Use code SUMMERPRACTICE for a 25% discount on all On Demand Courses through August 31.

Equanimity: Finding Balance in Difficult Times

With James Baraz recorded on January 16, 2022.

Found our teachings useful? Help us continue our work and support your teachers with a donation. Here’s how.

In times like these with so much uncertainty, fear and suffering, how can we keep our center in a world that sometimes seems to be spinning out of control?

Equanimity (upekkha in Pali) in Buddhist teachings describes the quality of balance in any circumstances. It is one of the Four Divine Abodes, one of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, one of the Ten Paramitas and a number of other Buddhist lists. When highly developed it is the precursor to the experience of awakening.

How can we cultivate equanimity in our meditation practice? Even more, how can we access it in our daily life?

Listen to the audio version below, or click here to download the mp3.

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • The Spectrum of Sensuality – Where do I stand?

    The extremes of addiction to sense pleasure and addiction to self-mortification are not the path to happiness. The spectrum of human sensuality spans from pleasure to pain, pleasant to unpleasant, from hedonic excesses to self-harm, encompassing a vast range that is likely different for everyone. What is considered the Middle Way for a monastic might…

    Read More

  • Lisa Ernst

    When the Path Becomes Natural

    Much of the time, the path of meditation and awareness must be worked with intention, realigning ourselves with the teachings, with practice, lovingkindness and compassion. Other times, the path may become an effortless, natural part of our lives. We will explore the ways our practice feels easeful and our intentions metabolized and also how we…

    Read More

  • Lucid Dreaming: Awakening While We Sleep

    A lucid dream is a dream in which we are actively aware that we are dreaming as the dream is happening. Once we are lucid we gain access to the deepest depths of the unconscious mind which allows us to engage in psychological healing at a level often unattainable in the waking state. And beyond…

    Read More

  • Sitting with Pointlessness – Living with Potentiality

    During a recent retreat, the teachers’ instruction was to hold the question ‘What is this?’ in mind. While sitting on the cushion, the thought struck me that my life is futile! I am genetically programmed for survival and sex; everything else is just distracting window-dressing. This talk will explore the journey from the apparent ‘futility’…

    Read More

  • Bart van Melik

    Trusting Impermanence

    ‘All things fall apart’ was the Buddha’s last teaching before passing away. How can we live peacefully with this universal and challenging truth? In this session, we’ll practice how attuning to change supports letting go.

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nathan Glyde – Week of June 28, 2021

    This week’s theme is: The Unbound Heart

    Teachings of liberation expand our range of possibilities. They encourage us to discover a broader capacity of what we can contact, sense, and do. The teachings of the pāramīs are a key part of this journey. They act like a map and compass for the heart’s wish to be free of habitual limitations, to be a heart unbound. This week we’ll take a deeper dive into the illimitable qualities of the heart.

    Read More