Equanimity

I confess that when I hear "equanimity" my mind sometimes slips into "stoic". This is a mistake, of course. To be stoic is to endure hardship without showing it, while equanimity is what Sharon Salzberg refers to as a "balance that is born of wisdom".

It’s only through mindfulness, with its secret component of equanimity, that we have the right relationship to our experience to see more deeply into it, to understand it more fully, and to develop insight. – Sharon Salzberg

Another term for equanimity is perspective. It's by maintaining perspective that we avoid falling into, or turning away from, things-as-they-are. It enables us to be generous and patient. Without equanimity, we're easily caught up in superficial dramas or snared in mindless attention traps.

The meditative mind sees disagreeable or agreeable things with equanimity, patience, and good-will. Transcendent knowledge is seeing reality in utter simplicity. — Jean-Yves Leloup

Equanimity plays a key role in our journey to realizing existence as it is: nameless, naked, undivided. In meditation, we move toward sitting and settling into just this; a process that first cultivates equanimity and then relies on it in a gently spiralling updraft.

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