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|quote-text=And the Bhagavān proclaimed, "Abide in the mind which has equanimity to all beings. Develop an equal mind towards all beings. Do not generate an unequal mind."<ref>This is Simon Houlton's translation. བཅོམ་ལྡན་འདས་ཀྱིས་བཀའ་སྩལ་པ། སེམས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ་སེམས་མཉམ་པ་ཉིད་དུ་གནས་པར་བྱའོ། སེམས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ་མཉམ་པའི་སེམས་བསྐྱེད་པར་བྱ་སྟེ། མི་མཉམ་པའི་སེམས་བསྐྱེད་པར་མི་བྱའོ། ''Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā'' (''Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa stong phrag nyi shu lnga pa''), in Derge Kangyur D9, vol. 27, nyi khri, kha, fol. 347b, http://purl.bdrc.io/resource/MW4CZ5369_0009.</ref> | |quote-text=And the Bhagavān proclaimed, "Abide in the mind which has equanimity to all beings. Develop an equal mind towards all beings. Do not generate an unequal mind."<ref>This is Simon Houlton's translation. བཅོམ་ལྡན་འདས་ཀྱིས་བཀའ་སྩལ་པ། སེམས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ་སེམས་མཉམ་པ་ཉིད་དུ་གནས་པར་བྱའོ། སེམས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ་མཉམ་པའི་སེམས་བསྐྱེད་པར་བྱ་སྟེ། མི་མཉམ་པའི་སེམས་བསྐྱེད་པར་མི་བྱའོ། ''Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā'' (''Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa stong phrag nyi shu lnga pa''), in Derge Kangyur D9, vol. 27, nyi khri, kha, fol. 347b, http://purl.bdrc.io/resource/MW4CZ5369_0009.</ref> | ||
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Equanimity is an essential preliminary step in any method used to cultivate bodhicitta. For instance, in developing bodhicitta through the | Equanimity is an essential preliminary step in any method used to cultivate bodhicitta. For instance, in developing bodhicitta through the seven-point instructions of cause and effect, equanimity toward all beings must be established before we begin cultivating the recognition that all beings have been our mothers. | ||
The Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, explains this in his ''Essence of Refined Gold'': | The Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, explains this in his ''Essence of Refined Gold'': | ||
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We investigate how we interact with beings differently according to whether we view them as friend, stranger, or enemy. These three broad categories cover the whole scope of perspectives through which we view others. | We investigate how we interact with beings differently according to whether we view them as friend, stranger, or enemy. These three broad categories cover the whole scope of perspectives through which we view others. | ||
We tend to fixate on others in one of these ways and rigidly place them in one of these categories. And yet, under analysis, | We tend to fixate on others in one of these ways and rigidly place them in one of these categories. And yet, under analysis, no individual remains permanently in any one of these categories. | ||
Even within a single day, a person may act in ways that would place them in each of these categories. And from the longer-term perspective, a person who currently acts as a friend may have previously acted as our enemy, and vice versa. | Even within a single day, a person may act in ways that would place them in each of these categories. And from the longer-term perspective, a person who currently acts as a friend may have previously acted as our enemy, and vice versa. | ||
If we look carefully, we can see this clearly even in this life. Through a change of circumstance, those we felt were our enemies earlier in life can suddenly become dear to us. And someone we never noticed before can, in an instant, become a | If we look carefully, we can see this clearly even in this life. Through a change of circumstance, those we felt were our enemies earlier in life can suddenly become dear to us. And someone we never noticed before can, in an instant, become a bitter enemy or a dear friend. | ||
This context can be further deepened by bringing in the wider perspective that the mindstream of living beings is beginningless and has no end. If that is so, then we can extend this awareness of the changing nature of our relationships with others to prior lifetimes. In that context the person before us must have been a friend, a stranger, and an enemy many times before. | This context can be further deepened by bringing in the wider perspective that the mindstream of living beings is beginningless and has no end. If that is so, then we can extend this awareness of the changing nature of our relationships with others to prior lifetimes. In that context, the person before us must have been a friend, a stranger, and an enemy many times before. | ||
If we understand this reality clearly, we can see that our view of others is short-sighted and based on a biased and temporary perspective. From this we can understand that there is no reason to be biased toward a being just because of the way they currently act toward us. All beings are the same in having been an enemy, a friend, and a stranger to us many times. From this long-term vantage point, there is not a single valid difference between any being. This current appearance is fleeting, and our reactions to it therefore short-sighted. | If we understand this reality clearly, we can see that our view of others is short-sighted and based on a biased and temporary perspective. From this we can understand that there is no reason to be biased toward a being just because of the way they currently act toward us. All beings are the same in having been an enemy, a friend, and a stranger to us many times. From this long-term vantage point, there is not a single valid difference between any being. This current appearance is fleeting, and our reactions to it therefore short-sighted. | ||
Latest revision as of 17:48, 17 April 2026
- Buddha-Nature
- Compassion
- Defining Bodhicitta
- Emptiness
- Equalizing & Exchanging Self and Others
- Equanimity
- History of Bodhicitta Teachings
- How to Develop Bodhicitta
- Interdependent Origination
- Lineage of the Profound View
- Lineage of the Vast Conduct
- Mahāyāna
- Mind Training
- Non-Self
- Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect
- The Bodhisattva Ideal
- The Bodhisattva Path
- The Bodhisattva Vow
- The Bodhisattva's Goal
- The Four Immeasurables
- The Six Perfections
- The Three Higher Trainings
- The Two Accumulations
- The Two Truths
- Tonglen: The Practice of Sending and Receiving
- Types of Bodhicitta
Equanimity is the foundational attitude required for developing bodhicitta. Cultivating the mind of enlightenment that wishes to bring every single living being to the highest state of buddhahood must be grounded in treating all sentient beings with total impartiality, with no sense of attachment or aversion toward any of them.
Equanimity (upekṣā, བཏང་སྙོམས་) occurs in several contexts in the Buddhist tradition. It is included as one of the four immeasurables, a system of practice that is found across all Buddhist traditions. The four elements of the practice are immeasurable love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. In order to provide a stable base for the other elements, equanimity is typically cultivated at the beginning. In this context, immeasurable equanimity is an aspirational prayer expressing the wish that all beings be free from the attachment and aversion that hold some close and others at a distance. For more details on the four immeasurables, visit the following link:
The other main practice of equanimity is not an aspiration for others to develop these states of mind. Instead, it is a way of training our own minds to view all sentient beings with equanimity. We train ourselves to be free of attachment or aversion toward others, neither feeling overly close to nor overly distant from anyone. This form of equanimity regards beings with complete impartiality, without a trace of discrimination.
This feeling of equanimity toward all beings finds its practical expression in one of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's main life commitments—the promotion of universal human values to create a happier and more peaceful world. To this end, he teaches us to understand that all human beings are fundamentally the same and that recognizing our shared human experience can bring about a feeling of closeness to one another.
Cultivating complete equanimity for all beings is one of the essential prerequisites for developing the mind of bodhicitta. Without an impartial view that embraces every being equally—whether close friends or the worst of enemies—there is no opportunity to develop the vast mental states of great compassion or bodhicitta. However, the reality of our daily lives is that we feel strong attachment toward a few, aversion toward others, and indifference toward many. Yet these very attitudes are the main obstacles to developing equanimity toward all beings.
So why do we have these biased feelings? How do they develop in us? In his commentary to the Third Dalai Lama's text on the stages of the path to enlightenment called Essence of Refined Gold (གསེར་གྱི་ཡང་ཞུན།), His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama explains this:
Why do we like some beings, dislike others, and feel indifferent toward even others? Because of actions done or not done in this life. We like the beings who have helped and supported us, dislike those who have harmed us or who threaten our existence in some way, and feel indifferent to anyone unrelated to us, who has done nothing either pleasant or unpleasant to us.[1]
How we place people in these categories depends on how we perceive them and how they act toward us. If we feel that someone will potentially harm us, we label them an enemy. Those whom we perceive as having given us help or support we label as friends. And those toward whom we feel no particular connection we label as strangers or ignore them entirely.
His Holiness goes on to point out that the reasons behind why we feel someone is a friend, enemy, or stranger are often extremely superficial:
If we meditate on the people whom we dislike, the superficial nature of our reasons for disliking them become very obvious. Some merely smiled at us strangely, frowned at us or said something against us at one time. Others happen to play an unfortunate role in our lives. On the other hand, our reasons for liking people whom we choose as friends are usually just as silly. Most people change their emotions towards others as quickly as the weather changes. Such a mind is a cause of laughter, even by worldly conventions. How much more inappropriate is it to the spiritual path?[2]
There are various techniques to create this equanimity, but one very important method involves looking deeply into these biased reactions through which we categorize others as friends, enemies, or strangers and analyzing the true situation from a long-term perspective.
The Importance of Equanimity
The contemporary Gelukpa master Ribur Rinpoche describes the importance of equanimity in his teaching How to Generate Bodhicitta:
It is similar to painting a picture: if you want to paint a picture on a surface, you must first make sure that the surface is smooth and even and has no rough or uneven spots on it. In the same way, before you can train your mind in the meditation on recognising all sentient beings as your mother, you must make your mind even with equanimity towards everyone. In other words, you must learn to stop discriminating among sentient beings, feeling close to some and distant from others, and the way to do this is by developing equanimity.[3]
We need a blank canvas on which to paint our vision of compassion, love, and bodhicitta—a foundation on which to develop our wish to attain enlightenment for all beings.
In The Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-five Thousand Verses, we are reminded of the importance of this stable foundation:
And the Bhagavān proclaimed, "Abide in the mind which has equanimity to all beings. Develop an equal mind towards all beings. Do not generate an unequal mind."[4]
Equanimity is an essential preliminary step in any method used to cultivate bodhicitta. For instance, in developing bodhicitta through the seven-point instructions of cause and effect, equanimity toward all beings must be established before we begin cultivating the recognition that all beings have been our mothers.
The Third Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso, explains this in his Essence of Refined Gold:
As a preliminary to all seven of these meditations, however, one must make the mind level by means of meditation upon equanimity for all sentient beings. If the mind sees some beings as dear, some as alien, and some as neutral, it is not sufficiently mature to be able to meditate upon all beings as having been one’s own mother. If the mind has no equanimity, any love or compassion generated will be biased and unbalanced. Therefore one must first practice equanimity meditation.[5]
Developing Equanimity
One of the most common methods for cultivating equanimity toward all beings is through uprooting attachment to those close to us and dismantling aversion toward our enemies. This can be done on a conventional level by investigating the way we put beings into different categories, such as friend, enemy, and stranger, and how this perception of others as fitting rigidly into those categories is incorrect. Or this can be done on an ultimate level by looking at how the categories of friend, enemy, and stranger exist only conventionally and have no intrinsic reality.
1. Conventional Analysis of Friend, Stranger, and Enemy
We investigate how we interact with beings differently according to whether we view them as friend, stranger, or enemy. These three broad categories cover the whole scope of perspectives through which we view others.
We tend to fixate on others in one of these ways and rigidly place them in one of these categories. And yet, under analysis, no individual remains permanently in any one of these categories.
Even within a single day, a person may act in ways that would place them in each of these categories. And from the longer-term perspective, a person who currently acts as a friend may have previously acted as our enemy, and vice versa.
If we look carefully, we can see this clearly even in this life. Through a change of circumstance, those we felt were our enemies earlier in life can suddenly become dear to us. And someone we never noticed before can, in an instant, become a bitter enemy or a dear friend.
This context can be further deepened by bringing in the wider perspective that the mindstream of living beings is beginningless and has no end. If that is so, then we can extend this awareness of the changing nature of our relationships with others to prior lifetimes. In that context, the person before us must have been a friend, a stranger, and an enemy many times before.
If we understand this reality clearly, we can see that our view of others is short-sighted and based on a biased and temporary perspective. From this we can understand that there is no reason to be biased toward a being just because of the way they currently act toward us. All beings are the same in having been an enemy, a friend, and a stranger to us many times. From this long-term vantage point, there is not a single valid difference between any being. This current appearance is fleeting, and our reactions to it therefore short-sighted.
By meditating on how our enemies have been our friends in the past and will become so again in the future, and how our friends have equally been our enemies, we cultivate the equanimity of not feeling overly close to some and overly distant from others based on attachment and aversion.
With this basic ground, we can then approach the further instructions with a level playing field, free from bias.
2. Ultimate Analysis of Friend, Stranger, and Enemy
The ultimate analysis of those around us involves not focusing on surface-level characteristics, such as features of someone that we find attractive or unattractive, toward which we then develop attachment or aversion.
Looking deeper beneath these superficial appearances, we start to analyze the ultimate nature of things. Do the people we perceive as friends or enemies really exist in the way they appear to us? Is a particular person inherently and independently existent?
When we start to investigate, we find that there is no inherently fixed person at all. There is therefore no basis for attachment to those we like or aversion to those we dislike. In this ultimate context, we and all others are equal in our ultimate nature, with no distinction to be made between self and other. With this perspective of the emptiness of all beings, the secondary divisions we have created all drop away as we see the fundamental unity of all beings.
For further details on different ways of developing equanimity, see here:
Notes
- ↑ Dalai Lama, 14th, The Path to Enlightenment, trans. and ed. Glenn H. Mullin (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1995), 138–39.
- ↑ Dalai Lama, 14th, Path to Enlightenment, 139.
- ↑ Ribur Rinpoche, How to Generate Bodhicitta (Singapore: Amitabha Buddhist Centre, 2010), 7–8.
- ↑ This is Simon Houlton's translation. བཅོམ་ལྡན་འདས་ཀྱིས་བཀའ་སྩལ་པ། སེམས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ་སེམས་མཉམ་པ་ཉིད་དུ་གནས་པར་བྱའོ། སེམས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ལ་མཉམ་པའི་སེམས་བསྐྱེད་པར་བྱ་སྟེ། མི་མཉམ་པའི་སེམས་བསྐྱེད་པར་མི་བྱའོ། Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā (Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa stong phrag nyi shu lnga pa), in Derge Kangyur D9, vol. 27, nyi khri, kha, fol. 347b, http://purl.bdrc.io/resource/MW4CZ5369_0009.
- ↑ Dalai Lama, 14th, Path to Enlightenment, 138.
