EQUANIMITY:
Equally close to all things
This essay was originally published in The Hard Prune on 21st March 2025.
Equanimity is one of the most useful tools I know for getting through difficult times. It’s also one of the most misunderstood.
I used to think that equanimity was a magical ability to remain calm. That people with equanimity were bothered by nothing, could remain even-keeled in the roughest of seas, had Yoda-like abilities to stay steady, untriggered, even aloof: to be able to witness without getting emotionally involved. I thought that equanimity meant never losing your perspective or your chill. And that equanimity could only be attained through years of mind-training by people with some kind of genetic wiring that I sorely lack.
Conventional definitions of equanimity did nothing to disabuse me of these notions. Equanimity is widely described as a state of inner and outer calm, an ability to avoid reactivity and to transcend judgement and personal entanglement. Understood in these ways, equanimity was not something I actually aspired to. Like most of you, I don’t want to remain unattached from this world. I want to care about it.
But when you go to the dharma rather than to the google for your definition of equanimity, a different possibility emerges. The Buddha taught that equanimity is, in the words of scholar Bikkhu Bohdi, “a balanced reaction to joy and misery, which protects one from emotional agitation.”
A balanced reaction to joy and misery. Read too quickly, this seems just like the other definitions. It can be misunderstood to mean a judicious reaction, a measured reaction, a careful reaction. Like what you need is a little coach living in your head reminding you, “Hold on, don’t get too excited,” and “Simmer down, no need to get angry,” and “Watch out there buddy, you don’t want to get your hopes up,” and “Relax, there’s no need to be so annoyed,” and “Careful now, make sure you don’t get too happy about that, we want to keep things steady.” The misunderstanding here is that the way to protect yourself from emotional agitation is not to feel anything too strongly.
The more skilful understanding is that what you need to do is exactly the opposite: feel everything strongly.
Everything, in whatever degree it shows up. The balance of equanimity doesn’t come from the amount of an emotion you allow yourself to feel. It comes from the breadth of emotions you allow yourself to feel. This is not a matter of everything in moderation. This is a matter of, simply, everything.
My meditation teacher, Yanai Postelnik, gave me the following definition of equanimity: equally close to all things. It has become my mantra.
When I feel my heart lift with the murmuration of starlings forming and reforming in inscrutable waves overhead, equally close to all things. When I feel enraged and powerless upon reading firsthand accounts of innocent people unlawfully detained, equally close to all things. When my daughter hugs me. When my son ignores me. When the sun settles warm on my long-covered skin. Every feeling is permitted, none infringe on another’s territory, nothing needs judging or managing. There is room for the whole gamut of emotion; nothing is too extreme, and allowing one in does not constitute a betrayal of another.
I used to feel a loyalty to righteous anger – that I needed to tend it like a fire that can’t be allowed to go out. I believed that this is what the world demands of those of us who care about justice, equality, compassion. But equanimity says there is no need to prioritise. No feelings are more valid, more important, more worthy of attention than others. It’s as okay to feel the unpleasant feelings, like small-mindedness and despair, as it is the pleasant ones like marvel and righteous anger and unconditional love. Because when feelings are permitted, when space is made for them, they arise and diminish on their own.
A truly balanced reaction to joy and to misery allows for the seesawing between the two. It accepts the whiplash of sequential and overlapping emotions as entirely healthy and human. This acceptance of everything is the very thing that protects you from emotional agitation. Or, in the beautiful words of Narayan Helen Liebenson, one my favourite meditation teachers, it is what allows you to have “a balanced heart in the midst of the ever-changing conditions and challenges of life.” Equally close to all things is the method for attaining a balanced heart.
The conventional sources tell you you’re meant to find equanimity though meditation, deep breathing, journaling, CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) – the whole host of usual suspects. And of course these help, as they help with most things. But the conventional sources also kind of miss the point. Because what they help with is not that they moderate your ability to feel. It’s that they deepen it!
The person who practices equanimity (and it is a practice, not the super-human power I first believed it to be) becomes naturally balanced, through the practice. When you allow yourself to pinball from joy to despair to irritation to contentment to anger to delight to fury – when you encourage yourself to be equally close to each of these – you become less susceptible to, dependant on, fearful of, or attached to any one of them. Misery and joy and all their assorted companions even each other out, as you remain in the middle, centred, grounded, equally close to all of them.
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