Tales with Tails

If you can start the day without caffeine

If you can sit quietly after difficult news

If, in financial downturns, you remain perfectly calm

If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles

If you can see your neighbours travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy

If you can happily accept whatever is put on your plate

If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment
If you can face the world without lies and deceit

If you can conquer tension without medical help

If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it

and fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill

If you can always find contentment just where you are...

...You're probably a dog!

A friend's wirehaired dachshund provided much delight on a recent visit to see him, and his family.  Saxon, having been joined by Norman, a young black lab puppy with boundless energy, has demonstrated to all around him the true spirit of equanimity... 

My Buddhist teacher translated an ancient text from the 14th Century as follows, to demonstrate the relationship between equanimity and other wholesome qualities:

Out of the soil of friendliness (metta)
Grows the beautiful bloom of compassion (karuna)
Watered by the tears of joy (mudita)
Sheltered under the cool shade
Of the tree of equanimity. (upekka)

Equanimity has been something I've found myself giving a lot of thought to recently.  Watching Saxon, I was reminded of something I know to be true but for whatever reason, am apt to forget - that there can be moments in our life amidst all the swirlings of joys and sorrows, that we can find glimpses of true stillness. 

This stillness takes us by surprise.  Often, when we least expect it, we find ourselves experiencing moments in which we cease striving.  We come to simply be.  For much of our lifetime, we are consumed with planning, and fixing, and doing.  It is in these precious moments of stillness, that we are able to catch sight of equanimity.

I have heard equanimity described as unshakeable balance and stillness.  A spacious stillness of mind, a radiant calm, and inner poise.  What distinguishes equanimity however is the fact that this unshakeable balance is not removed or distant from life.  Quite the opposite - it is in no way dependent upon life being muted, or subdued.  It is to be found within our life, and within our willingness to meet all aspects of our life and our experience.

Equanimity is active, rather than passive.  It asks a lot of us - to meet all of our experience with equal respect is a tall order.  It requires that we put aside ideas about being for or against, right or wrong, good or bad, that we surrender cycles and avenues of avoidance and pursuit, of seeking and denial, giving each and every aspect of our experience respect in equal measure. 

To embody equanimity, is to be still and open in the midst of suffering in our world, meeting life without fear and without resistance, laying aside some of our ideas about what should be and what shouldn't be.  Great things come to pass when we are able to cultivate this quality - as we find ourselves able to listen, to the story of another, and to the story of life.  As a therapist, I actively seek to adopt and sustain this stance, to ensure the qualities of receptivity and listening - the twin pillars of compassion.  I seek to calm my own, inner, story which may at any time hold history, fear and prejudice - in order to be calm, and become still to hear better the story that life tells as it unfolds.