Buddhism seems to have a lot of lists. Like, a lot. And, you may have noticed that equanimity (upekkha) shows up in many of them. The Brahmaviahras, the Awakening Factors, the Perfections, to name a few. In many of these lists, equanimity is at the very end, as if it were the quality closest to the goal of the path.
In this talk offered for Insight Meditation San Jose, I explore the idea that equanimity is the quality being cultivated from the very beginning of practice, from the first time a meditation teacher invited us to bear witness to our experience “without judgment or reactivity”.
