When my youngest child was four years old, our local movie theater had a special showing of the original Lion King movie (not to be confused with the star-studded remake from a few years ago). It started at 7 pm, so I knew we’d be pushing the limits of his bedtime, but this seemed like an important special opportunity, so off we went. The movie was great.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, I felt some trouble with our minivan’s engine. By a few blocks later, the transmission was kaput. We were stuck at a traffic light. At 9 pm on a Sunday evening, I started looking for a tow truck. When I finally found one, they told me it would be 45 minutes until they could fetch us.
Toby had always been an easy child. I remember one day when he was 2 or 3 years old and said, “I’m tired. I’m going to go take a nap.” (If you haven’t been around a toddler recently, this is, in my experience, highly unusual.) As long as he had his thumb to suck and a tag on the back of his shirt to play with, he was comfortable pretty much anywhere.
So, when I turned around and said, “Hey kiddo, they say it’ll be 45 minutes,” he just said, “Okay,” stuck his thumb in his mouth, and went to sleep in his car seat.
For that and many other reasons, Toby has been one of my great teachers in equanimity.
Earlier this week I was listening to a Dharma talk about equanimity (Upekka in Pali) by Gil Fronsdal, who discussed this particular quality as the fourth in the series of the Brahmaviharas, four particular kinds of love in Buddhism. The other three are: Metta (lovingkindness), karuna (compassion), and mudita (sympathetic or appreciative joy). Equanimity, Gil pointed out, is the kind of love that’s useful when the other three are not:
“Goodwill or loving‑kindness… wants the best for people. Compassion wants suffering to end. Appreciative joy wants other people’s joy and success to be celebrated… But there are times when those three are not really called for. So, equanimity… is less complicated. It doesn’t involve any desire, any wish that something continue, or someone be better, or may they be happy. It kind of leaves the situation, leaves the person, much more alone, but we stay present with love.”
It’s important to point out that this is different from indifference. As Gil summarized it, the posture here, at least when applied to other people, is one of, “You make your choices, and I’ll love you anyway.” The point of the practice is to avoid becoming agitated into anger or other afflictive states, which would only obscure the basic form of love and care with which we aim to approach other people and situations—and often lead us into unhelpful responses born of reactivity. For a young child, that might involve sucking a thumb, saying “okay,” and taking a nap. For grownups, it could mean lovingly practicing the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
This is also an essential element of leadership, as Parashat Pinchas reminds us. After Moses is told he will not enter the Promised Land, he implores the Holy One, “Let YHVH, Source of the spirit of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who shall go out before them and come in before them, and who shall take them out and bring them in, so that YHVH’s community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd” (Numbers 27:16-17).
Rashi, following Midrash Tanhuma, comments on the unusual reference to the Divine here as the source of the spirit of all flesh: “Moses said, ‘Lord of the Universe! the personality of each person is revealed to you, and no two are alike. Appoint over them a leader who will tolerate each person according to their individual character.’”
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk adds, “When Moses saw the immense significance of Pinchas’s zealotry, he became deeply concerned. He feared that perhaps a zealous person would be chosen to lead Israel next, and Moses did not believe it was a good thing for Israel to have a zealot as a leader. Therefore, he requested of the Holy Blessed One that the leader of Israel should be someone who can tolerate and bear each individual—meaning, a leader who is patient and understanding, and not a leader who is a zealot.”
While Pinchas’s bold, perhaps reactive, action may have been important in the moment, this interpretive tradition points to an overriding general preference for leadership that is more equanimous: patient, understanding, able to bear—that is, to hold—the reality, the suffering, and the fullness of each member of the community, and the community as a whole.
This weekend the United States celebrates 250 years of independence. As I’ve been exploring on the Soulful Jewish Living podcast for the last six weeks, I think this is an opportunity for all of us who live here to do some serious reflection on not only our independence, but our interdependence. I think equanimity is foundational to the ability to live together in peace—which is perhaps, ironically, why the Holy One grants Pinchas a brit shalom, a covenant of peace: it is in the prayer that our reactivity give way to spaciousness, that we might be able to receive and hold one another with loving hearts.
For Reflection & Conversation
Do you find it easy or difficult to maintain equanimity? What supports you? What hinders you? How might your spiritual practice help you increase your capacity to do so?