Equanimity: The ability to be aware of all that you experience, of every sensation--without reacting, without tying new knots of craving and aversion, not creating misery for yourself.
With the desire to become more mindful, I took a 10-day meditation retreat.
First off, let me mention S. N. Goenka. Each day of the retreat, there is a viewing of a DVD recording of a discourse given by Goenka. Even through the recordings, you can feel the kindness, and tremendous spirit, of this individual. If Yoda were a smiling fat Indian man, he'd be Goenka. With humor, and great care, Goenka explains how to be successful in the practice of meditation, and the reasoning behind the practice.
Here's my summary of the basic theory of Vipassana meditation. The chief problem in life is suffering. To solve the problem of suffering, you must understand the problem. A person has six senses, where cognition is considered a sense...As an aside, it seemed unreasonable to me to categorize thinking as a passive sense, but my first ten minutes of meditation dispelled the illusion that I actually have any control over what thoughts arise in my consciousness...A person receives stimulus through the six senses. There is no control here. An evaluation occurs automatically based on the individual's history. Again, no point of control. Evaluation results in a sensation in the body--either a feeling of pleasure, or pain. Still, no control. Lastly, there is a response. Typically, this is not a point where people apply control, but this is the only point to apply volition. It is in an individual's habitual response in the pursuit of pleasure, and resistance to pain, that all suffering lies.
Vipassana claims that an intellectual understanding of the problem of suffering is not helpful. To solve the problem of suffering, an individual must experience the detailed mechanism of suffering directly; and they can do so simply by observing the sensations in their own body.
Before an individual can direct their awareness to the events in their body, a minimum amount of discipline is required. So meditation occurs in two stages. The first three days of the retreat are to produce discipline in focusing the mind. After that, there is a focus on the sensations of the body.
The ten days were rich with personal insights for me, but there are two experiences I'd like to share.
On the fourth day of the retreat, I gained a new perspective. I had (and continue to have) a feeling of detachment towards my ego, my personality, my feelings. Which isn't to say that I walk around like a robot. That's not what I mean. What I'm talking about is that I'm now able to experience my feelings with strong sympathy, but still have some perspective. I feel a sense of being able to serve as my own personal mentor, guide, and adviser, in a way that I never experienced before.
The second insight I want to mention occurred on day six. In the first five days of the course, I struggled with the pain of sitting. Pain was the enemy. I tried to control it, minimize it, ignore it--anything to get rid of the pain. On the sixth day, during meditation, without any intention to do so, my relationship with the pain changed. I felt the pain coming, and instead of my usual posture of resistance, I found myself approaching the pain and welcoming it. The pain built into a wave that immersed me, and from that point onwards the pain wasn't a problem. It was still there, but it no longer controlled my attention--it was just another piece of information.
I realize there are many opportunities in life that I have missed out on because I have been avoiding emotional pain. I figure it took 50 hours of sitting to change my experience with the pain of sitting. At my current rate of exposure, I estimate it will take me a 150 years to change my relationship with certain kinds of emotional pain. Not believing in reincarnation, I don't have the luxury of that kind of time. I've been planning on how to increase my rate of exposure.