I think this post fails as an explanation of equanimity. Which, of course, is dependent on my opinion about how equanimity works, so you have a pretty easy response of just disputing that the way I think equanimity works is correct. But idk what to do about this, so I’ll just go ahead with a critique based on how I think equanimity works. So I’d say a bunch of things:
Your mechanism describes how PNSE or equanimity leads to a decrease in anxiety via breaking the feedback loop. But equanimity doesn’t actually decrease the severity of an emotion, it just increases the valence! It’s true that you can decrease the emotion (or reduce the time during which you feel it), but imE this is an entirely separate mechanism. So between the two mechanisms of (a) decreasing the duration of an emotion (presumably by breaking the feedback loop) and (b) applying equanimity to make it higher valence, I think you can vary each one freely independent of the other. You could do a ton of (a) with zero (b), a ton of (b) with zero (a), a lot of both, or (which is the default state) neither.
Your mechanism mostly applies to mental discomfort, but equanimity is actually much easier to apply to physical pain. You can also apply it to anxiety, but it’s very hard. I can reduce suffering from moderately severe physical pain on demand (although there is very much a limit) and ditto with itching sensations, but I’m still struggling a lot with mental discomfort.
You can apply equanimity to positive sensations and it makes them better! This is a point I’d emphasize the most because imo it’s such a clear and important aspect of how equanimity works. One of the ways to feel really really good is to have a pleasant sensation, like listening to music you love, and then applying maximum equanimity to it. I’m pretty sure you can enter the first jhana this way (although to my continuous disappointment I’ve never managed to reach the first jhana with music, so I can’t guarantee it.)
… actually, you can apply equanimity to literally any conscious percept. Like literally anything; you can apply equanimity to the sense of space around you, or to the blackness in your visual field, or to white noise (or any other sounds), or to the sensation of breathing. The way to do this is hard to put into words (similar to how an elementary motor command like lifting a finger is hard to put into words); the way it’s usually described is by trying to accept/not fight a sensation. (Which imo is problematic because it sounds like equanimity means stopping to do something, when I’m pretty sure it’s actively doing something. Afaik there are ~zero examples of animals who learn to no longer care about pain, so it very much seems like the default is that pain is negative valence, and applying equanimity is an active process that increases valence.)
I mean again, you can just say you’ve talked about something else using the same term, but imo all of the above are actually not that difficult to verify. At least for me, it didn’t take me that long to figure out how to apply equanimity to minor physical pain, and from there, everything is just a matter of skill to do it more—it’s very much a continuous scale of being able to apply more and more equanimity, and I think the limit is very high—and of realizing that you can just do same thing wrt sensations that don’t have negative valence in the first place.
Huh, this is helpful, thanks, although I’m not quite sure what to make of it and how to move forward.
I do feel confused about how you’re using the term “equanimity”. I sorta have in mind a definition kinda like: neither very happy, nor very sad, nor very excited, nor very tired, etc. Google gives the example: “she accepted both the good and the bad with equanimity”. But if you’re saying “apply equanimity to positive sensations and it makes them better”, you’re evidently using the term “equanimity” in a different way than that. More specifically, I feel like when you say “apply equanimity to X”, you mean something vaguely like “do a specific tricky learned attention-control maneuver that has something to do with the sensory input of X”. That same maneuver could contribute to equanimity, if it’s applied to something like anxiety. But the maneuver itself is not what I would call “equanimity”. It’s upstream. Or sorry if I’m misunderstanding.
Also, I also want to distinguish two aspects of an emotion. In one, “duration of an emotion” is kinda like “duration of wearing my green hat”. I don’t have to be thinking about it the whole time, but it’s a thing happening with my body, and if I go to look, I’ll see that it’s there. Another aspect is the involuntary attention. As long as it’s there, I can’t not think about it, unlike my green hat. I expect that even black-belt PNSE meditators are unable to instantly turn off anger / anxiety / etc. in the former sense. I think these things are brainstem reactions that can be gradually unwound but not instantly. I do expect that those meditators would be able to more instantly prevent the anger / anxiety / etc. from controlling their thought process. What do you think?
Also, just for context, do you think you’ve experienced PNSE? Thanks!
(Kinda figured this, almost decided not to post the comment.)
Also, just for context, do you think you’ve experienced PNSE? Thanks!
Yes with some caveats. I think I’ve experienced no-self, which is what you describe from 6.2 onward. But if you’d asked me how far I am to enlightenment, I’d have said maybe 15%. Which is to say, I think no-self is a real thing you can achieve (and I definitely think it’s a net positive), but I think from there, the ladder goes way way higher. Like the “take one day vs. entire life” comment implies a goodness multiplier of at least 20000x compared to the minds of regular people. Even if we assume this is widely exaggerated (although people keep insisting that it’s not) and that the real multiplier is two OOMs smaller, than that’ still 200x, whereas I’d put no-self at somewhere between 1x and 2x. If someone did claim that just the no-self part gives you even a 200x multiplier (which I doubt the person in the twitter comment would say), then I’d just be scratching my head at that.
… which could be a sign that I’m delusional and haven’t really experienced no-self, but I think my experience fits quite well with your description (less anxiety, less self-reflective thoughts, identification with everything in awareness, etc.). Actually I think no-self + flow state is really very similar to regular flow state, which is again why the multiplier can’t be that high. So, yeah, in my model enlightenment and no-self are two radically different things, the first is way harder to achieve and presumably way way better, and I think I’ve experienced the second but I know I’m nowhere close to the first—if in fact it exists, which I suspect it does. (Sorry for the rambly answer.)
Also, I also want to distinguish two aspects of an emotion. In one, “duration of an emotion” is kinda like “duration of wearing my green hat”. I don’t have to be thinking about it the whole time, but it’s a thing happening with my body, and if I go to look, I’ll see that it’s there. Another aspect is the involuntary attention. As long as it’s there, I can’t not think about it, unlike my green hat. I expect that even black-belt PNSE meditators are unable to instantly turn off anger / anxiety / etc. in the former sense. I think these things are brainstem reactions that can be gradually unwound but not instantly. I do expect that those meditators would be able to more instantly prevent the anger / anxiety / etc. from controlling their thought process. What do you think?
Agree with all this.
More specifically, I feel like when you say “apply equanimity to X”, you mean something vaguely like “do a specific tricky learned attention-control maneuver that has something to do with the sensory input of X”. That same maneuver could contribute to equanimity, if it’s applied to something like anxiety. But the maneuver itself is not what I would call “equanimity”. I
I don’t think it feels that way. What it feels like is that, if you pick any item in awareness, there’s by default a tension with that thing, which makes it feel lower valence. If you apply equanimity—which as I said, I can best describe as ‘try not to resist’—then the apparent tension lessens. With pain, this like experiencing the pain but not suffering. With positive sensations, the best way I can describe it is that if you succeed in applying a decent amount of equanimity, you realize afterward that your enjoyment wasn’t “pure” but was plagued by attachment/craving. A decent way to describe it is that “pleasure turns into fulfillment”; I think that’s the term associated with good-sensations-that-have-no-craving-aspect. But in both cases they definitely become higher valence. And with neutral sensations it kinda still feels like you’ve removed craving or resistance, even though this doesn’t particularly make sense. Anyway, it really doesn’t feel like it’s an attention-control maneuver, it feels like it’s a property of the sensation.
I sorta have in mind a definition kinda like: neither very happy, nor very sad, nor very excited, nor very tired, etc. Google gives the example: “she accepted both the good and the bad with equanimity”
Imo meditators are often evasive when it comes to this topic and refuse to just say that meditation is supposed to make you feel better, even though it obviously does, and this is probably causally upstream of you writing this sentence. i think it’s just because ‘feeling better’ is generally associated with ‘feel more nice things’, and trying to chase pleasures is the opposite of meditation; you’re supposed to be content with what is (again, equanimity feels like not resisting; it’s sometimes analogized to the inverse of friction in a mechanical system). So yeah, I mean, applying tons of equanimity doesn’t make you feel more pleasure, but yeah it does feel really good/high-valence, just in a non-pleasur-y but fullfilment-y sense. (The one time I was on a formal retreat, the meditation teacher even complained when I mentioned that I had a goal for meditating, and I had to specify that this doesn’t mean I’m thinking about the goal while meditating; tbqh imo many people are just kinda bad at differentiating these things, but it’s really not that complicated.)
Your description of applying equanimity to pain is somewhat familiar. I gained this ability suddenly and seemingly independently of meditation. I agree that “not fighting it” is fitting but incomplete. I think a better one is “don’t look away, but straight at it”.
Mine is limited to injury- and to some extent fatigue-type pain, it hasn’t worked for head- or stomach aches or itches. There’s also an element of predictability: it works best when the pain is constant, less when it comes with a movement, and worst when its unpredictable. I still have a startle reaction to injury, and sometimes a short bit of pain before I’ve “processed it”. I also haven’t had good sensations become better. I almost wanted to say that it makes them fade too, sort of like you’d expect from equanimity (though that isn’t how I think of it) - it used to do that, but I realised it hasn’t in a long time.
I definitely think developing equanimity without meditation is a thing. The description checks out.
About the applicability, maybe you could extend it to other types of injuries (and positive sensations!) with a higher skill level? I doubt there are different types that work differently.
I think this post fails as an explanation of equanimity. Which, of course, is dependent on my opinion about how equanimity works, so you have a pretty easy response of just disputing that the way I think equanimity works is correct. But idk what to do about this, so I’ll just go ahead with a critique based on how I think equanimity works. So I’d say a bunch of things:
Your mechanism describes how PNSE or equanimity leads to a decrease in anxiety via breaking the feedback loop. But equanimity doesn’t actually decrease the severity of an emotion, it just increases the valence! It’s true that you can decrease the emotion (or reduce the time during which you feel it), but imE this is an entirely separate mechanism. So between the two mechanisms of (a) decreasing the duration of an emotion (presumably by breaking the feedback loop) and (b) applying equanimity to make it higher valence, I think you can vary each one freely independent of the other. You could do a ton of (a) with zero (b), a ton of (b) with zero (a), a lot of both, or (which is the default state) neither.
Your mechanism mostly applies to mental discomfort, but equanimity is actually much easier to apply to physical pain. You can also apply it to anxiety, but it’s very hard. I can reduce suffering from moderately severe physical pain on demand (although there is very much a limit) and ditto with itching sensations, but I’m still struggling a lot with mental discomfort.
You can apply equanimity to positive sensations and it makes them better! This is a point I’d emphasize the most because imo it’s such a clear and important aspect of how equanimity works. One of the ways to feel really really good is to have a pleasant sensation, like listening to music you love, and then applying maximum equanimity to it. I’m pretty sure you can enter the first jhana this way (although to my continuous disappointment I’ve never managed to reach the first jhana with music, so I can’t guarantee it.)
… actually, you can apply equanimity to literally any conscious percept. Like literally anything; you can apply equanimity to the sense of space around you, or to the blackness in your visual field, or to white noise (or any other sounds), or to the sensation of breathing. The way to do this is hard to put into words (similar to how an elementary motor command like lifting a finger is hard to put into words); the way it’s usually described is by trying to accept/not fight a sensation. (Which imo is problematic because it sounds like equanimity means stopping to do something, when I’m pretty sure it’s actively doing something. Afaik there are ~zero examples of animals who learn to no longer care about pain, so it very much seems like the default is that pain is negative valence, and applying equanimity is an active process that increases valence.)
I mean again, you can just say you’ve talked about something else using the same term, but imo all of the above are actually not that difficult to verify. At least for me, it didn’t take me that long to figure out how to apply equanimity to minor physical pain, and from there, everything is just a matter of skill to do it more—it’s very much a continuous scale of being able to apply more and more equanimity, and I think the limit is very high—and of realizing that you can just do same thing wrt sensations that don’t have negative valence in the first place.
Huh, this is helpful, thanks, although I’m not quite sure what to make of it and how to move forward.
I do feel confused about how you’re using the term “equanimity”. I sorta have in mind a definition kinda like: neither very happy, nor very sad, nor very excited, nor very tired, etc. Google gives the example: “she accepted both the good and the bad with equanimity”. But if you’re saying “apply equanimity to positive sensations and it makes them better”, you’re evidently using the term “equanimity” in a different way than that. More specifically, I feel like when you say “apply equanimity to X”, you mean something vaguely like “do a specific tricky learned attention-control maneuver that has something to do with the sensory input of X”. That same maneuver could contribute to equanimity, if it’s applied to something like anxiety. But the maneuver itself is not what I would call “equanimity”. It’s upstream. Or sorry if I’m misunderstanding.
Also, I also want to distinguish two aspects of an emotion. In one, “duration of an emotion” is kinda like “duration of wearing my green hat”. I don’t have to be thinking about it the whole time, but it’s a thing happening with my body, and if I go to look, I’ll see that it’s there. Another aspect is the involuntary attention. As long as it’s there, I can’t not think about it, unlike my green hat. I expect that even black-belt PNSE meditators are unable to instantly turn off anger / anxiety / etc. in the former sense. I think these things are brainstem reactions that can be gradually unwound but not instantly. I do expect that those meditators would be able to more instantly prevent the anger / anxiety / etc. from controlling their thought process. What do you think?
Also, just for context, do you think you’ve experienced PNSE? Thanks!
(Kinda figured this, almost decided not to post the comment.)
Yes with some caveats. I think I’ve experienced no-self, which is what you describe from 6.2 onward. But if you’d asked me how far I am to enlightenment, I’d have said maybe 15%. Which is to say, I think no-self is a real thing you can achieve (and I definitely think it’s a net positive), but I think from there, the ladder goes way way higher. Like the “take one day vs. entire life” comment implies a goodness multiplier of at least 20000x compared to the minds of regular people. Even if we assume this is widely exaggerated (although people keep insisting that it’s not) and that the real multiplier is two OOMs smaller, than that’ still 200x, whereas I’d put no-self at somewhere between 1x and 2x. If someone did claim that just the no-self part gives you even a 200x multiplier (which I doubt the person in the twitter comment would say), then I’d just be scratching my head at that.
… which could be a sign that I’m delusional and haven’t really experienced no-self, but I think my experience fits quite well with your description (less anxiety, less self-reflective thoughts, identification with everything in awareness, etc.). Actually I think no-self + flow state is really very similar to regular flow state, which is again why the multiplier can’t be that high. So, yeah, in my model enlightenment and no-self are two radically different things, the first is way harder to achieve and presumably way way better, and I think I’ve experienced the second but I know I’m nowhere close to the first—if in fact it exists, which I suspect it does. (Sorry for the rambly answer.)
Agree with all this.
I don’t think it feels that way. What it feels like is that, if you pick any item in awareness, there’s by default a tension with that thing, which makes it feel lower valence. If you apply equanimity—which as I said, I can best describe as ‘try not to resist’—then the apparent tension lessens. With pain, this like experiencing the pain but not suffering. With positive sensations, the best way I can describe it is that if you succeed in applying a decent amount of equanimity, you realize afterward that your enjoyment wasn’t “pure” but was plagued by attachment/craving. A decent way to describe it is that “pleasure turns into fulfillment”; I think that’s the term associated with good-sensations-that-have-no-craving-aspect. But in both cases they definitely become higher valence. And with neutral sensations it kinda still feels like you’ve removed craving or resistance, even though this doesn’t particularly make sense. Anyway, it really doesn’t feel like it’s an attention-control maneuver, it feels like it’s a property of the sensation.
Imo meditators are often evasive when it comes to this topic and refuse to just say that meditation is supposed to make you feel better, even though it obviously does, and this is probably causally upstream of you writing this sentence. i think it’s just because ‘feeling better’ is generally associated with ‘feel more nice things’, and trying to chase pleasures is the opposite of meditation; you’re supposed to be content with what is (again, equanimity feels like not resisting; it’s sometimes analogized to the inverse of friction in a mechanical system). So yeah, I mean, applying tons of equanimity doesn’t make you feel more pleasure, but yeah it does feel really good/high-valence, just in a non-pleasur-y but fullfilment-y sense. (The one time I was on a formal retreat, the meditation teacher even complained when I mentioned that I had a goal for meditating, and I had to specify that this doesn’t mean I’m thinking about the goal while meditating; tbqh imo many people are just kinda bad at differentiating these things, but it’s really not that complicated.)
Just curious what you make of this:
Your description of applying equanimity to pain is somewhat familiar. I gained this ability suddenly and seemingly independently of meditation. I agree that “not fighting it” is fitting but incomplete. I think a better one is “don’t look away, but straight at it”.
Mine is limited to injury- and to some extent fatigue-type pain, it hasn’t worked for head- or stomach aches or itches. There’s also an element of predictability: it works best when the pain is constant, less when it comes with a movement, and worst when its unpredictable. I still have a startle reaction to injury, and sometimes a short bit of pain before I’ve “processed it”. I also haven’t had good sensations become better. I almost wanted to say that it makes them fade too, sort of like you’d expect from equanimity (though that isn’t how I think of it) - it used to do that, but I realised it hasn’t in a long time.
I definitely think developing equanimity without meditation is a thing. The description checks out.
About the applicability, maybe you could extend it to other types of injuries (and positive sensations!) with a higher skill level? I doubt there are different types that work differently.