Equanimity is the seventh Factor of Awakening.

Life can become so muddled by our preferences and plans that we miss the simple experience of things as they are, of life as it is. We excessively rely on our judgments, plans and ideas–as if we know what is going to happen. Although we might be able to make a good guess, we really don’t know how things will be. We don’t know whether tomorrow our time on earth will end or we’ll win the lottery. (As my teacher once said, we have the same chance of winning as we do of it being sent to us by mistake!!!).

Yes, human life is a mixed bag of sorrows, joy, great difficulties and beauty. Knowing this deeply, we discover through loving presence, the heart’s capacity to rest in the seasons of gain and loss, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, fame and disrepute and their resultant changes and unfolding circumstances, with unshakable evenness, balance and poise. We meet life as it is, not apart from, but in our humanity, with a strength and softness or fluidity that is not caught by circumstances.

Equanimity should not be confused with indifference (a cold distancing from a heartfelt sense of life, blocking the potential to realize our birthright of love and freedom). It is a warm open hearted engagement with all of life in its inevitable manifestations and phases.

This is the last of the Seven Factors of Awakening.

Next week, we will discuss ways of working with these factors in your practice.