The Buddha described equanimity as an unshakable steadiness of mind and heart that meets life’s inevitable changes without being swept away. When we are equanimous, we are not ruffled by the eight worldly winds: gain and loss, praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain. These vicissitudes of life are always shifting and never really under our control, so the strength of equanimity lies in flexibility, in the grace to yield, to bend, and to rise again.
Equanimity emerges naturally from meditation practice. Focused attention practices such as mindfulness of breathing settle the heart and calm the nervous system. As agitation subsides, more equanimity arises.
Equanimity also deepens through vipassana practice. Vipassana, often translated as “insight meditation,” involves carefully observing the changing nature of thoughts, sensations, and feelings to see them clearly as they arise and pass away. As we study the nature of experience, we see that things are always changing, so we are less shocked when that change is not to our liking. As we observe the continual arising and passing of experience, it begins to feel less personal. Eventually, we recognize unsatisfactoriness woven through life itself: unpleasant things happen, and pleasant ones fade. This understanding—often referred to as wise view—resets our expectations for this human life and allows us to relax our resistance when things are difficult, as they invariably will be from time to time.
In the well-known teaching of the second arrow, the Buddha outlines the typical pattern that leads to loss of equanimity. A painful experience arises: This is the first arrow. It hurts, and it is unavoidable. These fragile human bodies and tender human hearts will, at times, hurt. The uncultivated mind immediately reacts: This should not be happening. How can I escape this?
We become preoccupied with getting rid of the unpleasant sensation or emotion. We might generate anxious, looping thoughts in our struggle to find escape, and then resistance builds to those painful thoughts themselves. We reach for sense pleasures: ice cream, our phone, intoxicants, anything to soothe the sting. Relief comes, but only a little and only briefly.
Then comes identification: I am hurt. My life is ruined. Something is wrong with me. We might even define ourselves in relation to whatever we are experiencing—I am anxious, I am depressed—as if that is all we are.
The escape attempts, the resistance, the search for a fix, and the identification are the second arrow: the extra mental anguish we add to physical or emotional pain.
When the mind is cultivated, the first arrow is still felt. Pain is present, but it stops there. No dramatizing, no piling on, no urgent need to fix or flee. There is simply awareness: Anxiety is here, sadness is here. That shift from “I am sad” to “Sadness is here” is the first flowering of mindfulness. In that instant, the thought is seen rather than blindly believed, and the tension diminishes.
Of course, when a fix is obvious, it’s wise to take it. If I am cold, I can put on a sweater. If I am hungry, I can eat. If I have caused harm, I can try to make amends. When there is no quick fix, though, the training becomes essential.
Equanimity is aspirational. It’s easy to say, “Meet every experience without resistance or problem-solving or pleasure seeking or identification.” But retraining the mind takes patience, time, and endless repetition. It begins by simply noticing moments of nonequanimity. Notice the unpleasant experience and observe how the mind resists and the agitation that resistance creates. Notice the longing for distraction or pleasure. Notice the personalizing reflex that wants to make it my problem, my flaw, my failing, or who I am.
Sometimes people hear this teaching and ask, “Then what?” It’s another way of saying, “But, ultimately, how do I get rid of this unpleasant experience?”
Our conditioning runs deep. We assume relief comes only when the unpleasant disappears. The practice invites us to test a different hypothesis—that ease is possible even in the midst of what we do not like and that most of our suffering comes from the second arrow.
As the German monk Bhikkhu Analayo writes, “When mindfulness meets experience again and again, understanding ripens naturally.” We don’t need to figure everything out. Mindfulness keeps gathering the data, and wisdom unfolds in its own quiet, ineffable way.
The heart of equanimity is this capacity to stay present with the unpleasant without collapsing or pushing it away. We learn to relax the compulsion to fix every discomfort or straighten every crooked line. In doing so, we discover a mind that can stand steadily in the midst of things.
Jan Frazier, the contemporary spiritual teacher and author of When Fear Falls Away: The Story of a Sudden Awakening, offers a beautiful description of equanimity: “whatever has weighed on you suddenly no longer weighs…it has no mass, no gravity. All that has ever troubled you is now just a feature of the landscape, like a tree, a passing cloud. Every bit of emotional and mental turmoil…is utterly, inexplicably gone. Into the startling emptiness flows a quiet joy that buoys you morning, noon, and night…. Everything you undertake happens effortlessly.”
Moreover, Frazier continues, “You are happy, but for no reason. Nothing bothers you. You feel no stress. When a problem arises, you know what to do, you do it, and then you let it go…. Because your equanimity is disconnected from anything in your outer life, you know that no matter what challenge you are handed—for the rest of your life—the peace will sustain.”
Jan Frazier is pointing to the same truth the Buddha revealed: Peace arises when grasping and resistance soften. The storms of life don’t disappear; they simply lose their power to rattle or define us. This equanimity is not beyond reach. It unfolds naturally and incrementally in anyone who practices and who dares to notice that whenever there is difficulty, there is some resistance that can soften, even just a little. This is how the heart learns to rest. Over time, what once felt impossible becomes more and more the way we move through the world.
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