Equanimity: How To Feel Peaceful All The Time

By following just 3 simple keys

What Is Equanimity?

As a solid mass of rock
Is not stirred by the wind,
So a sage is not moved
By praise and blame.

As a deep lake
Is clear and undisturbed,
So a sage becomes clear
Upon hearing the Dharma.

Virtuous people always let go.
They don’t prattle about pleasures and desires.
Touched by happiness and then by suffering,
The sage shows no sign of being elated or depressed.
— Dhammapada 81–83

Equanimity is the emotional-spiritual state of warm and stable calmness. It is the undisturbed peace and clarity of mind of someone who has mastered themselves. The equanimous person does not allow negative thoughts and emotions to carry them away into suffering. Similarly, the equanimous person also does not allow positive emotions to carry them away into suffering.

The slippery slope of negative thoughts and emotions are more obvious. If we trust a negative thought and feed it the attention of going along with it, then we create more negative experiences. The sudden thought “This sucks” tends to generalize into “Life in general sucks” which generalizes again into a terrible feeling of hopelessness.