DW's Blog

Equanimity: The Gift Of Recognition

by DW Green — November 12, 2025

“This is equanimity. This steadiness. This balance. This capacity to hold it all. This is what I am when I’m not busy being something else.”

There is a quality of being that sits at the pinnacle of balance, centeredness, and calmness. A way of meeting life that sees things as they are, without the distortion of personal agenda or the drama of resistance. A steadiness that remains present through triumph and disaster, joy and sorrow, gain and loss.

This is equanimity.

The word itself carries weight and meaning, yet somehow remains light, happy, good, open. Say it slowly: e-qua-nim-i-ty. There’s a musicality to it, a spaciousness in the sound that mirrors what it names.

Equanimity is not a state we achieve through effort. It is a gift. A gift of recognition. A gift of wearing – or being – awareness itself.

THE WORD ITSELF: ETYMOLOGY AS REVELATION

Before we explore what equanimity is, let’s look at the word itself – because sometimes the ancients embedded wisdom in language that we’re still discovering.

Equanimity comes from the Latin aequanimitas, which breaks down beautifully:

• aequus – equal, even, level

• animus – mind, spirit, soul

Literally: equal-souled. Even-spirited. A mind that remains level.

The ancients understood something profound here. Equanimity isn’t about suppressing one side of experience to maintain calm. It’s about having an equal relationship with all experience – not preferring pleasure over pain, not elevating success above failure, not treating some parts of life as more worthy than others.

Equal-souled. The soul that can hold all of it with the same steadiness, the same presence, the same open awareness.

This etymological root reveals why equanimity is related to balance – another word whose etymology illuminates:

Balance comes from Latin bilanx – bi (two) + lanx (scale, dish). Two plates of a scale finding their equilibrium point. Not eliminating one side, but allowing both sides to find their natural relationship.

And consider spacious, from Latin spatium (space, room). But spatium relates to spatior – to walk about, to wander. Spaciousness isn’t just empty room; it’s room to move, room to roam freely without cramping or confinement.

Even awareness carries ancient wisdom. From Old English gewær (watchful, cautious) and Proto-Germanic waraz(attentive, conscious of). The witness quality – that attentive, wakeful presence – is embedded right in the word’s roots.

These words are relatives, family members in a universal knowing of life. They point to the same essential truth from different angles: there’s a way of being that’s open, balanced, steady, awake. And that way has been recognized across cultures and centuries, embedded in the very words we use.

THE PERSONAL BARRIER

We spend most of our lives behind a personal barrier of our own construction. This barrier is made of preferences and aversions, judgments and opinions, the constant assessment of whether things are going “my way” or not.

Behind this barrier, everything becomes personal. Success inflates us. Failure crushes us. Praise feels like validation of our worth. Criticism feels like an attack on our being. We’re constantly braced, constantly managing, constantly trying to arrange circumstances to match our preferences.

This is exhausting. And it obscures reality.

But something remarkable happens when this barrier drops away, even for a moment. Suddenly there’s just… what is. No problem anywhere. We live our lives. And when we die, we just die.

This is equanimity emerging.

SEEING WITH AN IMPERSONAL SEARCHLIGHT

Equanimity involves seeing with what might be called an impersonal searchlight – a quality of awareness that illuminates things as they are, without adding the overlay of personal reaction.

This doesn’t mean we become cold or detached. When we’re not busy defending our personal position, we’re actually more present, more responsive, more capable of genuine connection. We can meet others and circumstances directly rather than through the filter of “how does this affect me?”

The impersonal searchlight doesn’t diminish our humanity. It clarifies it. We still feel, still care, still engage. But we’re not constantly making everything about our small, separate self.

This is what the poet Rudyard Kipling captured so beautifully:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same…

Triumph and disaster – impostors both. Not because success and failure don’t matter in the relative world, but because they don’t define who we are. They’re weather passing through the sky of awareness. The sky doesn’t become the weather. It simply holds it, allows it, remains itself throughout.

A CAPACITY WE DISCOVER

Is equanimity a state of mind? A mental statement we affirm?

Neither, really. Equanimity is more like a capacity we discover, an orientation we embody, a quality of being that becomes available when we stop contracting around experience.

Think of physical balance. You don’t achieve balance by thinking the right thoughts about balance. You find it in your body, you adjust, you inhabit it. And even when you lose it momentarily, you know how to find it again because you’ve felt what it’s like to be balanced.

Equanimity works similarly. It’s not a concept but a felt reality. Once tasted, it becomes something we can return to, not through effort but through recognition. We remember what it feels like to meet life from this place, and in that remembering, we drop back into it.

THE GIFT

This is why equanimity is ultimately a gift – the gift of recognition.

We don’t create equanimity through force of will. We don’t manufacture it through techniques. The practices – softening the heart, opening the mind, cultivating spaciousness – these remove obstacles to equanimity. They create conditions where equanimity can emerge. But equanimity itself arises as grace, as gift, as recognition of what was always available.

It’s the gift of seeing clearly. The gift of not being tossed around by circumstances. The gift of remaining present through whatever life brings. The gift of treating triumph and disaster as the impostors they are.

And it’s the gift of wearing awareness – not as something separate from ourselves, but as what we actually are beneath all the personal construction. When we wear awareness, when we be awareness, equanimity is natural.

THE PINNACLE OF BALANCE

Balance has been following some of us since childhood – not just physical balance, but the intuition that there’s a center point, a place of equilibrium where we can meet life without toppling over.

Equanimity is the pinnacle of this balance. It’s balance fully realized, fully embodied, fully lived. Not the precarious balance of someone on a tightrope, gripping and straining to stay upright, but the natural balance of someone who has found their center and can move fluidly from it.

This balance includes centeredness, calmness, steadiness, openness, and clarity. Together, these qualities create equanimity – that Grand Place from which we can meet life fully, participate completely, and remain balanced throughout.

ARE WE ALL CAPABLE?

Can everyone experience and live from equanimity?

Yes. Absolutely yes.

Equanimity is not a special achievement reserved for saints or masters. It’s our natural condition beneath all the conditioning, all the reactivity, all the personal barriers we’ve constructed. Every human being has moments of equanimity, however brief.

A moment watching a sunset where there’s simply beauty, no commentary.

A moment with a loved one where there’s just presence, no agenda.

A moment in nature where everything feels right, no problem anywhere.

These moments reveal what’s always available. The question isn’t whether we’re capable – we are. The question is whether we’re willing. Willing to drop the personal barrier. Willing to see things as they are. Willing to stop making everything about me and mine.

This willingness itself is a practice. Not forcing equanimity, but removing the obstacles to it. Softening rather than hardening. Opening rather than contracting. Meeting rather than resisting.

THE WEIGHT AND THE LIGHTNESS

There’s something paradoxical about equanimity. The word itself has weight and meaning – it points to something substantial, something real, something that matters deeply.

And yet equanimity is also light, happy, good, open. There’s a quality of ease to it, a lack of burden. When we’re in equanimity, we’re not carrying the weight of constant reaction, constant management, constant defense of our personal position.

The weight gives it substance. The lightness gives it grace. Together they create that quality we recognize as equanimity – both grounded and spacious, solid and fluid, serious in its depth yet playful in its freedom.

LIVING FROM THE GRAND PLACE

What would it mean to live from equanimity?

It would mean moving through life with the steadiness Kipling described – keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs. Not because you’re superior or detached, but because you’re not adding personal drama to what’s already difficult enough.

It would mean meeting triumph without inflation and disaster without collapse. Receiving praise without it defining your worth. Hearing criticism without it destroying your peace. Experiencing loss without being lost. Celebrating gain without grasping.

It would mean embodying balance not just physically but emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Finding that center point and living from it, even as circumstances swirl and change around you.

Most of all, it would mean recognizing that you are not the weather passing through. You are the spacious awareness in which all weather arises and dissolves. And from that recognition, equanimity becomes natural, obvious, unavoidable.

THE PRACTICE OF RECOGNITION

How do we cultivate this gift?

Not by forcing it. Not by trying to feel balanced when we don’t. Not by suppressing reaction or pretending we’re unaffected when we are.

Instead, we practice recognition. We learn to recognize when the personal barrier is up and when it drops away. We notice the difference between seeing through our preferences and seeing things as they are. We feel the contrast between being tossed around by circumstances and remaining steady within them.

We practice softening the heart when it wants to harden. Opening the mind when it wants to close. Creating spaciousness when we notice contraction. These practices don’t create equanimity directly, but they remove the obstacles to it.

And then, in moments of grace, equanimity emerges. Not as achievement but as recognition. Not as something we’ve built but as something we’ve always been beneath the construction.

“Ah yes. This. This is equanimity. This steadiness. This balance. This capacity to hold it all. This is what I am when I’m not busy being something else.

NO PROBLEM ANYWHERE

Perhaps the clearest sign of equanimity is this: no problem anywhere.

Not because circumstances are perfect – they rarely are. Not because challenges don’t exist – they always do. But because we’re not making problems out of what is.

When the personal barrier drops, we still see circumstances clearly. We still respond appropriately. But we’re not creating additional suffering through resistance and grasping.

We just live our lives. And when we die, we just die. No problem anywhere.

This isn’t resignation or passivity. It’s the freedom that comes from seeing clearly and responding from balance rather than from reactivity. It’s the capacity to engage fully with life without being destroyed by it, to care deeply without being destabilized by caring, to participate completely while remaining steady throughout.

This is equanimity. This is the gift. This is what becomes available when we recognize what we’ve always been – not the small, defended, reactive self, but the spacious awareness that can hold all of life with balance, with grace, with an open heart and an open mind.

The pinnacle of balance. The gift of recognition. The Grand Place from which we can meet triumph and disaster as the impostors they are, and simply live our lives with steadiness, clarity, and love.

Light, happy, good, open – yet substantial and real.

This is equanimity. This is what we are. This is home.