Calendar

Equanimity

Practice Library

Equanimity

19 teachings in the library cover this practice.

  • Session Two - From Need to Care, and the Open Palm David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded July 18, 2026

    David shifts the basis of a relationship from need to care, then reads Thich Nhat Hanh on loving in such a way that the person you love feels free. Contentment and gratitude come in as the medicine for attachment, and equanimity as the open palm rather than the fist closed around a songbird that has landed in it. David then guides a practice in which we turn towards the fear of things changing with reassurance rather than argument, and wish a loved one free. It closes on the group's own reflections.

  • Acceptance or Action? David Oromith · 30 minutes · recorded November 23, 2025

    In the practice of open, non-reactive presence with the body, sound and mind we release any need to change what arises. Prompted by a question from a previous session, David talks about acceptance and agency together, using the serenity prayer and Mel Robbins' let them theory to show that accepting what we cannot control does not mean giving up our own response.

  • D6S3 - Equanimity, and the Four Immeasurables Complete David Oromith · 93 minutes · recorded August 24, 2025

    The last of the four immeasurables, taught first in some traditions and last in others. Equanimity is not about flattening our emotions, David says: you ride the ups and downs without changing your behaviour and people pleasing so that you get praised again tomorrow. We work through the petty categories we put people in, and how a stranger could be a best friend or a sworn enemy in a year's time as causes and conditions shift. The session opens with a demonstration of the kata offering ahead of tomorrow's ceremony.

  • Session 2 - Exploring Bodhicitta David Oromith · 80 minutes · recorded February 1, 2025

    A guided practice weaves the four immeasurables, loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, extended in turn to oneself, a loved one, a stranger and an enemy. David explains how these four give rise to great compassion and then bodhicitta, and reads passages from the Dalai Lama on its benefits for health, relationships and facing an enemy without anger. Questions cover holding all beings in mind by caring for everyone we actually meet. A short closing meditation follows.

  • D3S4 - Equanimity and Tonglen, Two Meditations in Practice David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded December 2, 2024

    Two guided meditations fill this hour. The first is equanimity, in which we work with a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult, to separate love from the grip of attachment. The second is tonglen: we breathe in the pain of someone we love as dark smoke, extinguished at a point of light in the heart, then send back everything good in return. David addresses the fear that tonglen means taking on suffering, and whether the same ignorance applies to animals.

  • D3S2 - Compassion Practice and the Two Paths to Bodhicitta David Oromith · 84 minutes · recorded November 28, 2024

    Compassion follows loving kindness as the second immeasurable, wishing others free of suffering rather than simply well. David explains why happiness chased through possessions never truly satisfies, using the story of buying a Dyson vacuum as a teenager expecting lasting contentment from it. Bodhicitta, the wish for enlightenment to benefit all beings, is introduced alongside two routes to it: seeing all beings as having once been one's mother, or exchanging self with others.

  • Guided Meditation - Equanimity David Oromith · 23 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024

    Before levelling the three people, David has you look at your grip on each: the attachment mixed into love for someone dear, the reasons behind indifference to a stranger, the basis of aversion to someone hostile. You then set all three in front of you and ask whether any deserves suffering more than another.

  • Session 5 - Equanimity David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded October 15, 2024

    The teaching turns to equanimity, upekka, the balance underlying loving kindness, compassion and joy. David distinguishes it from flat indifference, drawing on Sharon Salzberg's story of relating differently to knee pain, and explains why acceptance means acknowledging what is, not condoning it. Questions bring stories of grief for a missed friendship and a man at peace with terminal illness. In the meditation we extend loving kindness equally to a loved one, a stranger and someone difficult.

  • Session 3 - Empathetic Joy & Equanimity David Oromith · 58 minutes · recorded June 11, 2024

    In the guided practice in empathetic joy we rejoice in our own good qualities, a loved one's happiness, and the kindness of strangers. David describes mudita as harder to sustain than it looks, distinguishes it from envy and cynicism, and tells how seeking joy in a local park helped him through depression. He then teaches equanimity, showing how we sort people into loved, neutral and disliked, and how true equanimity extends equal warmth to all three, unlike the flat indifference that mimics it.

  • Aversion and Patient-Acceptance David Oromith · 83 minutes · recorded May 7, 2024

    The evening opens with ten minutes counting the breath and extending loving-kindness. David returns to the Dalai Lama's Beyond Religion to show attachment and aversion turn destructive only when out of proportion, then sets out patient acceptance through acceptance, understanding, compassion and fortitude, using the spark and fuel image and the two arrows. Questions cover a job left out of aversion, indifference as a near enemy of equanimity, and looking after oneself.

  • D3S4 - The Inner Practice and the Mala Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 59 minutes · recorded January 10, 2024

    Garchen Rinpoche's inner practice, in full: Vajrasattva father and mother above the crown, the short mantra garland revolving, nectar running down the lotus stem into the central channel and out through every pore to all beings. Tenpa explains why this purifies although the four opponent powers are not named in it, and is no substitute for the practice that does. Then the mala, how it is held, which way the beads are drawn, how a round is counted. A ten minute loving kindness meditation closes the retreat.

  • D4S2 - Loving Kindness for a Friend Michael Lobsang Tenpa · 60 minutes · recorded January 5, 2024

    The step to someone close, a partner, a sibling, a best friend, where the practice gets harder. Michael Lobsang Tenpa shows how the wish quietly turns conditional, may you be happy but only with me, and asks people to hold that person's flourishing steady even with themselves removed from the picture. He is clear that this does not mean tolerating harmful behaviour, and that healthy boundaries and loving kindness belong together.

  • Week 4: Equanimity (Upekkha): Finding balance and serenity with others and amidst life’s ups and downs David Oromith · 91 minutes · recorded June 29, 2023

    The session closes the four immeasurables series with equanimity, upekkha, opening with a settling breath meditation and returning at the end to the classic practice in which we bring a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult to mind in turn, wishing each equally well. David distinguishes true equanimity from indifference and from attachment. Questions cover boundaries with a difficult colleague, confrontation, and a cooled friendship.

  • S3 - The Four Immeasurables, and Empathetic Joy Against Loneliness David Oromith · 86 minutes · recorded January 26, 2023

    The session opens with a brief meditation on the breath, before David turns to the four immeasurables: loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity, practices for countering loneliness and low mood. He works through each, warning that reciting the words is not yet the mind itself, then leads a guided metta meditation in which we extend kindness through a loved one, a neutral person and someone difficult. Questions turn to forgiveness, cognitive fusion and using longer exhales to calm the body.

  • Guided Meditation - Equanimity, Even Care for the Neutral, the Dear and the Difficult Lama Alan · 26 minutes

    Lama Alan Wallace guides the last of the four immeasurables, equanimity. You bring to mind a neutral person, then someone dear, then someone you find difficult, and in each case you see how transient the relationship is and how constantly that person, like you, wishes for happiness. With an orb of light at your heart you breathe in the darkness of their suffering and breathe out loving kindness, closing on the difficult person set free.

  • Guided Meditation - Loving Kindness for a Neutral Person and Someone You Find Difficult Lama Alan · 25 minutes

    Lama Alan Wallace carries the sequence of loving kindness out to a neutral person, someone you know but barely notice. You picture them vividly, even imagine being them, and offer the four aspirations breath by breath. Then you bring to mind someone you find disagreeable and examine the cartoon you have made of them. Looking past behaviour to the wish for happiness beneath it, you extend the same aspirations, then open in every direction to all beings.

  • Equanimity Glen Svensson · 85 minutes

    Equanimity as an unbiased mind, undoing the habit of sorting people into friends, strangers and so-called enemies by how they seem to affect us. In the guided practice we step into the perspective of a stranger, a loved one and a difficult person in turn, then back out again. Glen Svensson shows how each of the four immeasurables acts as the antidote to the near enemy of another, so they are best practised as a package. He closes with the four opponent powers and an end of day review of one negative action, one good one and one thing received with gratitude.

  • Dealing with Attachment Glen Svensson · 72 minutes

    Attachment is the near enemy of loving kindness, and Glen Svensson defines it as a mental factor that exaggerates an object's attractiveness and wants to hold on to it. In the guided practice you bring to mind a person or thing you cling to, loosen the grip, then look directly at the attachment itself. Glen dispels the common misconceptions that attachment is needed to enjoy things, to have relationships or to be creative, describing how ordinary food grew tastier during a long retreat as his craving subsided.

  • Mindfulness of Breathing (Full Body) Glen Svensson · 78 minutes

    We rest attention on any tactile sensation in the body connected with the in and out flow of the breath, with the emphasis on relaxation. Glen Svensson takes up Alan Wallace's point that mindfulness of breathing is universally emphasised for those especially prone to compulsive thinking: the sensations of the breath only happen in the present moment, so attention comes out of the thinking mind and into the body. In a second practice we notice the rhythm of the breath, long or short, deep or shallow.

More by practice

Log In

Search

Human Friendly Events

Samadhi is an inclusive organisation and we welcome people of all ages, genders (including gender identity), sexual orientation, abilities, race (including colour, nationality and ethnic or national origin), religion or belief.

As an LGBTQ-led Buddhist organisation, we strongly believe that no one should be discriminated against for any reason at all and subscribe to the ideals of non-harm and loving-kindness. You’re welcome no matter who you are and you’re free to express yourself authentically.

  • With Love, David & Manu x