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Hi, this is Margaret Maloney and welcome to the Death Dhamma Podcast. In a series I used to read, occasionally one character would say to the other, may you live in interesting times. It was understood that this was a curse, where interesting times meant chaos and difficulty. Well, we do live in interesting times. I mean, don't we always? So this season, together we'll explore equanimity and chaos, recognizing that many aspects of life are beyond our control. Let's find a sense of balance and peace amid external chaos. Hello, my friends. Welcome and thank you for being here in our continued discussions on equanimity. What is it? How do we practice it? Today, I bring to you a story or really I'll say the transcript of a Dhamma talk. And the talk is by Tanisaru Bhikkhu. It's called The Equanimity of a Cow and it is dated June 11th, 2005. I found this on dhammatalks.org. And felt like it was a helpful thing to bring to us as we are, you know, dealing with equanimity in these times. I'm going to read from it. I'm not going to read all of it, but I'm going to pull from it. So with much gratitude to Tanisaru Bhikkhu for this talk and to dhammatalks.org, The Equanimity of a Cow. There's a story they tell about a monk who once stayed with Azan Shah during the rains retreat. Half of the roof of his house was covered with mud, and half of the roof of his house was covered with mud.
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So Ajahn Chah asked him, why are you doing this? Why aren't you fixing your hut? And the monk said, I'm trying to practice equanimity. Ajahn Chah said, that's not the equanimity that the Buddha taught, that's the equanimity of a water buffalo, or perhaps to us that word would be translated as cow, which is why the story and the talk is called the equanimity of a cow. And this is an important point for us now and always, you know, because first of all, this talk goes back to 2005, but the Buddha's teachings are evergreen and it's based on something, it's based on something that happened with Ajahn Chah, which was even prior to that, which comes from the Buddha's teachings, which are, you know, as we know, a couple thousand years old, at least, right? The point is the Buddha didn't say just to be passive or just to accept things. We need to be, be skillful and stay away from being unskillful. So sometimes if you think of equanimity as just, I know my part of my roof is gone and that's how it is, so I accept it, that's not necessarily skillful. So what we need to do is, and Tanisar Bhikkhu says, you have to look into your mind and see what works, you know, of course, because there are skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind, right? We know this. There are times when you practice and if you're practicing only looking for pleasure, it's going to lead to defilements.
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You have to practice sometimes with pain, whether you want to or not, and then you've got to be really careful not to let greed for healthier times or anger or delusion overcome the mind when you are practicing during a time of difficulty. You know, so there are some things that you can or can't have equanimity about, right? Out. Watching things come into the mind, sometimes will be enough to help them fade away. Right? Tana Sarabicu says that Aljan Lee said that some things, if you really look at them, they get embarrassed and they go away. I get that. Right? I don't know about you. Do you ever have times when you're sitting and meditating and something comes up and you're like, I can't believe I thought of that. Or I can't believe I still think about that. So, sure, I guess there's a kind of an embarrassment going on there that sends things away, sends things away. And, you know, there's other things that they're not going to go away. They don't get embarrassed. And no matter how much you look at them, in which case, then we have to be more proactive in fighting those things off that I'll say, don't slink away out of embarrassment. And so he talks about being proactive in preventing them, or if they've already arisen, be proactive in getting rid of them. Right? So again, he's pointed out an important skill in the path is learning when to be just an observer and when to be more proactive. And this falls back on being skillful and unskillful, which is at the core of so much of the way in which we practice, right? Drawing on something skillfully versus unskillfully. Now I'm going to pull away from the rest of his talk for now, because I think something that maybe... Maybe we grapple with as Buddhists, some of us is in a difficult time if you're upset about things that are happening. So for a lot of people in the United States right now, there's so much uncertainty and we don't know what is happening and systems that we're used to are being torn down. And it's very hard to understand why some things are happening and why they're being, why they are allowed to happen and what's going to happen next. There's a lot. I know there's a lot. And then there's equity. There's equanimity. So does equanimity mean to just sit back and accept all of these things that are happening? And now I'll introduce the phrase of, remember, I'm always saying pace yourself. So now we're looking at that equanimity and the ability to pace yourself and knowing when to be skillfully proactive. That answer is going to be different for many of us. Because for each of us, there are going to be things we see happening that will make us feel called to action. And there will be some things that we see happening that may move us to tears, but not necessarily to action. It's so helpful right now. Okay. I'll say skillful right now to really understand yourself, what it is that may upset you during these times. Okay. Understand why you're upset. And at the core of that, why could come the ability to be, to have equanimity, uh, and to know when to act right. And then we don't want to act out of anger. So when something happens and it's triggering anger in you, it is good to step back and think about it. Okay. Why it's triggering anger work to come to that place of calm. So in this moment, I'm, I'm thinking of this place of calm as a state of equanimity work to come to a place of equanimity and then decide what you're going to do. Is this where you're going to take on some kind of proactivity? Because now bringing in my thought about, you know, pace yourself, uh, one of the ways on which I'm beginning to think. Okay. Pace yourself could mean protect and conserve your energy because as you already know, things are going to be changing every day, every day. And if you wear yourself out, you won't be able to stand up and work proactively on the cause that is the right cause for you. And then in a way you will get steamrolled. So we do need to pace ourselves, protect and conserve your energy. Okay. When I say learn to accept what is happening, I mean, get to a place where you understand like, this is where we are. This is who is in charge, but I not agreeing with some of the decisions and actions that are being taken.
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And sometimes that makes me feel anger or despair or many other things, and I'm going to work. To get to a place of being more calm. And then I'm going to decide what to do, what to do. And in that way, I can act skillfully. I can act skillfully because if we do nothing, then I feel like we have the equanimity of cows. Right. And again, going back to the point of equanimity, isn't pat to be passive. Okay. We have to accept. We have to recognize what is skillful and what is unskillful. And there are times when we do things. So you don't sit in your hut with half a roof and just crowd yourself over to the other side and think that not repairing the roof is equanimity. And so in whatever way that phrase means to you, I'm going to say, repair your roof on the final passage. I will read you the final passage from his talk he says so the equanimity you develop is the equanimity of the Buddha not the equanimity of a cow in other words your equanimity is skillfully applied carry around as your main category or your main thought in the back of your mind the question of skill and lack of skill I think this is always true what's skillful what's skillful to do what's skillful to think right now what's not that pair that difference between skillful and unskillful this is very important without it the path doesn't make sense it doesn't work with it you can turn any experience any moment into part of your practice so always keep it firmly in mind because yes no matter what you decide to do during these times if you decide to protest resist volunteer whatever you decide to do for whatever you believe in you will be able to do it and you will be able to do it and you will be able to believe in everything is still part of your practice you've been listening to the death Dhamma podcast with your host Margaret Maloney thank you so much for being here come find me on margaretmaloney.com m-a-r-g-a-r-e-t-m-e-l-o-n-i.com and until we meet again may you be well may you be happy may you be at ease and may you be free from suffering bye for now