Equanimity

Ok, noted the point.

But I believe this is the common and typical ‘friend’ thing until something obvious happens. This happens all the time everywhere. It is not easy to detect human potentials of evil that are hidden within the mind/brain of individual[s] until they state their beliefs openly or commit evil acts and violence.
The various known cults, e.g. Jim Jones, Scientology, David Koresh, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh , etc. who has many friends and supporters from all over when they first emerged as very positive to society but many abandoned them when the cults later turned out to commit terrible evils and violence.

What is critical is whether they share the same evil potentials in person or beliefs.

Btw, I don’t idolize the Dalai Lama and I think he is drunk with compassion to be very blind and stupid not to understand the evils and violent potential of Islam.

Right, when you cannot find a solution on your own, or at least, when you’re used to relying on others for solutions, you look for other people’s guidance. Everyone does that from time to time but some people do it more frequently than others. No doubt about that. There is also no doubt that it is superior to do everything on your own than to rely on others for help; but in reality noone does everything on their own. That’s just an ideal. With that out of our way, I have to say, and probably repeat, that I have no interest in Buddhism. Therefore, I am not looking for a solution in it. Instead, what I am doing, and only in this thread, is focusing on what is good in Buddhism. Not because I am looking for a solution but because someone brought the subject of Buddhism in this thread. In other words, I am merely socially interacting. Other than that, I do not care about Buddhism and in many ways I am repulsed by Eastern thought (and what goes under the name of holism in general.)

My holism is of personal kind rather than of universal kind. In this regard, I think I differ from Prismatic. Prismatic thinks that the universe is a oneness, a whole, a unity, a singleness, etc. He constantly repeats that the ultimate goal is the good of humanity. I don’t care about humanity. He’s a monist on a universal level. I am not. I do not think that “all is one”. I am a pluralist and I am more inclined to take the position that unity is an indication of blindness rather than of objective reality; and I am certainly disinclined to take the position that the opposite, the disunity, is merely an appearance. I am more sympathetic to the position that the more you are engaged with reality the more change you perceive (but that, at the same time, you never stop perceiving stasis since that’s how our minds work.) So I follow the footsteps of Heraclitus, or at the very least, I am more sympathetic to Heraclitean and Nietzschean position, than that of dialectical monism (which acknowledges antagonism but subsumes it to oneness.)

Let’s not confuse what is real with what is ideal. High-energy is an ideal. It is not what is real even in the strongest organism. Every organism goes through periods of high-energy and low-energy. Those who are constantly on high-energy die very quickly. We all have to sleep, right? Sleep is a low energy state. Without sleep, we die. My point is merely that there must be a balance between engagement with and disengagement from reality. You need both and not only one. Short-term weakness is long-term strength. And vice versa. Short-term strength is long-term weakness. Appearances can be deceptive.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

The above is my slant on what true equanimity is all about.

I know I’m late here, but this is a good topic and I have thoughts.

Put that way, the question being asked is whether one should base their life on equanimity. To make it the organizing principle.

I generally think of equanimity as the positive moment when self-control and emotional/psychological wisdom prevails in a tough situation. This is a virtue in particular contexts, but I would not universalize it. If I understand the question being asked in this OP, then I find equanimity, like most other singular principles, too limited to be a lone ruling principle. Probably better to have many gods.

This also comes to mind…

Agreed. Once it is universalized, it is problematic. There are crises when it is good to remain calm despite the stakes. The stakes might make one want to scream - an escaped tiger is running at you and your child - but it better to not flip out, but rather to use the adrenalin to act, decisively. I think actually these situations are fairly rare. Here’s the trick: since society - let’s say Western right now, so Europe and the US, despite the wide variations involved in subcultures and even at national level - dislikes and punishes emotional expression except in certain situations - you can cry publically at moves (at least if you are woman), you can scream with rage at soccer games, etc. Given that people judge emotions harshlyl, equanimity can be a good strategy, in a more general way when dealing with others expecially strangers. But that is a sad compromise. Because there is a problem in society where hiding emotions is culturally valued and deviations punished, then, yes, it is often the wise move to stifle emotions. But we shouldn’t confuse this with some essential good.

It’s always better to be in charge of your emotions than to be under their control.

They are you, a part of you. Who is this other you you trust to rule over that part of you and why is that part in charge? Why not be a team? Or really one person?

That’s what it means to be “one person”. That’s what “local holism” is all about. You are a unity to the extent you are in control of your emotions. You should be the one deciding when you will express this or that emotion and not your circumstances. Just because you feel like doing something doesn’t mean you should do that something. There must be a clean internal yes signalling it’s safe for the emotion to be expressed.

Sure, I explained above that GIVEN how much society tends to punish and be afraid of emotions, one should be careful. It’s a sad compromise, but it is not one with any essential value. I am a unity to the extent I do not need to control my emotions. To have one part control another part, in fact to have parts at all, is by definition not to be unity.

Just because I think I should do something does not mean that I should. I see people with ideals, self-hatred, images from media guiding their thoughts, fashion, ‘noble’ dreams, telling their emotions how to feel, telling themselves what to do - even though it feels wrong, and so on.

You don’t have to choose between thought and feeling, but since we are so trained to see this as a duality and to control our emotions and to disidentify with our emotions - see the way you worded the last two posts - we are split. They are ways to move towards unity.

It’s very sad that you think that there is only one reason to regulate our emotions – fear of being punished by society.

What about self-motivated individuals?

The problem is that the universe does not work according to our expectations, desires, needs, etc. So adaptation is required if you want to maintain unity.

I mentioned earlier in this thread that there are situations, generally rare in modern society, where, regulating emotions is necessary. Generally when there is an immediate physical threat, but here’s the thing. You are used to the split. You are used to having your emotions judged and shut down. The emotions, when split off like this seem disruptive, essentially, rather than because of the jailer/regulator —> jailed regulated dynamic. This is clear in the following…

Emotions are the prime motivators.

My emotional reactions pick up hte nature of the universe all the time. You are assuming something. LIke if I feel and express my emotions I am a baby in the corner with no intellectual understanding. That’s because you have the split and even venerate it. When the split is not present the emotions are informed by what the thinky parts of the mind are aware of, and the mind is free to fully notice the world since it does not have the role of controller. I know this is hard for people to get because they are so used to the split and what this has done to both the intellectual and emotional parts of the mind - both are damaged by this.

If I maximize my time with people who do not judge emotions, form friendships with people who are not afraid of passion, not afraid to be honest about how things make them feel, both good and bad, get a partner, which I have, who also is open, then I do not have to shut down my emotions as much as the average person. Work is of course the trickiest, but even there it can be done.

Allow those portions to express freely and they are not like how you experience yours.

But if you are sure you would become the irrational disconnected person you seem to think you would if you expressed emotions and allowed full integrations, then perhaps you are right. Do what you want. But when you talk about how I must be, you are not describing me at all.

You are trying very hard to downemphasize the fact that it is changing environments in general that necessitate emotional regulation. When you’re used to one kind of environment and then you are introduced to a different kind of environment this necessitates a change in your emotions in order to preserve self-unity. Some people are not used to modern environments so they require quite a bit of emotional regulation. You are pretending that emotional regulation is something that only makes sense within natural environments.

Yes, short-sighted people can only detect immediate threats. When it comes to long-term consequences that are moreover negative in their character, they are completely blind. So, for example, they cannot understand monogamy. Polygamy is simply not immediately dangerous – you need to use your intellect in order to perceive it as dangerous.

As I said, you have a problem seeing that emotional regulation within modern contexts is not merely due to a fear of being punished by society.

You can say that. But then you will also have to say that emotions are organized in a hierarchy. There is a dominant emotion and then there are many subservient emotions. And when these subservient emotions are not doing their job, i.e. when they are not aligned with the dominant emotion, they must be adjusted if you want to preserve the hierarchy. Otherwise, anarchy ensues.

Your emotions can only deal with what is familiar to them. Once we find ourselves in a situation that is not familiar to them, they become self-destructive . . . unless controlled. So reason must take over. You must restrain yourself. You must shape your emotions. You must decide what is the most important thing and then subordinate everything to that thing. Noone is speaking against emotions in general but against emotions that do not fit the situation.

This process of splitting, of division, will never stop unless the environment remains stable forever which is an unrealistic expectation. Instead, the environment changes and you are expected to adapt accordingly if you want to preserve some semblence of unity. There is no other option.

You are endorsing the childish tendency to surrender to emotions.

The subject of regulating and modulating emotions has been around for ten of thousands years ago within the Eastern spirituality sphere.

Note Aristotle’s

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry
[list]with the right person and
to the right degree and
at the right time and
for the right purpose, and
in the right way -
that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. -Aristotle[/list:u]

Are you familiar with Emotional Intelligence -EQ;

There are tons of research done on the subject of emotion.

In general, emotions are entangled fundamentally in almost all normal human activities in various degrees [very low to high]. Thus for human behavior to be efficient and optimal, the degrees of emotions need to be regulated and modulated [see Aristotle above] either spontaneously or mindfully.

I bet your emotions are regulated spontaneously without your conscious awareness, but if you do not develop the skill to modulate your emotions consciously and mindfully, there is the possibility [if your natural inhibitors fail] you could end up in ‘Hell’ on Earth.

You really don’t have to try to read my mind, I think it just adds a layer of noise. Emotions will change due to environment, urban, social, with other species, whatever. I am saying that much of the control regulation of emotions is because we are trained to have a split, a jailer and a jailed. The assumption is that one part of me must regulate another part of me. But the reason it seems this, I am trying to make clear, but perhaps doing a bad job, is because we do accept emotions, tend to favor one or two, and the more we do not accept them, the less they regulate themselves. The more you accept them, the more the emotions themselves adjust to the situation. Sure, my rage might make we want to tell my boss that he is an asshole, but if I am in fluid contact with all my emotions, I will not just feel anger and will adjust on an emotional level, without mind neocortex ‘regulating’.

I appreciate the example. It’s a good one. But my intuition/emotions set off warning bells immediately. I know this on a gut level, for me at least. I have been in environments that were partly polyamourous. I did not have to reason my way to avoiding that. In fact I would worry about how disconnected someone would have to be that they would need to use reason for a decision like that.

I wasn’t talking about external jail. I was talking about how one part of you is now the jailer of another part of you.

If you mean there is a dominant emotion in the person over time, in all situations, then that is a problem. Emotions should relate to what is happening and what one’s goals are. If you have a lifelong dominant emotion, you are avoiding other emotions, you are cutting off parts of yourself.

Not my experience.

Good. Glad you made that clear. My point is that is you work on accepting emotions, you have to clear out the past, then the emotions are not reacting to past situations in the present when things trigger it. Emotions are often the first things that give me insight into new experiences. Warning me, for example. Not infallibly of course, but then I still judge emotions, I have not undone all that training.

I adapt and react to what is happening. I don’t have a single state, emotionally or otherwise.

See, you see it as a war, you couch it in that kind of terms. And I do not surrender to emotions, I do not support the split. I do not think this can be understood if one thinks the split is inevitable. This twists the emotions, the other parts of the mind are cut off also, and the emotions seem to fit the judgments, when in fact it is the judgments that twisted them. And while I can certainly be playful and childlike, I am hardly childish. If you think I am, you probably shouldn’t waste time discussing things with me.

Do you consider yourself to be a romantic?

That’s what you do when you suppress the impulse to get angry at your boss. One part of you, the one which says don’t get angry at your boss, suppresses the other part of you, the one which wants to get angry at the boss.

Right. Next time you feel like getting angry at your boss, don’t try to control yourself, just accept the impulse and you won’t get angry. Sounds realistic? Not quite.

That would be self-control.

That’s what self-control does. It puts one emotion in the jail so that another can leave the jail and take its place. In the case with your boss, you jailed your impulse to tell your boss he’s an asshole so that you could tell him something more productive.

Note that this thread is not about reason but about equanimity. Two different concepts. Equanimity is about making sure you are not emotionally overwhelmed. It is achieved through reduction of stimulation, through relaxation. You don’t have to make intelligent decisions to have equanimity. The process of relaxation has as its ultimate consequence calmness, inactivity, passivity, low energy, unconsciousness, etc. It’s a right brained process, little to do with the left brain. It does not operate on specific emotions but on emotions as a whole. In other words, it does not fixate on reducing certain emotions and increasing others. It works by cutting off all emotions and then gradually reintroducing all of them. What this means is that you never know in advance which emotions you are supressing and which you are expressing. It makes you spontaneous. So this isn’t the type of self-control that leads to repression or what some call “body armor”. It is actually the type of self-control that fights against repression.

Two responses 1) Yes, I cannot be fully expressive of my emotions because of the dominance of a belief system you share with the majority. 2) Fear is part of why I regulate my rage. Given the state of society, I cannot express all my emotions. HOwever I can maximize the expression of my emotions and have done this over decades. The judgments held by the majority are groundless.
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Again, since you are split off from your emotions, you think one part must control the other. Since I have worked on removing this split I do not have those experiences. I do not find myself holding back rage, because my other emotions are present. I don’t have to reason my way to not expressing anger at him.

Nope. Self-control was what it used to be like. It is a fluid response and based on emotions.

No, I do not put emotions in jail. Fear guides me when dealing with people who have power. The details for precisely how I navigate the situation are informed by other parts of the brain, say the neocortex. But I am not stifling rage. And your model is not realistic for anyone really. We don’t replace the suppressed emotion, we present a false emotion, or a lack of emotion. At least, that’s what I did back when I believed in the split like you do and that is what people in general do.

People get overwhelmed because they are split off. something triggers them and suddenly emotions they have suppressed are present and other parts of the mind get shut down. Based on the split, this either or false dichotomy.

If equanimity is your goal, you are suppressing emotions. I also notice that you are changing the explanation, both with the replacing emotions model and now with this sinking into inactivity return to introducing the emotions model. It seems like a way to try to counter my arguments without acknowledging that you needed to change yours.

In any case, I think we’ve reached the impasse. I used to think your assumptions and ideas were correct. I know that from the inside. All the judgments you have are based on inexperience. A common inexperience, but there it is. Note, I am not saying it is because you are young, though I suspect you are. People my age have these assumptions also and are also afraid of what they also might call surrendering to ones emotions, because they have very little experience with really expressing their emotions. They do not take the opportunities to express when alone or with other people who do not judge emotions, so they are unused to it, split and yes, get overwhelmed. If you pass through that over time, you experience that all these ideas are not correct and that the war metaphor is both telling and confused. You haven’t tried fully expressing and allowing the range of not so conscious emotions to be expressed in a fluid way over a significant period of time. You are quite controlled even when not in situations where there is no boss, the boss has been introjected. You have the inner boss and aim for equanimity. You have no base to be certain, but you are. And that’s fine, but it’s not worth continuing this discussion for me. Maybe in five years we can take it up again, should we be here or back here then.

I do meditation type activities, several, but the goal is not to regulate emotions but rather to slow down the chatter and also in those states, where there is less noice, I can learn things. Even in these states strong emotions can arise, especially if the insights connect to other people, my own patterns, etc. I have nothing against being relaxed, in fact it’s a treasure. So are other states.

Osho was a Buddhist and he was far from an Apollonian. Everything points to the fact that he was a notorious Dionysian, very absorbed in the sensual.

Consider Chapter No. 5 in his book “From Sex to Superconsciousness”:
balbro.com/s2s/s2s2.htm

The chapter is titled “From repression to emancipation”.

Here’s an excerpt:

Another guru. Osho said pretty things but engaged in destructive behavior. He:

  1. Used drugs (Valium and nitrous oxide)
  2. Committed suicide
  3. Drove his last girlfriend to suicide
  4. Insisted on abortion of his pregnant girlfriends

He also exhibited self-aggrandizing paranoic ideas (the government was out to get him because of his ‘transformational’ and ‘liberating’ ideas). If life is so wonderful, as he claimed, why be so destructive yourself? If he’s sensual, it’s also a destructive and selfish type of sensuality. This is also why you can’t trust drug users, no matter how enlightened or insightful they are. Their words and actions often don’t match. If the view eventually leads to self destruction (and likely originates from it), whether physical or psychological, how is it a superior view, if only for a high that it gives, which would make it akin to any feel-good drug? And originally driven by what? Overwhelming joy and happiness? I think not. Through words, he gave people what they wanted, on a shiny platter, but he couldn’t hide his own true nature which betrayed his facade. Anyway, this is my take on him, and this is also why I’m wary of Nietzche as well.

How is that relevant?

You brought up another cult leader in this thread. Why?
Why do such shady characters keep showing up in this thread?

Buddhism, and its idea of equanimity is used today as a weapon of compassion baiting, or using compassion as a form of passive aggression, and you have to be wary of that. It’s not innocent.
It’s now used to pursue rainbow agenda and normalize victimhood and passivity, all of which are portrayed as positive aspects of Buddhism. Sensitivity, tolerance, forgiveness, generosity, selflessness, understanding, equanimity, blah, blah, all seeen in Buddhism as values to live by. If you go that way, I will assume you have already sought your own end.