Anchoring equanimity in impermanence
When difficulty or pleasure arises, add the silent note "this too will change" — not as denial but as accurate perception.
Key takeaways
- What it is: When difficulty or pleasure arises, add the silent note "this too will change" — not as denial but as accurate perception.
- Why it works: The mind's habitual over-weighting of the current moment — loss aversion, hedonic forecasting errors — produces both excessive suffering during bad times and excessive grasping during good ones. Noting impermanence as a real fact (not a consolation story) corrects the over-weighting and produces genuine equanimity: the situation is exactly as it is, and it will change.
- Evidence: Backed by randomized trials / meta-analyses.
- Avoid: Using "this too will pass" to avoid fully feeling difficult emotions, which produces bypassing rather than equanimity — upekkha holds experience, not at arm’s length, but without being swept away.
Why it works
The mind's habitual over-weighting of the current moment — loss aversion, hedonic forecasting errors — produces both excessive suffering during bad times and excessive grasping during good ones. Noting impermanence as a real fact (not a consolation story) corrects the over-weighting and produces genuine equanimity: the situation is exactly as it is, and it will change.
How to do it
- 1During formal meditation, note the arising and passing of each sensation, sound, and thought: "arising… passing…"
- 2In daily life, when strongly attracted to or repelled by something, silently note: "This is impermanent."
- 3Do not use the phrase as a bypass ("it does not matter") — use it as an accurate description.
- 4Notice the difference between noting impermanence with resignation versus noting it with spacious acceptance.
What the evidence says
RCT / meta-analysisTemporal distancing — mentally stepping back from current experience and perceiving it in a longer timeframe — reliably reduces emotional reactivity in experimental studies.
Honest caveat: Grossmann & Kross test self-distancing reasoning, not impermanence noting in Buddhist practice; the temporal-perspective mechanism is shared.
- — Grossmann & Kross (2014), exploring Solomon's paradox: self-distancing eliminates the self-other asymmetry in wise reasoning, Psychological Science
Common mistake
Using "this too will pass" to avoid fully feeling difficult emotions, which produces bypassing rather than equanimity — upekkha holds experience, not at arm’s length, but without being swept away.
IX Coach incorporates impermanence noting into guided vipassana-style sessions, helping you distinguish the bypass quality from the genuinely spacious quality at each sitting.
Practice this with IX Coach →