Four Great Wishes and Equanimity
March 10, 2003

Teaching by Venerable Domo Geshe Rinpoche

This series is on the four great wishes and this is the fourth vast wish of equanimity.

May all sentient beings have happiness and the cause of happiness
May they all be free from suffering and the causes of suffering
May they never be separated from the bliss that is sorrowless
May they abide in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion

The fourth line in this section of the Blue Healing of Wisdom practice is the subject of my teaching tonight. You who are my monastics and laypeople present here, please apply these motivations while you are doing your practice.

These teachings that I am giving have special importance because today I am wearing my traditional peaked gold colored Gelug hat. I wore one occasionally here in Kalimpong at Tharpa Choling.

“May they abide in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.” At this point in the sadhana, it is important to fix bodhicitta motivation clearly. Should there be an opportunity for you to personally pass into nirvana during that very meditation session let us hope that your compassion is strong enough that you do not weasel out and allow living beings to remain in a suffering state while you selfishly go off into a state of nirvana.

You should not pass into the Hinayana liberation, but remain in the Mahayana motivation, the vast liberation and gateway to complete and total enlightenment. That is the difference – whether one has the motivation for others or whether one has the motivation for oneself. The sophistication of the enlightenment that is produced when you do it for others is a more powerful, more beneficial and more complete form of enlightenment.

The difference between Hinayana enlightenment and Mahayana enlightenment is the basis. The very thread, the warp and woof of the dynamic process is like the difference between a coarse home spun and the finest of silks. With the profound Mahayana motivation, the very basis – you, in other words – becomes so refined and so sophisticated that the quality of enlightenment produced is superior.

The quality of the enlightenment is much more profound because the basis is broader, it is taller and deeper, and to the degree that you include the Mahayana bodhicitta motivation, to that extent you will have a practice which is not singular, not for oneself alone, but in fact your process is geometrically enhanced by including your concern for all sentient beings.

Equanimity comes on many different levels of practice and understanding. To gain true equanimity is to make a strong breakthrough because you cannot wish for another what you do not possess yourself.

You cannot wish for others what you do not possess yourself. That which you have not experienced is difficult to wish so a better way here might be to say “You cannot wish something for others that you do not wish for yourself.” That might be made valid by including yourself among all sentient beings. Depending upon how things are going on any particular day, you may want to go and stand among the ranks of all sentient beings, and then turn around and say, “You poor suckers, you. You deserve my great wishes.” One of my monastics was putting on an impromptu skit the other night. He played two parts by jumping back and forth across an imaginary fence, being one person and then another person. Like playing both sides, you are wishing for others to have something that you also wish for yourself.

All of these wishes are promises. You are forging a holy bond, a holy promise. It is a more profound promise that you are making to all sentient beings than you have ever experienced before in ordinary life. These wishes are formed from bodhicitta motivation, and this bodhicitta motivation is something that extends from life to life. It is not something that is small. Even what you have not yet been able to experience is possible and is connected to that vast wish. Inner Guru holds the wish in its entirety. Those who are serious about experiencing the great wish go to their Inner Guru.

We do not wish for something like Tinker bell or like a fairy wish. You are not a fairy godmother who is going to tap all sentient beings on their heads and somehow transform them. The vast wish is not a fairy tale but the very glue by which the bodhicitta motivation is held together. When I came into my new incarnation, I asked many people, “What is it that you wish? What is it that you really want?”

Their answer was “I want to benefit all sentient beings. I want to save all sentient beings.” And I would say, “Well, how are you going to do that? How can that be your wish?” That desire must have something to do with your own practice because that is the activity that is associated with accomplishing that desire. Even more important is to be able to experience Mahayana equanimity through your practice in order for you to have something to build upon.

Equanimity is like an anti-magnetic force that allows both attachment and aversion to be stilled. It is the force that does not permit attachment and aversion to come together in their usual configuration. Then what arises is a state of mind that is not attached or attracted to either grasping or pushing away.

Equanimity in general is something that is treasured in others. It is a quality we would admire strongly in our friends. That one is pleasant to be around, a being of wisdom imminent. They are peaceful in their very behavior, peaceful in their own mind, happiness exuding in a calm manner and someone who can be trusted. In addition, they are not so attached to a certain position that they can be spoken to logically and understood without emotions running wild. Someone who has equanimity would be sought out in the community.

In a small community in Tibet, someone who possesses equanimity might be asked to be a community leader because they would be marvelous at mediation. They would listen to other peoples’ problems with special care and lack of personal agenda. This kind of equanimity would be a feature of a particular individual’s life. This kind of equanimity is often a quality that laypeople see in and admire in Buddhist monastics. One of the primary goals of monastics is to reduce attachment and aversion allowing, equanimity to arise.

One of the primary features of human experience, this desire realm, is a continuous irritation of your own being with attachment and aversion. They are connected because there is always something that you want but it is mixed with something that you do not want. Trying to hold away what you do not want as well as trying to whistle and call toward you what you want is exhausting to ordinary mind. I feel that when they finally discover the actual cure for old age there will be scientific measurements of the exhaustion induced by this dynamic.

Why would it be a good thing for them to abide in equanimity? Without equanimity, you are bound up or caught. Like a hurdle jumper these are the hurdles that are placed in the middle of the path of this runner. Someone could run a track from the starting line to the finish line in a very quick movement except now they put all these little fences there so they run a few steps and then they have to jump over the fence in order to get to the finish line.

For the first time, I attended a marathon. Even ordinary people could participate, many were speed-walkers or families walking together. So it was not like the New York marathon where, if you did not run fast enough, someone would knock you over or people would jeer at you. This was something that everyone could do, and yet there were many who were real runners who were trying to break some kind of speed record. I did not participate, but I wandered among the crowd and was watching, and I looked at people, and it was a beautiful spring day and pleasant company. I chatted with people. It was very pleasant. And then I came down to the finish line and I watched as runners were coming in. The fastest ones had already gone in.

There was one gentlemen dressed in jogging shorts running with the others but he would not cross over the finish line. He would go back down the road against the flow of the runners and find someone who was not running very well, who was exhausted and needed encouragement, and he would run along with them, joking with them, encouraging them, “You can do it! You can make it!” And in fact, they would smile and perk up, and they would get to the finish line, and he would see them across. And then he would jog back in and find another one, and he would keep getting these people to the finish line, entertaining them, enjoying them, encouraging them.

I sometimes think of that, especially in the context here of the great wish. What it means to have a great wish is being able to uplift and to encourage. The vast wish also has a diplomacy to it that says, “Oh you living beings, please do not grasp onto things so tightly. Please do not annoy yourself inside as strongly as you are. Do not put that much strain on your inner mind. They do not think of it that way, but in effect that is what is happening. They are either seduced by attachments, or frightened and creating obstacles for themselves like these hurdlers. Even those who are strong must jump over the fences that are being placed in their own path. There is no use, no good purpose at all.

Equanimity arises when attachment and aversion are reduced. Imagine what our world would be like if these delusions were eliminated. Imagine what it would be like if there were no wars. Imagine what it would be like if there was no conflict anywhere. Imagine what it would be like if crimes such as thievery and rape never happened again. Imagine what this world would be like if crimes like this did not exist.

Imagine what it would be like if we lived in a world that was so peaceful that equanimity was the norm. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where each living being had this as a normal component of their very personality, and grasping and disgust were so little known, that they would be something placed in a zoo to go and look at. Perhaps people who suffered from unhealthy attachment and hatred would be sent to a facility until they recovered. May they be helped, may they be helped until they would again be allowed to participate in normal society. Everywhere would exist a peaceful zone, a zone of peace.

Here is your rope, you are pulling in this vast wish. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if there were such a thing as world peace? Wouldn’t it be marvelous if the words ‘attachment’ and ‘aversion’ did not even exist anywhere? As you are doing this, there is a gentleness, there is a determination. If one could channel their desire for world peace into this vast wish, this is where the vast wish would be accomplished – in that world. And living beings would pass peacefully from birth to old age and passing away in a seamless appreciation of a quality that you are looking at as being outstanding virtue.

Those would be the cultivated qualities. And high among the list would be those who not just had equanimity normal, like everyone else, everyone in that society would have a certain level of equanimity, but in fact there would still be leaders among those who even in a country, in a world, in a universe where equanimity was the norm, there would still be those who would be considered to be models of virtue and equanimity. And those models of virtue and equanimity would be asked questions such as, “What is the meaning of life? What is it to be an enlightened guru?” And people everywhere would gather gently and perform virtuous actions, and the world itself would begin to resemble a place where authentic healers could live and work carefully. What a blissful way to pass through a human existence.