How to Develop Equanimity According to Tibetan Buddhism
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Description
How to Develop Equanimity According to Tibetan Buddhism
According to Tibetan Buddhism, developing equanimity requires understanding the causes and conditions that contribute to suffering.
What is Equanimity in Tibetan Buddhism?
Generally speaking, equanimity is the absence of biased attitudes of feeling close to some living beings and distant from others. According to Tibetan Buddhism when we meditate on equanimity in the context of The Four Boundless Thoughts, it is the wish for all beings to be free from their attachment to their close ones and aversion to those who are distant from them. Hint: The keyword is ALL, not just our loved ones or friends but all beings. Remember this is a practice, so we can let go of the expectation of instant mastery. Developing equanimity requires time and concentrated effort.
Why is developing equanimity helpful?
Developing equanimity is helpful because it allows us to train ourselves away from biased attitudes. One way to contemplate this is by considering that the people closest to us in this life or another lifetime may have been the ones who hurt us the most in a different lifetime.
On the other hand, those people who we think would never do anything good for us in our current lives could have been helpful to us in another lifetime. Yes, those are a lot of lifetimes to consider. However, it is helpful to our equanimity development to zoom out and consider more than this current lifetime. This contemplation can help us release strong attachments to those we are currently close to and can help ease our aversion to people we tend to avoid.
How to maintain equanimity when we encounter stressful situations or people?
When we realize that there is potential for good and bad in every relationship and every situation, we start to feel a more equal attitude. Developing compassion for all living beings is a lofty goal. It is common to struggle on that journey. It doesn’t feel good to admit, but most of us have at least one person we struggle to like. It can be challenging to understand why we should want them to be free from suffering. We can begin with these contemplations and learn to see the bigger picture, that we perpetuate our own suffering by not developing equanimity.
What's an example of equanimity?
When we encounter people or experiences that we don’t like, whether it’s because we have opposing viewpoints, or we feel it’s harmful to ourselves or our society, we label them as bad. If we start digging deeper and think about it, we realize that we are all suffering for the same reasons of grasping at self, a misapprehension of reality. Thus, we are all equal.
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