Tara Brach

Sometimes I keep company with family and friends.

Sometimes I feel lonely among familiar strangers.

Sometimes I'm alone.

Sometimes the sun rises and sets inside my own heart as I disappear into painted rocks and silence, becoming the space for life to occur.

So right now around the globe there are a lot of shadows, a lot of fears in these canyons of our life, separation, reactivity.

It's around the globe.

And only by having access to equanimity, to that spaciousness and that freedom can we remember the loving awareness that really brings healing to our world.

For some of you, you might not have heard the last few weeks of talks and we're doing a series, each talk stands on its own, but the series are what's described in Buddhist tradition as the Brahma-viharas, that's the divine abodes, and these are the different expressions of our awakening heart.

and each one of them naturally is part of us and can be cultivated.

So the first of the Brahma-viharas that we explored was love, the second compassion, the third joy, and this class we're going to explore equanimity.

And equanimity sounds different from the other three sometimes to our ears, it's not as

juicy or sexy or it's like, well, why do I want that?

It doesn't sound as good as love.

But interestingly, it's the freedom and balance of our mind that actually allows the other three to be mature and full.

Equanimity is that space of mindful presence where we are not reacting and pushing away or grasping but really in an open-handed way available to the life right here in the moment.

And we know what it's like when we're not a quantumist.

I mean, we all know, we can feel it when we're off balance.

One story that I love sharing now and then, it took place somewhere in the West in a high school where some students played a prank, and I think it was a brilliant prank,

They released three goats into a school, and each goat had on it a number painted, and one goat was number one, one was number two, and one was number four.

And the school administrative, the staff spent the entire day looking for goat three.