Staying steady in samsara

• Four immeasurables in the Pali tradition
• Different definitions of equanimity
• Responding to a disruption with equanimity
• Equanimity as the preliminary to the seven-point cause and effect instruction
• Questions and answers
  • Vividness of sensation as an obstacle to cultivating equanimity
  • Practicing equanimity when we think that Buddhists and Buddhism are being attacked
  • Practicing equanimity when we are anxious
  • Equanimity versus avoidance of action

Let’s just take a minute and cultivate our motivation. This series of talks has been on the four immeasurables of love, compassion, joy and equanimity. It’s good, as much as possible, to generate those four thoughts as our motivation for sharing the Dharma today. These are not abstract thoughts. They apply very clearly to our lives and the people in our lives. Can we have an attitude of love towards others, wanting them to have happiness and its causes? Let’s cultivate compassion, wanting them to be free of misery and its causes.  Let’s cultivate joy, rejoicing in others’ virtue. And let’s cultivate equanimity—not being attached to some and having anger and aversion to others, but being able to have love, compassion and joy for all sentient beings equally. Take a moment and just imbue that in your mind as our motivation for sharing the Dharma.

A lesson on equanimity

When you teach the four immeasurables in the Pali tradition, they often describe it as your attitudes when you raise a child. Compassion means having our general attitude towards whomever we meet be one of wishing them well. Now, can we do that? Or do we come into things with tons of opinions? It’s important to really try to wish sentient beings well. Then when we see them making mistakes or bringing suffering upon themselves, causing suffering to each other, experiencing the suffering result of karma previously created, then we can have compassion, wishing them to be free of that suffering. 

Now, joy means that when others create virtue—when they have opportunities, when they do really good things—we really rejoice together with them in their happiness. But that means we can’t compete with others. And we tend to evaluate ourselves and others—who we like, who we don’t like, who we’re rooting for. And if somebody’s better than us, we don’t like it. If we’re better than them, we put our nose up in the air. Joy really cuts all of that. And it enables us just to look at what is in somebody else’s life without inserting ourselves into it. We just rejoice when they have opportunities, when they have whatever. 

And then the last one, which is our topic today, is equanimity. As it’s described in the Pali tradition, equanimity is having more of a neutral attitude, not favoring some people because you like them, and distancing other people because you don’t like them. We do this all the time, don’t we? Because we have opinions about everybody: “I like this one, and I don’t like that one,” and “This person agrees with me, and this person doesn’t agree with me.” And so, the people that we like, we want to do things for; they’re our friends. 

But when someone does something in a very impolite way, how do you react? A spammer just put rude images up on the screen, so somebody did something I don’t like. What they did was impolite, and I’m sure if you all saw the pictures, you would agree with me. But do we have to hate the people who did that? We don’t even know them. And people who do that kind of thing somehow think that they’re going to be happy interrupting other people’s things with vulgar images. They think they’re going to be happy. And so they look so happy when they’re doing these things in the images. That means somebody’s pretty confused, doesn’t it? That they think that interrupting others’ virtuous activities, being vulgar, is going to bring them happiness. They’re pretty confused, and they must be pretty unhappy in their own lives and have a very weird idea of happiness if they think that acting like that is going to make them happy. So, rather than disliking those people, we can criticize the behavior.

The behavior is inappropriate, but the person and the behavior are different, and we can have compassion for people who act like that. Next time they come around, then we have to have equanimity. 

Different kinds of equanimity

There are different kinds of equanimity. That word means different things in different contexts. There’s the feeling of equanimity when there’s not the feeling of happiness or pleasure, and there’s not the feeling of suffering or pain. So, that’s an equal feeling. There’s that. That’s not the one that’s in the four immeasurables. And there’s the equanimity in the fourth dhyana, and that equanimity is when the mind and the mental factors are very balanced in a way that makes that a very good meditative state for meditating on emptiness. That’s another kind of equanimity. 

When it comes to the kind in the four immeasurables, there are kind of two ways to look at it. In the four immeasurables that we recited at the beginning of this talk, first was love, then was compassion, then joy. Equanimity was last: “May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free of bias, attachment, and anger.” And so, we’re wishing for all sentient beings to be free of bias, attachment, and anger. We’re wishing it for everybody. Now, wishing it for everybody and bringing that about is something everybody has to do with their own mind. That always, of course, starts out with what is the value of cultivating that—of wanting others to have equanimity.

The value of cultivating equanimity

Well, if people have equanimity and they’re free of bias, attachment, and anger, the government shutdown that’s happening in the U.S. would have been quickly resolved and probably wouldn’t have happened at all. Because instead of people digging their heels into their own position, they would have talked, and instead of one side blaming the other and that side blaming the other and the other one for the shutdown, they would have come together and resolved this. You can see that when we wish others to have equanimity, it creates a much nicer society. If there were equanimity, then, again, with what’s happening in the Middle East and what’s happening between Russia and Ukraine, there wouldn’t be so much hatred. There wouldn’t be so much of a wish on everybody’s part to destroy the other one. They would have an equal attitude that is not biased. So, in the case of the Middle East, the food would go to Israel, and the food would go to Gaza, and everybody would have enough to eat.

In the case of Russia and Ukraine, it’s not that they would throw an equal number of bombs at each other and an equal number of drones at each other, but they would share whatever it is that each side is trying to have. That’s one presentation of the four immeasurables. 

The four immeasurables in a different order

There’s another prayer in the Mahayana tradition where you start out with equanimity and then you go to love, compassion, and lastly joy. It’s a different order. Instead of being at the end, equanimity is the first one. Now, this equanimity is actually one that incorporates the main steps in the Mahayana tradition of generating bodhicitta called the seven-point cause and effect. You start out with equanimity between friend and enemy. Then you have to add stranger because the near enemy of equanimity is apathy, which is how we usually feel towards strangers. If you’re going to generate bodhicitta—the aspiration for awakening so that you can really benefit sentient beings most effectively—then you have to get over that. Friend, enemy, stranger: you have equal feelings towards all of them, not favoring any of them. That’s how it starts. Then your equanimity gets bumped up again to what they call equalizing self and others. 

Now it’s no longer equalizing friend, enemy, and stranger who are all external people while you sit there. You make them all equal, but who’s still most important? Me! Me! So here, you have to put yourself in the mix and have an equal feeling towards friend, enemy, stranger, self, and others. This is even harder because our self-centered attitude rules the nest. It rules our life. Who do we always think about first? Who’s most important in our lives? Whose suffering hurts more than anybody else’s? Who should always get their way? Well, just coincidentally, me! Why? Because I’m me! And others are not so important because they’re other. 

So, friend, enemy, stranger, they’re all equal, but first I do things for myself—please myself, get myself happy, do my own practice, make everything good for my practice—and then I’ll take care of others. That’s why equalizing self and others is really a big step and it touches so directly on that self-centeredness. There are different ways of developing it. There’s, in fact, a whole nine-point meditation on it, which I can’t go into because Ming is going to interrupt me in a few minutes and say I’ve talked long enough. But I have equanimity towards you, Ming, it’s okay. I talked too long last time, so you can cut me off this time.

So, with just the labels of “I” and “others,” we start out questioning that. “I” is here; “others” is there. We live off of Spring Valley Road, so we’re on one side of the valley, and there’s the other side of the valley. Our side of the valley is this side and over there is that side. Now, of course, if you walk over to that side and you look here—imagine going over to that side—and then you point your finger then that side and this side are different now. So, this and that are not inherently existent in the side of the valley. It depends on your perspective. There’s no this side of the valley, that side of the valley, this side of the valley, that side of the valley. And so it goes with self and others, “I” and “others.” But all of you people think “I” when you refer to yourself, and you consider me as “other,” don’t you? That’s why you don’t listen to anything I say because I’m “other.”

So, the “I” and “other” is just a matter of perspective. There’s nothing here in this combination of body and mind that is inherently “I” and therefore more important than anybody else. And similarly, from your perspective, when you say “I,” there’s nothing from the perspective of your “I” that makes that “I” more important and this “I” something to be ignored. So, it’s helpful to really think about, because “I” is the most important thing in our life, isn’t it? We spend a lot of tour time protecting ourselves physically, protecting ourselves mentally, protecting ourselves emotionally—it’s all about our happiness, our suffering. So, it’s helpful to think that’s only a matter of perspective because every other being on this call, in this room, on this planet, thinks “I.” And who am I to say your “I” is less important when, from your perspective, my “I” is negligible. That really stretches our mind.

When we then think about love, we want sentient beings to have happiness and its causes. That doesn’t just mean us, and it doesn’t just mean others. It’s everybody, and it’s everybody equally. This is a really good thing to keep in mind as we go through the day and start discriminating: “I like,”  “I don’t like,” “I approve,” or “I don’t approve.” Now, does that mean that we don’t have any opinions at all? Does that mean, “Oh, the people that just showed those very vulgar pictures: they want happiness just as bad as I do, and they’re worthy of happiness just as much as I am, and so we’re going to let them show those pictures because that makes them happy and I want all sentient beings to be happy”? No, that’s not how you practice the four immeasurables. You want the person to be happy, but that behavior is not really leading to their happiness. That behavior is creating negative karma, and they will experience the result of that.

When we want sentient beings to be happy, it’s not just so that they can have some chocolate now and forget about what happens after. It’s not just thinking temporary happiness; it’s thinking long-term happiness. So yes, they deserve happiness; they’re worthy of happiness, but what they’re doing to get it—no. It’s an interesting thing to do with yourself. For example, we live in community and many of the people online, you work in jobs. So, there are always tasks to do, and I could do them or somebody else could do them. Well, the nice tasks I’ll do, and the ones that are difficult other people can do. Practicing equanimity here is to ask ourselves, “Well, is that really good? Is it good that I get to do the things that everybody likes and other people have to do the things that everybody doesn’t like?” Now, it could be a situation where I like one thing and the other person likes another thing, in which case you cooperate so each person can do the task that they like. But there are other tasks where everybody wants the easy one and nobody wants the hard one.

And with those, it’s important to stop and ask ourselves, “Why am I more important?” If I say, “I am more important,” well, that’s the same words that other people say. They all say, “I am most important. I want to do this task. You can have the difficult ones.” So, why do I side with this “I” and not with the other “I” when they’re all equal in being “I,” in being persons? And we’re saying we want all sentient beings to have happiness and its causes and all sentient beings to be free of suffering and its causes. And we’re working for the benefit of all sentient beings. So, we can’t have this discrimination between “I” and “other” as in “I’m more important, and you’re secondary.” 

It is very good to keep this in mind during the day as you’re going through things. And when there are chores to do or when you’re discussing with somebody—when you’re planning something, and you want to do it one way, but they want to do it another way—ask yourself, “Well, why do I have to get my way?” We might think, “Well, my idea is best,” but have we actually considered the other person’s idea? Or are we just saying, “It’s someone else’s idea, so automatically it’s not very good? It’s not as good as my idea”? We have to slow down because we shouldn’t think that ideas are people or that actions are people. Ideas are themselves. It could be one person’s idea or the other or both of their ideas. We shouldn’t judge ideas based on who’s saying them: “I don’t like that person, so every idea they propose is bad.” 

Try to keep that in mind. That’s another meaning of equanimity that is really quite important because we can’t really generate full love and full compassion if we don’t have that kind of equanimity between self and others. And then when we come to generating bodhicitta—“I aspire to become a Buddha for the benefit of all sentient beings”—are we really thinking, “I aspire to become a Buddha for my own sake and forget everybody else?” If there’s that thought in our mind, there’s no bodhicitta. That’s why equanimity comes at the beginning, because we really have to cultivate that in order to properly cultivate love, compassion, and joy. 

Okay, Ming, I only talked eight or nine minutes too long. 

Ming: For me it was never too long, but thank you. 

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): Do you approve of me now? 

Ming: I always approve of you, Venerable.

VTC: Oh, you shouldn’t because sometimes I’m naughty. 

Ming: Okay, okay. Maybe when I catch you naughty, one time.

Q & A

Ming: Venerable, I have a question. I actually tried practicing what you taught. It’s very profound, the whole idea that self and others are equal—that we have an equanimous relationship. And I found it very hard. And I thought, “Why is it so hard?” And the one reason is because of the vividness of sensation. So, what does that mean? When I experience pain, I experience it very vividly, but when I see somebody else experiencing the same pain, I experience it less vividly. And it’s the same with joy. When I see you eat sushi, I have less vivid joy than when I eat sushi. So, given the stark difference in the vividness of sensation, how do we think about equanimity of self and others? 

VTC: This is where we get into talking about selflessness. If I get stung by a bee, it hurts more than if somebody else gets stung by a bee. But here, why do I treasure what is this body? What’s the relationship of this body to “I” and the relationship of that body to the other “I”?  This body is one of the five aggregates, together with my four mental aggregates, that is dependent on these five aggregates that the designation “I” represents. That’s fine, designate “I.” But ignorance is not satisfied with that, and that “I” that is designated in dependence on this body and mind, appears inherently existent. It’s a real “I,” and it’s more important than anybody else’s “I,” and it has to be happy at all times, and that bee just took away its happiness. 

Whereas, when I look at somebody else who got stung by a bee, well, I’m labeling you or other in dependence on your five aggregates. But from your viewpoint, those five aggregates are “I,” and those are the ones that you grasp as most important. So, why do we feel our own suffering is more important? It’s because of self-grasping ignorance, which is the root of samsara. When we start to challenge who’s more important, then it makes us look at how do I think of this body? If I just look at my body, it’s just some glob of vegetable goo. That’s all. What makes it me, mine, my, important? My mind makes that. But from your viewpoint, this is just vegetable goo and that’s all. You don’t label it “I” or “mine.” So, it’s not just the labeling process; it’s the grasping at the inherent existence that causes the problem. 

Ming: If you stop grasping onto the inherent existence of selfness, does the issue of vividness of sensation, does it become less and less over time? 

VTC: Oh, yes. 

Ming: Wow. Fascinating. 

VTC: Do you remember the story in the sutra when there was a famine and all the monks had to eat was like fodder from cows? The Buddha ate the fodder from cows. It didn’t bother him at all. It tasted delicious. Because there was no self-grasping at all from the viewpoint of the other monks. You just look at the fodder without even tasting it. “Ew, that’s terrible; I don’t want it.” 

Ming: What you just said, Venerable, it sounds very profound because I was under the impression that equanimity towards the sensations leads to the releasing of selfness. But what you’re saying is the other way is also true: the releasing of selfness leads to the equanimity towards sensations.

VTC: Yes, I think equanimity towards sensations helps you not grasp so much. But you don’t cut off the grasping until there’s the realization of selflessness.

Ming: While we’re waiting for another question, I have another one, Venerable, if you don’t mind. Just now, during this session, we had an opportunity to practice equanimity ourselves because we were just here having a nice time doing Dharma talk and then there are naughty pictures. And so I had my practice, I calmed my breath and so on. I think I was able to do this. My question to you, Venerable, is to me, the hardest part actually is when I feel that I get attacked because I’m Buddhist and also that Buddhism gets attacked. And so in these cases, what should we do? 

VTC: So you identify, “I am Buddhist.” And then somebody says, “Buddhism: you guys don’t believe in God. You just worship idols. You don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re all going to hell.” Yes, I’ve been told that. So, the idea is then “Buddhism is my religion.” So this is grasping not only at “I,” but also at “mine.” You know, it’s that wrong view—grasping at “I” and “mine.” In this case, it’s “my” religion. Shantideva, the 8th century Indian sage, in his book, Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, in Chapter 6 on fortitude or patience, he talks about that. Because people tend to think, “Oh, they’re criticizing the Dharma. I’ve got to defend the Dharma. I’ve got to make sure those people don’t have those wrong conceptions and they don’t spread those bad things. It’s terrible.” He goes into this whole thing about the Dharma itself is not hurt. What is the Dharma? From the ultimate perspective, Dharma is true paths and true cessations. That’s called the realizational Dharma.

And then you have the transmitted Dharma: the scriptures. Whether it’s the realizational Dharma or the transmitted Dharma, none of those suffer. The true paths and true cessations in the minds of Aryas and Arhats and Buddhas, they don’t suffer. So, why do we get so angry about it? The Dharma is still the Dharma. It’s still pure. It’s still worthwhile. We don’t have to defend ourselves to other people who criticize it. The way I view it is: It’s a free world. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. And people have different opinions than me. And also, in terms of religion, different people find different religions more valuable to them. And so whatever religion somebody follows, if it helps them be a kinder person, then I want to support them in practicing that religion. I don’t need, again, to insert “I” in there. 

Ming: Wonderful. Thank you, Venerable. 

Audience: My first question is how I can be more equanimous when I am very anxious because I many times have lots of anxiety, feeling fear that what if my behavior might be harmful for someone? For example, now I just have moved to a new house and when I unpack my stuff, some boxes became moldy because it was humid summer. And then, wow, immediately I have a fear about what if this mold can spread to other places by, for example, me cleaning up the mold and then this cloth may have some mold spores or powders and then if I run it in the laundry machine, maybe other people who use the same laundry machine might be impacted. So, I end up spending so much time sanitizing every single thing. And then I have lots of fear and anxiety. 

VTC: And if you look, you know, what’s going on in your mind when you’re anxious? Your mind is dreaming up all sorts of things that are unlikely to happen or that are blatantly inaccurate. So, anxiety becomes overwhelming and suddenly, with your anxiety, you think the whole world is going to be covered in mold. Do you see it? Do you feel, “I see mold on you. It came from Singapore.” Oh, be careful. We better yet let ICE know about this so that they can kick out the mold. No mold is allowed in the U.S. Trump will have a fit and slam and put more tariffs on Singapore because of it. Is that going to happen? I don’t think so.

When we’re falling into anxiety it’s helpful to just stop and look at the thoughts that are racing in our mind and ask ourselves, “Is that likely to happen?” And chances are, if you have any contact with conventional reality, no, that is very unlikely to happen. But then a part of your mind might say, “Yes, it’s unlikely, but it still could happen.” So then, you ask yourself, “If it did happen, do I have resources to deal with it?” Well, yes, I have friends and family and they’re all going to come over with detergent and disinfectant and we’re going to do the whole flat together and all the mold is gone. I’m not in this alone; there are resources I can draw on. I’ll be in Singapore in December. I’ll come and help you with the mold. So, you aren’t alone in this. And I’ll tell you something, too. When I lived in Seattle, one closet in that flat where I lived had mold. 

Ming: So, what do you do? 

VTC: I said, hello. I didn’t go in that closet very much. So, I actually didn’t discover it until I had lived there for quite a long time. And I discovered it when I was about to leave. So, I was very kind and I left it for the owner to clean up. No, I think I did a little bit of cleaning myself. And when I lived in India, oh my goodness, in monsoon rain, everything smells like mold and mildew. So, when it stops raining, you put it all out in the sun. All your clothes, all your bedding—you spread it all out in the sun. And then the sun kills the mold and the mildew. So, don’t invent problems. I think we have enough problems already. We don’t need to invent some more.

Audience: Thank you so much. That’s really helpful because I felt like, what if I am spreading the mold to other people? And then I felt out of control, but I remember that other people also have resources to deal with that, like the support from other people. Thank you so much. I’ll skip my second question because there is another person.

Audience: My question will be related to what we mean when we talk about equanimity. And I also heard about saying that to do or not to do is the same. So, sometimes when I have choices in front of me, like to do A or to do B, I was not making any choices, you know? I wasn’t responding to A or B. In the end, it’s like I am doing nothing. So, my question is when we talk about equanimity or to do or not to do, it’s the same. How can we identify or distinguish running away from what we should do? 

VTC: I’m not familiar with this saying that to do or not to do is the same.

Audience: It’s like for my personal understanding. It’s like looking at the big picture and deciding whether to do or not to do something and thinking that actually, we don’t affect anything overall. So, sometimes, that thought is a bit of a trigger for me when it comes to making decisions.

VTC: When we do things, our actions affect things. And not doing is also a choice. It’s also an action. We’re acting all the time. So, it’s not that “to do or not to do” are equal, and I’m not going “to do or not do.” I’m going to do some third kind of not doing instead. That just gets you pretty confused. Because whether you do an action—you do this, or you do that, or you do nothing—with all three, you’re making choices. You’re making decisions, and they’re going to have results. How do we discern what is good to do? What is valuable when we’re faced with a decision? One thing I think is to look each choice and ask ourselves, “If I follow that path, is there any harm that’s going to happen to myself or others?” If what I’m doing is causing harm to others because I have a negative motivation and it’s harming myself because I’m creating negative karma, then don’t do that.

Then I look at the other choice and I examine in the same way. And I do that with however many choices there are. Because one of the criteria that I use for making choices is what benefits myself and others in terms of creating virtue, and what does no harm either to myself or others.  That’s one criteria I use. With some choices, it’s like same, same—doesn’t matter what it is. But with some choices, it’s different. I don’t look so much in terms of short-term harm or benefit, but long-term harm and benefit. I analyze things in that way and then make a decision. Does that help? 

Audience: Thank you. 

Ming: Thank you. There is a Gandhi quote I found very inspiring: “What you do is not important. What is important is the fact that you’re doing it.” So, the doing itself is the thing that’s important. 

VTC: I think your motivation is what’s important, because you can do an action with a virtuous motivation, or you can do the same action with a non virtuous motivation. It’s not the action that’s important. It’s why you’re doing it, what your intention is.

Ming: Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Venerable.