The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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This equanimity.

And over the years, people have come to me when times are challenging,

either locally in a certain area or nationally or internationally,

it's it, Gil, please give a talk on equanimity. It's like a go-to thing that people are requesting.

And when I discovered equanimity for myself, it was on retreat.

And I was quite surprised to discover it and to understand how both sweet it is, that it's really sweet, that it really involves a tremendous clarity,

and it's powerful. It's an amazing thing.

And I had no idea until then that equanimity was like a thing.

It's a particular state that we can experience a particular way the mind operates

that can be known that operates. If anything, when I thought about equanimity before,

I thought it was like an admonition, like some like, stay calm. Don't be reactive now or something.

Some are a little bit, you know, like you had to do something.

Okay, I've got to be a quantumist.

But to discover on retreat, as the mind got very settled and peaceful,

that there arose this particular state of mind

or a particular activity of the mind in a sense

that is known as equanimity and how beautiful it is. That was a great, you know, a great source of joy for me.

So the word for equanimity in Polly, in the ancient language, is Upeka.

And it is a word that means something like to watch over, to have an overview of something.

And so to get to have the big picture of something.

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