Equanimity (Four Immeasurables)
Photo by Amanda Phung
Equanimity is the fourth of the Four Immeasurables, four virtues that also include loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy.
In this pointed talk after the 2016 presidential election, Zuisei speaks of equanimity in relationship to the practice of taking refuge in the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. She also offers an expression of welcome that became incorporated into Zen Mountain Monastery’s Inclusion Statement.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Equanimity Paramita
It feels really good to be here with you this morning. You know, there was nobody out on the streets that day. The weepers were up at the Heights Hall, and they were chanting, and they were praying for the world to come. And the ragers were just destroying anything that was left standing, because they thought there was nothing afterwards. And so, Lif was by himself, and he was standing by the edge of the ocean, just looking out. And he knew that there was something he needed to do, and he was beginning to get a sense of what it was. But the problem is, it didn’t make sense.
Because, you see, he had just decided to build a road. He was a bricklayer. And he had decided to build a road straight into the ocean. And when he began carting his bricks that were up at the top of the hill down to the edge of the water, a couple of the ragers came, and they saw him, and they thought he was getting rid of his things. And they said, “That’s good. That’s good. We no longer need things.” But what they didn’t know was that he, what he had done, what no one else in his town had ever done, he had learned to swim. He had learned that he could go into the water and float, and that he could dive. And so he laid two steel rods to lay a brick, to lay a road by.
And so when nobody was watching, he would, he would cart down a load of bricks and dump them into the ocean, and little by little, he laid down this road that went straight into the water. And then a widow with a baby saw him, and they knew each other from before. And she asked him what he was doing. He said, “I’m building a path.” And she said, “Well, I’ll throw the bricks to you from the top of the hill, so you don’t have to go up and down.” And he said, “But you know, I don’t know where this is going.” And she said, “I know.”
And she threw the bricks. And as the days went by, and they began to run out of food, she started to see the pile of bricks, and it was getting lower and lower. And at a certain point, she realized they were going to run out of bricks. And by this point, Lif had about 120 feet laid down of road. And when he came back up the hill at the end of a long day, she told him, she said, “You know, there’s very little food left, and there’s no more bricks.” And he realized, as he was walking up the hill, as he was going up to her home, that all the stores were dark, kind of like gaping mouths, and the windows were blind. And he said to her, “Where’s everyone?” And she said, “Oh, they’re gone. They’ve been gone for a couple of days.” And he said, “Gone where?” And she said, “I don’t know.”
And he said, “Well, we should go too. Tomorrow we’ll go.” And she said, “OK.” So the next morning, she packed up the baby, wrapped him up, and together they went down to the edge of the water. They didn’t go north to the road that would take them across the hills. And they didn’t go south, where they knew there were other towns, but they didn’t know those towns very well. He took them straight to the edge of the water, and they just stood there and watched the raging sea. And he held her hand and said, “It’s OK. I’ll hold you up above the water as long as I can.”
And so she was carrying the baby, and together they began to walk on the path that he had built until they got to the edge of those 120 feet, and there was nowhere else to go. And they looked at each other, and he said, “There’s just one more step.” And she said, “Yes, I know.” And just as they were about to take that step, he heard a voice, voices, in fact. And then he saw a sail in the distance, and he heard, very far away, but he could still hear it, somebody saying, “Wait. Come with us. Come aboard the ship, and come with us to the islands.” And so he stopped, and then he looked at her, and she nodded, and he held her hand a little tighter, and then together they took the last step. Thank you.
Walking the Unknown Path
This morning, I want to speak about equanimity. And it’s the fourth immeasurable of the four immeasurables. And I want to speak about it in a specific way, which is from the perspective of balance, of maintaining balance at a time of uncertainty, a time of great imbalance. And I skipped the third immeasurable, sympathetic joy, because I thought equanimity would be a little more timely. I don’t know if you saw that cartoon in The New Yorker. Uncle Sam is sitting at the doctor’s office, and the doctor has the stethoscope on his back, and he’s saying, “Well, just breathe in deeply, and don’t exhale for the next four years.” Not such good advice for living. Not such good advice for a practice focused on the breath. On the breath.
I was telling the residents, this is a little irreverent, but not intentionally so. And it actually happened. I was telling the residents that some time ago, when Daido Roshi was still alive, he had so many students to see, he couldn’t see everyone during sesshin, especially towards the end of sesshin. So for a brief period, we would call the line, just as we did today, the line for dokusan in that case, according to people’s practice. And the students really disliked it because it was like they were outed on what they were practicing at the time. And so we didn’t do it for very long, but for a short while we did. And so the line would be called according to those who were doing koan practice, koan study, shikantaza, and breath practice.
And normally those who were doing breath practice would see Shogun Sensei. And so one of my friends at the time, who was a novice monastic, was the attendant, the jisha, and he was calling the line. He was really nervous, and he had done it before, but he was really terrified of speaking, speaking in public. And he gets up there and he says, “The dokusan line is open with Daido Roshi for those who are doing breast practice.” And he was just so horrified.
And what happened, it’s like there’s this ripple that starts in the zendo of giggles, and everybody starts laughing. And Hogan was actually the monitor at the time, and I was sitting next to him. I must have been, I don’t know, the timekeeper. I’m not sure what I was doing, but I was sitting right next to him. And I started to laugh, and he just leans over and he says, “If you keep laughing, I’m going to kick you out.” And I thought, okay, you know, it’s like you contain yourself. It’s the only way to keep a zendo in control, if you will. And this has nothing, actually, to do with my talk, but I thought of it when I was thinking about the breath. Plus, it’s good to laugh. Feels good to laugh.
But the story that I told is a very abbreviated version of a story by Ursula Le Guin called Things. Things you carry, things you get rid of, things you use to support you, to hold you up. And I’ve spoken about this story before, in fact. And when I was thinking about it recently, I was thinking about it in terms of refuge. I thought of the Buddha saying, “Be an island unto yourself,” because we know the phrase “be a lamp unto yourself,” but the sutra, the Atadipa Sutra, dīpa actually means both island and refuge. And so one translator uses the word island, and he says, “Friends, be islands unto yourselves. Be your own refuge, having no other. Let the Dharma be an island and a refuge to you.”
We can’t afford to get lost in the little details of the form at the expense of the people that the form is serving.
Those who are islands unto themselves should investigate to the very heart of things. What is the source of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair? How do they arise? That is the question, isn’t it? What is the source of sorrow, grief, conflict? And despite how it may appear, it’s not elsewhere. It’s not someone else’s doing.
And then the Buddha himself, he answers. He says, “Seeing the body’s impermanence is changeability, it’s waning, it’s ceasing.” A wise one says to themselves, “Formerly as now, all bodies were impermanent and unsatisfactory and subject to change.” Though seeing this as it really is, with perfect insight, he or she abandons all sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair, is not worried at their abandonment, but unworried lives at ease. So whether we’re speaking of this body or this body, this still holds true. And this election has highlighted what’s always been true, that life is impermanent, and it’s fragile, and it’s uncertain. It’s just a little closer now.
So we can and need to be a refuge unto ourselves. And we also need to do it for each other. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche said, “The essence of taking refuge is to have complete confidence in the three treasures, regardless of life circumstances, good or bad.” It is to have complete confidence in this road that you’re building, even though you don’t know where it leads. You can’t see its end, and yet you trust. You have confidence that you have both the ability to build it and to walk it.
Finding Our Ground in Uncertainty
I’ve been hearing my teacher whispering in my ear in the last few days, you know, Shogun Sensei saying, “You know, this is sad, this is upsetting, but it’s not surprising. We’ve been here before.” If you like to read history, you know, this kind of upset has happened before, most likely will happen again. This kind of divide exists everywhere, somewhere today in this world. And so, given that this is true, where do we stand? What is our support? And I see these bricks as the three treasures, and they actually don’t need to be thrown at you. You have them, you have them in your pockets, you have them close. They are what’s holding you, what’s grounding you, whether you call them the three treasures or not, actually. So the ocean may be buffeting you this way and that, you have spray in your face, you can’t breathe. But you know, you know how to pull the brick out, and you know how to place it. You’ve done it before, and you’ll do it again.
You know that the work required of you is just simply to lay down one brick after the next, having full confidence in these three treasures that you’ve taken refuge in. This is equanimity, really. Because traditionally, the Three Treasures—Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—you know, there’s a formal, you could say, kind of classically dharmic way of describing them. But I wanted to bring them closer, and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that we have them, that we are them. So that really, when we’re taking refuge in the Three Treasures, what we’re taking refuge in is ourselves.
Buddha is my and your awakened nature. It is we never fail to cover the ground upon which we stand. As Master Dogen says, we’ve been studying the sangha. And this isn’t based on virtue. It’s not based on intelligence, on intention, on our ability to fulfill it. It is an unarguable truth. We always cover the ground upon which we stand. Always. And so when the ground is shaky, when it seems to shift and is crumbling, disappearing from under us, what do we turn to? This mind, this heart, this body. Because we’re the ground, you see. This is where it is.
Somebody asked yesterday, we did a retreat on discipline as self-power. “What about groundlessness, which is in fact a basic teaching of Buddhism?” And that’s what I said. You’re the ground. You don’t need the illusion of solidity of the ground in front of you. It’s like standing. You’re standing at the edge of a cliff, which you encounter, all of us encounter, either in your practice or life. All of us have been there at one point, and you know what’s behind you. You’ve been there. You’ve seen it. You know it doesn’t lead where you want to go. So the only choice that you have is to take a step, but there’s an abyss. There’s a raging sea. There’s a fiery chasm. You don’t know where you’re going to land. And so you hesitate, because we’re afraid. Of course we’re afraid. We want to feel that we’re going to be okay, and we don’t know. At the edge of the precipice, you don’t know if you’re going to be okay.
But what happens is when you get to that edge enough times, because you can’t bear the thought of going back anymore, you take yourself to the edge of that precipice over and over again until the one day in which almost in disgust or in desperation or in surrender, you don’t even think. You just step. And before you know it, you realize you’re standing on the ground. You never left the ground. There was no chasm. There was no precipice. So solid ground is not solid. It is solid, in fact. It’s just solid is not what we think it is. This is another way of saying that we’re not powerless in the face of impermanence. We’re not bereft. We’re not victims of a crazy world, of crazy people that have nothing to do with me. It’s much closer than that. And because of this, we have a lot more power than we think.
But what about confusion? Right, what about uncertainty? What if you don’t know? What if you can’t see? You’re unable to feel your direction. You can’t feel the path under you. You’ve laid it down yourself. You can’t feel it. Then what? I mean, really, all you need is a pinprick of light. You know, it’s that moment, that infinitesimal moment in which you give rise to the thought, “There has to be another way. There has to be another way.” There’s the light. That’s the first brick in your pocket just waiting to be set down. That’s the moment of returning to our senses, if you will, of reclaiming our ground. So we don’t actually need to know the whole picture. We don’t need to know where it will go. We really only need to know one thing, and that’s that we want to be awake, that we want to be alive. And by awake, I mean that in a very literal, practical sense, we want our eyes to be open. We want to be aware, we want to be here, we want to be present, and responding to what life will present us with, what is presenting us with.
We just need to know that we are resilient, that we have this incredible capacity to respond, to cope with change, to meet what is difficult to meet. It’s one of our most basic capacities as human beings. Dharma is the all-pervasiveness of that awakened nature. So there’s no on-and-off switch. There’s no red-light district. There’s no no-axis zone. All of it is illuminated, all of it is awakened. But if that’s true, then why this mess that we’re in? Why this mess we’ve been in for some time, 200,000 years? Because we don’t know. Our awakened nature reaches everywhere. It really is that simple. It’s unfortunate that it’s that simple. It’s fortunate that it’s that simple. We don’t know. And not knowing, we don’t have access to it. It doesn’t mean it’s not there, it just means we can’t get to it, so it doesn’t manifest.
I was telling someone earlier, you know, my teacher used to say, or, you know, I would hear different people say, “Well, you know, what every human being wants is just to be happy.” And I would be like, ah. I mean, we’re really not all acting that way, are we? And, you know, the longer I practice, the more I realize, yeah, that is true. We all want very basic things. We want to be happy, we want to be at peace. Some of us go about it in what you could call more skillful ways than others. But we all want to just be fundamentally okay. And so this awakened nature, it is like being in possession of the most splendid work of literature, this great book, and you can’t read it. You don’t know how to read it. And so we’re learning to read here, slowly, painfully sometimes, with a lot of setbacks. But that’s what we’re doing.
Practicing Peace in the World
I wanted to do something a little unusual for a talk, but I wanted to do it anyway. Anyway, you have under your mat a chant, if you could pull it out. This is the Caranilla Metta Sutta. And it’s a chant, it dates back to the time of the Buddha. It’s on recycled paper, so you only need the one side. Don’t start chanting, you know, our grocery list. The Caranilla Metta Sutta. Yeah, and it’s under your chair. Oh, yes, and if you don’t have one, if you could share with the person next to you. Thank you, yes.
Yes, so this is a chant that dates from the time of the Buddha, and basically it speaks to how a person acts when they—exactly when it says—when they are steeped in goodness, skilled in goodness, when what they want is peace. So I wanted to chant this, all of us together. And Ecosystem, since you’ve done it before, would you mind leading us? Can you turn down my mic, or should I just pull it down? Leave it just a little bit.
This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace. So with a boundless heart, should one cherish all living beings, radiating kindness over the entire world, spreading upwards to the skies and downwards to the depths, outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill-will, whether standing or walking, seated or lying down, freed from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection. This is said to be the sublime abiding, by not holding to fixed views, the pure-hearted one having clarity, a vision being free from all sense desires, is not born.
Thank you. If you want to keep it, please take it, take it with you. And, you know, if some of it seems not quite yet doable, just focus on that one, on that one phrase, you know, “wishing in gladness and in safety may all beings be at ease.” That’s what we want. Someone said to me recently, and I’m trying not to project into scenarios of how bad things could get. And this is a kind of discipline. Just as in this sutra, it’s really speaking to the one who knows the path of peace, as it says, that’s how they act, that’s who they are in the world. And it’s not just naïve, it’s not utopian, it’s because the Buddha himself dealt with conflict throughout his life. I think about it as this is how you take care of your mind. You know, the spiritual life, Shogun Sensei has been saying this recently, is a disciplined life. And at least what I mean by that is that you’re very aware of the choices that you’re making, what you’re thinking of, what you’re speaking, the actions that you take, with full awareness that each one of these three forms of action has a direct consequence, and sometimes not so direct, and so you don’t know, you can’t tell yet. It takes time for it to unfold.
And so, as I told the retreat participants yesterday, you know, discipline, I see it as your ability to exercise your choices, and to learn how to focus your mind on all different levels. And so, you know, that doesn’t mean that you should necessarily go on a news fast. It doesn’t mean burying your head in the sand and not dealing with what is happening. It really means more carefully watching what happens. You know, if you obsessively are listening to the news or watching the news, just really feel how that makes you feel, what state of mind that creates for you, and perhaps those around you. You know, a big, big part of practice is learning to identify what is skillful and what is unskillful. The near enemy of equanimity is agitation. And so, to very, very deliberately choose what you take in in the coming days and months will help you. If you find yourself worrying about what may happen, see if you can turn your mind back. First, your breath, your body, so that you remember, “I’m an embodied being, and I’m here right now.” Ground yourself in that stillness and silence. And then there is the moment when you step forward, when you act. As the three pure precepts, you refrain from evil—evil towards yourself as well. And then you practice good, and then you actualize good for others. And what that will be for each one of us, each one of us will have to decide. You know, first, it’s just refraining from creating more suffering. That thought of they, them, their fault. That simple thought already creates more suffering. Just watch that thought. And then, as you turn to practice good, some of you have been speaking to me about your liturgy. Some of you have incorporated into your daily liturgy a wish for a new president-elect to act out of clarity and compassion. Good, good. He needs it, and we need it. So whether it’s formal liturgy, you know, like the liturgy that we do each day, Mejuku, Kanonggyo, we chant every Sunday. It’s a chant of compassion. The Shosaimyo, by the way, the Shosaimyo, Kichijo Dorani, that we do every day, that precedes the healing list when we’re wishing well-being for those who have… The people who are on our list have life-threatening illnesses. But you can do it for anyone, and it’s actually a chant to avert disasters. So you can chant that every day, several times a day, if you want. Don’t underestimate the power of the human mind.
You know, whether you choose to then engage in political work or social justice work. You know, a student posted that in Starbucks, they’re training their staff to respond to hate crimes against LGBTQ people. You know, maybe we should do something like that. Hate crimes of all sorts. Creating safe spaces. Because really, responding, not responding, is no longer an option. Not responding is saying, you know, “I’m okay with this,” even when you’re not okay with it. You know, it’s out of that fear, that paralysis, that comp, understandably. But that’s no longer an option. We don’t have time for that anymore. We have to respond with all the clarity that we can muster. And we have it. We have the clarity, and we have the capacity to do that. We have a tradition, a 2,500-year-old tradition, that is saying, you know, these things do happen, but you know what to do, you know how to work with your mind.
So this is a time to not allow our minds to be covered over, you know, with anxiety, with worry, with confusion. This is a time to not let the world change us, as AJ Must, the activist, used to say. This is the time to come together and create a refuge. I mean, what do you think all of this is for? And it’s not the building, you know, it’s not the Buddha and the incense, the chants, though all of those help, for sure. It’s us. It’s us that create the refuge. You know, it’s the resident that washes the cups once you go home, it’s the person sitting next to you right now. The student that first talked to you when you came here, when you went to the monastery and they made you feel welcome. I hope they made you feel welcome. They should make you feel welcome. That’s what we want everyone that comes here to feel. That, you know, if you’re brown or black, you’re welcome here. If you’re Asian, if you’re Latino, if you’re Middle Eastern, if you’re African, if you’re Native American, you are welcome here. If you’re Christian, if you’re Jewish, if you’re Buddhist, if you’re Muslim, if you’re Jain, if you’re Pagan, if you’re Wiccan, any other religious tradition, you are welcome here. Whether you’re a citizen or you’re a resident, documented or undocumented, you’re a refugee, there’s a place here for you. If you’re gay or you’re straight, you’re bisexual, trans, queer, undefined. If you’re cisgender, gender non-conforming. If you’re poor, if you’re rich, if you’re somewhere in between. If you’re 18, if you’re 35, if you’re 80, if you have one leg, you have two legs, you can’t hear, you can’t see. If you’re liberal, if you’re conservative, you’re welcome here. If you want to study the Dharma, if you want to know how to live an awakened life, you are welcome here. And if we offend you with our ignorance, with our lack of understanding, our vow is to learn from you and from everyone, so that we don’t repeat that. What is not welcome is bigotry, is hatred, ill will. And so we vow to fight it.
Putting Compassion into Action
You know, I was thinking of Daido Roshi. I was telling someone, I think he said, “An army of bodhisattvas.” Isn’t that a great image? But think of it as just vast. Think of it as large. Think of it as lines and lines and lines of bodhisattvas. And he gave this talk at the turn of the century. Yeah, the turn of the century, the millennium. And he said, “This is a 21st-century bodhisattva.” And he had no idea that this was going to happen. He couldn’t have known what he was talking about when he was invoking the 21st-century bodhisattva. Here it is. Here it is. It’s no longer enough to sit quietly on our seats. That’s good. We should keep sitting quietly on our seats because we need the, again, the groundedness, the clarity, the strength. But it’s no longer enough. You know, that vow that we’ve been making every day, “I vow to save all sentient beings.” We’re about to make it in a few minutes again. This is it. This is our chance to actually bring it to life, for reals, as Sikoseli says.
And please, you know, those of us who take care of this temple, you know, let’s really remember, it really is about being clear, seeing ourselves clearly in each other. So you know how straight the lines are, how well we ring the bell, how much we get done, how carefully we keep time. All of these things are secondary to this interaction between us as human beings. The world is burning. We can’t afford, you know, to be harsh or impatient or overbearing with each other. We can’t afford to get lost in the little details of the form at the expense of the people that the form is serving. So there’s a time when you say to someone, you know, “This is how you do X.” And there’s a time when you just let them figure it out, give them space, trust them to take care of it, because they know how to do that.
And so, as I said, I think this is a time to work together, and by that I mean us, you know, the sangha, the community of practitioners. Sangha, the virtue of harmony. And to remind ourselves and each other that we’re facing in the same direction. We want the same thing. And we actually know how to do that. We have an inkling of how to go about that, if we can only trust one another. To truly see the person in front of us. I know I often come back to this theme because I feel it’s so important. We don’t see each other generally. There’s a place and a time for seeing the unity of all things and all beings. There’s selflessness and oneness. We’re all one. And then there’s a time for realizing you are different from me. You have a different experience from me. Radically different at times. I need to be able to see that at a very basic level. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to get along. I need to be able to see you so that I can actually truly ask you, “What do you need?” So you can hear me when I ask you for help.
Equanimity is not dispassionate. It is not being above feelings. It is not aloof or detached. In fact, its far enemy is indifference. It only works with the other three immeasurables. In fact, it’s said to be the ground, the place in which the other three rest: loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy. It doesn’t mean not caring, being equanimous. It means caring deeply, deeply, and grounding yourself in that care. So if you feel, if you feel your mind, your thoughts just going off the rails, just gently, but firmly, bring yourself back. Remind a friend, “Let’s stay here, let’s stay present. Let’s deal with what’s actually in front of us right now.” And also remind yourself that, you know, we know how to gather, we know how to organize, we know how to come together. As Zen students, we certainly know how to respond. We do it well. Why wouldn’t we do it now? What is this practice for if it’s not to teach us how to respond when it’s really needed? So do keep your mind focused, clear, aware.
Gandhi used to say that repeating the name of God had more power than an atomic bomb. And given his power, I don’t doubt that for a moment. And so if not God for you, whatever life-affirming principle you hold, hold that in your mind. That’s what you want to focus on. So we definitely have work to do, my friends. But there’s absolutely no reason that we can’t do it. In fact, I would say the opposite. We can absolutely do it. And we will. We will.
Equanimity Paramita, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.