The Motion of Equanimity | Michael Uebel

I'd love to hear, you know, I think most people have kind of, you know, passing understanding of equanimity or kind of like a flavor that they recognize it in their nervous system when it hits or when they're in meditation and they kind of get a taste.

I'd love to hear how you see these different definitions of equanimity, you know, like kind of maybe the cultural stereotype of equanimity and more what you're pushing towards.

Yeah, I think that was really what I was attempting to accomplish was to think about through whether this idea that equanimity is stillness, as it's often portrayed, is actually right.

I mean, is it actually this kind of resolute immobility, this sort of sitting like a mountain, as it's often described and even practiced? And the more I investigated, I was less convinced that equanimity really was anything like a safe space that you could go to buffer against the world, which is how it sometimes gets framed.

And to think of it not as a buffer at all against tonalities of feeling and inner experience, but instead as just an open relationship to the world.

And when I say the world, I mean inner and outer worlds that can incessantly fold everything into a more capacious awareness.

So it's this constant sort of process of enfoldment that I think is really important to underscore.

It's not like others haven't talked about it, but I'm using a language that would help me sort of think through this idea of like, well, can we ever be balanced, for example? Is that even something to aim for? And I don't think it is because I don't think we're ever balanced as if that's some sort of act we've accomplished.

But I think it's true to say that we can be balanced in a process of balancing, right? And so understanding that balance might be an option among others, but even though I just said I don't think it is, but our inner stillness, is equanimity profound inner stillness? Possibly, but I think that's one option among others.

And so the key for me was trying not to get stuck wherever I found myself, both in practice and in thinking about this, and really to appreciate equanimity probably along Taoist lines more than anything, because I have a strong background in Taoism, but to just to appreciate equanimity as an instance of, or instances of adaptation to the complete flow of things,

you know,

so I really wanted to uncouple equanimity from acceptance and from non-judgment and, to appreciate this notion, like I was saying, that equanimity is a continual rebalancing and an essential mobility in everyday life.

And I talk a lot about different forms of mobility in the book, whether it's wandering or floating or hunting even.

I talk about hunting, playing, those kinds of things.

Because I believe that you can think about acceptance and non-judgment more broadly in terms of flexible and ultimately non-teleological modes of relating.

In other words, there isn't an end.

I've been writing more about the purposelessness of something like equanimity, or if I want to hedge my bets, I suppose I could say something like, you know, equanimity, and I think I do say this, equanimity has a purposeless purpose.

Yeah, it's...

Is it an end in itself? I'm not sure it is.

I think it's more like playing.

It's more like dancing.

It's more like floating.

It doesn't aim.

It's a specific result.

And so I think that's one place in which I may be departing a bit from some of the discourse.