From The Rebel by Albert Camus
028At a Vispassana Retreat, teachers Eric Kolvig and Brian Lesage illustrated the equanimity practice with a passage from Camus.
One must accept the unacceptable and hold to the untenable. This magnificent consent, born of abundance and fullness of spirit, is the unreserved affirmation of human imperfection and suffering, of evil and murder, of all that is problematic and strange in our existence. It is born of an arrested wish to be what one is in a world that is what it is.
Thus from absolute despair will spring infinite joy, from blind servitude, unbounded freedom. To be free is, precisely, to abolish ends. The innocence of the ceaseless change of things, as soon as one consents to it, represents the maximum liberty. The free mind willingly accepts what is necessary.
Painting by Orlando Leibovitz