Eviatar Shulman
The Subtle Care of Buddhist Equanimity
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Equanimity is suspicious as a constructive emotion: some find it difficult to distinguish from indifference or even apathy. Nonetheless, a careful attention to early Buddhist sources suggests that equanimity has subtle emotive content, based on care, serenity and attentiveness. These must retain their unattached attitude in order that their constructive character will not be driven by hidden aggressive, dominating and judgmental impulses. Equanimity emerges from love (metta), compassion (karuṇā) and an empathic joy (mudita) that rejoices in others’ happiness—all divine attitudes that prepare the heart for the subtle care of equanimity (upekkhā). Equanimity further characterizes the peaks of other paths of meditative cultivation, suggesting that the Buddhist path aims not merely at removing negative mental content, such as desire, ignorance, or the seemingly simple category of suffering. Rather, it aims to cultivate the mind and culture consciousness toward a softer, more attentive and wiser mode of being. As such, Buddhism provides a new vision of the human that is based on the primacy of conscious experience.
Eviatar Shulman is Gail Levin de Nur Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is head of the Institute for the Study of History, Religion, and Classics, and director of the program for Buddhist Studies. Among his publications are the monographs Rethinking the Buddha: Early Buddhist Philosophy as Meditative Perception (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Visions of the Buddha: Creative Dimensions of Early Buddhist Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2021).