learn more about Buddhism

So I’ve been reading about a concept in Buddhism that fascinates me today, that of equanimity.

This week has been a huge emotional roller coaster ride for me. I felt sad because things didn’t turn out as I expected at work, I feel happy because I got a job interview for a new job, then I felt angry because that job offered me less money than I thought. All of these things are really unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but I have let them influence my emotions in a big way all week—swinging from extreme happiness to sadness and back to anger in a period of only a few days.

Buddhism seems to caution against allowing your joy to be conditional on the circumstances you’re in and this is the concept of equanimity.

The simple fact is that in life there is pleasure, and there is pain, and there are experiences that are neither pleasurable nor painful. The question isn’t how can we get more pleasant experiences. People who haven’t trained their minds seek an accumulation of pleasant experiences. But you’ve already had a lot of pleasant experiences, haven’t you? Did it really make you happy? No, it was just a pleasant experience. It came, it went.

So are we going to be tossed back and forth, pushed and pulled, between pleasure and pain? Can we stay steady with the simple fact that feelings shift? Equanimity is this quality of mind that is balanced and present with any of the three kinds of feeling as they change. The mind when it is equanimitous is free of the habit of grasping and lusting, of aversion and pushing away, and of indifference.

In an untrained mind, when pleasure arises, the mind grasps after it, tries to make it stay. The movement of lust and greed is stimulated. When an unpleasant feeling arises, aversion, anger, blame, withdrawal, fear – some form of pushing away occurs. An untrained mind tends to dull when encountering a feeling not distinctly pleasant nor unpleasant. There can be a floating, numb, indistinct quality almost like confusion, that brings uncertainty as to what is actually present. The perception is not exciting enough to pay attention to, basically, because it’s not quite pleasant and it’s not quite unpleasant. These three states of mind fall into the general categories of what are called the three poisons – greed, hate and delusion.

So this quest for information about Buddhism for me, I don’t know where it’s going. What I do know is when I read something and it speaks to me, I feel like I should make an effort to utilize that knowledge to better my life. Today, and for the rest of this week, I’m going to try to do a better job of cultivating an equanimitous mind and to find balance. I can’t change the circumstances I am in by worrying or being emotional about them, so I am going to try to face my challenges head on and stop letting them suck the joy out of my life by instead viewing them as opportunities to grow as a person. I think I could find a lot more peace.

So to any Buddhists on here, what do you recommend for cultivating equanimity? I know that living in the present moment is a good place to start. I spend far too much time worrying about what has happened or what will happen and far too little time enjoying what is happening. 4 months ago

As soon as I posted my question, I got off the internet to study for a Speech test I have on Wednesday. Chapter 6 of my speech textbook is “How to Research a Topic”. Considering I had just asked this question, it was the first topic that came to mind.

My speech book said that if you don’t know a lot about a topic, it is best to start with a broad understanding of your topic. The best place it said to look was a general encyclopedia. I had checked wiki before, but never an actual encyclopedia.

This is what I have gathered today, maybe some of you with this goal will find it interesting as well:

BUDDHISM, a major world religion, founded in northeastern India and based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who is known as the Buddha, or Enlightened One.

The number of Buddhists worldwide has been estimated at between 150 and 300 million. The reasons for such a range are twofold: Throughout much of Asia religious affiliation has tended to be nonexclusive; and it is especially difficult to estimate the continuing influence of Buddhism in Communist countries such as China.

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was born in Kapilavastu near the present Indian-Nepal border, the son of the ruler of a petty kingdom. According to legend, at his birth sages recognized in him the marks of a great man with the potential to become either a sage or the ruler of an empire. The young prince was raised in sheltered luxury, until at the age of 29 he realized how empty his life to this point had been. Renouncing earthly attachments, he embarked on a quest for peace and enlightenment, seeking release from the cycle of rebirths. For the next few years he practiced YOGA and adopted a life of radical asceticism.

Eventually he gave up this approach as fruitless and instead adopted a middle path between the life of indulgence and that of self-denial. Sitting under a bo tree, he meditated, rising through a series of higher states of consciousness until he attained the enlightenment for which he had been searching. Once having known this ultimate religious truth, the Buddha underwent a period of intense inner struggle. He began to preach, wandering from place to place, gathering a body of disciples, and organizing them into a monastic community known as the sangha. In this way he spent the rest of his life.

At the core of the Buddha’s enlightenment was the realization of the Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is suffering. This is more than a mere recognition of the presence of suffering in existence. It is a statement that, in its very nature, human existence is essentially painful from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Even death brings no relief, for the Buddha accepted the Hindu idea of life as cyclical, with death leading to further rebirth. (2) All suffering is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and the craving, attachment, and grasping that result from such ignorance. (3) Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment. (4) The path to the suppression of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation. These eight are usually divided into three categories that form the cornerstone of Buddhist faith: morality, wisdom, and samadhi, or concentration.

Buddhism analyzes human existence as made up of five aggregates or “bundles” (skandhas): the material body, feelings, perceptions, predispositions or karmic tendencies, and consciousness. A person is only a temporary combination of these aggregates, which are subject to continual change. No one remains the same for any two consecutive moments.

Karma consists of a person’s acts and their ethical consequences. Human actions lead to rebirth, wherein good deeds are inevitably rewarded and evil deeds punished. Thus, neither undeserved pleasure nor unwarranted suffering exists in the world, but rather a universal justice. The karmic process operates through a kind of natural moral law rather than through a system of divine judgment. One’s karma determines such matters as one’s species, beauty, intelligence, longevity, wealth, and social status. According to the Buddha, karma of varying types can lead to rebirth as a human, an animal, a hungry ghost, a denizen of hell, or even one of the Hindu gods.

The ultimate goal of the Buddhist path is release from the round of phenomenal existence with its inherent suffering. To achieve this goal is to attain NIRVANA, an enlightened state in which the fires of greed, hatred, and ignorance have been quenched. Not to be confused with total annihilation, nirvana is a state of consciousness beyond definition. After attaining nirvana, the enlightened individual may continue to live, burning off any remaining karma until a state of final nirvana (parinirvana) is attained at the moment of death.

The ethic that leads to nirvana is detached and inner-oriented. It involves cultivating four virtuous attitudes, known as the Palaces of Brahma: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. The ethic that leads to better rebirth, however, is centered on fulfilling one’s duties to society. It involves acts of charity, especially support of the sangha, as well as observance of the five precepts that constitute the basic moral code of Buddhism. The precepts prohibit killing, stealing, harmful language, sexual misbehavior, and the use of intoxicants. By observing these precepts, the three roots of evil—lust, hatred, and delusion—may be overcome.

I feel a little more educated now, and intend to find more specific information now that I have a broad sense of what Buddhism is. 4 months ago

I’m doing an assignment on Ninian Smart (I think that’s his name) and Kundun, a film about Tibetan Buddhism and the Dali Lama. I’m comparing it to Fiddler on the Roof, arguing on the dangers of an atheist government when faced with centuries of faith. 8 months ago