Equanimity — even-minded mental stability and non-attachment, unshaken by the “eight worldly winds” (gain/loss, fame/disrepute, praise/blame, pleasure/pain)..
Equanimity — even-minded mental stability and non-attachment, unshaken by the “eight worldly winds” (gain/loss, fame/disrepute, praise/blame, pleasure/pain). The fourth and culminating brahmavihāra.
Critically not indifference or apathy — that is its near enemy. As Bhikkhu Bodhi stresses, it is “equanimity, not indifference in the sense of unconcern for others”: it is indifferent only to the ego's demands, and it perfects rather than negates the warmer brahmavihāras. Compared with the Greek ataraxia or Stoic apatheia (philosophical end-states), upekkha is a cultivated factor within a soteriological path.
“looking on, looking over,” from upa + īkṣ “to look upon.”
From upa (“over, near”) + the root īkṣ (“to look”) — literally “looking on / over” the whole situation without being bound to either side (confirmed by the Pali Text Society dictionary).
Extensively treated across the Pali Canon and commentaries (Buddhaghosa identifies ten senses); the last of the ten Theravada perfections. Concept is stable.
Persistently oversimplified as “indifference,” “neutrality,” or cold “detachment” — which is precisely its near enemy and a misreading. The same word also names a neutral feeling-tone (vedanā); conflating that with the ethical virtue is a common error.