Equanimity

Today's chapters were on expanding lovingkindness and also embracing equanimity. "The traditional image for equanimity is a banquet to which everyone is invited. That means that everyone and everything without exception is on the guest list. Consider your worst enemy. Consider someone who would do you harm. Consider Pol Pot and Hitler and drug pushers hooking young people. Imagine inviting them to this feast. Training in equanimity is learning to open the door to all, welcoming all beings, inviting life to come to visit. Of course, as certain guests arrive we'll feel fear and aversion. We allow ourselves to open the door just a crack if that's all that we can presently do, and we allow ourselves to shut the door when necessary. Cultivating equanimity is a work in progress."

I definitely feel the urge to shut the door to a lot of people. Later in the sections I read for today she talks about one of the enemies of compassion being "idiot compassion," which is not drawing boundaries or saying enough when we find ourselves in an aggressive relationship. I guess when I think of the current political administration I am wondering where the line between compassion and idiot compassion is. Unfortunately she doesn't have much to say about it. While I am finding Chodron helpful because it is clear to me that nurturing my own anger against enemies, political or otherwise, is corrosive and transforming me into a person I don't really like, I do also need to find some sort of balance between nurturing compassion in myself and maintaining a commitment to acts of political resistance.

I do like her emphasis throughout the book in doing what you can. This chapter also talks about being overwhelmed as an enemy of compassion, and how--even in meditation practice--if you can't have compassion in certain circumstances because you are overwhelmed, to start smaller and practice.