The Pleasure of Calm

Adults who care for children should help them notice that being calm is pleasurable—because it allows us to feel our own natural energies, the world around us, and the Great Mystery in which we all appear. For this reason, Avatar Adi Da calls everyone to cultivate a state of dynamic calm, or equanimity, as a form of life--positive fullness.

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This equanimity fosters sensitivity, the capacity for love, mental clarity, and relaxed awareness—all of which are highly pleasurable. But since children can tend toward vital exuberance that is wild and unbalanced, practicing calm and sensitivity can be a challenge for them. Avatar Adi Da advises those who care for children:

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Calmness is pleasant. Whole bodily feeling is pleasurable. Children’s wild, vital play is actually disturbing them, and they become dependent on feeling disturbed. They feel it is necessary for happiness, whereas it is a calm, balanced, feeling life that is truly pleasurable.

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Children must learn the discipline of equanimity, or responsibility for the movement of energy and attention, and be balanced and relaxed. This does not mean they can never have fun, but their basic mode of existence should be one that is balanced, relaxed, sympathetic to others and to the “world” at large, meditative, simple, and free. Therefore, whatever else adults do in educating children and young people, they should be constantly serving this disposition of equanimity. . . you must help children realize the pleasure and the joy inherent in the basic responsibility of equanimity and in the ego-transcending disposition that grows only on that basis.