Equanimity as a Skill
May 24, 2019
You’ll notice in the chant we had just now on the four sublime attitudes: “May all beings be happy. May all beings be freed from their suffering. May all beings not be deprived of the good fortune they have attained.” It’s “may, may, may.” But then the fourth one is not like that. It’s a statement of fact: “All living beings are the owners of their actions.” When I was in France this last month, I came across the French translation of the sublime attitudes in the chanting book that the group there had put together, and they’d missed that point. Their translation of equanimity was, “May all beings be the owners of their actions, heirs to their actions.” It sounds like a curse. We’re not wishing that on anybody. We’re simply accepting that that’s the way things are.