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

  • Daily Meditation Recordings, with Ulla Koenig – Week of 05 May, 2025

    We are delighted to have Ulla Koenig guiding our Daily Meditation sessions this week. May these offerings support and enrich your practice.

    This week’s theme is: Touching Ground

    Whether it is the dynamics of the world that stir our hearts and minds, or personal challenges, as human beings we are confronted in many ways with the fragility of life. Touching ground, finding something to orient and trust in, is a deep need and yet not an easy endeavor. We dedicate this week to exploring the idea of taking refuge and translating it into a meaningful act that we can participate in no matter what.

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

    Read More

  • Body and Heart: Qigong and Meditation for Harmony and Ease

    Our heart’s experiences do not only affect our mental and emotional states. They also impact bodily experience, creating tension, tightness, spaciousness or ease. Likewise, our bodily experiences do not only generate physical sensations, but also inform and determine the energies of our heart. In this Sunday Sangha session, we will use qigong and meditation to…

    Read More

  • Embracing the Radical Act of Rest

    In times of global challenges and uncertainty, we often respond with fear-driven action, guilt, or survival mode. Yet the simple act of resting offers a powerful path to liberation. By connecting with our bodies and trusting the ground beneath us, we cultivate ease that naturally supports the awakened mind. When we act from deep rest,…

    Read More

  • The Radical Heart

    It’s hard to find the words that do justice to the enormity of the heartbreak we are in. As we wake up to our new reality, we feel grief, fear, outrage, and a daily kaleidoscope of reactions as we witness the dying of our beautiful planet. Our Dharma practice is for this, to meet reality….

    Read More

  • The Happiness of a Liberated Heart

    What is pleasure and what is happiness? Why is my pursuit of happiness not working? Is there any lasting happiness? Together we inquire into the nature of happiness. We reflect on different attempts in our lives to find happiness and what stops us from being contented. Inspired by the Buddha’s own quest for a genuine…

    Read More

  • Nathan Glyde

    Daily Meditation Recordings with Nathan Glyde – Week of September 16, 2024

    This week’s topic is “That Changes Everything”. The Buddha instructed us to “notice how all conditioned things change”. How we understand this instruction changes depending on which words we emphasise. If we emphasise ‘change’ it sounds like “that’s simply how it is”. If we emphasise ‘how’ and ‘conditioned’, it invites us to question and play a part.

    Read More

  • JD Doyle

    Practicing the Middle Way: Navigating Between Extremes

    The Buddha invites us to travel the Middle Path, between extremes. How do we navigate this path that leads to knowledge, understanding and liberation? We practice with mindfulness and kindness to meet our day to day experiences and our conditioning: societal, familial, cultural, and historical. Inviting in curiosity and diligence, we learn to practice to…

    Read More