Equanimity: Present Moment Echoes and the Art of Desire
Equanimity has always come easier to me when sitting with pain than when sitting with pleasure. Maybe it’s because I lean more toward stoicism — because I can grit my teeth and endure rather than surrender. But I don’t think it’s just that. I think I’ve built a genuine ability to be with suffering, to meet it without flinching, to let it move through me without resistance.
I learned this in vipassanā. The adhiṭṭhāna sittings — one-hour sittings, three times a day, starting on Day Four of a Vipassanā course as taught by S.N. Goenka — where for that entire hour you don’t move, don’t shift, don’t even open your eyes. Just sit.
The first few minutes are fine. My breath is steady, my posture is strong. Then the aches begin.
A dull, creeping burn in my knees. A slow tightening in my hips. The sharp pull of my lower back screaming for relief. My body whispers at first: “Shift your weight. Stretch your legs. Just move a little, no one will notice.”
Then it demands:
“You can’t sit here for an hour. You’re ruining your knees. This is insane.”
The minutes crawl by.
Surely, an hour must have passed already. The teacher must have fallen asleep — that’s the only explanation. There’s no way we’re still in the middle of this sitting. I fight the urge, but eventually, I can’t help myself. I sneak a glance at my watch.
Thirty-five minutes.
I want to laugh. Or scream. This is never going to end.
The pain builds. The frustration builds. Every second stretches longer than it should, time itself taunting me, refusing to move faster.
And then, suddenly — like a mirage on the horizon — the familiar sound of the last five minutes begins. The soft hum of chanting, the teacher’s voice giving closing instructions.
And just like that, I know I can do this.
Nothing changed — my legs still ache, my back still throbs — but my resistance dissolves. The moment I stop fighting, a deep wave of equanimity flows through me, spreading like warmth through my veins. The pain is still there, but I no longer need it to go away.
And this is the lesson I carry with me: everything passes. Pain, longing, discomfort — they all rise and fall. It’s the resistance that makes the pain unbearable.
So you sit and strive to be equanimous through it all. Embracing the truth of our existence.
I learned this is what it means to be fully alive.
Loss and Grief
The skill of equanimity, forged during those adhiṭṭhāna sittings, has carried me through much suffering, especially grief — the loss of my sister, my brother, my mother, my father, my husband. Each loss, a lesson in sitting with suffering instead of resisting it.
Because of vipassanā, I am not afraid to meet death head-on.
Too many people treat death like an inconvenience, something to be outsourced — just like they do with aging parents, just like they do with their own children. They send kids to boarding school. They put parents in nursing homes. They turn away from life’s hard truths because they lack the strength to face them.
I refuse to be that kind of person.
My Mother’s Death
My mother lived with me until the day she died. She was on hospice, but she was home. And Brian — my husband — was steadfast: We are not putting your mom in a home. There was no debate, no hesitation. He believed, as I did, that she deserved to be with family, to be cared for with dignity — not discarded like an old piece of furniture.
As her death neared, I built her casket in the garage. Measuring the wood, sawing, sanding, fitting the pieces together. It felt surreal — constructing the box that would hold my own mother. But it also felt right. This is what we do. We don’t turn away. We take care of our own.
She died in the room I now sleep in.
I remember lifting the casket, feeling the weight of her one last time as we carried her to my pickup truck. I remember gripping the wheel, knowing what was coming next. Watching as the box I built to hold her — to hold the woman who raised me — was taken from me and into the crematory.
There was no running from it.
I met it fully, without turning away.
Brian’s Death
When Brian died, I faced death the same way.
I will never forget the moment I was allowed onto the scene of the accident — the automobile fire that took his life.
His body was burned beyond recognition. The kind of sight that sears itself into your mind forever, leaving scars even deeper than the loss itself.
The tears came in a rush, but I didn’t pull away.
I walked forward, knelt down, and placed my hands on what remained of his shoulder.
I told him I loved him.
One last time, in his presence.
Even now, I still have nightmares from that moment. But if given the choice, I would do it all over again.
Too many people turn into cowards when life hands them something raw and real. They hide from it. They choose ignorance over courage.
I refuse to.
I will meet life fully, even when it rips me apart.
I know this is what it means to be fully alive.
The Challenge of Equanimity in Love
Today, I face a different challenge: desire.
Peter, my boyfriend, and I have shared the most breathtaking, blissful, almost cinematic moments together since we met about six months ago. Every second is imprinted on my skin, my cells, my memory.
I hear a song from a concert we attended, and suddenly, I’m there.
It was The Disco Biscuits at Infinity Music Hall in Hartford, CT. I can still feel it — the sensual charge in the air, thick, electric, alive. The music wasn’t just sound; it was something deeper, something that coursed through us like a pulse, a force we surrendered to. The band played without pause, an unbroken stream of rhythm and melody, pulling us under, wrapping us in its grip.
Peter stood in front of me, his back pressed against my chest, our bodies moving together in perfect sync. My arms held him close, locking us into the moment. I felt his breath rise and fall against me, his heartbeat drumming in time with mine. The beat pulsed through the space, through his body, into mine, binding us in something wordless and undeniable.
We danced like this, so close it was impossible to tell where I ended and he began. Every movement was instinctual, primal — an answer to a call buried deep in our bones. The whole room moved as one, caught in the same fevered rhythm. It blurred the line between dance and something more, something deeper — passion, connection, surrender.
Lasers sliced through the darkness, illuminating faces lost in the same bliss, the same ecstasy of motion. Nothing else existed — no past, no future, only the raw, organic energy of human existence: passion, connection, and life itself. We were consumed by it, by each other.
It was the greatest concert I had ever been to, and it wasn’t because of the music, the performance, or the energy of the crowd. It was because I was with Peter — completely in sync, lost in the rhythm, caught in something so intense it felt like reaching the edge of a moment that never had to end.
When I hear a song from that night, I’m not just remembering it — I’m experiencing it again.
When that happens, am I living in the past or the present?
Or maybe, this is what it means to be fully alive.
The Love Letter: Desire as a Present-Moment Experience
It had been nearly a month since Peter and I had any contact. We have taken time so he could work on his personal development. A month of space, of quiet, of letting him work through his own storms without me as a distraction or failsafe.
During our time apart I have started writing him. Handwritten letters.
Last Thursday, like every Thursday, I sat down to write him such a letter.
Only this time, I let every ounce of longing, every flicker of memory, every pulse of desire spill onto the page.
This wasn’t just any letter. This was a letter to mark our month apart. A love letter, a hungry letter, a letter dripping with the heat of passionate moments we had shared.
I wrote about how my body remembers him.
How my fingertips remember tracing the shape of him.
How my lips remember the way he tastes.
How my skin, even now, carries the ghost of his touch.
I wrote about the specific ways I miss him — not just I miss you in some generic, sentimental way, but I miss you here. I miss you like this. I miss the weight of you against me, the way your breath felt against my neck, the way our bodies moved together like we were built to fit.
I poured everything into that letter.
And then, I sealed it and sent it into the world.
Not knowing if he would ever read it.
Not knowing when or if I’d ever hear back.
Not expecting a response.
But I do imagine him reading it.
I imagine his eyes widening as he takes in my words.
I imagine him feeling it — the depth, the fire, the rawness of it all.
I imagine the letter reaching into him, shaking him, blowing him away.
I don’t need a reply to know that it lands.
The Echo of Desire
I wake up in the middle of the next night.
Heart pounding.
Body aching.
My mind filled with images of Peter, of us, of every moment we had shared.
The letter had done something to me. Writing it was a present-moment act, but it left a ripple, an aftershock, an echo that continued to — no, continues to — move through me long after the ink has dried.
Desire. Most people see desire as a source of suffering — something to resist, suppress, or extinguish. And I understand why. When we lose what we crave, when something we long for inevitably slips away, it hurts. The logic seems simple: the stronger the attachment, the deeper the desire, the sharper the pain when it’s gone.
Desire, when clung to, can be suffering — yes. But desire, when met with equanimity, when embraced as a real, living, breathing moment — is that planting seeds for suffering?
I don’t think so.
This is what it means to be fully alive.
Embracing Desire
Warm water runs over my hands, soap bubbles clinging to my fingers as I scrub a plate. I watch the suds swirl and slip away down the drain. The scent of lavender dish soap lingers in the air. The rhythmic clatter of dishes fills the quiet kitchen.
I am here.
And yet, I am with him.
Thoughts of Peter move through me like an undertow, subtle yet undeniable.
One moment, I’m at the sink. The next, I’m back at the concert — his frame pressed against mine, the music through him to my body. I can feel my lips on the back of his neck, the way we moved as one.
He’s not here. There’s no music. And yet, I feel it.
Some might say I’m lost in the past. That I’m not present.
But they’d be wrong.
Because this moment includes the echo.
Desire Without Suffering
I’ve been taught that suffering comes from clinging, from chasing, from resisting impermanence. But does desire itself lead to suffering?
I don’t think so.
Desire is not the enemy. Clinging is.
So when I wake in the night, body thrumming, mind spinning with thoughts of him, I won’t fight it. I won’t scold myself for feeling it.
I will let it move through me.
This is what it means to be fully alive.
Letting Go Without Resistance
I will allow the ache of longing to sit in my chest, let the warmth of Peter drift through me — without reaching, without trying to keep it.
I will feel it fully, and then, like soap bubbles disappearing down the drain, I will let it pass.
This is equanimity.
Not denial. Not numbness. Just observing. And feeling.
Feeling everything — completely, honestly — without getting lost in it.
I can desire without clinging.
I can love without losing myself.
I can revel in it without being consumed by it.
Desire doesn’t have to be a problem.
Desire can just be desire.
Echoes and Being Fully Here
When I wrote Peter that letter — a love letter so raw I could feel the words in my bones — I poured myself into it.
And now, nights later, I still wake up from dreams of him, aching, skin humming.
But is that suffering?
No. That’s just an echo.
We understand this with the body: after a long hike, muscles burn the next day. That’s not reliving the hike — it’s the body processing what it’s been through.
Why should it be any different for the heart?
After a concert, music lingers in your nerves.
After deep laughter, joy reverberates.
These are echoes of experience, still alive in the present.
If I resist them, I create suffering.
If I allow them, I am simply living them.
This is presence — not shutting out echoes of past moments, but letting them move through me without becoming them.
What Do You Think?
Can we experience longing and love, fully and intensely, without suffering?
I think we can.
I think we must.
Because isn’t this what it means to be fully alive?
