Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 429. Chapter 12 of Pema Chodron, The Places that Scare You, is about equanimity. Which, if you’re a human living in the 21st Century in a wealthy nation like the U.S., might seem like it would arrive or be possible, anyway, when we finally get all the goodies.
Because, when do I think I’m feeling the most equanimous? When I get what I want. And not only when I get what I want, but when I can feel into some sense of stability and security around having what I want. I want my family to be well and happy. I want my house to be safe. I want to eat good food, have time to meditate and do yoga and exercise. I want to be able to offer the Wake Up Call and teach at our teacher training and do all the fun things. When I get all that, my life is in balance - or I think it is.
What is it that you want, and that, when you have it, feels like you can finally relax? Makes you feel like you’re stable and content?
That sense of stability and contentment – that’s what I thought equanimity was: getting myself to that place, and then staying there. But you know where this talk is going. You’re probably already shaking your head, or at least smiling. Because you know that’s not equanimity.
It took me a long time to understand that, though, and I still forget. I forget to not try to gather everyone in my arms under the misapprehension that if I can do that and no one moves, and nothing changes, I can keep everyone safe. And keep myself safe, too. I forget that wanting everyone to be safe and everything to be pleasant, and not wanting anything to go wrong, is not equanimity at all. It’s not even a recipe for happiness. It’s a recipe for sorrow.
Pema calls Chapter 12, “Thinking Bigger.” I think what she means is, this gathering of things into our arms is actually a limited way of thinking about life. Here’s the way she articulates a bigger way:
Equanimity [she says] is bigger than our usual limited perspective. That we hope to get what we want and fear losing what we have – this describes our habitual predicament. The … teachings identify eight variations on this tendency to hope and fear: pleasure and pain, praise and blame, gain and loss, fame and disgrace. As long as we’re caught in one of these extremes, the potential for the other is always there. They just chase each other around. No lasting happiness comes from being caught in this cycle of attraction and aversion. We can never get life to work out so that we eliminate everything we fear and end up with all the goodies.
But if the idea is not to swing from one extreme to the other, longing for pleasure, praise, gain, and fame, and swimming as hard as we can away from pain and blame and loss and disgrace, then what are we supposed to do? What does life look like, day to day and moment by moment? And what does a life in the law look like, considering how heavily weighted it is in favor of pleasure, praise, gain, and fame (not that a life anywhere else is very different from that)?
Pema offers some useful instructions (as always). She says, rather than getting swept away, notice, or be mindful, of that moment when desire arises. Oh, I want that win. I want that client, that matter, that case. I want to work with that partner; I want that judge, this juror, etc.
It’s not that we stop wanting things. Don’t get me wrong: we have to want the right things in order to do our jobs. And we also have to want the right things for our families, or we’re not being very good members of our families.
But when we notice how badly we want something or someone; when we notice we have a sneaking – or loudly proclaiming – feeling that if this thing happens, then all will be well, then, if I’m taking Pema’s meaning, we stop. And we pay attention. And we remember that since nothing is forever and to the contrary, impermanence is an immutable characteristic of life, even if we get the thing we want, it won’t provide lasting happiness. The happiness we gain will only be fleeting, or at best, short-lived.
I know this from so many things. From thinking I’ve been fit and then bumping into the holidays and too many cookies and not enough exercise and then January, out of shape and my jeans are too tight. I know it from wanting to be top billing at a conference and then not doing a great job in my presentation. I know from having been non-suited after offering my opening statement, in front of my client. I know from twenty years ago, thinking my family was safe and secure, and it all fell apart.
Maybe you can relate to one of those, or to some other moment, when you realized you were pinning your happiness on external conditions and turning away from the possibility, or actuality, of pain. We have all been there, and this is Pema’s first instruction: remember that. I am not the only one who has just been disgraced. Someone in the next room or next county has also just had that happen to them, too. We’re all in this messy thing called law, together, and life, together. And the only way to not get knocked down over and over by the eight worldly winds, is to face into them. To explore each moment of joy for what it is, joyful and fleeting; and each moment of pain for what it is, painful and not forever. Therein lies equanimity, in the ability and willingness to be in that exploration, every moment of the day.
Pema puts it this way: [t]raining in equanimity requires that we leave behind some baggage: the comfort of rejecting whole parts of our experience…and the security of welcoming only what is pleasant. Gil Fronsdal, another wonderful teacher, likens this to “standing in the fire of things” without getting burned.
For me, this is the task, as a lawyer, a human in the world right now, as a parent, a grandparent: to leave behind the baggage that has me rejecting the parts of my experience (and also my history) that I simply don’t want to see, or remember, and welcoming only what is pleasant. It’s too limiting, and anyway it’s a recipe for imbalance, not balance, not equanimity. It’s a recipe for unhappiness, not happiness.
Better to welcome everything, and stand in the fire of it all.
Let’s sit.
