upekkha

Yeah.

Where are you deploying the words always and never? What positive evidence of your own growth are you actively rejecting to protect a painful story?

But why would we protect a painful story? That seems so counterintuitive to me.

Yeah.

But when we take it personally, then we say, "Oh, I want that," or, "I don't want that.

I want to be happy." Then in fact, the reality is, is that as we get to the state of Upekkha or balanced peace of mind, then happiness is much more subtle.

But even Upekkha, even peacefulness, even quiet joy, quiet peacefulness is not to be clung to as I, me or mine.

So happiness would be good in the beginning, but it's not necessarily part of the end.

But everybody starts at the beginning.

I don't think, I don't think there's a linear mapping.

Like, I don't think you can put, um, like, Upekkhā is the opposite of arrogance.

But I just wondered if there was a connection in using them as an antidote to purification or to getting a cleaner cloth.

Yes.

Right now I'm enjoying myself," that is much more of a unification of mind.

Now, with that comes the next phase, the seventh of the, of the group, is called, [clears throat] in the Pali, Upekkha.

And what does Upekkha mean? Well, they couldn't find a good word for it in the early days, and so they invented words.

They called it equanimity.

How many of you have ever heard of the word equanimity without it being a Buddhist word? Doesn't exist in the dictionary until, uh, somebody made it up, probably about 1920 or so.

Life keeps moving back and forth and up and down, and when we, uh, are not well-balanced, that means then that we're affected by the environment.

The floor is not steady.

But if we have steadying legs, if we've got sea legs, and so what, uh, Upekkha actually means is having sea legs for the mind so that no matter what happens, no matter how out of balance things get in the world, our mind can be balanced and handle it happily, easily.