Equanimity (Upekkha)
Equanimity is a perfect, unshakable balance of mind, rooted in Insight.
Looking around us into the world and within us into our own heart, we see clearly how difficult it is to attain balance of mind and to maintain it.
Looking into life we notice its changeful nature continually moving between contrasts. We notice rise and fall, success and failure, loss and gain; we meet honour and blame and we feel how our heart responds to all that with happiness and sorrow, delight and despair, disappointment and satisfaction, hope and fear. These waves of emotion carry us up, and fling us down; and no sooner we find some rest, than we are in the power of a new wave again. How can we expect to get a footing on the crest of the waves? How shall we erect the building of our life in the midst of this ever-restless ocean of existence, if not on the Island of Equanimity?
A world where that little share of happiness allotted to beings is mostly secured after many disappointments, failures, and defeats; a world where only the courage to start anew, again and again, promises success; a world where scanty joy grows amidst sickness, separation, and death; a world where beings who were a short while ago connected with us by Sympathetic Joy, are at the next moment in want of our Compassion – such a world needs Equanimity.
But the kind of Equanimity required has to be based on vigilant presence of mind, not on indifferent dullness. It has to be the result of deliberate and hard training, and not the casual outcome of a passing mood. Equanimity would not deserve its name, if it had to be produced by exertion again and again. In that way, it is sure to be weakened and finally defeated by the vicissitudes of life. True equanimity, however, should be able to meet all these severe tests and to regenerate its strength from sources within. But it will possess this power of resistance and self-renewal only if it is rooted in Insight.
To establish Equanimity as an unshakable state of mind one has gradually to give up all possessive thoughts of mine, beginning with little things from which it is easy to detach oneself, up to possessions and aims to which our whole heart clings. Moreover, one has to give up step by step all “thoughts of Self”, beginning with a small section of one’s “personality”, with qualities of minor importance. With small weaknesses clearly seen by oneself, up to those emotions and aversions which are regarded as the center of one’s “Self”. Thus, detachment should be practiced.
To the degree we forsake thoughts of “Mine” or “Self” Equanimity will enter into our hearts. For how can it be that, what we realize as something foreign and void of a Self shall cause us any agitation, be it of lust, of hatred or of grief? Thus, the Teaching of Non-self will be our guide on the Path to Deliverance, to the Equanimity of holiness.
But its perfection and its unshakable nature are not lifeless rigidity; they are not like the inert gravity of matter. Equanimity is not dullness, heartlessness and frigidity. Its perfection is not due to an emotional ‘emptiness’, but to a ‘fullness’ of understanding, to its being complete in itself. Its unshakable nature is not the immovability of a dead, cold stone, but the manifestation of highest inner strength.
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