Issue 13: Equanimity
The topic for my secular Buddhist sangha (meditation and study group) this month is equanimity. It’s a subject that has especially engaged me since the beginning of the pandemic. I wrote in my launch issue in April that I felt like “a tiny, bobbing boat on a roiling, stormy ocean.” This is a metaphor for one of the fundamentals of Buddhist teaching, as I understand it – to maximise our equanimity in the face of life’s vicissitudes. I know, more than ever, that I can do very little to affect the ‘roiling, stormy ocean’, but I can do a great deal to stabilise my ‘tiny, bobbing boat’.
This has made me very curious about how I can cultivate equanimity. I think I’ve learned over the past 10 years (since I’ve been studying Buddhism, mindfulness and meditation) that I can do it in at least three ways:
- letting go of the “grasping, aversion and delusion” to which the Buddha attributed all of our self inflicted suffering
- cultivating good qualities such as love, compassion, gratitude and joy that displace the above
- trying to be as present in the moment as I can rather than trying to anticipate what is to come (which is always impossible, but currently seems especially futile).
The one that especially intrigues me at the moment is the third – presence. To stay with the water metaphor, it reminds me of my childhood swimming in the ocean off Long Island. The safest way to manage the big surf was to dive deep under each wave to avoid the crashing breaker which might otherwise tumble me. When I dove deep enough, I was always amazed how calm it was under all that energy exploding above me.
My equivalent now is when I can remember to take the time to stop, step out of busy-ness, activity and movement, and ground myself in noticing my five senses and body sensations. It’s astonishing how much more becomes available to me in the world around, and within, me when I can do that. Equanimity almost always ensues naturally from dwelling in the present moment; it’s remembering to dive into it that is the key.