Loading summary
Transcript63 lines
- [00:02]
Commercial Announcer
This episode is brought to you by NBA on Prime. This Tuesday at 8:30 Eastern it's the Emirates NBA Cup Championship Game on Prime. This year's quest for the cup has been building to this the championship game live from Las Vegas. Not a Prime member. Sign up for a 30 day free trial to get started today. The Emirates NBA Cup Championship Game this Tuesday at 8:30 Eastern only on Prime. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com amazonprime for details.
- [00:30]
Indeed Sponsor Voice
This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to move your business forward, but first you need to find the right team. Start your search with Indeed sponsored Jobs. It can help you reach qualified candidates fast, ensuring your listing is the first one they see. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. See the results for yourself. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply.
- [00:59]
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
Limu Emu and Doug Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
- [01:12]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Fascinating.
- [01:13]
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [01:16]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [01:19]
KFC Ad Voice
Cut the camera.
- [01:20]
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
They see us.
- [01:21]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. Affiliates excludes Massachusetts welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:37]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
This is the Imperfect Buddha Podcast on.
- [01:42]
Podcast Introduction Narrator
The New Books Network, sponsored by O' Connell Coaching.
- [01:47]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Find out more at Imperfect Buddha.com.
- [02:01]
Podcast Introduction Narrator
Michael Ebel is a psychotherapist and researcher currently based in Austin, Texas. He is recognized as a pioneer in applying psychological insights to the historical intersection of social, personal, and imaginative phenomena. He is a research affiliate at the University of Texas, Austin, and he is a psychotherapist working in both the public and private sectors. He has taught literature and critical theory at several universities, including the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, and the University of Kentucky. Today we will be talking about his book Seeds of Equanimity, Knowing, and Being, which was published this year. It is a text that explores the nature of equanimity from Eastern and Western philosophical perspectives. Michael challenges the popular, somewhat modern view often associated with mindfulness, that equanimity is a state of impartial quiescence, a solidity or inner stillness that is somehow achieved through emotional regulation. His book goes much further. It reanimates the concept of equanimity by drawing on its philosophical and psychological genealogy. He traces its origins and development and puts together a framework and image of equanimity, which is very rich indeed this is not just a book for practitioners of Buddhism or mindfulness, but for those interested in what it means to be truly equanimous. Two practical points before we get into it. Number one, I have just had some dental work, so my voice is not quite as it should be. Hopefully that will be temporary. And two, Michael was gung ho on the introduction and dive straight in. So Michael will give you a sense of who he is from the get go. Enjoy.
- [04:15]
Dr. Michael Ebel
In a more formal introduction.
- [04:17]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Right.
- [04:17]
Dr. Michael Ebel
I was initially trained as a medievalist, and I earned a PhD in medieval studies and taught at research universities for over a decade. And became clearer and clearer to me that the ideas that were preoccupying me and that I had the privilege of teaching in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis called for real world application. And so initially I had toyed with the idea of becoming an analyst, but yet I would need a license to practice. And so I went back to school and I did some psychoanalytic training and teaching, and I still publish in the field, but I didn't ultimately become an analyst. Instead, I was fortunate to find early great satisfaction in working with military veterans and have been in the public sector since and along with a private psychotherapy practice in Austin, Texas. And I'm currently affiliated with a research center at the University of Texas and continue to think about how my varied interests kind of fit together in a more or less coherent endeavor called intellectual history. And the really interesting work for me is taking a concept and providing a kind of historical and philosophical context for it, and which really led to the present book on equanimity from a kind.
- [05:52]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Of more mundane question, how do you manage to juggle all of that?
- [05:57]
Dr. Michael Ebel
It's a challenge, of course, working 40 hours a week full time and then doing a private practice and managing to basically write on the weekends.
- [06:10]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Do you kind of draw very specific forms of satisfaction from each of these, what appear to be vocations? Do they kind of coalesce into a certain kind of sense of purpose in your life?
- [06:22]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Yeah, absolutely. I think they're interwoven in nice ways because I have the opportunity actually several times a week to lead groups with military veterans on topics such as mindfulness and how equanimity might be useful for treating ptsd. And. And yeah, it's been nice to teach mindfulness to military veterans for, I believe, for the last 15 years, and turned out that sort of. One day about five years ago, I was talking with another clinician who also teaches mindfulness to the same population, and he and I were comparing Notes. And almost simultaneously, we said that, you know, what we really are teaching is equanimity. And while compassion and loving kindness and those sorts of things which are typically taught under the heading of mindfulness kind of pro social activities, dispositions were really not, in our view, the perfect antidotes to the kind of stuckness and narrowness of vision that we saw in our patients. And so equanimity kind of appeared to be a path toward psychological flexibility that I think veterans needed to navigate the world with less friction and greater possibility. And so the book was kind of born out of a desire to give equanimity what I think it had been missing in the current literature. And namely, a context of ideas in which to think about equanimity as something more than a balanced or impartial mind.
- [08:04]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
We've kind of stumbled on your book already, so we should make it explicit. So it's been published this year. There's a kind of key sort of proposition that kicks off the whole project. So maybe you can respond to that and tell us about why the title's important. So the phrase I got from it is this idea that equanimity is not stillness. And if you're going to talk about mindfulness and practices and the kind of spiritual setting that that term tends to find itself within, well, stillness might be the first sort of association that people make. Why have you made that a key point in your exploration, critique, and development of this term?
- [08:46]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Yeah, I think there were. Initially, when I started writing, there were two sensibilities about equanimity that I wanted to rethink. And that first one is, is precisely that notion of whether or not equanimity is really stillness as it's often portrayed? And is it a kind of resolute mobility or solidity in the face of realities that are typically figured as adverse? And so we know, in typical practices, the assumption of the attitude of a mountain, right, sort of sitting like a mountain is often the way that equanimity is described and practiced, outlined in certain meditations. And it seemed to me that equanimity was not a safe place that one goes in some effort to buffer against the world. It's rather a kind of spacious awareness and not at all a buffer against the kind of tonalities of feeling. It's. Equanimity becomes, for me, you know, that relationship to the world that incessantly folds everything into a more capacious awareness. It's a sort of constant process of unfoldment. And it's very helpful in the sense that it offers, if you don't think of it as stillness, it's helpful in the sense that it offers a kind of what I would call a kind of three dimensional view of the emotional landscape, for example. So in other words, we're at a point where we're beyond accepting what I'm afraid of or what I'm not afraid of. We're beyond binaries like pleasure and unpleasure and rejection and acceptance and avoidance and engagement, those kind of things. And equanimity allows for all of that in, in my view and kind of folds it into the full range of experience. And so the words that you see very typically to describe equanimity, the kind of adjectives that are used are, you know, it's unshakable or it's unflappable or balanced is one word that I wanted to key on in the book in the sense that I don't think one is ever balanced, as if that's an act that's accomplished, but one is balancing constantly. And so we move then beyond the kind of profound inner stillness where stillness, we could say, is one option, but it's an option among others. And so the key for me, and some of this came out of doing acceptance and commitment therapy work as well with my clients and patients, is the key is not getting stuck sort of wherever you find yourself. Right? So equanimity can't resemble anything that's not unyielding or steadfast. And it's more than serenity, it's more than calm, because it offers a kind of instance of possibility of adaptation to the flow of things. And so that's really what I wanted to do, was to uncouple, in a nutshell, sort of uncouple equanimity from acceptance and non judgment. And that seemed to me to require appreciating that equanimity is a matter of, as I said, continual rebalancing and a sort of essential mobility in everyday life. And ultimately for me, a kind of agility that is unintentional, which is another aspect of equanimity that's I think, currently put forward is the notion that it must be intentional. But I really wanted to think through things like acceptance and non judgment a bit and think of them more broadly in terms of flexible and non teleological modes of relating and perceiving and being in the world and knowing the world, and that's the subtitle of the book, which is knowing and being. So that was one, that was one of the Things I really wanted to rethink. And I also wanted to rethink this, which is related to what I was just saying, which is that, you know, what is the purpose of equanimity ultimately? And could we better describe equanimity as purposeless or as sometimes I'll put it hedging my bets a bit, I suppose, but to call it a kind of purposeless purpose. And so when I describe equanimity as non teleological, I wanted to explore the possibility that its end is in itself. And it's like play, which I talk about, it's like dancing, it's like floating, it doesn't aim at a specific result. And so through the book I offer a number of examples of that. Whether it's the Japanese tea service, whether it's Flannery or wandering, or the Olympian view from low earth orbit hunting. And this kind of to point in gesture toward a kind of non interfering awareness which is devoid of purpose. That I think as I was looking briefly at some scientific discovery, I was intrigued by the notion that often scientific discovery is in the hands of relative beginners or the, you know, people who have a generally more flexible sort of mind than say an expert would. And this purposeless equanimity, it struck me, is very consistent with a number of thinkers, whether it's Abraham Maslow who would label this without using the word equanimity, but he would call it b cognition or being cognition or trigon. Burrow is a really interesting figure not often appreciated in the history of psychoanalysis and group analysis, who called it co tension versus ditension or Heidegger's notion of the meditative versus the calculative. There were lots of ways to sort of discuss this and I wanted to mobilize some of those for the listener tuning in.
- [16:15]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
I think they might be wondering something that I'm wondering, which is that there are a lot of very interesting terms and phrases that you're sharing and you're centering around what we might define as a placeholder for now this word equanimity, intellectual history, of course, can take different forms and perhaps you can say a little bit more about that. But why ask so much of this term? Why is equanimity the one that stood out for you, as the one that could both be a kind of. What should we say? Well, if it's a verb, a movement into these different characteristics you're describing, why not something else? Why?
- [16:58]
Dr. Michael Ebel
That I was interested in, I think, distinguishing it from Buddhism, where the term is often figured right and it often belongs to Buddhism, if you will. And it clearly has a hallowed place in Buddhist visions of the processes of awakening. It has a very clear association with samadhi. It's the last of the eight elements of the noble Eightfold Path. It has this kind of status as the final of the four Brahma Viharas. It ranks as the last of the seven factors of enlightenment or awakening. And it also has a status as the fourth and ultimate jhana, that meditative absorption, where in the fourth jhana, happiness and discontent are replaced in fact with total equanimity. So this is what I'm getting, right? So this place is the last of the ten paramitas, the perfections in the Theravadan tradition. And it also, as we know, has a supreme function in Buddhism, is offering kind of protection against the eight worldly winds, right of praise and blame and gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disgrace, those kind of things. And so it was really that sense that, you know, equanimity. Why is equanimity the last of the Eightfold Path? Why is it the final Brahma Vihara? You know, why is it the ultimate Jhna? Why is it the last of the ten parameters? So it, it sort of begged a question of just how significant is this and can it just be folded into, you know, well, universal love as it gets folded into and things like that. And I was wondering really about what the nature of the awakened mind actually is, which is to say that I think it possesses an immensely broad state of awareness and is like this, this undivided context for the experience of things. And that's really kind of what I, what I wanted to examine. I mean, there's no, in Buddhism, there's no univocal view of equanimity, right? I mean, there's no univocal Buddhism even, right. But generally speaking, it kind of looks like the disposition that people talk about, such as take Bhikkhu on Alayo notes that it's the fourth immeasurable. And for him it rounds out the sort of other three. Compassion, sympathetic joy, loving kindness. And I think there's this merit to much of what he's saying is that these other three are more sort of proactive and joyful. He says, but equanimity is this, as he puts it, a kind of open hearted stepping back. I wanted to examine what that means, to step back to create space. He sees it generally as a way to allow others to proceed in the way they wish, rather than imposing one's preferences and the belief that this, as opposed to that might be better for them. Really wanted to again, kind of understand what equanimity is supposed to do in Buddhism and kind of what it actually might be doing.
- [20:32]
1-800-Contacts Ad Voice
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body.
- [20:35]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying.
- [20:39]
1-800-Contacts Ad Voice
Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [20:47]
Dr. Michael Ebel
And breathe.
- [20:49]
1-800-Contacts Ad Voice
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.
- [20:56]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [21:00]
Capella University Ad Voice
1-800-Contacts at Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more@capella.edu.
- [21:32]
1-800-Contacts Ad Voice
This is a real good story about.
- [21:34]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Bronx and his dad, Ryan, Real United Airlines customers.
- [21:37]
Commercial Announcer
We were returning home and one of.
- [21:39]
Dr. Michael Ebel
The flight attendants asked Bronx if he.
- [21:41]
Commercial Announcer
Wanted to see the flight deck and meet Kath and Andrew.
- [21:43]
Dr. Michael Ebel
I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future. It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight.
- [21:59]
Commercial Announcer
Deck will stick with us forever.
- [22:00]
Dr. Michael Ebel
That's how good leads the way.
- [22:02]
KFC Ad Voice
A KFC tale in the Pursuit of Flavor the holidays were tricky for the Colonel. He loved people, but he also loved peace and qu? So he cooked up KFC's 499 chicken pot pie. Warm, flaky, with savory sauce and vegetables. It's a tender, chicken filled excuse to get some time to yourself and step away from decking the halls, whatever that means. The Colonel lived so we could chicken KFC's chicken pot pie. The best $4.99 you'll spend this season.
- [22:29]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Prices and participation may vary.
- [22:30]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
While supplies last. Taxes, tips and fees extra. Well, maybe we can also talk about some practical applications and within the way that you're elaborating this, this rich understanding of equanimity as a verb. Dynamic engagement is part of what you're describing with these different takes and perspectives on, on how you've been elaborating your understanding of it. You've said that the classic kind of images of, well, I don't want to say stoic ness, but it's a kind of sternness. Right. It's a word you've used so far. And also a kind of stillness and an ability to withstand stand. So if it becomes dynamic, if the mountain softens and moves into the world, how does it look for a practitioner?
- [23:14]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Yeah. So I think like we could take the example of ptsd, one that I think provides a nice contrast with what equanimity is up to, but also a kind of way of seeing the world that's ultimately to be folded into equanimity. So we could bring in a lot of things here. We could bring in anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder or even depression, where you have a kind of myopic view of the world. Right. And so in the case of PTSD or anxiety, it can be a fear based kind of view of the world and it screens out from attention that which is not immediately important to a scanning system, which is interested in what is dangerous and what is threatening, what is fear inducing and so forth. And it, it's a way of sort of prejudging the world. It's a way of using a kind of consciousness that I could usefully compare to as a spotlight. Right. It doesn't, as opposed to allowing it, it sort of focuses with intense observation and I think mindfulness sort of can do the, do the same thing. But the issue here is that with patience, often it's, you know, observe that a particular way of seeing the world, such as PTSD becomes the form or the style of all ways of seeing the world and all relationships, or at least a great deal of them, as it craves certainty, for example, about the past, which is productive, often of guilt among those who suffer from ptsd. And it also demands certainty about the future in a almost kind of compulsive way. It's less curious. And so a lot of clinicians, including myself, kind of go at that and say, well, let's see what mindfulness can do to sort of dissolve some of that intensity of the spotlight consciousness. And I think mindfulness is helpful in the sense that mindfulness aims generally at a more holistic perception of the world and the self. It's an observing just like PTSD is, but it's less charged with reactivity, you know, more rooted in some of the classic, you know attitudinal foundation, null concepts of what mindfulness is, is fundamentally about like trust and the beginner's mind and all that sort of stuff. What I thought when I was opposing, if you will, or setting a better way to say it would be to set mindfulness over against PTSD and just think about both of them as ways of seeing the world is that it was equanimity that, that allowed the fluidity to shift back and forth between those two modes. And so it was a nice way for me to think about the possibility of a kind of non pathologizing of say with PTSD as our example here, but a non pathological sort of way of thinking about it and saying like, okay, so PTSD is a way of seeing the world. Mindfulness is generally a way of seeing the world. And then equanimity allows the shift or oscillation between those two. It's a way for sort of figure and ground to shift places. So, you know, ptsd, very interested in figures. We're all interested in figures, you know, from a gestalt perspective, you know, what stands out against the ground. But in equanimity, those two are allowed to oscillate fluidly as, as the whole is kind of apprehended more evenly. So we get a kind of field and focus sense of things. And, and equanimity offers that space, right, for mobile awareness that's, that's liberated from, liberated from both in our example, PTSD and, and a kind of mindfulness perspective. And that's what really drew me to it is just the possibilities that it offered.
- [27:31]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
If you're new to the podcast, you might not know that I help people out on occasion through my coaching work. O' Connell coaching is an attempt to translate non Buddhism, post traditional takes on Buddhism and spirituality more broadly and weave them into a worthy companion to the practicing life. I originally trained as a counselor, then life coach, and have fashioned my own approach into a working space for helping others to reconsider the practice in life. If you are stuck in your practice or looking to construct a way forward through a difficult or challenging moment, or if you wish to fashion your own practice in life, get in touch. I may be able to help. Imperfect Buddha.com coaching well, that's interesting. I wonder if we might bridge it to something more common and mundane, something like mild addiction to one's telephone.
- [28:44]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Okay, right.
- [28:45]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
I mean, you're describing a kind of relational shift, right, that's facilitated by this enactment of mindfulness and this subsequent appreciation of movement into a state of dynamic equanimity. I mean, imagine you had a couple of young adults in front of you, a couple of millennials, glued to their phones, very much aware that, okay, they're not suffering from any clinical condition, but there are certainly low scale addiction taking place. How could this process be used to help them not just sort of detach to some degree from their, their phones, but also get an appreciation for this kind of spacious movement that might be used to break that loop of, of attachment?
- [29:34]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, I opened the book early with an example of how just how difficult it is to kind of grasp reality cognitively, the more it's mediated by screens and cell phones and devices. And point to this study from 2017 done by some researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. And they discovered that even when people were not students, in this case were not interacting with their smartphones, the mere presence of one imposed a kind of brain drain, right, by reducing available cognitive capacities. And that was happening in part because the attentional resources that are otherwise available for a kind of fluid moment to moment awareness are here recruited for the narrow purpose of a kind of hypervigilance, right, which, which links back to PTSD in a way. Right. So one symptom of hypervigilance is in, in this case with, with phones was the feeling that the phone was actually vibrating nearby, when in fact it, it wasn't at all. You know, so it's a tough thing because in a way, smartphones do offer us a constant sort of fluid panorama of images.
- [31:06]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Right.
- [31:06]
Dr. Michael Ebel
I mean, this is sort of the, what it means to be a late modern human being is that we're always faced inexhaustibly with these choices about looking that are far beyond the immediately perceptible world. I wanted to sort of suggest that the way out of that was to see that our identity as active perceivers of the world actually hinges on the emergence of certain objects of attention, like what's on our phones. But it only emerges against a neutral or non dynamic sort of background. And I wanted to sort of think about ways in which we could alternate between those nose and sort of open up a kind of consciousness of, you know, you could say you can go outside and take a walk or something and just, just engage in a more holistic sort of perceptual awareness of the phenomenal world. So that, as I was saying earlier, you know, figure and ground can, can switch places. I mean, ultimately it offers a way of, of me, I think, being non stuck or unstuck from, from the kinds of things that would normally capture our attention, like our phones. Yeah, I didn't want to write the book at all as, as a set of practices or anything like that. I mean, I really wanted to, to suggest that there was a way to talk about equanimity without laying down any blueprint for it, or to issue any kind of rigid set of definitions. And I thought that that ultimately was true to what equanimity itself is, which is how the many sidedness of a given matter, given object can, can be drawn out.
- [33:07]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
That's good because you also use this concept of multi perspectivism. And if we think about perspectivism as the sort of starting point, obviously dynamism, flexibility, movement do lend themselves to the idea of the non static. To what degree do you develop further this idea of multi perspectivism? Is it just a kind of tool for you to avoid being pulled into a singular narrative about what equanimity is or should be? Or are you also using it as a kind of characteristic of equanimity itself?
- [33:45]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Yeah, I think both. Right, I think both. Because equanimity is a form of consciousness that allows us to range over the universe as kind of a phenomenal field. It values the open ended and the not easily resolved. And this is something I emphasize back to sort of the practical notion of things as a way of really impressing upon people that the kind of questions that we form about the world we live in are at least equal to, you know, I strongly suggest for the sake of impressing this upon people, but it's actually more important than the answers or solutions that, that we can come up with. And so you get an attitude in terms of this multiplying of perspectives that in Sanskrit is the Ehipasaka kind of this invitation to come and see for oneself. It's an orientation toward knowledge and perspective taking that rests really on experimenting with your conclusions. Right. So rather than unreflectively accepting them or dogmatically asserting them, it's a word that, you know, the Buddha used frequently to describe his own teachings. I think similarly, equanimity proposes that any answer that you can arrive at is inherently provisional. And it's, it's merely the product of the moment when your questioning ceased, for example, or you're experimenting, stopped. So it's this unfinished, inherently unfinished business is a nice way to that. I like to describe equanimity. It's sort of a continually evolving questioning rather than a kind of conclusive answering. And so it's always Going to operate with perspectives, right, which will exceed the neat hierarchical categories and sequential orderings. If we're going to talk about cause and effect and causality that normally structure our ways of knowing and learning. So that multi perspectivism for me means essentially, right. That each insight that equanimity can offer us is just one more point of departure for further inquiry.
- [36:08]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
And I think that ties nicely to another concept which comes up which has kind of been mentioned off and on throughout the conversation already, but perhaps we can be a little bit more explicit about it. Playfulness is the word I'm thinking of. To what degree are you seeing then? Equanimity is also representing the possibility of not being caught up, not just in rigid perspectives or beliefs, but any kind of identity in which we fixate ourselves into a certain image of who we think we should be. Playfulness seems to be a nice antidote to that as well. It's not just some kind of naive return to childhood, but it's this ability to have a light touch in perhaps prodding at some of our neuroses and some of our fixations.
- [36:59]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Right, right. And that's near the closing of the book. I talk about Homo ludens, the person at play, as one form of subjectivity that I think is representative of kind of a quantum way of being in the world. And yeah, I think it captures very well what it means to be sort of situated in a relation to an incredibly vibrant and animated world. Right. Because it, if you're playing, you're presented with invitations to what's possible. I think playfulness is that, that response to that invitation. It's both a call and response, in a sense. Children, of course, can be marvelously inventive with their toys and ordinary kind of utilitarian objects like chairs and blankets that I write about. And so the. But the world is full of these kind of enticements to playful encounters. And I wanted to suggest that in such a world of felicitous possibilities, equanimity allows us to really celebrate those because it sees the field of possibilities as richly animated. And ultimately, if you're playing, you welcome that, right? You, you might even risk that play engenders equanimity provides for, you know, opportunities for light hearted, light minded deference, which is a term I use a lot to sort of characterize what I think equanimity is about that, you know, allows us to commit ourselves, however transitorily. Right. And to a whole field of outcomes in the world. It's something that is important to realize Kind of within the philosophy of play, you get a context which allows us to oscillate between movement and fixity. And it's not just that they're tolerated in play, but they're the very processes of transformation which allow us to become what we are. Not yet. I mean, back to the issue of why, which I've largely encourage my clients and patients to abandon. Is that the burden of questioning why things are the way they are, why they're one way as opposed to another way, why there's something rather than nothing. That burden is lifted, and play leaves behind those whys in the process of awakening new perceptions of what is, rather than why it's there. George Santillana, the philosopher, called it this flexible attitude of free entertainment. And I think that was what I wanted to underscore. It's beyond the utilitarian. And that's why we enjoy play, because it frees us from some of the burdens of everything being utilitarian, having an end, having a kind of fixity as opposed to ambiguity. And that's the beauty of play, is because if you're playing right, you. That ambiguity, which might, in other cases, or maybe even in. In the real world, if you don't want to set the real world against the play world, but that. That ambiguity is often a source of anxiety or defensiveness. But when we're playing, then it's the source or the origin of. Of wonder and new lines of possibility that makes sense. You're sort of adding ambiguity to the world when you're. When you're playing. And that's, I think, why we enjoy it. I would argue that's why we enjoy travel as well. Sort of thinking through right now, an essay on travel and equanimity and how cadence of life kind of shifts when we're traveling. And what does that mean? You know, how. What does that look like? And how. What. What role does equanimity have in allowing us to embrace undecidability and unanticipated possibilities? Especially if we're traveling to someplace we've never been before, for example.
- [41:13]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Yeah. I mean, the way you're describing it, you're kind of almost imagining a form of adult play as travel. But you've planted quite a few seeds in this conversation, which ties nicely to the title of the book, which I will remind listeners of. It's Seeds of Equanimity, Knowing and Being. Is there another seed that we have not discussed that you'd like to mention before we bring our conversation to a close?
- [41:41]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Yeah, Seeds were the Sort of operative metaphor for the whole book, because I found in Seeds precisely the kind of dynamism that I was trying to capture. Yeah, I think it has to do with, you know, sort of think about when you. When you plant a seed, there's no assurance that it's going to, in fact, grow into anything. And sort of the more seeds we plant in the world, the more possibilities there are for something being produced. Seeds for knowing. Right. How we. How we know the world. I really been attracted to this notion that knowledge is inactive, and not inactive, but inactive, enactive, right, to use Alva Noe's term, that it's predicated on this kind of exploratory reach of our minds and our bodies. And one of the things that's not a seed for that is the way that we get caught up in the distinctions that we make, the kind of binaries that we're often trapped in. So I like to think in the book often about what dissect equanimity looks like as well as equanimity, just to kind of contrast the possibilities there.
- [42:59]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Ladies and gentlemen, you have been listening to a conversation with Dr. Michael Eebel that is spelled U, E B E L. And we have been discussing his book, which was published this year, Seeds of Equanimity, Knowing, and Being. And I think you probably realized from the conversation that Michael has a very rich appreciation for language as well as the various fields he is involved in or at this point, rooted in. And this is a great opportunity to think beyond Buddhism, if you're curious about the role and place and potentiality of something like equanimity. Michael, I appreciate you doing this work. I think this is. This is good. You know, there's a tendency for many. Well, not just practitioners in the west, but many curious folks who kind of dabble in the world of Buddhism to have quite a superficial grasp sometimes of the potential that these terms are pointing to. And you've done a good job in creating this intellectual history of the word and the concept and the idea of this word, equanimity. You may have mentioned that it's not. Well, it's not so much of a practice manual. But I think perhaps you'd agree with me that just reading, reflecting, and thinking and allowing these words to kind of work on us is a kind of practice all of its own, right?
- [44:30]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's one of the things that I think about when I work with my patients and the veterans that I serve is precisely that providing them with a vocabulary that itself is transformative. Of the ways that they know and exist in the world, having a way to describe our relationship to each other and to ourselves and to the universe.
- [44:53]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Yeah, that's an entire conversation right there. So we should end with you just saying, where can people not only find your book, but find out more about you?
- [45:03]
Dr. Michael Ebel
All that I publish is on Academia Edu and Research Gate and the book itself is, from what I can tell, going to be available in the U.S. although it's sort of an interesting situation because the book has been available since end of June, early July in Europe. In fact, my first copy that I received, I actually ordered from Amazon UK before the press sent me the book. But in terms of Amazon us it has been postponed and I think a lot of that have to do with distribution tariffs, that. That sort of thing. So I look forward to it appearing in the U.S. in the meantime, I've been furiously mailing copies to people that they could at least see. See this thing that I. That I produced.
- [46:00]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
Yeah, that's a. That's an unfortunate reminder, isn't it, of just how much these tariffs are causing chaos. And yeah, shipping's become an absolute nightmare. It's also the same for the UK coming out to Europe. So we're in a bit of a mess, but perhaps we still need a little bit of that old form of equanimity in the face of such challenge. Yes, we can combine the two. Michael, thank you for coming on. All the best with your work and appreciate the fact that you're helping out veterans as well. So it's not easy work. So it's great to hear you committed to it and all the best with the future of your book and your reflection and thought. Yeah.
- [46:41]
Dr. Michael Ebel
Thank you.
- [46:41]
Podcast Host (Interviewer)
You've been listening to the Imperfect Buddha podcast with Dr. Michael E.
- [46:59]
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
So you want to start a business. You might think you need a team of people and fancy tech skills, but you don't. You just need GoDaddy arrow. I'm Walton Goggins and as an actor, I'm an expert in looking like I know what I'm doing. GoDaddy Arrow uses AI to create everything you need to grow a business. It'll make you a unique logo, it'll create a custom website, it'll write social posts for you, and even set you up with a social media calendar. Get started@godaddy.com Arrow that's godaddy.com Airo.