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.
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.