"The fourth sublime state is equanimity. Cultivating equanimity helps us learn to greet whatever is present in our experience with an evenness of temper, so our mind is able to stay balanced and steady in the face of life's ups and downs. This is a tall order, especially because it means engaging our lives with calmness and ease amid both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Resisting what is unpleasant just adds stress to what is already a difficult situation. And clinging to what is pleasant just sets us up for impermanence dukkha because change is inevitable.

"For me, the greatest challenge in cultivating equanimity has been to let go of my self-appointed role as 'the fixer.' In the movie Michael Clayton, George Clooney plays a fixer. When his law firm makes a mess of a case, it's his job to make the problem go away. As soon as I heard the term fixer, I thought, 'Oh no, that's me — always trying to fix my loved ones' lives so they won't have to experience those ten thousand sorrows.'

"When my children were young, I tried to protect them from suffering, as I imagine most parents do. The Buddha's father did. As the story goes, he tried to shield the young Siddhartha from being exposed to any suffering in the world, going so far as to post guards to keep him from leaving the royal grounds. But as a teenager, Siddhartha dared to venture forth and, for the first time, was exposed to human suffering. I'm grateful for his courage because that experience set him on the quest to find the answer to why we suffer and how we can find relief from it.

"Like Siddhartha's father, I tried to shield my children from the sorrows of the world. And I thought I could fix all their difficulties. If something wasn't right at school, I was on the phone with the teacher. If there was a conflict with a friend, I was on the phone with the kid's parents. I thought I'd change when they grew up and started households of their own, but I didn't. If one of them had a cold, I regaled them with every possible remedy — even though they hadn't asked for advice.

"With the Buddha's help, I'm a recovering fixer. I've come to understand that this continuous effort to protect my loved ones from the full range of life's experiences is not triggered by their suffering, but by my own — suffering that stems from my desire to fix their lives so they'll always be happy. Through equanimity practice, I'm learning to let go of this need to shield them from all disappointment and suffering. I'm coming to accept that everyone must be left to experience his or her own life, with its ups and downs and its joys and sorrows.

"To help me with this practice, I silently recite equanimity phrases, such as:

"• I love you, but I cannot keep you from experiencing suffering.
• Your happiness and unhappiness depend on your actions, not on my wishes for you.
• May you live in peace regardless of your circumstances.
• May you accept with grace both your successes and your disappointments.

"As for my own ups and downs, I try to greet each day as it unfolds, knowing it won't meet all my expectations and knowing that most of my desires will go unfulfilled. The key to equanimity is understanding that life is an ever-changing parade of pleasant and unpleasant experiences that we rarely control. Our self-focused desire — that want/don't-want mind — that leads us to attempt to control our lives by trying to fix everything to be to our liking only intensifies our dissatisfaction and suffering.

"To practice equanimity, I resolve to be mindful of how my experience feels to me during a set period of time — maybe fifteen minutes. If an experience is unpleasant — too loud in a restaurant or too hot outside — I acknowledge the unpleasant feeling and then say to myself, 'It's loud, but that's okay; restaurants are sometimes loud'; or 'It's hot outside but it's the nature of the weather to sometimes be hot and sometimes be cold.' If an experience is particularly pleasant — delicious food, a garden in bloom — I say to myself, 'I'll enjoy this experience while it lasts, knowing that, like all phenomena, it will pass away and another experience will take its place.' When I practice in this way, I'm able to touch the peace and well-being that come from connecting with my moment-to-moment experience just as it is, without the burden of always trying to change it.

"I also practice equanimity toward the people in my life. Our interactions with others are also a mix of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. On the unpleasant side, people don't always fulfill our expectations or keep their promises. In these circumstances, I cultivate equanimity by saying to myself, 'I feel let down, but this is what people are like — sometimes they come through for us and sometimes they don't.'

"I have a friend who always promises to visit when she comes to town. I put the dates on my calendar, but she rarely calls. I don't call her because I know she has a lot of friends and family in town — she raised her children here — but I feel sad as I watch those dates on my calendar pass without a call from her. Once she's home, I get an apology email from her and a promise to visit next time. I practice equanimity over this disappointment by repeating phrases such as, 'I feel let down, but disappointments are part of life.' I work on acknowledging my sadness without judging her negatively because, in my experience, that only adds another layer of suffering to my disappointment and sadness.

"Practicing equanimity in these ways helps me accept that not all my experiences will be to my liking and not all people will behave as I would prefer. Acknowledging this helps me engage life more fully whether it happens to feel pleasant or unpleasant at the moment. Because equanimity fosters in us feelings of peace, contentment, and well-being, we experience our life as sufficient just the way it is without the constant need to fix it."