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

How to Find Balance in Difficult Times

With Oren Jay Sofer recorded on June 2, 2019.

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

Equanimity is balance that comes from wisdom; it’s our heart and mind’s capacity to roll with the inevitable challenges and changes of life without taking it personally, without falling into despair or hopeless. Rather than a bland state of neutrality, or a cold state of indifference, equanimity gives us a wide space to feel the whole range of human experience, and the poise to act with wisdom and care rather than reactivity. Whether it’s personal loss and difficulty, challenges in relationship, or the immense pain our world is facing, equanimity is the indispensable quality that allows us to meet life with grace and balance, and at times to keep going in the face of extraordinary hardship.

In this session you’ll learn tools to:

Find balance with difficult emotions
Understand how we get reactive and what helps us to let go
Get perspective when challenged or overwhelmed

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

Discussion

Leave a Reply

Discover more from the Dharma Library

  • Sophie Boyer

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Sophie Boyer – Week of 28 April, 2025

    We’re delighted to have Sophie Boyer guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May they bring peace and depth to your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Groundedness to Groundlessness

    Grounding oneself in this very moment to realise that what we are looking for has never left us. It has always been here and is not bound to anything. It is an invitation to let life inform every moment without a “me” being in charge – a groundless home.
    Sophie Boyer will lead our Daily Meditations this week, inviting us to engage with this paradoxical dynamic.

    Grounding ourselves in this very moment to discover that what we’re searching for has always been here. It has always been here and is not bound to anything. Sophie Boyer leads our Daily Meditations this week, inviting us to explore this beautiful paradox: finding a groundless home where life informs every moment without a separate “me” being in charge. Join us as we practice together in this space of gentle revelation and discovery.

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

    Read More

  • Nirmala Werner

    Daily Meditation Recordings, with Nirmala Werner – Week of 24 November, 2025

    We are delighted to have Nirmala Werner guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these sessions support and enrich your practice. This week’s theme is: Embodying the Four (or Five) Elements: Meditation for Everyday Presence. Rooted in Buddhist wisdom, this practice invites us to connect with earth, water, fire, air, and space as living forces within and around us. By attuning to their ever-shifting qualities, we find grounding amidst change-an anchor of presence, steadiness, and clarity to meet the movements of daily life. Our Dharma Library thrives through collective generosity. Your donation helps sustain this offering for our entire community.

    Read More

  • Glimpse of Being

    There are many ways to practice mindfulness, from the focused and deliberate to the expansive and relaxed. In this session, Diana teaches about natural awareness, which is a wide open, spacious, effortless awareness of awareness. Learn simple meditative shifts and ‘Glimpse Practices’ to connect with our radiant awareness and the innate capacity we all have…

    Read More

  • photo of Martin Aylward smiling

    The practice of pleasure and delight (or the spiritual art of having fun).

    Dharma teachings importantly emphasise suffering, compassion, renunciation, desire, non-reactivity, peacefulness. All these are potent themes, yet ones which can make our practice feel overly heavy, unnecessarily serious, maybe even uptight! Dharma practice equally points us towards a playful nature, light-heartedness and ease, delight and the capacity to really enjoy life. Especially when we can get…

    Read More

  • Kaira Jewel Lingo

    Growing the Good, Moment by Moment

    Goodness does not appear all at once; it grows through small, intentional acts. In this Sangha Sunday, we explore how mindfulness helps us recognize and tend what is already wholesome within us, offering a preview of the practices and reflections that will be covered in the course Growing the Good. Further resources from Kaira Jewel:…

    Read More

  • Return to Unity: Seeing Through Duality

    Dualities are endless. Why? Because when we look through the lens of duality, everything seen appears to be dualistic. Join Caverly for a Dharma talk revolving around a reading from her new book The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together, published by Sounds True. This session also includes a practice from the book that supports us in returning to unity.

    Read More

  • Deborah Eden Tull - Senior Dharma Teacher

    Courageous Conversations, and Speaking from the Heart

    Join us for an experiential practice and embodied inquiry into speaking from the heart and engaging in courageous conversations. Our challenges are gateways to relational presence. By bringing compassionate awareness to habits of mind that can obscure clarity within the relational field, we can perceive more clearly from the heart. Through deep listening — to…

    Read More