internal meditation, sometimes that’s all that needs to happen. We can recognize at times that just allowing the aversion to be there creates the conditions for it to weaken, for it to fall apart. I’ve seen that happen over and over again. It’s like when I recognize, “Oh, the aversion’s there,” when it’s clearly seen in our meditation, often that aversion just, you know, it doesn’t have any traction anymore. So, it falls away. And then we get an understanding of what it means to just be with the challenging situation with the mind that’s balanced, with the aversion having fallen away.
So sometimes in meditation that’s all that’s needed. That quality of allowing and acceptance and just meeting, “This is what’s here. Unpleasant, aversion, that’s what’s here. Oh, aversion weakening. Aversion falling away. Unpleasant and okay. Oh, aversion coming back. Unpleasant, aversion.” Allowing that. That can be a process in meditation.
And there are also times when, you know, the aversion itself, the situation, the aversion are so strong that we get pulled into the whirlpool of it, into the rabbit hole of it. And in those moments it’s useful to do something else, to not simply… I mean, the wisdom that comes with equanimity, of understanding the conditions here are overwhelming my capacity. What’s skillful? What’s a skillful action? So equanimity in that case isn’t about simply what we might think of as allowing. It’s about skillful action. The equanimity understands, “This condition is pulling me out.” Wisdom understands that and so brings in some tools, maybe redirecting the attention.
There’s a teaching about five methods for working with things when thoughts and mind states get overwhelming. And one of those is a skillful redirection. You know, taking your attention out of that thing and putting it into something else. And that’s often what I suggest in the meditation. There’s several others, and one of them, and these I think will be useful as we think about applying these tools to our relationship to the world and equanimity in relationship to the world. The first one is contemplating the drawbacks of the reactivity. Contemplating that, “Yeah, this reactivity puts more junk into the world, puts more reactivity into this system.” So contemplating the drawbacks of the challenging mind state and those challenging thoughts. Another one is to replace them with something skillful, like Metta2 for instance.
So those are other possibilities. Those are kind of bringing in other tools in our practice to allow us to navigate when things get so strong in our hearts and minds that we just can’t settle back and know, “Yeah, this is what’s here. Aversion’s arising. Difficult situation and aversion is arising.”
We can take this kind of approach, and I think that exploration around the conditioned nature of experience in the world and that we condition each other, to meeting the suffering, the conflict that’s present in the world. Cultivating the capacity to be with things as they are creates the conditions for us to have more of a sense of balanced action in the world.
I’m right now going to read something. I was going to save this to the end, but I’m going to read it now. This is a reflection on, he uses the word acceptance but he’s really talking about equanimity. This is a Zen teacher, Daishin Morgan3.
To accept means to receive what is offered. Circumstances of life give rise to conditions and our acceptance of these conditions is just the acceptance of things as they are. What is not meant by the idea of acceptance is any agreement or disagreement with the way things are. Acceptance is about basing ourselves in reality, not about making judgments of liking and disliking or of agreeing and disagreeing. To accept the situation is to be grounded in the actual state of things without getting lost in ideals or fantasies of how we would like it to be. We then have a good basis from which to see what action may be called for. Acceptance does not imply inertia. On the contrary, to be grounded in reality gives rise to a true response.
And so this is what we can explore in our relationship to what is happening in the world. First, I think it’s crucial to meet what is happening with a clear mind, to cultivate that capacity and understand too, I think, that conflict is a form of suffering. There’s a teaching in the texts that’s called the “Exposition of Non-Conflict.” And in that teaching, that’s in the Majjhima Nikāya4, it says that we need to understand the state with conflict and the state without conflict.
So what do we think of as conflict? We think of conflict as resistance, of fighting, of disagreement, of wars, different perspectives, different understandings that can’t be resolved. And we feel like it either has to be my way or their way. It’s like each side seems to feel like their side is right. And there’s not a “can we meet in the middle somewhere.” There’s a kind of a pulling to the opposition.
This teaching says the state of conflict is a state beset by suffering, vexation, despair and fever. And it is the wrong way. And the wrong way here means the wrong way in terms of finding peace, ease, and happiness. So again, all of the Buddha’s teachings are pointing towards non-suffering, non-harming.
One of the interesting things I think about that sentence is, “Conflict is a state beset by suffering, vexation, despair and fever.” So it’s a state. It’s a condition that has come to be. It’s a state. And so this is something that can be explored. We can explore conflict internally. We can explore conflict externally. We can kind of look at what is going on here. Get to know the conditions of it. See how it has come to be. So we explore it the same way we might explore something happening internally, a state of conflict happening internally.
And so this space of exploring conflict in this way can help us to have a little bit more balance, equanimity around what has come to be. And to look at from a place of compassion, non-harming, what actions are skillful to take in this moment. Remembering some of those other teachings like pointing out the drawbacks of what’s going on. That’s probably a useful thing to do. Cultivating the wholesome qualities and cultivating that perspective of wisdom of understanding the conditioned nature of what’s happening.
I do believe that the world needs more of this approach of understanding and action from compassion and care without deluding ourselves. And also I recognize that we’re going to need to act when we’re not equanimous. So what do we do there? What’s maybe skillful to do internally in our meditation when we’re not equanimous? We bring in some skillful means, you know, when it’s too much, when there’s too much reactivity, we bring in some skillful means about, “How can I balance the mind here? How can I balance the mind?”
Aware of our reactivity, can we ground in the intention of wisdom? So aware that with reactivity, we tend to act out of reactivity when reactivity gets strong. And now speaking about thinking about the world and acting in the world, when reactivity gets strong, we tend to act out of it. It tends to be guiding our actions. There can at times be that recognition, “Yes, reactivity is here. I’m not going to be able to get past this reactivity right now, but it may be possible in this moment to ground myself in the intentions of non-harming, of wisdom, of compassion.” And committing to acting skillfully, not trying to convince our minds that we feel something that we don’t, but committing to those basic ethical conducts. Refraining from killing. Refraining from creating harm out of speech. Refraining from harming through our sexuality, refraining from taking what’s not given. Those basic ethical conducts can be our guide when we’re experiencing reactivity.
So to try to act with the intention of non-harming even if we feel reactive is possible. I’ve watched this in my own mind in small ways, you know, to see how it’s possible to change. It’s kind of like I pick up the intention of the opposite of what’s going on in my experience and I try to not let that reactivity leak out into my behavior, into my action. So I let my actions be guided by the intention, while still fully recognizing, “Yeah, the heart is not balanced here.” And this is wisdom. This is the cultivation of equanimity. We understand that we have this happening in our mind. This is what is arising. “Yes, if I had the choice, I would turn off the hatred. I’m not able to do that right now. And can I act from a different lens?”
So using ethics as a kind of a guide. And then there’s this cultivation of equanimity related to actions of others that are causing harm. How do we deal with that? How do we relate to that? I think a lot of the understanding around this, the compassion around this can arise when we recognize that everyone is acting out of their own conditioning. We see our own conditioning. We as meditators get to see how much stuff is going on in our own hearts and minds. We get to see the aversion, the anger, the hatred, the confusion. I remember at one time so clearly seeing I was so angry at somebody and then in the observing of it, I couldn’t turn the anger off but I was watching it. And in that watching that anger, I saw that there was a part of the mind that so wanted the other person to suffer that it startled me. It’s like, “Wow.” That was a little bit of a moment of waking up and seeing the seeds of war are right here. That wish for somebody else to suffer. That’s the seed of war.
And seeing that was so humbling. And it made me in that moment was like, “Oh my gosh, no wonder the world is such a mess.” Multiply that by 8 billion interacting with each other. No wonder. That moment gave me both the understanding and the appreciation for my own conditioning, but also of seeing this is not about just me. This is what’s going on in the world. This going on multiplied by 8 billion.
So recognizing the conditionality of what’s going on in that conflict, the other side of the conflict that’s been conditioned also. What we’re experiencing has been conditioned. Their experience has been conditioned. And so that for me creates some conditions of compassion and humility. If I had lived their life, what might I be doing right now? I don’t know.
So that’s a piece again. That’s the reflection on equanimity. The reflection on the conditioned nature of experience is one of the main conditions that leads to equanimity. And just as we need to hold ourselves accountable for ethical action, and I think this is an important piece in our own hearts and minds. We need to notice, you know, it’s like, “Yes, it’s conditioned and there’s some capacity that this being has to recognize what is being put out from this being is affecting others.” And so holding ourselves accountable for how we are in the world. And this practice, this meditation practice gives us some tools to kind of have a little bit of a gap before we react, to respond rather than reacting. So we need to hold ourselves accountable and we need to hold others accountable. Accountable to behave in ways that are ethical, that are kind, that are compassionate. And that’s a challenge right now. I don’t have the answers, but I do deeply believe and feel that the direction of greed, aversion and delusion is not the way, and that the direction of wisdom, compassion, kindness is the way.
I’ll just read a little bit of this paragraph again to end.
To accept the situation is to be grounded in the actual state of things without getting lost in ideals or fantasies of how we would like it to be. We then have a good basis from which to see what action may be called for. Acceptance does not imply inertia. On the contrary, to be grounded in reality gives rise to a true response.
May it be so. Thank you for your attention.
Upekkha: A Pali word for equanimity, one of the ten perfections (Pāramīs) and one of the four sublime states (Brahma-viharas). It refers to a state of balance, non-attachment, and impartiality in the face of the changing conditions of life. The original transcript said “oopa.” ↩
Metta: A Pali word meaning loving-kindness, goodwill, or benevolence. It is a practice of cultivating universal, unconditional love for all beings. ↩
Daishin Morgan: A British Zen Buddhist teacher and the founder of the Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey. ↩
Majjhima Nikāya: A collection of Buddhist scriptures in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pāli Canon, known as the “Middle-length Discourses” of the Buddha. The original transcript said “majica.” ↩