Living Life As It Is: Chapter 9
The Magic Power of Equanimity
Chapter Nine – The Magic Power of Equanimity
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
~ T.S. Eliot
Keeping the Change in Perspective; Continuing the Transformation
At the end of the last chapter, I wrote:
Transformations are not transformations unless they go beyond a single event. Transformation is a continuous process of growth and change. They are typically empowering. The transformation that I experienced began with a fall and evolved through pain and some confusion about how I was suddenly thinking differently. I experienced a reevaluation of my thoughts and beliefs that I didn’t initiate. The circumstances of what happened to me at the time and after changed my perspective completely.
Because change is change all the time, I know the change in perspective I experienced can change again or just slowly fade away. Once the emergency is over, the healing underway, and the subsequent rethinking of things takes a back seat to life being life. How do I keep the transformation?
I find kindred thinking in the poem Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot, which he wrote during his conversion to Anglicanism. It’s a long poem that speaks to his struggle moving from someone who had no faith to someone trying to find God. It was met with mixed reviews from secular scholars due to its focus on Christianity, but others, including Edwin Muir, a poet and novelist, praised it as Elliot’s most perfect poems.
I believe some of my readers might be tempted to avoid a close read of the quote from Eliot’s poem I will share, also because of the Christian reference, but not so fast. Don’t judge based on any preconceived distaste or bias against Christianity or religion in general. Eliot’s words have power in helping us live a more equanimous and non-reactive life, whether we’re secular, Buddhist, or another faith/spiritual follower.
Here is some verses from part one of his poem, Ash Wednesday:
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
Please read this closely and try to brush aside any bristling you might have about the use of words like “God”, “judgement”, and “mercy”, and I think you will find a very Buddhist message. But before I take a more detailed look into T.S. Eliot’s poem, I will share more about how I have been trying to understand how I was suddenly thinking differently; how I unhooked from delusion without a purposeful decision to do so, which is much like what Eliot prayed for.
How could this happen without my conscious effort? Is it proof of the truth of the Shin Buddhist concept of Other Power and grace? It clearly is proof of how conditions outside of any seemingly willful direction or intent changed my perspective, essentially reversing my thinking and beliefs about how things. I’ve been reflecting on this ever since the day I left the hospital, trying to understand how it fit into my Buddhist worldview and beliefs, but also trying to open and relax into the transformation so that it might continue to help me loosen my grip on other illusory concepts I have and align me closer to right view and living life as it is.
I was reminded of this poem by T.S. Eliot around Ash Wednesday, this March 2025. Reading it again, it struck me how many Buddhist concepts it seemed to point to and how much it spoke to what I was going though. I’ll highlight a few and reflect on what they mean to me and my effort to keep connected to life as it is, rather then listening to the stories my mind tells me are ‘true’.
The first three lines of the quote speaks to how I hope to stay centered in right view, as much as possible:
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
This, too, is my hope: to not turn again, to keep this change in perspective and not fall into the grasp of fear, anger, or other delusions and their stories. The theme of renouncing desires and attachments is the teaching at the heart of the Four Noble Truths, reducing suffering through letting go of clinging to things that cause pain. And the things that cause pain are clinging to anything that isn’t life as it is.
Then, these lines echo Rev. Koyo Kubose’s teaching of person, place, and time that I wrote about in Chapter Two:
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are….
When he writes that “time is always time and place is always and only the place” he is writing about the now. The way he expresses now is: “what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place.”
He not only emphasizes the now, but he also focuses on how, in the now, we find things as they are; life as it is; and in that we should rejoice. He writes: “I rejoice that things are as they are.” If someone asks me what the one thing is I would point to as the essential Buddhist teaching, I say it is accepting things as they are, not as you would like them to be or not as you want them not to be. Eliot does me one better, he says “I rejoice that things are as they are.”
Being able to “rejoice that things are as they are” is the ability to find nirvana or enlightenment in the midst of samsara or everyday life. This is not easy for most of us. It’s not easy during normal, everyday frustrations and it’s not the least bit easy when we’re dealing with the big things like pain, illness, and loss. To be able to truly accept every day and what it brings without grasping at the peace of the day before, or wishing away the circumstances of this day for a promise of tomorrow, takes some spiritual cultivation and understanding of impermanence and the emptiness of circumstances.
This reminds me of the Zen koan by Yunmen who said, “I don’t ask you about before the 15th of the month, try to say something about after the fifteenth.” Yunmen answered for everyone: “Every day is a good day.” The fifteenth of the month was the day of the full moon, signifying enlightenment. So, Yunmen’s question could be posed: I don’t ask you about before enlightenment, try to say something about after enlightenment.
Rev. Gyomay Kubose, one of my teachers, wrote about this koan in his book, Zen Koans. He wrote:
The “good day” does not refer to a nice day as compared to a bad day. It means the absolute, not the relative, day. Today is the absolute day, the only day in the eternity of time. Today is never repeated. Every day is fresh and new just as one’s life is new each day. Every day is a good day, but the good is not of one’s own making. It is good in the original, or absolute, sense—rain or shine, war or peace, sickness or health. The past is only reference; the future is only hope. Today is real.
The next lines from Eliot’s poem I will highlight are the ones where he is praying to forget what he thinks too much about, what he tells himself stories about: “These matters that with myself I too much discuss.”
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again….
Although Eliot speaks of praying, this could also be seen as emptying the mind of concepts and stories or the “matters that with myself I too much discuss.” And, like Eliot, because I don’t wish to turn again to an attachment to mind stories of fear or mistrust, I will practice meditative awareness of things as they are, or suchness, unattached to changing conditions and, therefore, free from the pain and confusion of loss and delusion.
And the last line I want to call out is a beautiful expression of Buddhist equanimity:
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
My meditation practice had gotten stronger prior to my fall in December, but it didn’t stop me from turning again and again toward my fear of illness and the delusion of being trapped by a world gone mad in the belief that Covid was harmless. But maybe it prepared me for the moment and enabled me to be somewhat calm and equanimous while in the hospital. Maybe it prepared me to take off the mask. Maybe it prepared me for a new perspective and new thinking that was focused on what was really happening, rather than what I was afraid was happening. That was the grace.
Was it my meditation that prepared me for a grace that gave me the conviction to take off the mask and not put it on again; to not turn again to “these matters that with myself I too much discuss?” Or was it standing aware in the stark reality of my biggest fear, suddenly awakened from delusion, like watching someone pick up the coiled rope I saw as a snake? Was it my meditation that prepared me for the words that answer, “for what is done, not be done again?”
Teach Us to Care and Not to Care Teach Us to Sit Still
This line speaks to the desire for equanimity. And it also teaches us how: Sit still. Equanimity, or caring but not caring, is the power that is helping me continue my transformation, keeping the change in perspective toward right view and away from sticky, destructive thoughts of fear and anger. And that power is developed through meditation, sitting still.
I am not the only one that needs this now. Just weeks into coming home from the hospital, healing from my broken arm and healing from the years I spent in fear, our country and our world began turning upside down, ushered into outrage and fear by the new administration, the new ‘regime’. Despite my urge to care too much, to be moved to anger, sadness, and anxiety by the daily torrent of threats and corruption, I have been able to care and not care by sitting still, being quiet and listening to the birds, the breezes, and wind chimes, rather than the anxious chatter of media.
When looking outside at our burning world is too hard to bear, it's time again to look inside. Look at our motivation, our intention. Look at what our hearts are holding and where our minds return. Check to see how our hearts can be softened and how our minds can let go of a death grip on negative thoughts.
It's like the teaching of the parable of the second arrow. Yes, you've been wounded by an arrow. But the suffering ends when the arrow is removed and the wound begins to heal. If you continue to focus on who shot the arrow, why they shot it, and your anger toward them, you have wounded yourself twice.
That's what pure reactivity does. We fight, run, or roll up in a ball of fear and overwhelm. But what if we chose, instead, to look into our own mind and heart and see what we're holding in there and how it might be released or purified. Instead of bouncing back and forth in reactivity, we can try to fix the thing we can fix: our own minds.
This is the bodhisattva attitude or bodhicitta, which is a powerful mix of compassion and equanimity. Equanimity is the secret ingredient to the bodhisattva attitude. And equanimity depends on a deep understanding of emptiness.
We can see compassion as a call to serve those in the world that need our help or engage in social movements that will be of help to people. Feeling for and feeling with those that suffer due to poverty, illness, abuse, wars, natural disasters, injustice, and fear gives rise to reactions of wanting to care for and/or fight for those that are suffering. Yet, if we spring to action or feel like we should spring to action, we may have done so from the opposite of equanimity. Equanimity isn't reactive, but, instead, a steady awareness or realization of the nature of things as they are: That things are impermanent, interconnected, and empty of inherent existence.
Equanimity evolves from wisdom and, because of that, it balances compassion with the wisdom that sees things as they are. Equanimity turns a reactive compassionate response from idiot compassion, as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called it, to wise compassion.
In the end it is an understanding that we can't end suffering. Remember, the world has always been burning as long as it has been turning (ala Billy Joel in “We Didn’t Start the Fire”). But, as part of bodhisattva practice, we work to free all beings from suffering. That bodhisattva work is helping others find the balance and peace of equanimity despite the physical or emotional circumstances they find themselves in. This is the kind of compassion we work to develop. And it starts with me and you through meditative and reflective practices that gradually train our minds and hearts.
And, of course, you can help others avoid as much worldly suffering as possible, whenever possible. You can volunteer, you can contribute money, you can write letters to your representatives, and you can demonstrate or protest. But, if in doing those external activities, you are suffering on the inside from a motivation based on anger or fear, you are shooting a quiver-full of second, third, and fourth arrows at yourself, and, possibly, causing more pain for others.
This becomes even more powerful if you are triggered by group think or a sense of me versus the "other." In today's supercharged world, waves of group speech and actions can propel the feeling that we need to act or speak out, in a reactive response to unguarded energies from others that are generally not driven by reflection but by a fight or flight reaction.
In the chapter on “Vigilant Introspection” in the book, The Way of the Bodhisattva, by Shantideva, he teaches about this kind of guarding the mind from reactivity:
When the urge arises in your mind
To feelings of desire or angry hate,
Do not act! Be silent, do not speak!
And like a log of wood be sure to stay.
Bodhicitta evolves out of this wise, thoughtful kind of compassion. Bodhicitta, as awakening mind, is the intention to wake up to life as it is, so that you can help others do the same thing. It is not just an emotion or feeling but an understanding arising from the wisdom of emptiness or no self, the wisdom of impermanence, and the wisdom of interdependence. This bodhicitta is teaching us to care and not care, teaching us to be still.
When I was lost in five years of trauma- and fear-based delusion, I lost my connection to bodhicitta because I was lost in my preoccupation with protecting my illusive self from others and, essentially, from life as it is. I pushed it all away, trying to keep me safe in a cocoon that was already tattered and outgrown, yet I was too frightened to make my way out.
I believe it was when I prioritized meditation and gave it more time and space in my life, instead of the time I spent focusing on what was awful “out there”, I prepared myself for that moment when I fell on the ice and tumbled out of the cocoon. Right view can never be found inside a chrysalis of confusion caused by attachment to fear, anger, hatred, and delusion. And the only way we can break the chrysalis apart is by being still and looking inside at our inner confusion to see that we are not the caterpillar we thought we were, but instead, a butterfly trapped by the inability to see things as they are.
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