Out of a living silence

Equanimity is characterized as promoting the aspect of neutrality towards beings. Its function is to see equality in beings. It is manifested as the quieting of resentment and approval.[1]

1968, Winter, Canada

In March of 1967 I left the United States and became a resident of Canada. My reason for making the move was to avoid military service during the war in Vietnam, a war that I saw as pointlessly destructive. During my first year in Canada I was cultivating anger and resentment toward the country of my birth. The winter months of early 1968 were especially difficult. I was living alone in a small apartment in the basement of a modest house in Lethbridge, Alberta, a town in which I had few acquaintances and even fewer friends—one friend to be exact. I did a lot of writing that winter on a green Hermes typewriter. I wrote a novel, a one-act play, a few short stories, and some poetry. Writing was an emotional outlet, and it gave me something to do while I was smoking unfiltered Player cigarettes, but what I wrote was unreadable. Even I didn’t like reading what I had written. It was too angry, too didactic, too preachy, too dogmatic even for my unrefined tastes. Who wants to read the bellicose raving of a bitter and inexperienced twenty-two-year-old draft-dodger?

Fortunately for me, there was a decent bookstore in Lethbridge, and when I wasn’t banging out substandard literature on my Hermes, I went to the bookstore to purchase novels by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. On one of those visits to the bookstore, I happened to see a thin volume called Buddhist Meditation, published in 1956. Reading Conze’s Buddhism: Its Essence and Development in the previous year had piqued my interest in Buddhism. So I bought Buddhist Meditation, read it, and even began to try some of the contemplative exercises described in it. One set of exercises in particular that caught my attention was the four brahma-vihāras, often known in English as abiding with the divine or the divine abidings. That set of exercises consists in cultivating loving kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā), which are antidotes to respectively hatred, cruelty, envy, and resentment. This post is about the fourth of those abidings: equanimity.

I was amazed to learn that there were actually tools available for reducing the painful mental states of anger and resentment, that loving kindness and equanimity are skills that one can develop by putting those tools to regular use.

Brahma-vihāra: abiding with the divine

In traditional accounts it is said that the Buddha once came upon a mendicant whose religious practice was done for the purpose of seeing the god Brahmā face to face. The Buddha asked the mendicant how his devotional practice was working for him. Had he seen Brahmā face to face? The mendicant said he had not yet succeeded. On being questioned further, the mendicant admitted that he had never known anyone who had succeeded in seeing Brahmā face to face. The Buddha then asked what qualities a devotee expected to find in Brahmā. The mendicant replied that he expected Brahmā to have unconditional love toward all beings, to be actively responsive to those experiencing hardships, to be full of joy when beings have good fortune, and to pass no negative judgment on beings. The Buddha then said that he could not help the mendicant see Brahmā face to face, but he could teach him how to have unconditional love (mettā), compassionate responsiveness (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā). Having those qualities would be tantamount to abiding with or even in Brahmā (brahmavihāra).

Many centuries after the Buddha lived and taught, the Theravādin monk Buddhaghose wrote a comprehensive manual of Buddhist practice called Visuddhimaggo, which has been translated into English under the titles The Path of Purification and the Path of Purity. The first section of that manual is dedicated to the development of good habits (sīla), the second section to mental concentration (samādhi), and the third to cultivating wisdom (paññā). In the second section a wide range of contemplative exercises are outlined in detail, one of them being the set of four exercises known collectively as abiding with the divine (brahma-vihāra). Buddhaghosa’s instructions on contemplative exercises were in fact the basis of much of Conze’s Buddhist Meditation.

What is equanimity, and how does it relate to the other divine abidings?

The quotation at the beginning of this blog post is Buddhaghosa’s concise description of uppekkhā.

Equanimity (upekkhā) has the defining characteristic (lakkhaṇa) of generating (pavatti) the mode (ākāra) of impartiality (majjhatta) toward sentient beings (sattesu); it has the essential property (rasa) of seeing (dassana) the similarity (samabhāva) in sentient beings; its manifestation (paccupaṭṭhānā) is the quelling (vūpasama) of aversion (paṭigha) and favoritism (anumaya).

The flagship of the divine abidings is the cultivation of friendship or loving kindness (mettā-bhāvanā). That exercise consists in learning to regard all beings as one regards oneself by acknowledging that all beings desire for themselves happiness and well-being. The other three divine abidings are particular expressions of friendship. Compassion is acting in response to a friend’s misfortune, that is, doing whatever one can to help reverse the misfortune. Sympathetic joy is the delight one feels when a friend experiences good fortune. Equanimity consists in accepting all one’s friends as they are rather than resisting them or being annoyed by them. It also consists in not playing favorites among one’s friends but rather loving them all equally. Buddhaghosa says that equanimity (or even-mindedness as Pe Maung Tin translated upekkhā) is the most refined expression of friendship

What are the obvious opposites of and the subtle obstacles to equanimity?

Buddhaghosa uses the expression “far enemy” to characterize a mentality that is obviously the opposite of the mode of friendship under consideration. For example, hatred, envy, and cruelty are the respective far enemies of loving kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy. He uses the term “near enemy” to characterize a mentality close enough that an unwise person might mistake it for the mode of friendship that one is aiming for. Lust is the near enemy of loving kindness, since both lust and loving kindness are based on seeing the desirable qualities in another. Grief at not having one’s own personal aims fulfilled is the near enemy of compassion, since both such grief and compassion are occasioned by recognizing a misfortune. Worldly joy based on attachment to one’s own good fortune is the near enemy of sympathetic joy, since it shares with sympathetic joy an appreciation of prosperity.

As for equanimity, its near enemy is indifference, or simply being oblivious of another person’s conditions and thus not caring at all for another sentient being. What indifference and equanimity have in common is an absence of condemnation of another’s shortcomings. Equanimity involves ignoring another’s faults, while indifference involves being ignorant of them.

Equanimity’s far enemy is resentment or disapproval of others due to their perceived shortcomings. True equanimity consists in being aware of another’s qualities without passing negative judgment of the person but rather seeing that personal qualities are conditioned, often by conditions beyond a person’s control.

Why equanimity?

It seems to me that blaming others has been on the ascendency in the past decade, as have shaming others for their real or imagined flaws, passing negative moral judgment on others for their perceived imperfections, and assuming the worst of those whose words and deeds are deemed unacceptable. The sort of equanimity described by Buddhaghosa may not entirely eradicate those trends—I would be the first to admit that those tendencies have not been eradicated it myself—but the cultivation of equanimity is likely to have the effect of reducing those tendencies in oneself.

I have a feeling that in some quarters equanimity may be perceived as a weakness or as a kind of permissiveness that accelerates moral degeneracy. I would ask those who feel that way to ask themselves what problems, real or imagined, have ever been solved by resenting, blaming, shaming, and accusing others. Those who are struggling in various ways are more likely to ocercome their obstacles by being shown kindness and a helping hand than by being condemned or shunned or villified.

There is much more to say on this topic, but rather than saying more I have more important work to do. I have a mentality that could use more cultivation of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.