Finding Equanimity through Mindfulness

I have just returned from a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat, in which I served food to the meditation students on their silent retreat. The servers sat for three hour-long sits throughout the day in between our service periods, and could sit on any extra free time. The servers are all dedicated Vipassana meditators and are practicing equanimity in their work flow, so it's a beautiful way to practice applying the equanimity one gains through meditation into daily life.

As far back as a teenager, I remember I had an awful time making decisions. What is the right path? I consistently defaulted to the wisdom of someone else who I deemed an expert on the issue, whether it be my parents or my teachers in the field I was studying. I was certain that it depended on the right decision to create the happiness I desired in my life, as well as to reach the goals I sought.

As I walked in the forest of the Vipassana center on a break last week, I reached a divergence in the snowy path. In this kind of meditative environment, one's thoughts are much more lean than in normal life, so when they come, they are much clearer and pop into the forefront, sort of like a billboard. When I reached the divergence in the path, a thought popped out: “I'll be happy either way”. This moment struck me, not only because of the pop-up clarity of it, but also because I could feel the open resonance of truth within me. As a younger person it had never occurred to me that no matter what decision I made in my life, I was capable of experiencing happiness within. Of course, intellectually this kind of idea made sense to me, and I wasn't unfamiliar with hearing a trope such as this. But in my own lived experience, I was constantly looking for external validation of deserving happiness. I was always feeling I needed to earn a certain amount of money, attain certain credentials and successes, to be applauded from the outside, and THIS would resonate within as happiness. I was seeing it all wrong.

I used to believe that happiness was created by making the right decisions that were stepping stones towards a future that made you happy. My constant experience was a desperate attempt to ground myself so I could make the right decision, in order to prevent further unhappiness, like a hamster wheel trying to seek an unknown goal. Eventually I realized I wasn't rarely ever experiencing happiness, no matter what decision I made. I was even skeptical of people I would meet who were obviously happy on the outside. The skeptical side of me said: “What was the dark underbelly of their unhappiness? What were they hiding?” The success-based side said: “Why are THEY happy? THEY don't even have a successful career, or a partner!“

I stopped singing for about half a year in my 20's, after performing a work that was so ill-fit for my voice I felt devoid of the desire to ever sing again. Since singing was what I had decided to do with my life, stopping singing made me re-evaluate everything. How did I get here? What decisions led up to this moment? What really mattered? What DOES bring me joy and happiness? That's when I started meditating. Meditation and its teachings have taught me that happiness and joy are experiential states lived in the present moment, that as we practice finding equanimity, we naturally reach a happiness state from there, and can experience joy merely by living fully with direct access to the present moment. It took me15 years of meditating to reach that moment when I truly felt in my body that I could be happy either way. (Don't worry newby practitioners! There have been other moments as well.)

So, how to practice equanimity in daily life? Any mindfulness meditation practice is a practice of equanimity, engaging the detached observational mind to notice one object of attention without reacting to its responses, whether it be the body, feeling, state of mind, or phenomena. Mindful listening, for example, is one mindfulness practice that focuses entirely on the awareness practice of listening, which is hearing plus attention towards it. Equanimity in listening is lifting off judgement of whether you like a sound or not, and just observing the traits of a sound objectively, in the middle. Anapana breathwork focuses on observing the breath as it is without controlling it, noticing if the breath changes when thoughts or feelings come up, but just sitting in the middle without reacting. Another form of mindfulness practice focuses on different postures of the body, whether the body is standing, sitting, lying down, or walking, just noticing how the body moves differently in these different postures without trying to make it anything different than it is. All of these mindfulness practices help us stay in the present moment, paying attention to observations as they come, noticing when thoughts, feelings, and sensations come up, and coming back to the practice of bare attention. In these practices we observe when our mind and body wishes to judge whether an action is good or bad, move towards it with desire or away from it with aversion, and practice sitting in the middle of that with equanimity. This practice on the basic level leads to calm and serenity, and slowly helps us dismantle the reactionary cycle of our lives. On a deeper level, it leads to insight.

Insight can be reached when mindfulness meditation is practiced regularly and deeply, and when it is focused on directly experiencing and observing phenomena in the body such as in vipassana. Through my healing and seeking journey recently, I have felt the importance of directly experiencing anything for individual and unique inner revelation. I have found this, not just through vipassana, but also through sound meditation and more active forms of breathwork. Long intense periods of focused practice will obviously lead to deeper realization. Others I know have found insight through plant medicine, shamanic journeying, hypnotherapy, and other techniques accessing altered states of consciousness. What insight can you find yourself through direct experience?

What are your habitual patterns of negativity? Do you feel a victim of your life situation? Do you find bitterness in your feelings toward others, or find yourself crippled with self doubt or anxiety? Try any mindfulness meditation technique that speaks to you and practice it daily or as often as possible, to find calm, awareness, and equanimity in every day life. Create a habit of it so you can begin to dismantle those unhelpful patterns on a consistent basis and practice sitting in the middle with equanimity. Then, try some of these practices that go deeper through direct experience, to welcome more insight into your life. At A Big AUM, we offer mindful listening and sound meditation experiences with breathwork, and post offerings hosted by others on the Facebook A Big AUM group as they come up. Click here to find a Vipassana retreat near you. May you find happiness within yourself today and every day, no matter where you are and which way you go!