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

Search Sangha Live

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.

Tags: compassion equanimity suffering wisdom

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Mark Coleman Profile Photo

    Discovering the Joy of Sensory Awareness: Mindfulness in Nature

    Recorded : February 12, 2023

    When we turn our attention to the sensory, natural world around us, mindfulness practice can become easeful and expansive. Nature allures awareness through her beauty, and range of dynamic, enchanting experience. In this session we will practice cultivating attention to our sense experience, and discovering joy, peace and wonder in this very moment. Tune in from any peaceful environment outdoors with an internet connection, or indoors, ideally with a view of the outdoors.

    Read More

  • James Baraz

    Awakening Joy: Practice as a Path of Happiness

    Recorded : January 13, 2019

    Joy is both a Factor of Enlightenment and one of the four Divine Abodes. Today, as we are bombarded with news that heightens our fear and sadness about the world, more than ever it’s vital to understand the importance of joy as a central aspect of spiritual practice. We need to remember how to stay…

    Read More

  • Chris Willard

    The Joy of Letting Go: Simplicity and Renunciation

    Recorded : July 6, 2025

    In our consumer culture, we fall for the illusion that more choice-in things, work, people, even spiritual paths-leads to more freedom, when often the opposite is true. As Jack Kornfield says, we live “in an era of unlimited desires but limited resources, when we think it’s the opposite.” More mindful awareness of our consumption isn’t…

    Read More

  •

    The Body as a Gateway to Peace

    Recorded : May 31, 2026

    Transform your relationship with the body. When we move beyond perceiving the body as merely a possession or a dense, fixed object, our experience of reality shifts. Experience how dropping the attention from the conditioned mind into the true nature of the body is a gateway to the heart of awareness. Here we discover the…

    Read More

  • Yahel Avigur

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Yahel Avigur – Week of 28 July, 2025

    We are delighted that Yahel Avigur is leading our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Equanimity: An Unshakable Heart

    Equanimity is the unshakability of the heart in the face of all conditions and experiences. It embodies depth and spaciousness, fearlessness, responsiveness and natural compassion, rooted in virtue and insight. It is a natural capacity of the human heart, a home that is always there for us to return to. In this week of practice, we will nurture the conditions that allow equanimity to arise and mature. Supported by practice, community, and teachings from the Buddhist tradition, we will meditate to cultivate kindness and insight.

    Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  •

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ayala Gill – Week of June 26, 2023

    This week’s topic is “Living in Sacredness”. Meditation is more than a practice of being present. The way in which we are present determines whether we reinforce habits of separation, or re-weave the fabric of sacredness. During this week we will explore the sacredness of body, breath, consciousness, emotions and beliefs. Returned to the embrace of sacredness, we plant seeds of Love in a world of separation.

    Read More