Brahmaviharas - Equanimity (Part 1)

by Gil Fronsdal

So I want to welcome you to the land of equanimity, the time of equanimity that this is the topic for this week's five talks. And in particular, it's the equanimity Brahmavihara. It's a form of love, which is characterised by upekkha, which is the Pali word for equanimity. And it is maybe counterintuitive for many people to think of love as being synonymous or connected to equanimity. Because love seems to be something that's more proactive, engaged and going (gearing) towards people doing something; it's being expressed many things. But in fact, I think it's not too difficult to analyse love. The way that it's often practised in the world around us is that it's often mixed up with other attitudes, needs and desires.

Sometimes, love is mixed up with what we need: We need company, we need security and sometimes people feel like they need admiration. Sometimes, love is mixed up with fear. Sometimes, love is mixed up with lust and sometimes mixed up with power. Also sometimes, it is mixed up with status, and all kinds of things that come along with love. So, it's very hard to see the difference between some of these other elements that come along with love and love itself.

I like to think of the practice of mindfulness – as well as the practices of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity –  as being practices that purify love and simplify it. Like you would simplify gold down to its beautiful essence. You take out the dross and take out the impurities that are there. So that as we simplify our love or clarify the love, it's not mixed up with these other needs and other things that are going on. It becomes more and more of a wonderful treasure, a wonderful jewel inside of us, a source of nourishing support. And so, this can help to purify our love; to clarify our love. For example, for loving-kindness, what gets purified is any  form of ill-will – and any form of love that has to do with our self-centredness, self-preoccupation; "What's in it for me?"

As we practise or connect to compassion, compassion is freed, certainly from any tendency for cruelty to harm people. And it's also purified from any sense of distress, and any sense of dismay, the horror that there might be or that sometimes is confused with.  Appreciative joy gets purified of envy and jealousy. Sometimes, a very strong motivator for insisting on love, or holding on to love, or protecting our love with someone else is when there's jealousy and envy going on. And also, it's also purified from any kind of self-centred focus on oneself – around feeling discontent, or feeling guilty, or feeling like "I'm the one who's now enjoying or delighting in the delight of someone else" as it's kind of a carious way of living where the focus is really on oneself – so that one can be just being open to the joy of others.

And so equanimity also is a purification. It's a purification, they say, from two things: repulsion and pursuit. Sometimes, it's translated as attraction and sometimes as greed. But the Pali word has the connotation of pursuit – pursuing or chasing after something.  And so love is neither pursuing, nor has any kind of repulsion against anything (as a result of it, or being part of it). And so, one of the ways to appreciate this quality of equanimity is that is, in fact, is not so much in trying to understand it directly, but to understand its alternatives, and that the mind that isn't centred in this restful, easeful place of equanimity is a mind that is either for or against things in some kind of way, has qualities of pursuit or repulsion (pushing away) in a way that's not so healthy. That's not really a place of freedom.

To begin, we start by discerning and noticing the small ways, or the big ways, which we're pursuing love, with wanting and getting;  some of us, especially when we were younger, maybe teenagers, the drive to pursue can be quite strong. So, to find a quiet equanimity, to find a place where love is not pursued, is not to feel repulsive to anything, or to push anything away, but is able to stay open and clear. And then in that openness and clarity, that purity of equanimity, love can radiate and shine quite brightly. So the purification of love is the task here. And it's closely connected to freedom. These different forms of love are freeing. And freedom is a  means for loving; it's opening to loving. And there's a wonderful reciprocal mutuality between them, the greater the degree(s) of freedom that the practice brings, and the greater our love. And the greater the love we have, the further it supports the freedom we have (will have).

The Buddhist Theravada tradition provides an analogy for these four kinds of love, and it has to do with parenting. For example, maybe in an ideal parenting situation - a scenario where parents have four children.

Towards a newborn, parents hope that everything's well and healthy, and there's enthusiasm and happiness and lots of loving-kindness and well-wishing for their future. There is happiness and it's very simple and clear that surrounding them is lots of delightful goodwill and loving-kindness.

And then there is compassion, as that child grows up, or if one of the children develops an illness. So, if the second child has an illness and/or is disadvantaged in some ways, the parents would feel a lot of compassion, care and concern and would support that child in a  different way from the others. So, that is compassion.

And then, if another (third child) is in the flush of youth where life is just opening up brilliantly and wonderfully, filled with many opportunities. Then, there will be a lot of joy and appreciation that things are working out so well.

And if the fourth child is well-established in life (say in their 40s) – stable in career, family and other areas. Then, the parents don't have to worry or be concerned about the child's welfare. And so, there's a kind of equanimity towards this child.

So, whether this is a good analogy or not is not exactly the point here. We have to shape these analogies for ourselves but the above shows ideal parental love where it generally doesn't have the complexities that romantic love has. It can have its own complexities, but the idea is that parental love is easier to have a kind of simplicity and purity.

Sometimes, parental love is not about the parent, this is especially true when the baby is just born. That love for the newborn is sometimes so pure that it is self-forgetting for the parents because they just want to care for the baby. So everything we need, this ability to love without it being self-preoccupied with our notion of love – without it being, for me myself and mine – what's in it for me, and what I need,  and what I have to get. There's nothing wrong with having needs, and in appropriate needs, there is nothing wrong with pursuing what we need to be safe and happy and content. But it's useful to separate these, from our capacity for love, so that our capacity to love can be simple, pure, just a wonderful opening and clarity.

One of the ways that I've experienced this in my life is opening the door to allow me to really appreciate this in a deep way, and it is through meditation. That through my first ten years of meditation practice, where I had a lot of suffering, I sat with a lot of suffering.  Unexpectedly, it opened into a lot of compassion. And I learned to appreciate this beautiful capacity for just compassion without any need and compassion without any being for or against – even though there's a movement towards helping to do things. But the movement towards supporting others or helping or caring for others can be done without this kind of self-centeredness, being for or against anything.

And then in my next years of practice – and especially when I practised Vipassana – I discovered this wonderful capacity of goodwill, of friendliness, of kindness, and also the simplicity of it, the purity of it, without needing to receive anything in return, and then sympathetic joy. I've really come to appreciate this a lot in my time as a teacher, just feeling so much appreciation, so much delight in other people,  and other practitioners, and learning. There's also a way in which that, coming out of meditation where that delight and joy can be so simple. This is simplicity without any needs or needing to do anything – really just delight and joy.

And then equanimity: The love of equanimity has a lot also to do with meditation. The way in which I've discovered freedom in meditation  – freedom from attachments and clinging. And developing just this feeling where sometimes this real, tender warmth and care would arise – kindness that extends to people whom I don't really like, or have trouble with, or being disturbed by what they do. And to have this ability to have love and equanimity – my loving-equanimity to spread out in such a clean way is also one of the great treasures.

So, this topic for this week is equanimity. And it's one of the great important topics. It has a lot to do – more than the others maybe –  with wisdom. And we'll see that wisdom comes into play and how the practice can really help tremendously in cultivating and developing this equanimity factor and how it can also lead to freedom.

Let's begin the year with an evocation of this quality of equanimity. And who knows, maybe it'll be a great resource for 2021.