Equanimity, by John Aske

By Buddhism Now on 31 August 2023 • ( 0 )

‘Equanimity’, as the Hsin Hsin Ming beautifully puts it, is ‘Being serene in the oneness of things,’ or rather prosaically as the dictionary says, ‘Is not moved by elation or despair’. But what most of us do is attach ourselves to attractive states and defend ourselves against negative ones, thus drawing ourselves into a constant tussle between ourselves and the feelings passing through us. Somehow, we have to learn to allow these things to come and go, as they will without involving ourselves. Not for nothing did King David wear a ring with the inscription: ‘All things pass,’ to remind him of this truth.

But as we involve ourselves with all these passing things, we absorb into them and become tangled in them, usually for the worse, and that leaves a trace in our minds often as well as in our bodies. Hence the various therapies that work on the body to clear the mind of states obstructing it.

The enlightened life is said to be ‘Traceless’, being lived in complete harmony with life and therefore not leaving a mark — life passes through it as if it were transparent, hence the Roshi’s comment: ‘Don’t see yourself as anything at all.’ Seeing ourselves as ‘things to be protected’ actually distorts our nature into a magnet for nice things and a barrier against unpleasant ones. It is like painting flowers on a window that faces the garden or as the old phrase goes: ‘Gilding the lily’; and as we are told:‘Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of those.’ All these responses distort the natural openness of our nature and allow passing things to take us over body and mind, whereas we could just allow them to arise and cease on their own as if passing through a clear space unhindered, as if we were a clear space ourselves (an idea that the ego doesn’t really like because it reduces its controlling power).

Equanimity is not a state or a condition, it is what we have always been, flow and change, with no attempt to allow or prevent anything. It is also seeing how things are with no interference.

We cannot ‘cause’ it, but for example by simply watching the breath during meditation, we begin, to see the spaces between breaths — and between thoughts — and in that quiet space there is an awareness we did not cause, whose presence enables us to ride through the spaces without encountering any obstacles. Equanimity is the counter to the ego’s obsessive control, so that things are as they are with no addition or subtraction.

One of Ajahn Sumedho’s monks recalled a retreat in which Ajahn Sumedho paused and said:

‘This is not going right, stop meditating.’ And when someone said: ‘But what shall we do? The answer arrived thunderously: ’Just be!’ Because before, they had been aiming for something at the expense of being. This is the end of intent, like the bowman in Zen in the Art of Archery, whose arrow is finally released without any thought of doing so.

The Sixth Patriarch of Zen at the Moment of Enlightenment. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. — The Sixth Patriarch.

The walking exercise is similar. When we begin, we find ourselves compiling what I call, ‘Shopping lists’ of things I want or I plan to do, often prompted by things around us. ‘How green the grass is’ Oh, that reminds me, I must buy some greens tomorrow.’ And we go on like this until we reach the end of our walking patch and have to turn, and suddenly, we return to what we are actually doing. This happens again and again, but after a while, the noticing begins to grow and grow, until the awareness begins to supercede the shopping lists. We are not so much doing anything, as a quietly noticing what is happening. We are ‘Just being!’

As ‘the fish swims in the water, but is unmindful of the water, the bird flies in the wind, but is unmindful of the wind.’

As the Zenrin says:

‘At a stroke, I forgot all my knowledge.

There’s no use for artificial discipline.

For, move as I will, I manifest the ancient way.’

I particularly like the story of the sage Fa Yung, who lived in a remote temple and to whom the birds brought offerings of flowers in tribute to his holiness. But after his enlightenment by the fourth Zen Patriarch, Tao-Hsin, the birds no longer brought flowers, because Fa Yung was now traceless.

Read other teachings on the ‘Four Immeasurables’ here.

You can read more articles by John Aske here.