this is the best season of your life

Be equanimous. 

Those were the opening words of a 10 day course I just completed with Sharon Salzberg, a world renowned teacher of mindfulness and Buddhist meditation.

In Pali, the word for equanimity is Upekkha. In Jewish terms, this is called Menuchat Nefesh - a settled soul, or a rested spirit. 

It describes a kind of internal balance that is liberating. Equanimity is not the result of avoiding pain and stress, or pretending it doesn't exist. Equanimity is what emerges when we cultivate the spaciousness and wisdom that allows us to relate to any experience and still be free. Which is to say, we can be fully present and without being burdened or broken by life. 

This is not easy, for me. 

And apparently not easy for 10 of the 12 spies Moses sends to scout the promised land in this week’s parsha, Sh’lach. They return reactive and afraid, warning the people, 

וַנְּהִי בְעֵינֵינוּ כַּחֲגָבִים וְכֵן הָיִינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶם׃
“...We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”

This line is so vivid and has always captured my attention. For today, let’s set aside the colonial context it is describing. And instead notice how it closely echoes the teachings on equanimity. 

Sharon Salzberg explained, “Our reactivity causes us to wither in self-confidence and avoid our own purpose.” We become grasshoppers in our own eyes. This is perhaps the greatest risk we take when we allow ourselves to be consumed by anxiety and fear. We wither in self-confidence and avoid our own purpose.  

From this place we are not able to easily access clarity and calm, and this negatively impacts our thinking. However, if we can cultivate enough spacious attention around our feelings, wisdom can naturally arise. Confidence can take root. And we can lean into our purpose and power. 

All of this takes practice. 
And all of this is possible. 

In the moment when we learn how much we cannot control, we let go. And there is freedom in letting go. And there is a sense of security in knowing we can meet whatever is actually happening. 

It is one of my summer goals to keep learning about equanimity, to cultivate menuchat nefesh. So that as we together scout the landscape of our own lives and of the world in the coming months, we can greet it with more courage and confidence, rather than fear and overwhelm. 

I am excited to share that I will be teaching a series next year called Selah: Sunday Morning Mindfulness. I hope you will join me. 

This will be my final Friday email for a while.
I offer you one more poem to take you into summer. 

Wu Men Hui-k'ai, a 12th century Chinese Buddhist teacher, wrote: 

“Ten thousand flowers in spring, 
the moon in autumn, 
a cool breeze in summer, 
snow in winter — 
If your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things, 
this is the best season of your life. 

To see things as they are, 
to see the changing nature, 
to see the impermanence, 
to see that constant flow of pleasant and painful events outside our control — 
that is freedom.”

Whatever your summer brings, I hope this is the best season of your life.