Equanimity:Buddhist Philosophy

Equanimity:Buddhist Philosophy. I found I was feeling sorry for myself tonight. I got to thinking about my three friends from childhood:one dead, one does not know who I am or who he is and one is a musician that I still ski with a couple times a year.

I started to thing about the Buddhist idea of equanimity. I have heard the idea many times spoken of by Tibetan Lamas. In theory at least I have tried to practice this idea of treating all moments in time and space equal and trying to generate equal feelings toward all life individually and collectively each moment. I have personally found that having compassion for all life in the universe to be much easier than to have compassion for someone on the freeway who has almost driven me off the road and into an accident. However, theoretically, one of the keys to full enlightenment is the real capacity to do this in all situations and for all beings in the universe in all moments. I have come closest to these kinds of consciousness when I look at all beings as children. Depending upon how I am feeling, thinking and acting I also look at myself as a child or as a teenager or as an enlightened adult when I am actually there. So, I guess the way to do this properly would be to have compassion for all beings including oneself however, and wherever oneself finds oneself and all beings. While at the same time not practicing idiot compassion which is to endanger oneself or others by only feeling compassion without wisdom. Because compassion without wisdom is relatively useless to all concerned.

In one sense I do believe I have had some success with equanimity. When I was young I fell in love very deeply a couple of times and when it did not work out I came very close to suicide. Over time I began to see all my girlfriends as gifts from God to me just like the women I was so in love with that I almost died for them. In this way I actually began to see all the girlfriends and then my three wives as personal gifts from God that have made my life better and better. I believe that the equanimity of feelings for all the women in my life as manifestations of God have brought me to a kind of equanimity toward women that has brought me great peace.

Though I have been faithful now to my present wife since 1994 and I can say to you that was not easy, I can also say that having the integrity to be faithful that long has brought a kind of integrity and honesty to my life that is amazing.

So the next time you are angry at someone or yourself or the next time you are feeling sorry for yourself or suicidal please think about what I am trying to say here. I am still alive and have peace 40 years after being suicidal over two women that I was deeply in love with. In fact, one of them I could not fully admit to even myself how in love that one of them I was. It was just too scary a thing to admit to myself.

Developing compassion for yourself and all beings in the universe may be the most important single thing you ever do in this lifetime.