Quotes Tagged "equanimity"
Not reacting with anger, but responding with compassion and equanimity, is a personal choice. Particularly so, in an explosive situation, when someone is provoking you, by trampling all over your self-esteem. How can you employ compassion when someone is spewing venom? Well, if you observe their behavior closely, someone causing you pain and anguish is actually suffering a lot within themselves. Their thoughts and actions are only reflecting their distressed state of mind. They surely know not what they are doing. So, respond – don’t react – with compassion. Ahimsa is not just non-violent action. It includes non-violent thought as well. Respond with ahimsa – that’s the best way to disarm your ‘opponent’! When you leave the other party guessing, as to why you are not striking back, you have won the battle without even fighting it. Isn’t that a great way to be protect your inner peace and profit from it?
How do you last a torrid time in Life? 1. Accept the reality that you are in the throes of a crisis. Stop wishing that it didn’t exist. Acceptance always delivers inner peace. 2. Know that the storm will always be strong. By even thinking of its ferocity, you are only going to feel debilitated. At the epicenter of a storm, it is always calm. Find that center, your center. That’s where you will find strength. 3. Your center is where you lose sense of time, place and thought. Art – anything inherent that makes you come alive – often leads you there. 4. Trust the process of Life. Do what you can do without losing your inner peace – daily, diligently. 5. No matter how intense it is, no storm lasts forever. All storms pass. So, be patient, surrender completely, let go…and offer yourself to be led by Life…
Life happens at its own pace and in its own time. It has a mind of its own. Your rushing through it only increases your stress levels and makes you anxious. You can do nothing to Life. At all times, in all contexts, you are never in control – Life is! And all you can and must do is to learn to live fully with what is. This does not mean inaction – trusting the process of Life is a lot of action; of keeping the faith and being patient. So, sit quietly doing whatever you can in a given context. And whatever must happen alone will happen; whatever is due to you alone will flow to you…on its own. When you are calm, you are non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering and only when you are in this state will you see how perfect your Life really is!
Oh! But training the mind isn’t easy…” Surely, Life is not easy. Getting through this lifetime is never easy. So, training the mind is not going to be achieved without dedication and diligence. But just as the body can be trained, the mind too can be taught how to live in the present moment. You see, the mind thrives only when it is stuck in the dead past or when it races into the unborn future. In those two states it is constantly spewing thoughts of anger, grief, guilt, anxiety, worry, fear and stress. But when trained to live in the now, the mind is powerless. That is how you learn to be non-worrying, non-frustrated, non-suffering, to be happy! You can either train your mind, and employ equanimity and happiness to deal with Life’s upheavals, or you can continue to cite the ‘it-is-not-easy’ excuse and be unhappy! Your call!
Don't imagine you are in a worse place than you actually are. Things could have been far worse. So, seize the day, count your blessings and move on. You can survive a crisis only by dealing it with one day at a time. Don't add up all your problems in your mind and think you are finished. Compartmentalize your problems; put them in different buckets and project-manage them separately. This is how you live through uncertain times – making decisions when there are few or no options to choose from. You never see it this way when you are going through a crisis. But, unfailingly, every crisis leaves you stronger, wiser – and happy!
Life is not only about going after name, money, success, fame and fortune and getting all of them. It is also about how you live with humility, dignity, and discipline when all of what you attained and acquired are taken away from you. Resilience and equanimity cannot be developed and deployed in simulated environments. They are always discovered within you, when you stand in the middle of the battle of Life, in the chaos, in the eye of the storm. It is by facing Life and learning to be happy, to be useful, despite your circumstances, that you become stronger.
Intelligence is really the ability to decide which battles to fight in Life…and when you employ your intelligence this way, you will awaken to the choice that perhaps, in most cases, it is best not to fight (any battle) at all. Almost always, the best way to live (and to win, if you like) is to not fight anyone – or anything. This understanding will interestingly help you choose wisely and in the event that you do choose to fight for a cause that you truly believe in, it will teach you to be detached from the outcome. When you are engaged only with the process, you discover the opportunity to be happy without getting keyed up about the result.
In your moments of solitude, when self-doubt, worry, anxiety and fear creep in, dive deep into what you love doing. This could be music, painting, gardening, reading, cooking…whatever…do whatever that makes you forget this world, that makes you forget your pain…surely, there is something that makes you forget who you are. Simply, go do it. When you do this, you will realize how you magically heal, how all your stresses and insecurities vanish. This is why Bliss is so powerful. This is why following your Bliss is so profitable. It helps you live in this world, inevitably trapped in the pulls and pressures of everyday existence, and yet be above all of it, thriving, living happily despite the circumstances.
There are three parts to your Life at any given moment. 1. The part where a complex problem situation is either totally or immediately unsolvable; so, over time, you intuitively learn to isolate this part while still dealing with it. 2. The part where all the existential drama happens – everyday grief, anxieties, stresses, suffering, worries, frustrations…stuff, often linked to the first part, that continuously keeps puncturing your happy state. 3. The center – your center. This is where you are in sync with the Universe’s, divine, energy; this center is your deeply personal oasis of happiness. Just as there’s complete calm at the epicentre of a cyclone, there is absolute stillness within you. You must find that stillness, that silence, you must find your center. Only then will you be unmoved by the other two parts of your Life. It’s from your center that your art flows and that’s where your Happiness lies!
When someone chooses not to understand you, despite your best efforts, you may want to examine whether they are not getting what you are saying or if they simply don’t want to understand you. If it is the latter, Life is so much simpler for both of you – there is no need to invest any more time and energy in striving for that understanding. The brutal truth that you often fail to confront is the fact that someone who is keen not to understand you, perhaps never will, no matter how hard you try!
When facing a Life-changing crisis, don’t expect your situation to turn around instantaneously. It won’t. So, prepare for the long haul. Nourish yourself. Meditate. Pray. Eat your meals on time and please eat healthy stuff. Exercise. Go for long walks. Goof off once in a while. Your being morose, or your worrying stiff, is not going to solve your problems. The situation will resolve only when the time arrives. Until that happens, you have to last, you have to survive. So, take care of yourself. Every moment. Every day.
You have to be clear that, often times, in fact almost always, despite your best efforts, perfection and success may elude you. So, the only way to stay anchored, and at peace with yourself and with your world, is to embrace what is. If you tried hard, if you put in your best, just celebrate the process of trying, of doing your best…leave the results and outcomes to Life. You can never get a perfect 10! And what you have is what it is. When you embrace this idea and live your Life, you will never be keyed up over the outcomes. You will enjoy the process, above all. And that is the key to your Happiness!
When you are wronged by someone, you have two options: either fight back or walk away. Now, if you can forgive and move on, walk way. But if you will grieve and suffer forever that feeling of having been violated and short-changed, fight. But don’t fight if it will make you wallow in a maze of debilitating emotions – anger, grief, fear, insecurity, worry, hatred…such a fight that drains you of all your goodness, and which leaves you cold and numb, is simply not worth it. But if you don’t fight the good fight, understandably, the cause will be lost. And that’s sacrilege. So, the key is to practice detached determination. Fight with focus and strategy and fight calmly, happily! Fight with detachment – don’t cling on to your desired outcomes, don’t set deadlines. Simply fight. When you fight the good fight, with equanimity and a sense of Purpose, the outcome never matters. The fact that you stood up and fought does.
There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sprouting of the second group and transforming the first group.
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