A guru was giving precepts. The topic was how to keep balance of mind in pleasant and unpleasant situations. A disciple asked: ‘Heat is heat and cool is cool. How can I avoid feeling joy in my success in life and not feel the pain of losing a dear family member during a pandemic? Is equanimity even possible?’ The guru replied: ‘Yes, the experiences of happiness and unhappiness would be different in both cases. But what also comes along is attachment to happy situations and an aversion to unhappy ones. While going through any kind of situation, one has to consciously avoid these two things. Eventually, the incident will pass, but the attachment or aversion to it might linger on. And this creates sadness. We only have to watch out for this.’ There are five reasons why we should neither hang on to pleasant situations nor avoid unpleasant ones. First, life is never fully under anyone’s control. It keeps throwing surprises at everyone. In spite of our aversion to them, extreme heat and extreme cold are part of nature’s cycle, as are day and night, light and darkness. Why not accept the cycle of pleasant and unpleasant events as inevitable and move on? Second, we must understand the non-permanent nature of each experience. We have a lot of happy and sad experiences in our life. It is difficult to expect a series of only pleasant ones. As the saying goes, ‘no king laughs always and no beggar wails always.’ Both have their share of happy and unhappy feelings. All experiences are temporary. One has to think ‘this too will pass.’ Third, if we are able to see the other side of the experience, with a discriminating mind, we will not be too elated or depressed in moments of happiness and unhappiness. While going through a happy situation, we often do not notice the negative things that are taking place simultaneously in our life. For example, acquiring a lot of wealth, and position could also make us arrogant. We may spoil our habits with the availability of excessive wealth. Hasmukh Adhia
