Upeksha Equanimity: The Story of the Farmer

Transcript

[Music] pecha is to be unwavering or to stay neutral in the face of the eight vicitudes of life which are known otherwise as the eight worldly winds or eight worldly conditions which are loss and gain good reputation bad reputation praise and criticism unhappiness and happiness so all the contrast all the ups and downs of life to be able to stay neutral and unwavering so the the near enemy the quality that resembles it but it isn't it isn't actually it is indifference or apathy so if you just are numb and you just don't care that doesn't mean you're practicing new pak you say oh they're suffering who cares that's not upeksha and the far enemy like the opposite of upeksha is greed or resentment it's like where you you get really attached to one thing or another so there's a there's a story that i like which represents upeksha in a really powerful way and then you can you can use this story and then we'll meditate on a little bit so a long time ago there was a farmer and he had one horse and he used this horse to plow his fields to carry his goods to the market it was his most prized possession he needed it for everything he did and so one day his horse runs away into the forest and it's gone and all of the townspeople say oh my gosh what a misfortune how terrible how awful this is for you your business will be destroyed your farm will will be destroyed how awful this is and the farmer who was apparently practicing opeksha he said i don't know if this is good or bad all i know is that i don't have my horse anymore and so then a few days later his horse comes back out of the woods with six other horses following it behind mares and stallions all together and so then the townspeople go amazing how incredible now you're wealthy and now you can grow your farm what an incredible fortune how great this is and he says i don't know if this is good or bad all i know is i now have seven horses in my stable and then a few days later one of his sons is trying to train one of the horses and he gets thrown off and he breaks his his arm and he breaks his leg and the town people say oh no what a misfortune without your son how are you going to plow the fields and how are you going to survive he's been taking care of all these things i said i don't know if this is a misfortune or not but all i know is my son is injured and then about a week later the army comes through the village and they're recruiting young men to go to war and because his son is injured they don't take him so you can see how upeksha is the ability to just see things as they are without subscribing to this is good or this is bad and trying to be more mindful and to step back a little bit from the reactionary nature that we have to instantly judge things this is very difficult in this day and age because of the pace of the society's dialogue as soon as something happens it seems like everybody's supposed to have an opinion this is good this is bad uh denounce this immediately or support this immediately we don't have the time to really just let things be for a little while and not make snap judgments so upeksha is a quality that has been recognized for thousands of years to be very useful and i think it's still very much relevant [Music] today you