by Joe Loizzo
Dear Friends,
As we brace to hear the results of a hotly contested, deeply consequential election, we have an opportunity to strengthen one of the most protective and beneficial muscles in our embodied minds: equanimity.
While the survival drive that anchors our traumatic way of being is rooted in our instincts for self-
enclosure, separation, and duality—self or other, life or death, good or bad—the thriving mode that frees us to open our hearts and minds and to engage the full complexity of our lives and world, is rooted in the soil of our connective social capacities for love, compassion, gratitude, and equanimity.
Equanimity holds the wisdom of connection—the wisdom that helps expose and release the deathgrip of self-protective instincts, self-enclosing identities, and rigid worldviews by keeping us open to others and their unique needs, lived identities, and distinctive worldviews. It reminds us that holding any fixed, binary position fuels opposition, that fixated attachment to any binary outcome locks us into a rigid mindset and way of being prey to what are called the Eight Worldly Winds: clinging to comfort and fighting discomfort; attachment to winning and aversion to losing; seeking praise and rejecting criticism; clinging to celebrity and avoiding censure. In the Mahayana tradition, the social scope of the worldly winds is emphasized: clinging to good things for our loved ones and in-group while wishing the opposite for our challengers or out-group. Equanimity is the medicine that allows us to move through these winds without being thrown off center and off balance—to be open, resilient, flexible, and responsive enough to stay connected to all beings and to the infinite complexity of things in a continuous, unwavering way.
Editor’s note:
May this meditation support all beings everywhere in the pursuit of their ongoing practice of equanimity while being fully present to the complexity within ourselves, within those around us, and the world we collectively share.