Finding Equanimity

—Calm throughout the storm

The Eight Worldly Winds are constant. To be happy stand like a great tree amidst them all.

Introduction

Finding equanimity allows you to remain calm and retain a wise perspective while experiencing the chaos and complexity of the world we live in.

Assess this moment in perspective. Recognize that this moment is the faintest ripple in the fabric of the universe.

Objectives

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This course can help you find equanimity and enjoy practicing it as you increase your well-being.

This course is part of the Emotional Competency curriculum and the Applied Wisdom curriculum.

If you wish to contact the instructor, please click here to send me an email or leave a comment or question on the discussion page.

There are no prerequisites to this course and all students are welcome. Students may benefit from studying the Wikiversity courses on What you can change and what you cannot change, Stoic joy, Embracing ambiguity, and Quiet mind.

Characterizing Equanimity

Several characterizations and definitions of equanimity (upekkhā) are proposed in the Buddhist traditions and in modern psychology. These include:

• “a state of mind that cannot be swayed by biases and preferences”
• “even-mindedness in the face of every sort of experience, regardless of whether pleasure [or] pain are present or not”
• “a balanced reaction to joy and misery, which protects one from emotional agitation”
• “maintaining calm and mental equilibrium in the face of provocative stimuli”
• “approaching pleasant, unpleasant and neutral experiences with equal interest.”
• “a balanced reaction to joy and misery”
• “regarding all beings as equal in their right to have happiness and avoid suffering”
• “treating [all beings] free from discrimination, without preferences and prejudices”

These characterizations can be summarized by this formal definition:

equanimity is an even-minded mental state or dispositional tendency toward all experiences or objects, regardless of their affective valence (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) or source.

Informally, equanimity is staying calm throughout the storm; keeping a cool head.

Equanimity can be distinguished from mindfulness. Mindfulness emphasizes the ability to remain consciously aware of what is happening in the present moment experience, while equanimity allows awareness to be even and unbiased by facilitating an attitude of nonattachment and non-resistance.

Equanimity is one of the universal beautiful states of mind. In the Buddhist tradition, it is said that while maintaining an evenness of mind, the mind of the great being (the Buddha under the Bodhi tree) was unmoved. He remained “There in the middleness” with an unshakable quality of mind.

As an example of finding equanimity, consider the range of reactions possible if you are suddenly cut off while driving your car in traffic. Lacking mindfulness and equanimity you might become frightened and angry and react by honking the horn, slamming on the brakes, shouting insults at the other driver, and exhibiting other symptoms of road rage. However, in a mindful state you become aware of the change in your emotional state, maintain a state of equanimity, gaze upon the experience, and calmly observe as your anger unfolds, resolves, and passes.

Equanimity is not Indifference

While indifference implies apathy, lethargy, aloofness, or even a subtle form of aversion, equanimity requires care and attentiveness. Equanimity does not involve suppressing emotions, reducing the affective coloring of our life experiences, or limiting our agency.

Equanimity is not apathy or “indifference but rather of mental imperturbability”. It does not mean indifference but is a vehicle to connect from a point of genuine affection rather than bias subjection. Equanimity is not indifference, it is impartial.

We can learn to separate the emergence of an emotion from our appraisal of and reaction to that emotion. For example, while practicing equanimity in the driving example above the transgression of the other driver is noted, but without the automatic attribution of judgment, blame, resentment, and anger, much of which is caused by interpreting the incident as a personal insult.

Equanimity requires caring for other people, in contrast to being indifferent to others. Buddhist masters recommend practicing equanimity towards beings by contemplating how all beings are like us in that they, too, wish to gain happiness and be free of suffering, regardless of whether we would consider them our friends, enemies, or strangers.

Methods for Finding Equanimity

The basic technique for finding equanimity is to become mindful of an object or event without becoming attracted to or repelled by it. Notice the presence of the object or event non-judgmentally, neither favoring it nor opposing it.

A non-judging attitude consists in “assuming the stance of an impartial witness to one’s own experience,” which involves suspending judgment and simply “watching whatever comes up,” including observing one’s automatic judgments of “like,” “dislike,” and “don’t-care,” without “judging the judging.” It also involves recognizing one’s thoughts as “just thoughts” without pursuing them any further. Although thoughts arise, I am not my thoughts, and my thoughts are not me. Observe your thoughts as they arise, transform, linger, and disappear, without becoming captive to those thoughts.

Acceptance is the “willingness to see things as they are”, “not merely tolerance” but rather “the active nonjudgmental embracing of experience in the here and now,” with “undefended ‘exposure’ to thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations as they are directly experienced”.

Below are specific techniques that may help you find equanimity.

Increasing Emotional Competency

Increasing emotional competency can increase equanimity. Developing the essential social skills to recognize, interpret, and respond constructively to emotions in yourself and others can help you accurately assess emotions as they arise. Emotional competency provides the perspective and depth of understanding that allow you to remain calm despite the ever-present storms we encounter.

Assignment

1. Study the emotional competency curriculum.
2. Increase your emotional competence.
3. Practice recognizing, interpreting, and responding constructively to emotions as they arise in you and others.

Reducing Stress

In his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky provides an in-depth guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping. The last chapter of the book provides some specific recommendations for managing stress. These include:

1. Based on the 1941 Harvard aging study traits that contribute to better health, including reduced chronic stress are: no smoking, minimal alcohol use, lots of exercise, normal body weight, absence of depression, a warm stable marriage, and a mature resilient coping style. One interpretation of the study results is that the warmth of relationships throughout life has the greatest positive impact on life satisfaction.
2. People with more of an internalized locus of control—the belief that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives—are more resistant to life’s troubles. Be clear on what you can change and what you cannot change. Being able to switch locus of control (taking justified credit for good outcomes and avoiding chronic shame and regret for bad outcomes) can be a helpful coping style.
3. Seek out accurate information to provide you with a realistic perspective, a basis for effective action, and to avoid worrying about unlikely occurrences.
4. The ability to walk away from provocations—let it go, don’t take the bait—helps to avoid stressors.
5. Exercise reduces stress if it is something you choose to do.
6. Regular meditation can improve health and reduces stress.
7. Social support (from welcomed friends and other supportive people) reduces the stress response when stressors are inevitably encountered. Giving social support is also helpful.
8. Finding a sense of purpose helps reduce chronic stress.
9. Hoping for the best while you prepare for the worst will help you stay calm throughout the storm.

Assignment

1. Complete the Wikiversity course on what you can change and what you cannot change.
2. Change what you can and accept the rest.
3. Practice those stress reduction techniques listed above that you find helpful.

Separating Wanting from Liking

It is possible to separate wanting (having a goal to acquire) from liking (eliciting a positive affect). Recognizing the distinction between wanting and liking provides four conditions.  Two conditions are unremarkable because wanting and liking are aligned, the other two are somewhat surprising because wanting and liking are misaligned.

Wanting and liking are aligned in these examples:

• I like my friends and I want to be with them.
• I like good weather and I want to be outside in good weather.
• I don’t like boorish people and I don’t want to be around them.
• I don’t like cold weather and I don’t want to be outside in the freezing cold.

Wanting and liking are misaligned in these examples:

• I like sweet desserts, but I don’t want a second helping.
• I don’t like smoking cigarettes, but I crave one now.

We can make constructive choices by separating wanting from liking. For example:

• Practice the virtue of temperance by consuming things we like in moderation, such as moderating in eating, consuming alcohol, shopping, and avoiding other temptations. This may also include working to overcome addictions.
• Practice the virtue of compassion by learning to accept people you find difficult and overcoming unhelpful fears by learning to approach unpleasant things.

Assignment

The lotus symbolizes non-attachment in some religions in Asia owing to its ability to grow in muddy waters yet produce an immaculate flower.

1. Exercise your agency by separating wanting from liking when it is wise to do so. For example:
   1. Decline that second helping of ice-cream.
   2. Limit your alcohol consumption.
   3. Limit shopping sprees.
   4. Reduce binging.
   5. Reduce hoarding.
   6. Limit time on social media. Overcome any obsession with social media likes.
   7. Work to overcome any addictions you might be experiencing.
   8. Practice the virtue of temperance, including everyday temperance.
   9. Exercise compassion for the difficult people you encounter.
   10. Forgive.
   11. Complete your chores, even the ones you don’t like.
   12. Clean toilets.
   13. Hold a snake or a spider.
   14. Overcome unhelpful fears so you can expand your sphere of comfort.
2. Study the Buddhist concept of impermanence.
   1. Accept inevitable losses and separations.
   2. Recognize that whatever is arising will also pass away – understand (pay attention to the fact) that everything is changing.
   3. The experience of a rainbow is transient, the rainbow is no-thing – it is a fleeting appearance of certain conditions of light, water, and air. Each rainbow is an “Empty phenomena rolling on”. Recognize all that is impermanent.
3. Study the concept of nonattachment.
   1. Overcome unhelpful attachments.
   2. “As long as there is attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant liberation is impossible.”
4. Remind yourself: “Anything can happen any time”. Expect nothing, prepare for anything.

A Buddhist Approach

Buddhist texts describe practices for developing concentration (samatha) or insight (vipassanā) to further develop equanimity.

One of the techniques for developing equanimity consists in trying to develop an impartial attitude toward all beings by reflecting on the “very simple truth” that “all of us, including the most despicable people, do the things we do because we’re seeking happiness and want to be free of suffering”

A more detailed contemplation would be:

“All beings are the same as us in three basic ways.

1. They all want to be well, happy, and free of suffering.
2. They are all lost in self-centered reactions to their own narrow thoughts of self and others.
3. They all possess an innate capacity of goodness that has been obscured by these self-centered reactions”

Assignment

1. Practice the above contemplation, perhaps by reciting it, reflecting on it, or using it as the focus for meditation.
2. When you feel anger, hatred, envy, vengeance, or revulsion arising, pause, reflect, and (silently) recite the above contemplation before taking any further action.
3. When difficulties arise while deep under water, scuba divers are taught “there are many helpful actions you can take, however panic is never the solution.” Keep this in mind when you are tempted to panic in response to turbulence in the surrounding storm. Panic is never the solution.

The Eight Worldly Winds

Equanimity is a protection from the eight great vicissitudes, also known as the “eight worldly winds”. The eight are praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute. Becoming attached to or excessively elated with success, praise, fame, or pleasure can make us vulnerable to suffering when the winds of life change direction.^,

Equanimity buffers us from these eight ever-present worldly winds. When we understand they are impermanent—they come and go like the wind—we can be happy as we stand like a great tree amidst them all.

Each of the eight worldly winds are types of gains and losses. Equanimity is detachment from an outcome, a gain or loss. To avoid being tossed by these winds, don’t identify with the goal or possession, the gain or loss. Understand that because each possession is impermanent, the possession cannot be owned; it is not mine.

Equanimity maintains our balance in the face of these ever-present and ever-changing vicissitudes.

Rupert Gethin on Four Noble Truths says:

As long as there is attachment to things that are unstable, unreliable, changing and impermanent, there will be suffering – when they change, when they cease to be what we want them to be.

(...)

If craving is the cause of suffering, then the cessation of suffering will surely follow from 'the complete fading away and ceasing of that very craving': its abandoning, relinquishing, releasing, letting go.

Ryōkan, was a Buddhist monk who found equanimity. He had very few material possessions and when they were stolen, he responded by writing a Haiku:

The moon

at the window,

the thief left it behind.

We can follow his example and learn to respond with equanimity rather than overreact to transient circumstances.

Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. Finding equanimity is one of several metacognitive skills. The sage recognizes that praise and blame are ever-present. The sage watches his own mind and chooses not to be buffeted by the constant ebb and flow of praise and blame. “As a solid mass of rock is not moved by the wind, so a sage is not moved by praise or blame.”

The ancient Chinese poem Xinxin Ming—trust in mind—begins: “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When attachment and aversion are both absent everything is clear and undisguised.” The central message of the Xinxin Ming is this: point directly to Mind by giving up one-sided views so we can see the One Suchness of reality as it is.

Modern psychologists also acknowledge the importance of metacognition in achieving calm. For example, author Gregg Henriques describes the CALM-MO approach to psychological mindfulness. This approach guides individuals to become a “metacognitive observer” that cultivates an attitude that is curious, accepting, loving (compassionate), and motivated to grow toward valued states of being in both the short and long term.

Assignment

1. Notice when you are perturbed by one of the eight worldly winds: praise and blame, success and failure,pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute.
2. Notice your attachment to, or aversion of, these.
3. Let it go.
4. Optionally compete the course on embracing ambiguity.
5. Read the essay Authentic humility.
6. Study the module on the virtue of humility.
   1. Attain authentic humility.
7. Avoid forming opinions unnecessarily or hastily.
8. Do not mistake kindness for weakness.
9. Study the course on Moral Reasoning.
   1. Act constructively and consistently with your well-chosen moral reasoning.
10. Live wisely.

Recommended Reading

Students wanting to learn more about finding equanimity may be interested in reading the following books:

• Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness  . Hachette Books. pp. 656. ISBN 978-0786886548. 
• Sapolsky, Robert M. (September 15, 2004). Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers  . Holt Paperbacks. pp. 560. ISBN 978-0805073690. 
• Damasio, Antonio (February 19, 2019). The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. Vintage. pp. 336. ISBN 978-0345807144. 
• Goleman, Daniel; Davidson, Richard (September 5, 2017). Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. Avery. pp. 336. ISBN 978-0399184383. 
• Henriques, Gregg (December 28, 2022). A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap  . Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 503. ISBN 978-3031184925. 
• Kahneman, Daniel (April 2, 2013). Thinking, Fast and Slow  . Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 499. ISBN 978-0374533557. 

I have not yet read the following books, but they seem interesting and relevant. They are listed here to invite further research.

• Calm (The School of Life Library), by The School of Life