In the series of techniques for developing love and compassion and, finally, bodhichitta, the basis, the foundation is the development of equanimity.
One type of equanimity is referring to your own steadiness as a result of working on your mind: less attachment and aversion, less up and down, and that’s the wisdom wing.
On the compassion wing, equanimity is referring to your attitude towards others. What it is, when you’ve accomplished it, is the heartfelt recognition that enemies, friends, and strangers – and let’s face it, there’s no fourth category – are equal: equal to each other from one point of view: each of them only wants happiness and doesn’t want suffering.
We can see this: everything we think and do and say is driven by these primordial wishes.
But right now, of course, we don’t see this emotionally, because our world is made up of enemies, friends, and strangers. And who are they? They are the objects of our three main delusions, the three root delusions.
The object of our attachment, they’re called friend. The object of our aversion is called enemy. And the object of ignorance – and the way it functions here is just this deep indifference – is what we call stranger.
There are those you like, whom you are attached to. And who are they? Simply, they’re the ones that do what we want, they fulfill our needs. And therefore they appear pleasing to us.
How do we feel about friends? We want them to be happy – that’s love – and we don’t want them to suffer – that’s compassion.
It’s very obvious. You can have incredible compassion for that little cute poodle. I remember a few years ago some road rage bloke was mad at some driver so at the lights he got out of his car and went over to the car and stuck his hand in and grabbed this little poodle off the front seat and chucked it into the traffic, and it died. Now, he was practically hanged!
Now, if that had been a rat, people would have called him a hero. You see my point? Look at the difference. The Buddha would say, “Excuse me, rat or poodle: they’re both sentient beings, they both want to be happy.” Not a fraction of difference.
Why do we need this equanimity? Because at the moment the basis of our love and compassion is, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, unstable. Or, as we would say, it’s got strings attached.
The main reason I love you, that is, want you to be happy is because you fulfill my attachment’s needs. And the only reason I don’t love you is because you don’t do what my attachment wants.
What we’re trying to cultivate, based on the logic of equanimity, which is that everyone is equal in their wish to be happy, is the wish that they be happy because they want it.
In doing the analysis what we’re trying to do is get a bit of space between ourself and the friend, enemy and stranger: visualize them out there in front of you. See them separately from me. Right now, we see them as extensions of myself: the friend is an extension of me, so my friend, whom I want to be happy, whom I totally adore; we can’t even separate them from ourself. Aversion the same. We see people only in terms of what they do or don’t do to me. A friend is a person who helps me, an enemy is a person who harms me, and a stranger is a person who does neither. You think, very simple.
But all we see is the projection of our own story – attachment makes the person appear gorgeous and the aversion makes them appear ugly – and on the basis of that we want them to be happy or don’t want them to be happy. It’s based solely on our own needs – we should be embarrassed about being so self-centered!
So what’s the stranger? A friend does what I want, an enemy proactively doesn’t, and a stranger does neither – and for them, which is 99.9999 percent of all beings on the planet, we have a profound uncaring and indifference. Why? Because they don’t affect my life. Who could care? Can’t even look at them, they’re so boring.
This is how it is; this is how we are. And these groups keep changing. The delusions stay the same. The stranger of yesterday is now the friend of today. The stranger of yesterday is now the enemy of today. The friend of yesterday is now the enemy of today. The enemy of yesterday is now the friend of today. We can see, we constantly go back and forth, because things change.
And then we believe in that latest label. The one we were totally adoring six months ago, made us faint with pleasure, now he leaves us cold as ice; hate him. Look at him, “If only I’d known what he was like six months ago.” Isn’t it? Just because our eyes are now seeing something different.
Equanimity is this attitude that moves yourself away from these three a little bit, using logical arguments to break down ego’s illogic. There’s no inherent enemy, friend, or stranger; there are just projections of your delusions. That objectively, these people are the same.
If I put up here in front of you my enemy, my friend, and my stranger, you won’t notice any difference, you can’t tell. There’s no big “E” engraved on the forehead of the enemy. There’s no angel wings on the friend. You’ll put your own projections onto them. They have noses and arms and legs and toes and fingers, they all want to be happy, they all go to the toilet, they all get depressed, they all get constipation. There’s equality there, it’s very easy to see it, but we’re so tunnel-visioned in our views, believing in our own karmic appearances.
On the basis of the recognition that all are equal in the wish to be happy, you now have a sound basis for wanting them to be happy – which is what love is; and a sound basis for wanting them to not have suffering – which is what compassion is.
Equanimity is the first step.