Via Tricycle // Grounding Through Equanimity

 

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June 27, 2024 Grounding Through Equanimity    Sometimes we’re up, other times we’re down. Some days the sun is shining, other days it’s pouring rain. Certain chapters of our lives bring great success, others seem to bring one failure after another.  Life is defined by these kinds of dualities. It’s a journey through peaks and valleys, highs and lows, challenges and triumphs. In Buddhism, the basic opposing forces of life are what’s known as the eight worldly winds, or the “vicissitudes.”   “Each of our lives will be touched by what are called the winds of the world,” explains meditation teacher Christina Feldman. “Moments of praise and blame, success and failure, pleasure and pain, gain and loss are woven into every human life. In the light of approval and praise, we glow; in the light of disapproval and blame, we find ourselves ashamed and withering.”  These opposing forces can threaten to pull us apart—or challenge us to step up and become stronger, more resilient, and more even-keeled.   While this basic duality is part and parcel of the human experience, it doesn’t have to create unnecessary suffering. We don’t have to be yanked around by every positive and negative experience that comes our way. We can learn to navigate life’s inherent push and pull with a balanced mind and an equanimous heart.  So what does that kind of equanimity look like? How do we keep our feet on the ground and our head held high as great winds of change blow around all around us?  “Equanimity is about being able to deal with difficult, forceful experiences in life, both internally and externally,” says Ethan Nichtern, meditation teacher and author of Confidence: Holding Your Seat Through Life’s Eight Worldly Winds. “In the Shambhala teachings that I studied for many years, there’s this notion of being able to hold one’s seat in meditation practice but also in life in general… When life knocks you around, you can hold your seat.” This week’s Three Teachings offers guidance on “holding your seat” in the face of the eight worldly winds.

In our upcoming Premium event on July 11 at 2 P.M. ET, movement strategist and Zen priest Cristina Moon joins Tricycle's Editor-in-Chief, James Shaheen, to discuss how training in martial arts such as Kendo and boxing, and fine arts like Japanese tea ceremony and ceramics can aid in developing the spirit. Register today »

Weathering the Eight Worldly Winds With Ethan Nichtern Praise and criticism, success and failure, pain and pleasure are unavoidable. Can we learn to trust ourselves more deeply as we navigate life’s ups and downs? Learn to develop unshakable self-confidence in the face of the worldly winds with meditation teacher and author Ethan Nichtern.

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The Worldly Winds By Christina Feldman  How can we learn to be with both “the lovely and the unlovely” in our lives, in the words of meditation teacher Christina Feldman? She offers a practice for staying present amid life’s many joys and sorrows by untangling the patterns of attachment and aversion that take us out of the moment.

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How Parents and Children Can Learn Balance and Equanimity from the Eight Worldly Winds By Christopher Willard  Family life offers countless opportunities to learn to work with hardships more skillfully and compassionately. Christopher Willard considers how the teachings of the eight worldly winds can offer support for navigating the stress of parenting.

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