The Practice of Equanimity: Bringing Balance and Neutrality to the Mind and Heart

with Lhasha Tizer MS, CDL

Seven-week Buddhist study & practice series
Mondays, October 6 thru November 17, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm
$200, Sol Center Member Discount Applicable

In these challenging and confusing times, it is easy to fall prey to fear, anger, avoidance, and despair. It then becomes even more important to gain mental clarity and effort towards positive qualities of heart.

The Four Heavenly Abodes consist of Lovingkindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and culminate with Equanimity. In Pali, the ancient language the Buddha spoke, equanimity is called uppekha, which means ‘balance, neutrality and impartiality”; its function is to slow down the mind before it turns into extremes of any sort. Uppekha is a spacious stillness of mind with a radiant calm that allows us to be present with all the changing conditions that form our world and our life.

In this seven-week series we will lightly touch on all the abodes with a special emphasis on equanimity and the cultivation of a serene heart that can help us face the difficult parts of our personal and collective challenges with skill and grace.

Themes and practices explored will include:

• Learning about the interplay of mindfulness and compassion for self and others in the cultivation of balance.
• Developing sensitivity and skillfulness with the feeling tones in every moment- pleasant, unpleasant or neutral states.
• Strengthening the understanding of non-reactivity as a dynamic experience of presence and intention.
• What it means to let go with love and forgiveness.
• Exploring the wisdom and willingness “to know things, are the way they are”.

Lhasha Tizer, MS. is a certified Community Dharma Leader trained in Insight Meditation through Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She is a long time practitioner and teacher of meditation and mindfulness, studying for 46 years, and has been teaching Buddhist Studies since 2010. Through Desert Insight Meditation, her teaching community, she offers classes, book groups, and retreats at Tucson Community Meditation Center and beyond. In her private practice, The Mindfulness Path, Lhasha guides, consults and provides individual instruction in mindful living, meditation practices, and mindful inquiry. Lhasha has a diverse background with a teaching certificate in “Chado”, The Japanese Way of Tea, with roots in Zen Buddhism. She has practiced as a Holistic Health Counselor, a Holistic nutritionist specializing in tea nutrition, and is a co-author of the book Tea Here Now. She is devoted to sharing the benefits of her personal studies and practices through her teachings with others, to enrich their lives with caring, non-harming, love, well-being, peace, and happiness.