Equanimity is a powerful state of being that not only reduces our stress and suffering but also enables us to respond effectively. However, in our efforts to achieve some measure of equanimity, we may end up stuck in the tentative calm of denial or in the coldness of indifference. True equanimity is clear-eyed, undefended, compassionate, and inclusive – but how do we cultivate it? I explore the virtue of equanimity from a Buddhist perspective.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Virtue of Equanimity in the Oldest Buddhist Teachings
The Challenge of Equanimity
The Dead-End of Indifference
The Ideal of the Unperturbable Buddha
Cultivating Our Own Equanimity
The Power of Equanimity
The Virtue of Equanimity in the Oldest Buddhist Teachings
In the teachings of the Buddha, the virtue of equanimity is considered very important and figures in several important lists. It is one of the four sublime social attitudes (Brahmaviharas), one of the seven factors of awakening,[i] and one of the ten perfections (paramitas).[ii] Successful contemplative practice is described by the Buddha as “having overcome covetousness and grief concerning the world.”[iii]
The Buddha himself is described as the epitome of equanimity. In the Pali Canon Sakalika Sutta, it says:
Now at that time [the Buddha’s] foot had been pierced by a stone sliver. Excruciating were the bodily feelings that developed within him — painful, fierce, sharp, wracking, repellent, disagreeable — but he endured them mindful, alert, & unperturbed. Having had his outer robe folded in four and laid out, he lay down on his right side in the lion’s posture — with one foot placed on top of the other — mindful & alert.[iv]
The Buddha also faced alarming circumstances with equanimity. According to another sutta, someone who resented him arranged to have a wild elephant given wine and then released as the Buddha was going on his alms rounds with his disciple Ananda. The sutta says:
Standing close by the Exalted One and seeing the intoxicated elephant head towards them, Ānanda was so scared out of his wits that he stepped behind the Tathāgata. ‘That elephant,’ he warned the Exalted One, ‘is wicked and violent, impetuous and given to creating havoc. It must by all means be avoided.’[v]
Rather than running, however, the Buddha calmly stood and faced the elephant and ended up placating it. (True, the sutta says this was by using his supernatural powers, but the image of Buddha standing still in the path of a rampaging elephant is nonetheless compelling.)
The Buddha’s foremost disciples are also described as having “overcome their passion.” For example, a group of monks was out of town when the Buddha died. Someone met them on the road and told them the Buddha had passed away seven days earlier. The Maha-parinibbana Sutta says:
With that, some of the monks present who were not without passion wept, uplifting their arms. As if their feet were cut out from under them, they fell down and rolled back & forth, crying, “All too soon is the Blessed One totally unbound! All too soon is the One Well-gone totally unbound! All too soon, the One with Eyes has disappeared from the world!” But those monks who were free from passion acquiesced, mindful & alert: “Fabrications are inconstant. What else is there to expect?”[vi]
The Challenge of Equanimity
A dictionary definition of equanimity is “mental or emotional stability or composure, especially under tension or strain”[vii] and synonyms include calmness, equilibrium, self-possession, serenity, and even-mindedness. Contrast this to how we often feel when faced with difficulty: Worried, stressed, anxious, fearful, reactive, angry, or resentful. Maybe we are experiencing conflict in our relationships, the torment of injustice, or the weight of great responsibility. We may be witnessing scary or heartbreaking things happening in our family, community, country, or global society. It can become extremely challenging to remain calm when we see cause for concern about our wellbeing, or that of our loved ones, or when something we care about seems threatened.
Do we really want to feel equanimity when facing challenges, though? Ask yourself this question and reflect honestly on it. Of course we’d like to be seen as composed. We’d like to be calm enough to act effectively. We’d like an end to our stress or angst. But do we really want to give up our emotional response to things? Not usually. We usually think our anger, anxiety, or fear are justified or necessary. After all, don’t we need these emotions to keep us vigilant and motivate us to take the required action? In the case of grief, we may be unwilling to let it go because it seems to be the only thing connecting us to who or what we have lost.
When we’re exhausted by our emotions and need a break from them, it can be tempting to slip into denial of some kind. Unable to maintain equanimity while facing our problems, the only alternative often seems to be ignoring them as best we can. Whether we’re avoiding the news, suppressing our thoughts and feelings, or numbing out with intoxicants, the relative calm we feel is very conditional. Even if we manage to be happy, the causes of stress and sadness lurk at the edges of our consciousness. To maintain this state, we have to close ourselves off to part of reality and compromise our experience of life and participation in it.
Alternatively, we may seek equanimity by trying to change our conditions. While it’s essential that we take care of our lives and act for good in the world, have we convinced ourselves that stable composure and even-mindedness will elude us until our problems are solved? If so, we are unlikely to experience much equanimity in our lifetimes.
The Dead-End of Indifference
Equanimity is not the conditional calmness of denial, so what is it? First, it’s important to realize that the term “equanimity” is meaningless unless it’s happening in the context of some kind of conditional turbulence or trouble. The dictionary definition quoted earlier says equanimity is composure “especially under tension or strain,” but I think the “especially” could be omitted. Equanimity isn’t the peace you feel when everything’s great, it’s how you can – theoretically, at least – respond to stress and pain.
In the presence of conditional turbulence, what is an equanimous response? Most of us, I think, assume it means not feeling anything, or not caring. In other words, we imagine equanimity is indifference. We imagine that when someone cuts us off in traffic and we almost have a collision, no fear or anger would arise in us, as if we have no concern about our own survival. Or that if we lose a loved one, we would feel no sadness, as if the person made no difference in our life. Or that when we watch political or environmental developments that may bring great devastation and suffering, we would feel no concern, as if we don’t love this world or worry about our grandchildren. That when we are wracked with pain, it wouldn’t register in our experience any differently than pleasant or neutral sensations, as if we don’t have a human body.
When we would like greater equanimity but imagine it to be dependent on indifference, we either dissociate from our life or create internal conflict with our own emotions. Both responses are a kind of inner violence. When we dissociate, we end up feeling disconnected from our thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences. This disconnect can range from mild to severe. If you’re troubled by emotions, it may sound great to be able to disconnect from them, but dissociation isn’t a healthy long-term way to manage our emotions. It’s like our emotional responses remain latent while we dissociate or suppress them, building up until we’re vulnerable and then bursting out all at once. Dissociation also fragments our internal experience and limits our emotional range.
When – for better or worse – we’re unable to disconnect from or suppress our emotions, we may end up doing battle with them. We identify with some kind of superego who aims to maintain emotional control. This “executive I” experiences continual frustration and disappointment – even anger or disgust – at the aspects of ourselves that flare up in anger, stew in jealousy or self-pity, sink into depression or despair, get carried away by lust or greed, or become paralyzed by anxiety or fear. Techniques for emotional regulation can help our lives feel more manageable and practice can help us let go of many responses that are based on our delusions and attachments, but still the emotional responses arise. No amount of telling ourselves, “I shouldn’t feel this way” seems to prevent this. In fact, some of our emotional responses end up feeling even more intractable the more we try to stop them, making equanimity – at least when we’re facing difficulty, which is the only time it matters – seem permanently elusive.
The Ideal of the Unperturbable Buddha
What if equanimity isn’t about indifference – not feeling or caring – but something else entirely? Let’s go back the the Sakalika Sutta, which described the Buddha’s pain after having gotten a stone sliver in his foot (something which, in the age before antibiotics, would likely have been infected). The Sutta says, “Excruciating were the bodily feelings that developed within him — painful, fierce, sharp, wracking, repellent, disagreeable — but he endured them mindful, alert, & unperturbed.”[viii] Note that the sutta does not say the Buddha felt no pain. In fact, it says the feelings were “repellent and disagreeable.” In other words, at a certain level the Buddha’s experience was no different than yours or mine would be if we were in terrible pain. And yet he endured it, remaining “mindful, alert, and unperturbed.” He didn’t seek refuge – as I would! – in substances that would dull his senses or activities that would distract him. He faced the entire experience with equanimity. This is impressive and worth examining.
The Sakalika Sutta continues, saying that Mara came by to taunt the Buddha (Mara is the mythological god of the desire realm who continually tries to foil the Buddha so beings won’t be able to escape his clutches). Mara says:
Are you lying there in a stupor,
or drunk on poetry?
Are your goals so very few?
All alone in a secluded lodging,
what is this dreamer, this sleepy-face?
In other words, Mara says, “Is your calm in the face of your injury due to denial, distraction, numbness, or indifference? Have you managed to dissociate from your experience, leaving you cut off from the world? Are you resting in oblivion?”
The Buddha responds:
I lie here,
not in a stupor,
nor drunk on poetry.
My goal attained,
I am sorrow-free.
All alone in a secluded lodging,
I lie down with sympathy
for all beings…
I’m not awake with worry,
nor afraid to sleep.
Days & nights
don’t oppress me.
I see no threat of decline
in any world at all.
That’s why I sleep
with sympathy
for all beings.
Despite the excruciating pain he was experiencing, the Buddha was lying there with his heart and awareness wide open. He didn’t allow his difficulty to consume all his attention but maintained care and concern for all beings. He wasn’t maintaining alertness out of worry – that is, out of an effort to manage his pain or prove his spiritual prowess – but because this painful moment was not less worthy of mindfulness than a pleasant one. He was not afraid to sleep or surrender conscious control. The changing conditions of day and night, light and darkness, pain and ease, joy and sorrow, didn’t “oppress” him as he didn’t increase his suffering by longing for whatever was not his current experience. Because he didn’t cling to a fixed idea about how the world should be, he was untroubled by the thought of its decline. All these aspects of the Buddha’s equanimity resulted not in a being who was centered only on minimizing his own pain, but in a being who felt sympathy with all beings even in sleep.
Cultivating Our Own Equanimity
The Buddha is an ideal, and few people will ever attain his level of equanimity, but such an ideal can be very helpful to us. It gives a direction to go. How can we be more like this?
Over time, our practice usually gives us more equanimity. It does this primarily by giving us a larger perspective. “Larger” is a relative word, of course, and the beautiful thing is that we can access a little bit of equanimity every time we’re able to broaden our perspective just a little bit.
When we start meditating and practicing mindfulness, we notice our thoughts and feelings come and go. Our perspective broadens from the content of our minds to the space through which the content moves. Less identified with our emotional and mental experiences, we are often less upset by them.
When we start relating the Dharma teachings to our lives, we learn to recognize the arising of dukkha – stress or suffering – and what causes it. Our perspective broadens from an effort to manage our individual lives to applying age-old wisdom to them because, after all, we are not so different from the Buddhas and ancestors. We can let go of guilt and shame and trust the practice.
When we start to wake up to Reality-with-a-Capital-R, we realize there is a whole universe in a single drop of water and the Ineffable can’t be destroyed. Our perspective broadens from the sorrows of the world to the boundless realm of the Dharma. While our heart breaks for the suffering of living beings and we toil endlessly to save them, we are free from existential despair.
However, no matter how broad a perspective we have awakened to, equanimity isn’t something we attain and keep. It’s a response to conditional turbulence in this moment, then this moment, then this moment. Like physical balance, it’s a response that manifests as we move and live. This is why we can have equanimity, then lose it, then gain it again. The loss is not a sin or a sign of failure, it’s just part of the process. All we can do is recover as quickly as we can.
Equanimity is also not about holding a comforting set of beliefs. All my talk about “broadening our perspective” may seem to suggest that if we’re able to cultivate the right kind of understanding, we won’t be upset by anything. While it’s true that a positive outlook on life may give us some equanimity, the efficacy of our outlook isn’t in the philosophy of it but in how it changes the way we perceive things in this moment. Equanimity isn’t to be found in a satisfying set of pre-determined explanations and answers to life’s problems, but in our fully embodied response right here, right now. It’s not about the future, or the past, or intellectual understanding.
If you’re anything like me, though, you harbor a tiny hope that the equanimity of the sages is a result of their having figured everything out – that the Buddha would feel calm in the face of the climate crisis, for example, because he would be able to foresee how everything will work out okay in the end, or at least how there’s no reason to be upset if it doesn’t. It’s tough to give up this hope, but real equanimity is more profound than feeling confident everything is going to work out the way we want it to.
The Power of Equanimity
Real, functional, in-the-moment equanimity isn’t rational. Instead, it’s a calm, centered way of being with the conditional turbulence we’re facing because that’s the wisest, most compassionate, and most effective way to be. We entirely let go of telling ourselves stories about what’s happening and trying to anticipate what’s going to happen next, instead allowing ourselves to be fully embodied in our direct experience. This isn’t denial; we don’t shrink away from the conditional turbulence but remain alert and present within it. This isn’t indifference because we aren’t clinging to an agenda of avoiding pain or emotional turmoil. In equanimity we reject nothing in the sense of trying to exclude it from our reality.
Equanimity is showing up wholeheartedly in the messiness of life with fierce determination to do what’s needed and willingness not to know ahead of time what those needs might be or how we might respond. It means surrendering our ego-based sense of control in favor of trust in interdependence. Equanimity isn’t powerful in and of itself (except perhaps as a source of inspiration and strength for others) but it allows something powerful to move through us. It takes time to build trust in this process. Our small mind jumps forward to interfere out of habit, but eventually we recognize that the experience of equanimity is far preferable to emotional reactivity, and when we can act with some measure of equanimity the results are usually much better than otherwise.
To avoid turning even this idea of equanimity into a source of struggle in our practice, though, we need to remember that our emotional responses are part of the conditional turbulence we aim to face wholeheartedly. Maybe, in some sense, it’s ideal if some difficulty doesn’t arouse any anger, anxiety, or distress in us, but if it does? We face our emotional reactivity in a calm, centered way because that’s the wisest, most compassionate, and most effective way to be. There is no use in getting upset about getting upset. Over time in practice, we learn to trust the practice to work on us. And while we naturally wish to be without emotional distress and reactivity, wishing is pointless. Life as a human being comes with emotions, and if we really think about it, we don’t want it any other way.
Finally, equanimity has nothing to do with passivity. We may imagine that if we experience real equanimity, we won’t care about protecting, changing, or improving anything because we’ll no longer be emotionally distressed about all of it. Fortunately, the motivation for wise and compassionate action comes from a much deeper place than emotional distress.
Equanimity helps us stay strong and enables effective action. I think of the motto “Keep Calm and Carry On,” meant for motivational posters in area of England that were being bombed daily in World War II. The posters were never widely distributed, but the motto reflects a real aspect of the character of people who survived and took care of each other during the bombing. In such a setting, to whatever extent you were able to “keep calm and carry on” helped you survive and take care of others. Rather than such equanimity being a passive or resigned way to be, it was defiant.
In this time when so much in the world seems headed in dangerous directions, I hope you will explore, with me, real equanimity.
Endnotes
[i] “Gilana Sutta: Ill” (SN 46.14), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn46/sn46.014.than.html
[ii] “The Ten Perfections: A Study Guide”, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/perfections.html
[iii] “Gelañña Sutta: At the Sick Room (1)” (SN 36.7), translated from the Pali by Nyanaponika Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.007.nypo.html
[iv] “Sakalika Sutta: The Stone Sliver” (SN 4.13), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn04/sn04.013.than.html
[v] Ekottarikāgama 18.5, The Drunk Elephant. https://suttacentral.net/ea18.5/en/huyenvi-boinwebb-pasadika?lang=en
[vi] “Maha-parinibbana Sutta: The Great Discourse on the Total Unbinding” (DN 16), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.5-6.than.html
[vii] https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/equanimity
[viii] “Sakalika Sutta: The Stone Sliver” (SN 4.13), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn04/sn04.013.than.html
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