The audio can be found here:Often the idea is that equanimity is the goal, and in fact equanimity is the foundation for the application of wisdom. This is a very important point, that without equanimity we are inevitably biased, prejudiced, and it's only with equanimity that we have the ability to look at things in a very nuanced, sophisticated and precise kind of way. So it's not that we're practising in order to be calm and centred, so whatever we see in the news or see or hear goes on. Often that's the idea: we need to gain this goal of equanimity and then we will not suffer from all the ups and downs of life.
But for me, equanimity is a stage, a foundation or necessary precondition for the application of wisdom....The equanimity that we are developing in Buddhism is based upon the investigation of causality; why things happen, how things happen. So if we are observing any phenomena as being the outcome of a vast web of causes and conditions, and we realise that given all these causes and conditions, right now it could not be any other way. It is this way because of all the supporting causes and conditions. So that's the equanimity. "It's like this", as Ajahn Sumedho says. But from that position of equanimity and acceptance, the question is "What now?" What's the way forward? It's not that now I'm OK with it, that's it, that's the end of my path.
...If then causes and conditions are like this, which ones do we have any power to change, and which ones do we have to accept?...In talking about motivation, in Buddhism there are two kinds: wholesome motivation and unwholesome motivation. Unwholesome motivation arises whenever there is ignorance of the way things are, avijjā. And that unwholesome motivation is called tanhā. In the formulation of the Four Noble Truths, dukkha is caused by craving, but the craving here is ignorance-based desire. That's the meaning of craving or tanhā. And then we contrast that with vijjā or understanding of the way things are. And the motivations that arise naturally from vijjā are not called craving, are not the cause of suffering, and they are the path to liberation. And they are called chanda, or sometimes dhammachanda or kusalachanda...
So this idea that Buddhism teaches that suffering is caused by desire, so we get rid of all desires and we don't have any suffering, is a gross distortion, a misrepresentation. What we need to do is channelling that energy from the unwholesome path to the wholesome path...
https://teachings.cittaviveka.org/category/audio-talks/
It's the highest on the list, 9th April. If you disagree with anything in the excerpt, please check first that I have not made transcription errors, and if I have, then I'm sorry.
I might post more excerpts later as I mull things over.