Question: How do we develop equanimity in the face of all the suffering we see in the world?

Ajahn Sumedho: We reflect on our actions and the intentions of these actions and contemplate their results, both good and bad. If I contemplate something like the slaughter in Rwanda, it seems very callous to say that they are slaughtered because of their kamma. It seems like a cop-out. Sometimes in India you see all the beggars and lepers and dismiss them by saying it's their kamma. But that's just not wanting to be bothered by it; it is not really the way the law of kamma should be used to contemplate. It's just using the law of kamma to push things aside.

I was in Delhi last June and it was really hot - 46°c. Now they have allowed Coca Cola in India, everybody was drinking Coca Cola in Delhi. I was in a car with the people I was staying with, and they stopped at a shop to buy a Coke. Then I saw two young leper women, one pushing a cart and the other one sitting in the cart and holding a little girl. They were begging outside the shop. Both women were attractive, not ugly or much deformed, only their hands were leprous - and they did not look all that miserable. They had a brightness about them, a humour. Even though their physical ailment was disturbing, I got the impression that they were coping quite well. Whereas often you see people here who are totally depressed, full of negativity; even though physically they have nothing wrong, their minds are not well. That's what I call real misery. You find this depression among the richest people. They find their lives meaningless, and they are stuck in their obsessions. I would rather have the leprosy than the depression!

In the book, 'City of joy,' by a Polish Catholic Priest, he goes to live in the worst slum in Calcutta. It's the worst slum, the poorest of the poor where the lepers live. It's called Anandanagar - the City of joy. He describes the lives of these lepers and the joy and spirit of these people. In spite of the poverty and the misery and the tragedy of their lives, they are full of spirit. We can feel a great deal of respect towards humanity when there's something that does not get ruined even under the worst conditions. There's one story of a rickshaw puller who had to slave to get enough money to marry off his daughter, so that she did not become a prostitute. This is not the kind of dilemma most of us have to face - pulling a rickshaw, in order to get a good husband for our daughter. But he did actually succeed in finding a suitable husband for her. This kind of thing is noble; you see the spirit of honour behind such people.

But then in places like Rwanda, there is this demonic spirit which seems to have taken over and there is total brutality, to the point where humanity disappears. And these people are not lepers. They are ordinary men taken over by hatred, where they can bash in the heads of women and children and commit the worst types of brutality. Where's that coming from?... That's also possible for us. It is within the range of possibilities of human behaviour.

I contemplate my own mind at Amaravati. People can complain a lot at Amaravati; the mind does complain about what we don't like. But as Buddhist monks, we train ourselves to contemplate what we have; that is, the four requisites - the alms bowl, the robes, medicine for illness and shelter. Then I contemplate: 'Well, I've had my meal for the day; I have my robes and a place to sleep.' Then I think, 'There's the Dhamma teaching and the possibility of living with good people.' And so I appreciate what I have, rather than getting caught up in some irritating situation which could take me over if I let it.

We tend always to think of an ideal situation of how life should be, and it's always based on the highest possibilities. So then we can only feel that there's something wrong with life the way it is. But life is seldom at its peak. We have peak moments, but we cannot sustain them for too long. Most of life is not like that, it's this way. In our meditation we learn to watch the flow of life, and we learn from that -rather than think there's something wrong with it if life's not at its very best.

With meditation, we're letting go of all the habits and resistance to life. We can get so caught up with our own busy-ness and compulsiveness that we don't see that to live as a human being, we don't need very much. We all think we need to have a high standard of material existence with all kinds of comforts but actually, if we had to give them up, we could still be very happy. We don't have to go and live in the City of joy to prove it, we can see it in daily life. The quality of life really depends on how we think and act. If we can cultivate a comfortable mind, we no longer have to dedicate our life to buying things, or to make life secure and comfortable. Once we have a comfortable mind, no one can take that away from us. But the comfortable house can burn down, squatters can move in, a motorway could pass through your living room; all kinds of things could happen!

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