This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video The Unshakeable Heart: Finding Freedom in All Conditions ~ Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Welcome, welcome. Nice to see you all. It’s so nice to practice together. What a difference it is. At least I think it is.
So tonight, I’m going to start us off with a poem that’s not by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer. The poet here is Lemn Sissay.1 He’s a British poet. And the poem is called “Some Things I Like.”
I like ex-addicts. I like ex-junkies. I like flunks and ex-flunkies. I like the way the careerless career. I like flat beer. I like people who tell half stories and forget the rest. I like people who make doodles in important written tests. I like being late. I like fate. I like the way teeth grate. I like laceless shoes, cordless blues. I like the one-bar blues. I like buttonless coats and leaky boats. I like rubbish tips and bitten lips. I like yesterday’s toast. I like cold tea. I like reality. I like ashtrays. I write and like crap plays. I like curtains that don’t quite shut. I like bread knives that don’t quite cut. I like rips in blue jeans. I like people who can’t say what they mean. I like spiders with no legs, pencils with no lead, ants with no heads, and worms that are half dead. I like holes. I like coffee cold. I like creases in neat folds. I like signs that just don’t know where they’re going. I like angry poems. I like the way you can’t pin down the sea.
This poem just makes me smile because it points out all these things that we don’t like. And the list is long, right? How many more things could we add to this list? It’s fantastic that he’s just highlighting these mundane things. Flat beer, people who tell half stories and forget the rest, people who make doodles in important written tests. These are like minor, small things that we don’t think about, and yet they irk us a little bit very often.
Without realizing it, so often we’re organizing our life in some kind of way just to avoid these little irksome things, or we’re trying to make things be different in some kind of way. Often when we have this expression, “get our ducks in a row,” it’s kind of like just making sure that none of these ducks show up.
I just appreciate the poet here, in this really long list, just highlighting, “Oh yeah, all these things that we’re often trying to avoid,” that we often think have to be different in order for us to be happy. “Of course, I’m irritated. I have cold tea and yesterday’s toast and curtains that don’t quite shut and bread knives that don’t quite cut.” Right? We have all these external things out there that we’re thinking we have to get rid of or take care of them in some kind of way, fix them in some kind of way, before we can have some ease, before we can feel happy, before we can let go and have a sense of freedom.
And these are the minor things. The list of big, giant things: get our relationships perfect, get our finances perfect, get our health perfect. You know, those are the big things, and often we’re not getting them exactly the way that we want them to be either.
So tonight, I’d like to talk a little bit about equanimity.2 This idea of, can we show up for whatever is being experienced? And can we show up not in a way in which we’re disconnected or just completely withdrawn, but in a way that we’re still present, and these small, irksome things aren’t a problem, and the big, giant things aren’t a problem either? I’m not saying that makes everything comfortable, and I’m not saying it makes everything perfect. I’m saying just that the “problemness,” quote-unquote, drains out of the situation. They’re still there. There are still bread knives that don’t quite cut and curtains that don’t quite shut. They just cease to be something that has to be fixed in order for us to have a sense of okay-ness. It doesn’t mean that we don’t fix them, just because maybe it’s nicer to have them that way, but it’s not a problem. It’s just something that we take care of when the timing is right.
So this idea of equanimity, it points to a steadiness, a balance, a spaciousness that allows us to meet whatever there is to be met. I heard this story that somebody told about somebody else telling the story, that apparently there was this person who was a scientist in Antarctica. Part of their job was to measure something with the ice, and they would take a helicopter, go to one place and measure it, and go to another place and measure it, and go back to the lab and do whatever they did. But apparently, they would encounter these giant colonies of penguins, thousands of penguins. And these penguins would hear the helicopter off in the distance, and all the penguins are looking at this helicopter. And then as the helicopter is flying over them, they’re all going like this, and they all would tip over. Like thousands of penguins, boom, tipping over as they’re watching the helicopter go over. It didn’t harm them; they’re kind of round, they have blubber on them and stuff. But that’s not what equanimity is. This idea of tipping over when something there is maybe problematic.
Instead, equanimity is about, okay, can we maintain our balance in some kind of way when difficulties arise? Maybe it’s also like sailboats have a long keel. I’m not a sailor, but they have this fin, like an upside-down fin, that’s at the bottom of a boat so that when the wind is blowing, the boat doesn’t just tip over with the sail but keeps it in the water. So equanimity, in some ways, is maybe kind of like this keel that keeps us steady. The winds are still blowing, but we’re not flipping over, or maybe we’re harnessing the wind and it’s helping us in some kind of way.
In some ways, we could say that equanimity really helps us to have a life that is more easeful and has maybe some more peace and well-being in it. One way that we might describe equanimity is that it helps us to not be blown around so much by what the Buddhists call the “worldly winds.” These are some of the winds that just show up for everybody. There are no exceptions. Everybody has these experiences. They’re often given in pairs. The Buddha talked about these thousands of years ago. This is something that people just experience.
There’s a translation that’s a little bit different, maybe updated, a little bit more modern than the traditional list of the worldly winds. Let’s see if you recognize any of these. The first pair: success and failure. We’re all familiar with this. Second pair: status and disgrace. We’re all familiar with this too. Third pair: approval and disapproval, by whomever, right? Ourselves, others. And the fourth pair is ease and unease.
So, right, these are something that we all experience. However, we always want to have just one half of those pairs, right? We want to have the success, status, approval, and ease. But it’s not possible to just have one half of those pairs. Because if you’re trying to cultivate or orient your life in one direction, in one half, it means you have to work with everything that isn’t that. And if you really want to work with success, that means you’re doing everything you can to make sure that there isn’t failure. You end up being really focused on failure, and maybe even things that wouldn’t be technically failure, you start to label as failure because it doesn’t feel like success. So as soon as we start to feel like only one half of these pairs is appropriate or okay, then we set ourselves up in a trap. It’s not possible to just have one half.
I’ll read this list again: success and failure, status and disgrace, approval and disapproval, and ease and unease.
There’s this way in which we might say that our well-being is predicated on only having one half of those pairs, even though these winds, they blow in both directions. I know that this has been a tremendous support for me. Sometime ago, I made a big mistake, and lots of people were talking about it. You know, like, “Wow, I can’t believe what happened here. This is a kind of a big mistake.” And it was so helpful for me to just realize, “Oh yeah, success and failure, or status or disgrace, it’s just part of what happens.” And it helped me to weather it, like, “Yes, all human lives have this.” Was I thinking that I could skate on through without experiencing them? You know, kind of the silliness of that idea, of thinking that I would never experience some of those things, just became really alive for me. Just like, “Oh yeah, of course. Of course I make mistakes, and some of them are big. It’s not my preference, but it happens.”
This is what happens. And so what often happens when we are experiencing that half of the worldly winds that aren’t so comfortable—the failure, disgrace, disapproval, or unease—then our inner critic jumps right in, and it wants to take responsibility for it. It wants to say something like, “See, I told you you couldn’t do it,” or you know, something mean. The inner critic is this inner voice that sometimes shows up that’s mean.
We don’t control these winds. We’re not 100% powerless, but we do not control them. Because if you could control them, you would be incredibly successful with very high status, in perpetual ease, right? We don’t control them. And yet, there’s this way that the inner critic starts to behave like we do control them, like, “Oh, this only happened because you are a terrible person.” This way that this inner critic shows up, saying these types of things or blaming ourselves.
A short little example is maybe while you were meditating, you got really tired. Maybe, you know, it’s Monday at the end of the day and it’s quiet, and maybe you just find yourself kind of getting a little drifted off or something like this. And then for some people, not everybody, they might say, “Oh my goodness, I’m hopeless. I can’t meditate. Look at all these other people. They’re perfectly awake. There’s nothing wrong with them. Oh, gee, I’m terrible. Maybe I’m not even going to do this anymore.” You know, there’s this way in which just experiencing tiredness when sitting quietly with eyes closed at the end of a day, we think somehow we have to take it on. It means something about us, giving this inner critic some authority.
I could say maybe it’s not surprising. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep last night. Maybe you already worked a lot today, or maybe you haven’t eaten or drunk enough today that you’re kind of low on resources. Maybe there are perfectly good reasons, and yet the inner critic wants to co-opt this natural response and make it something about us.
So it’s quite something how we invest a big sense of who we are in relationship to these worldly winds. But becoming aware of this pattern is a crucial step, I would say, in finding more freedom. Recognizing these worldly winds is something that people were talking about thousands of years ago. The same thing that we’re experiencing today, right? This is just human life. And to notice our patterns. What do we do when we experience this? I talked about the inner critic showing up, but other ways could be maybe anger or blaming or this real activation of energy. “Okay, I got to go fix this,” and there’s a lot of activity that gets done. Or maybe there’s distraction, just turning on Netflix for show after show after show, or something like this.
So first of all, just recognize these worldly winds show up. It’s unavoidable. And two, what are your patterns? When they do show up, it can be helpful just to recognize them. I’m not saying right now you have to completely change all your patterns. That feels like a pie in the sky to initially say, “Okay, I’m going to change everything about this.” But to do this third thing, can you just feel your feet on the ground? Feel the next breath. Just get embodied and present for this moment. Just this moment.
So often we get in our heads and we have to map out a big plan about something we got to do, and then we’re disconnected from the experience. The way forward is to be embodied, present here. There are a few advantages to that. One is it disrupts the momentum of the story-making and the inner critic and all this kind of stuff. Just to feel the pressure of the chair against your body or the feet on the ground is a way that helps you literally and figuratively be grounded and connected to this moment. And then that’s actually the way forward. It turns out we want to make a really complicated plan, but just being present for our experience is a way forward. And then what needs to be done becomes known. It arises when it’s time to be known. But don’t take my word for this. Just try it. Just see. Okay, what happens if I just become embodied and experience this? It will be uncomfortable. It’s not going to be your favorite thing to do initially, but in some ways, it starts to become your favorite thing to do because it feels like, “Oh, right, what a relief. Okay, I’m just here having this experience, and I don’t have to believe all the stuff that the mind is coughing up or throwing up.”
So equanimity allows us to have a different relationship to the stuff of life, to bread knives that don’t quite cut, or big, broad-brush failure and unease or disgrace or things like this. Equanimity is not about getting our life perfect so that we experience only the positive side of these worldly winds, but it’s about having freedom. It’s about changing the relationship to our experiences. As I said, kind of like removing the “problemness,” because as soon as something’s a problem, almost by definition, then we feel like, “Oh, it has to be fixed.” But what if it’s just an uncomfortable experience that we kind of wish wasn’t there? Full stop. As soon as we slap this word “problem” on it, then we feel this compulsion to do something about it. And to be sure, I am not talking about big global things that are happening in the world out there. I’m talking about your experience. You as an individual, your experience. I’m not talking about big things that are happening somewhere else to somebody else. I’m just talking about you right now.
So you could say, “Well, this sounds nice, this whole equanimity thing, but how do we do it?”
Maybe I’ll start by saying that equanimity, if those of you have been in the Buddhist scene for a while, you know that it’s in a number of lists. And the Buddhists love those lists, right? And I’m one of those people. I love the lists, too. But I also like the things that aren’t the lists. I’m just going to list the lists, but you don’t need to know these. You don’t need to be familiar with them, and you don’t need to know the contents of them, but some of you will be familiar with them: Seven Factors of Awakening, Brahma Viharas,3 Paramis,4 it’s in the Jhanas,5 and in the progress of insight. These are big lists that have a whole lot of practice just summarized there.
So in some ways, it really doesn’t make sense to talk about equanimity as pulled out from a whole bigger path of practice, because equanimity on all those lists is that last thing, and all those lists are in a particular order. One way to think about the order is it’s a progression from beginning to the end, and equanimity is at the end. So equanimity is always part of this path of practice. Wherever you are in that and whatever you’re working on, equanimity is part of that. So it would be great just to explicitly work on equanimity, but it happens in the context of other things that we’re doing.
There are maybe two families or types of practices or activities that we could do that support equanimity. One is related to wisdom, and I’ll talk about that at another talk, and the other one is about well-being or warm-heartedness as a support for equanimity. So if we can cultivate an inner reservoir of warm-heartedness and well-being, then it supports equanimity.
Just imagine, for example, if someone was having difficulties with their relationship, or perhaps they wanted a relationship and they weren’t in one. Their response to that situation, that life experience, would be really different if they had been cultivating some warm-heartedness, some sense of loving-kindness, than if they didn’t. It just kind of makes sense. It’s as if a person didn’t know how to swim and then they find themselves overboard and in the water. What a difference it makes if you have a life jacket on. Then you can just kind of bob around and take a little time and figure out, “Okay, well, what needs to be done here? Is the boat going to come back around, or how long is it going to take for them to come get me?” or whatever it is. But if you don’t know how to swim and you don’t have the life jacket, then it’s a whole different situation.
So we can consider that this cultivating well-being, cultivating some warm-heartedness, is like a life jacket that supports us with equanimity and with our whole life. And then you might say, “Okay, well that’s nice, Diana, but how do we do that?”
Well, here are some things. One is, just notice when in your day, doing whatever it is that you’re doing, just notice those moments when there’s a little bit of uplift or some tenderness that shows up. Just notice when you take some delight in just something minor every day. Maybe somebody sends you a text and they put a cute emoji in it. I’m just making this up. You’re like, “Oh, how clever that they put that in there.” Or maybe you see a family with a stroller with a cute little baby in it out for a walk. Or maybe you’re in the grocery aisle and you happen to see your favorite cereal that you had when you were a kid, and you have this memory of like, “Oh my goodness, I remember I used to eat that and read the back of the cereal box every morning for breakfast.” For me, it was Captain Crunch with peanut butter. I think they still make that. They probably do.
So is there a way that you can build a reservoir of well-being? So often, with these types of things, these small little experiences, we tend to be dismissive of them. Just notice them, like, “Oh yeah, this feels good.” I think it’s Rick Hanson6 who said it’s like Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the positive. So when you have those experiences that are a little bit uplifting, linger with them. Allow them to be a support for you. That’s one thing to do to help cultivate this reservoir of well-being.
Consider—I’m not going to say you have to do this, of course—just consider a media fast. Just like, you know, maybe I’ll take some time off of some media. Media these days, right, it’s part of the “outrage industrial complex” that got created. This way in which everything’s about outrage, and then if you’re not outraged, people are outraged that you’re not outraged. Right? It’s quite something, but it’s not good for our nervous systems. It’s not good for our well-being. So, consider, take a fast, take some time, no media. And then you’ll be like, “Well, wait, what do I do?” Find out. Maybe you have that hobby back in the closet that you used to do, that you haven’t finished that project. Go pull it out. Maybe just go outside and go for a walk or write that letter. I don’t know, you’ll think of something. So that’s the second thing, because there’s a way in which media, not all of it certainly, but parts of it kind of chip away at our sense of well-being.
You can also do a formal practice of loving-kindness, some of you are familiar with this, a Metta practice. That is, and I’ll say briefly, it’s part of a meditation practice, but it doesn’t have to be solely done in meditation. Bring to mind a lovable being, an absolutely lovable being. It can be an imaginary or an actual being. Some people like grandkids, or maybe when you were younger, you had a coach or a mentor that really supported you, somebody that you have a lot of appreciation for. For me, Mrs. Asano, my first-grade teacher, was really kind to me and helped me out. So bring to mind a lovable being. Connect with them in whatever way that makes sense. Sometimes people will visualize the lovable being—this might be kittens, puppies, babies—and connect with them and allow yourself to feel maybe a little bit of softness or openness in the heart. And then we send goodwill, we send good vibes, if you will, to this lovable being. It’s easy to do because there’s this sense of care or respect or goodwill or benevolence for this lovable being.
Do not underestimate how powerful this practice is. Even just for a little bit, it just starts to kind of make the heart a little bit more soft and open. It makes it easier to notice when we are, just in the course of the day, experiencing more ease. If we’ve been practicing intentionally some loving-kindness.
I used to listen to the Metta Sutta,7 which is a chant that sometimes we chant on retreats. You can find this online, and there’s even like karaoke where there’s the bouncing ball where you can chant along. It’s about having love and care for the world, and it’s very meaningful for me. I’d listen to it over and over again, and it just touched me in some deep way. I can’t really explain it, but it would always be uplifting and inspiring. So I would listen to it in my car over and over and over. That’s how I memorized it. But it was just like a fun, easy thing to do that would uplift my heart and make me a better driver, as I’m nicer to everybody that’s on the road with me.
There’s also this way in which we can practice, if you feel like it’s available for you—it’s not always available for everybody all the time—but there’s this way in which we can intentionally radiate loving-kindness. If we feel there’s a sense of ease and some openness, maybe like a beam going out from the chest or from the heart center. We can do it in the different directions. This is often easiest to just do it in front, and then to all the beings to the left, all the beings to the right, and then maybe behind you, above you (those that are flying), below you (the earthworms, etc.). And this can be such a lovely practice too, just to be radiating this sense of care and goodwill.
There are all kinds of practices we can do to help create this reservoir of well-being. And notice that well-being is not the same as pleasure. This isn’t about just having all pleasurable experiences, because you know many pleasurable experiences make it so we don’t feel so great afterwards—the ice cream if we eat too much of it, or watching Netflix for too long, or something like this. It’s about what feels nourishing and supportive. And this is a tremendous support for equanimity.
There was a teacher in a different Buddhist tradition, but he defined equanimity as being “equally near to all things.” Equally near to all things. And I like this. It’s not pushing away what’s uncomfortable, not pushing away what’s on that half of those worldly winds that we really would prefer not to have, and it’s not pulling in those things that are pleasurable and things that we like, but being equally near to all things. So this “near” is highlighting that equanimity is not a cool withdrawal. It’s not a disconnection. It’s not a gray dullness. Instead, it has a juicy quality to it. It has an intimate and maybe connected, ready, open quality to it. It has a warmth. And we might say it helps with this unshakable heart, this heart that’s able to meet whatever is arising without getting blown over like those poor penguins.
So maybe I’ll end there and open it up to see if there are some questions or comments. Thank you.
Audience Member: [Question about the spelling of Metta Sutta]
Diana Clark: Oh, Metta Sutta. You can spell it M-E-T-T-A, and then Sutta, S-U-T-T-A. And here’s another spelling thing. The one that has the karaoke that I mentioned, you can find at this website, but I would have to spell it for you: Abhayagiri. It’s A-B-H-A-Y-A-G-I-R-I. Fearless mountain. It’s a place where they have the karaoke with that. But you’ll be able to find chants of it elsewhere.
Audience Member: When you were giving that list of the eight worldly winds, it made me think a little bit about how we always want one and not the other. For something like 40 years, physicists have been seeing whether they can find a magnetic monopole.
Diana Clark: Oh yes. So like only a north or only a south.
Audience Member: Yeah. Yeah. Doesn’t exist. Or well, they haven’t found it yet.
Diana Clark: Yeah. There we go. Thank you. That’s a good example.
Audience Member: Hi, and thank you. I thought the list was kind of funny and, at first, I was thinking some of these things I could like on some days, and sometimes just for shock appeal with other people. But then it got long. What I wanted to say is, with the penguins, I was wondering, like, maybe they’re having fun, like playing?
Diana Clark: Maybe. Right. Right. I don’t know. That just came to mind as something funny. Yeah. I would love to see this, right? All of them tipping over together, thousands at a time. It’s weird. Thank you. Yeah, it’s good to ponder all of this. Thank you, Peggy.
Audience Member: I think in the beginning you said something about not making uncomfortable experiences or things that we don’t like a problem. Which I understand, but if we don’t see something as a problem, then how would we be motivated to make changes that are good for us?
Diana Clark: Yeah, we have this idea that we’ll just sit there and be a blob and nothing will be a problem. It turns out it’s not like that at all. Instead, we make changes because we care. We make changes because we have respect and love and care for things. So, it’s not like, “I have to fix it. This thing is wrong.” It’s like, “Oh, that would be more easeful to have this be different.” And it just has a different motivation. It comes from a different place. And it’s very interesting, this coming from a different place means often the solution, quote-unquote, the way that we might change it, is often different than if we think it’s a problem and it has to be fixed or gotten rid of or something like that. Thank you for asking that question. That was a good question because it’s natural to think, “But wait, how is this going to work then? Am I just going to be a doormat and passive and never do anything in my life?” It turns out it’s the opposite. So much energy we spend trying to fix all these things, kind of the whack-a-mole thing. And when we stop doing that, then so much energy becomes free for things that we care about, for us to really pay attention to and give our resources, our energy towards.
Okay. So thank you for your kind attention. I wish you a wonderful rest of the evening and safe travels home. Thank you.
Lemn Sissay: A British author and broadcaster. The poem is “Some Things I Like.” ↩
Equanimity (Upekkha): A Pali word for one of the four Brahma Viharas (divine abodes). It refers to a state of mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. It is a balanced and steady state of mind, not indifference or apathy. ↩
Brahma Viharas: The “divine abodes” or “four immeasurables” in Buddhism. They are: Metta (loving-kindness), Karuna (compassion), Mudita (sympathetic joy), and Upekkha (equanimity). ↩
Paramis: The ten perfections or qualities cultivated on the path to enlightenment in Theravada Buddhism. They include generosity, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity. ↩
Jhanas: States of deep meditative absorption and concentration. There are typically eight stages of Jhana, which lead to profound states of tranquility and insight. ↩
Rick Hanson: A neuropsychologist and author, known for his work on the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and contemplative practice. The quote is often phrased as, “The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.” ↩
Metta Sutta: A discourse from the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism, often chanted as a blessing or for protection. It is a teaching on the cultivation of universal, unconditional loving-kindness (Metta). ↩