Quotes About Equanimity

Pema Chödrön

What I have realized through practicing is that practice isn't about beng the best horse or the good horse or the poor horse or the worst horse.

Emotions cannot take off and escalate if the mind is steady.

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

Only with equanimity can we see that everything that comes into our circle has come to teach us what we need to know.

The path of the bodhisattva-warrior WHEREVER we are, we can train as a warrior. The practices of meditation, loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are our tools. With the help of these practices, we can uncover the soft spot of bodhichitta, the tenderness of the awakened heart.

We don't have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse.

How we regard what arises in meditation is training for how we regard whatever arises in the rest of our lives.

Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know. When things fall apart and we're on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that's really swell.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

We must take situations as they are. We must only change our mental attitudes towards them.

Stand in that reverent attitude to the whole universe, and then will come perfect non attachment.

Even-minded and cheerful. When things go bad, you'll find that the same kind of attitude comes to you naturally.

During civil disturbance adopt such an attitude that people do not attach any importance to you - they neither burden you with complicated affairs, nor try to derive any advantage out of you.

Receive a guest with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.

Only an acceptance of both the flowers and the thorns can bring you peace. Peace, after all, is the fruit of total acceptance.

Anything that causes you to overreact or underreact can control you, and often does. Responding inappropriately to your e-mail, your thoughts about what you need to do, your children, or your boss will lead to less effective results than you'd like. Most people give either more or less attention to things than they deserve, simply because they don't operate with a mind like water.

Life is what it is, Will. You take it as it comes.

If you can't do something about a situation, there's no point in worrying about it.

meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same.

The Empress of Blandings was a pig who took things as they came. Her motto, like Horace's, was nil admirari.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily as lying down.

The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror.It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing.It receives but does not keep.

Happiness is the abscence of the striving for happiness.