"Training in equanimity is learning to open the door to all, welcoming all beings, inviting life to come visit. Of course, as certain guests arrive, we’ll feel fear and aversion. We allow ourselves to open the door just a crack if that’s all that we can presently do, and we allow ourselves to shut the door when necessary. Cultivating equanimity is a work in progress. We aspire to spend our lives training in the loving-kindness and courage that it takes to receive whatever appears—sickness, health, poverty, wealth, sorrow, and joy. We welcome and get to know them all."
- Pema Chodron
Hello John,
This week we conclude our discussion of the Seven Factors of Awakening and look at the factor of EQUANIMITY.
As we see from the quote above, EQUANIMITY is about being open to whatever life presents. It's finding a balanced, impartial state between familiar opposites - gain/loss, praise/blame, fame/disrepute, and pleasure/pain. What can we see and know from a neutral state right in the middle of it all where we don't demand an outcome either way? What can we see and know when we have intention, curiosity, kindness, compassion and courage to show up and be present for anything?
One mistake we sometimes make is equating EQUANIMITY with indifference. Instead of being fully present and balanced with the way things are, we detach from actual experience and favor apathy or we adopt a "pretend not to care" mask. Indifference is considered the "near enemy" of equanimity - it poses as balance but it's really ignoring what has actually appeared. We also can be challenged by the "far enemy" of Equanimity that shows up as restlessness or agitation because we're either clinging to how we want things to be or pushing things away that we don't want.