Quiet Strength: The Power of Equanimity (with Margaret Cullen & Sean Fargo)

Speaker 1 · 0:00Hi everyone, welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. My name is Sean Fargo. Today we're exploring something that I think is deeply needed right now and very often misunderstood. It's the practice of equanimity. Today I'm joined by someone who has devoted her life to this path of equanimity and mindfulness and emotional balance. Margaret Cullen is here with us today. Margaret is a licensed psychotherapist and meditation practitioner with over 45 years of experience. She's been a quiet pioneer in bringing contemplative practices into mainstream settings, co-developing compassion cultivation training, helping create mindfulness programs for military spouses, and serving as a founding faculty member of the Compassion Institute. She's also a Mind and Life Institute Fellow and co-author of the Mindfulness-based emotional balance workbook, which I've been recommending for years to lots of people. Now she has a new book called Quiet Strength Find Peace, Feel Alive, and Love Boundlessly with the power of equanimity. We'll post a link to the book and to her website in the show notes. And I highly recommend that you check out her website.

Speaker 1 · 1:36What I appreciate about Margaret's work is that she reframes equanimity not as detachment or emotional flatness, but actually as a deeply alive steadiness, a way of caring without collapsing, a way of staying engaged without being consumed. In a time of climate anxiety, political division and personal overwhelm, when so many of us feel pulled in a million directions, this conversation feels especially relevant. So whether you're guiding others in mindfulness, holding space in your work, raising a family, leading a team, or just trying to stay upright in this fast-moving world, I think this conversation will meet you where you are. Margaret Collin, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 2 · 2:35Thank you, Sean, and thank you for that very thoughtful introduction.

Speaker 1 · 2:40My pleasure. I've been aware of some of your work for quite a while. As I mentioned, I've been sharing your workbook with a lot of people. And I'm excited about your new book on equanimity, which is very often misunderstood.

Speaker 1 · 2:58And I'd like to ask you that when you use the word equanimity, what do you not mean by equanimity?

Speaker 2 · 3:08I think that's a great place to start. And you alluded to this in the introduction, as I'm sure many of your listeners understand, at least intellectually, the classic near enemies of equanimity in Buddhist philosophy are indifference or apathy. So I definitely don't mean indifference or apathy. But I find this is one of those things where people nod their heads, they understand that idea, but somehow emotionally still cling to the idea that equanimity means completely even tempered in the middle experience, and that it doesn't expand and contract like a bellows to hold arousal, to hold heartbreak, to hold excitement or passion. I love this with some of my younger students who are very nervous that to choose equanimity is to forego passion and how terrible that would be. And I agree with them completely that to choose equanimity is not to forego passion or any of the emotions or qualities of life that make it juicy and rich.

Speaker 1 · 4:34Yeah. I had subscribed to that myth for a long time, thinking that equanimity was sort of always staying in the middle and that there was no room for the arousal or the full spectrum of life or the passion.

Speaker 1 · 4:47Now that we're kind of sensing into what equanimity is not, like how would you describe what it is? I've heard so many different definitions over the years. Gil Fransdale has called it a caring perspective. Sharon Salzberg over the years has had a few different definitions. How would you describe what it is where it does include room for passion and the range of human emotion?

Speaker 2 · 5:15I think in this context with you, we can get a little Buddhist geeky together. Is that okay?

Speaker 1 · 5:24Yeah.

Speaker 2 · 5:25Which I don't typically do in my interviews for the book, but I would love it if we could do that a little bit here. You know well, and I think a lot of your listeners know that in addition to the object of our awareness, the sense experience, every object has a valence, what we call Vedana in Buddhist philosophy, a feeling tone. Very simple pleasant, unpleasant, neutral.

Speaker 2 · 5:55Really, I think from a Buddhist perspective, a lot of the way equanimity functions is not getting caught in the feeling tone. We often get derailed by the feeling tone. We get attached to the pleasant, we reject the unpleasant, and we space out with the neutral. And when we do that, we lose balance and perspective, what Gil Fronsdale was talking about. So in many ways, on a more subtle unpacking level, that's where we lose equanimity. The object, the experience itself can be pleasant, unpleasant, it can be boring, neutral, it can be very big or very small. We're equanimous as long as we put space around it. As I unpack it, the mechanics of it and get more granular, it seems to be that rather than make the space bigger around the object, the tendency is to make the object more neutral. You know, that's where we get dull. So what equanimity asks us to do is to put bigger space, ever-increasing space around our experience. That way we stay on balance, we stay present, we don't lose perspective, wisdom, which are kind of key components, again, as Gil said, to equanimity.

Speaker 1 · 7:18And do you find that adding that space or spaciousness around, say, the object, whether it feels pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, that that is in its own ways sort of like an antidote to our reaction of dulling something, that by adding space, it allows more room for the richness of the object?

Speaker 2 · 7:46Yeah, I think so. And I think just the simple practice of paying attention to the second foundation of mindfulness, the simply raising awareness that this is often happening. Our reaction to feeling tone is typically happening under the threshold of awareness. So simply raising that level of awareness to include feeling tone almost in and of itself creates space. Just simply being, as it were, mindful of the second foundation is a powerful doorway to equanimity.

Speaker 1 · 8:26I once did a like a week-long retreat at Spirit Rock on Vedana, which really helped me open my eyes to how much I don't notice my reactions to pleasant and unpleasant and neutral, and did find much greater spaciousness unfolding over the days of the retreat. It sounds like what you're saying is that this practice of paying attention to feeling tones, the second foundation of mindfulness, is a very helpful primary gateway towards really cultivating equanimity. I've never heard them directly link so much before. I always think of equanimity being the tenth ring of a 10-ring ladder. And, you know, Vedana as being the second ring. So do you feel like Vedana is more direct gateway towards equanimity practice?

Speaker 2 · 9:23I do. And I don't know if anyone will agree with me, but I did come to that understanding in the course of

Speaker 2 · 9:31studying and writing the book and talking to a lot of different teachers, not just Buddhist teachers. As you know, I kind of explored all the Abrahamic religions and their perspective to equanimity. And a lot of teachers, I would say, especially Shin Zhen Young, who's an outlier in some ways, and also is really dialed into the idea of equanimity lately. He's been writing and talking a lot about equanimity. And he sees it as being with experience without friction. Shenzhen loves math and physics, and he loves those kinds of examples. I think it is in line with what how most other people think about equanimity. We're not siphoning off energy by defending, guarding against, arguing with our experience. It's a kind of frictionless. And a great gateway to that is Vedana, because that's where we start defending against and arguing with our experience, is right there at Feeling Tone.

Speaker 1 · 10:42Do you have like a pithy one or two sentence definition of equanimity?

Speaker 2 · 10:49Yeah, I did. And now, of course, it's just like completely flown out of my mind.

Speaker 1 · 10:54There's so much space, it just flew.

Speaker 2 · 10:58I think it is the capacity to fully hold all of life's experience without collapsing into overwhelm or numbing out. One of the reasons I hesitate always with the elevator pitch for equanimity that is totally reasonable to ask, and everyone does, it makes a lot of sense to me. Again, I'll share this with you because I feel like we can get into the nuance here. Sometimes we completely foreclose on aversion, attachment, and spacing out with awareness. Other times we recover more quickly, and they both count for equanimity. So I think it's unreasonable to set an ideal based on a pithy definition of equanimity that we will open to the full range of experience moment by moment, because none of us do. In many moments, we collapse, we attach,

Speaker 2 · 12:02we reject. And there haven't been that many papers written on it. An important one came out of a group at Harvard led by Gael Debord and other people. They were talking about a concept called effective chronology in relationship to equanimity. And I think this is another really important way to put our arms around the idea. And that simply is how quickly do we recover? So this is the dynamic dimension of equanimity. It's not static. We're not just this big, wide open space all the time. Well, maybe enlightened people are, but I don't know about that. Speaking for myself, I'm not this big, wide open space in which everything arises and passes without the slightest disturbance. That sounds lovely, but that's not how I live. What I do see is that I can tolerate greater intensity, not all of it, and also that I recover my balance more quickly. And they both feel related to equanimity to me.

Speaker 1 · 13:10Yeah, I think even just in how you answered that question, illustrated how you're able to dance with being off balance and then finding your way. I'm that way too when people ask me to define what mindfulness is. Even though I'm a quote-unquote mindfulness teacher, I might have ten different answers depending on the day or who it's asking or what the context is. So I relate with that. As you're talking, reminds me of just how much identity can be wrapped up in this, where if we don't say collapse into believing our story or fixating on some version of our identity that we cling to. If we're able to hold ourselves with spaciousness and say beginner's mind, then there's more freedom for possibility, freedom for noticing new things, freedom for just being, and there's kind of a lightness that happens where maybe we don't feel threatened by unpleasant stimuli, or we don't feel like we need something pleasant. How would you talk about equanimity

Speaker 1 · 14:31in terms of how much identity is related to this?

Speaker 2 · 14:36I think that's key. And not just in Buddhism, but certainly in Judaism and Sufism. And I'll explain that a little bit. One way that equanimity is described is really in how we relate to life events and the worldly wind in Buddhism, those pairs of pleasure and pain, gain and loss, fame and disrepute. Those worldly wins, gain and loss, fame and disrepute, those have a lot to do with identity. Increasingly in our modern lives today, a lot of our reactivity is bound up in identity. A lot of the suffering and a lot of the attachment that we feel going through social media and just all of our conscious lives, a lot of the bouncing around with our nervous systems is all based on pleasure, pain, fame, disrepute, likes and dislikes. Interestingly, Maimonides, who it seems was the person who introduced the concept of equanimity into Judaism in the 12th century, borrowed a Sufi story because the relationship between Sufis and Jews at the time was very, very rich and very bidirectional to talk about equanimity. And in both traditions, equanimity is described really in terms of ego. There are stories about a rabbi getting praise and blame, stories in the Sufi tradition about praise and blame. And how do you relate to praise and blame? And can you be balanced with both? And one of my favorite teachers, Matthew Brensilver, who you probably know.

Speaker 1 · 16:29Yeah, I love him. Yeah. I was just thinking about him an hour ago.

Speaker 2 · 16:33So Matthew talks a lot about all the strategies we have to defend our stories and to defend ourselves. And those are really what stand between us and equanimity often. Just one step further, I can't remember his name, but another Buddhist teacher who I don't know, but I quoted in the book through another Dharma friend, talks about the state of equanimity as one of vulnerability. It's really an undefended state. And I think this ties back into Shinzhen's idea of not using energy to either maintain an identity, and Matthew talks about this a lot, to try to curate both our inner experience and our outer appearance to the world. All of those things create friction between us and reality. And that friction inhibits equanimity.

Speaker 1 · 17:35Thank you. It's so well said. Yeah, I like to dive into that vulnerability piece a little bit more because a lot of what we do with our identity is defend. And I believe I listened to Matthew Brensilver once talk about this in terms of skydiving without a ground. Like, can we sense into our experience as if we're like skydiving, we're kind of falling, but remove the concept of a ground or sense that there's actually not a ground that we're actually gonna hit. There's this sort of free-falling

Speaker 1 · 18:14openness that could feel very vulnerable if you believe there's a ground that you're going to die. I hope I'm getting his metaphor correct. But the sense of vulnerability in being and how many of us consciously or subconsciously create these identities as a way to defend ourselves, which inherently, as he says, causes a friction with life. Um can you talk about how we can meet that sense of vulnerability with equanimity? And forgive me, I'm not a very good interviewer, but this question kind of reminds me that equanimity is posited by the Buddha as a Brahmavihara, as a divine abode of the heart, that it's not this sort of head-based map of the world, but rather a form of caring. So just kind of asking in real time if you could talk a little bit about the vulnerability, the defending, and maybe equanimity as a heart-based practice to meet that vulnerability.

Speaker 2 · 19:21No, I love that question. I think it's really an important area to address. I'll tell you briefly, I discovered writing the book. My wonderful editor, Barry Boyce, was one of the original students of Trumpa Rinpoche and a founder of Mindful Magazine. And he told me that quote is from Trumpa that you jump out of an airplane, you discover you have no parachute, you're afraid, and then you discover there's actually no ground. I didn't know that either. Barry told me that, but it doesn't matter, really. It's wonderful metaphor. And in terms of vulnerability and love, and yes, equanimity is the fourth of the four immeasurables. And Frank Ostoteski calls them the four flavors of love. Equanimity is a flavor of love. It's an expression of love. We know that loving kindness is a kind of unconditional goodwill, and that when it meets suffering, it becomes compassion. But it's essentially the same quality of the heart, this unbounded, unconditional goodwill. Meeting suffering becomes compassion. And when it meets the success of others, the well-being of others, it becomes mudita, the third of the four immeasurables. When it meets cause for celebration, which is maybe the flip side of suffering, we might say in that context, it becomes mudita. And we might say when love meets vulnerability, it becomes equanimity. What is this vulnerability? Well, in our vipassana practice, at least I was taught equanimity through the phrases, uh, your happiness or unhappiness is a function of your thoughts and deeds and actions and not my wishes for you. Recognizing this complete vulnerability, this complete inability to guarantee the happiness of people I love, in the face of this, I still love, I still care. And to me, that was a revelation when I first encountered that and really took it to heart that I had been living with this false binary of if I love, then I'm attached and I'm gonna fix and I'm gonna make better, and I'm gonna protect my heart, and I'm gonna protect you. And if I can't do that, I'm gonna withdraw. But equanimity says no, you can't protect, and you can't withdraw. Withdraw. So you stay with the reality that you cannot protect

Speaker 2 · 22:06those you love from suffering, that you continue to wish and care deeply, understanding the complexity of causes and conditions that influence the outcome of every moment, well beyond your wishes, that your wishes have some small influence, but no ultimate influence.

Speaker 1 · 22:29I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but it feels like there's so much fear in this world. I was going to call it like an age of fear, but so many people are feeling vulnerable right now. And I think anxiety is on the rise because we're afraid and because we're feeling vulnerable and we don't know how to meet that vulnerability. I'm so excited that you have this book out called Quiet Strength, which I highly recommend. I think it's going to be so helpful for so many people who don't know how to meet their vulnerability. And I'm so glad that you wrote this because of your depth of practice and your vast experience with all of these practices we've been mentioning. Because equanimity, it's not only not easy, but it's some misunderstood. And the Buddha talked about this as being the last thing that you can master right before enlightenment because it does tackle issues like identity, which is a slippery thing to sense into or to peel the layers of illusion. So I'm glad that you have this depth of background to be able to support people with this nuanced practice. So when so many people are feeling afraid right now and there's so much fear in the world, what practical steps would you recommend for people who don't know how to meet their vulnerability with this love? We're often trapped by our sympathetic nervous system where we're kind of caught in this loop of rumination or anxiety. How can people start to practice equanimity in this age of fear?

Speaker 2 · 24:22As you asked that, something occurred to me that has kind of been in co-aid in the back of my mind. And let's see if I can find language for it. My sense is that in this particular time with the poly crisis, as many of us call it, and a lot of fundamental values and rights feeling under threat, and of course the planet, it can feel disloyal. It can feel like a cop-out. It can feel foolish. There are a lot of other adjectives I might be able to pull up for someone to approach equanimity. It can feel like you don't care. Like all of these mere enemies that we understand intellectually, but then we pit them against the level of upset in the modern world. And all that intellectual understanding goes down the drain. And it feels like, well, any really serious person would be very upset right now, and equanimity cannot be the right response. So I want to challenge that. I really want to challenge that and say, suggest that people experiment in the laboratory of their own lives in a very safe way. And just see, keep the bar low, don't overwhelm yourself. See if you challenge a hyperbolic statement like it's the end of the world or the world's on fire, if you ask yourself, is that really true right now, does that make you a worse citizen? Does it mean you're not going to engage in your activism? How does that serve or not serve? And in a sense, our whole Buddhist path is one of connecting with reality. And in that reality, it's true that we don't

Speaker 2 · 26:19have the solid ground of self. It's true that things change, and that is vulnerable for us because we can't really hold on to anything. So there's a reality of vulnerability that we get closer and closer to through this path that we've undertaken. And I think what we discover is that there's actually less fear and greater engagement and greater energy available for engagement when we're not trying to be at war with reality. So this is unpleasant, this is pleasant, this is neutral. Many situations that I'm in aren't personal. Yes, there are very serious problems in the world. And what is going to help me to be the most effective, given my frame of reference and my capacities, and generally the hyperbolic outrage that social media is genius about escalating, and we can feel that we are disloyal to our party or our position or politics to not get on the outrage machine. I really encourage people just to experiment and see what's really going to help you be the most effective citizen right now.

Speaker 1 · 27:43Beautiful. We need to be loyal to ourselves and to our well-being and not get too attached to trying to control all these outcomes. Yeah, I remember being on retreat with Joseph Goldstein and Bhiku Analio. There was a mom who raised her hand and said, you know, it's really hard for me to practice equanimity when I have a two-year-old at home and I love my daughter more than anything in the world, and it's really hard for me to relate to my daughter with equanimity. And I remember Joseph had a beautiful metaphor saying, Well, when you think of your daughter, does your love feel like a tight grasp around your daughter, where you just lock on them so much with your love? Or is it more of like an opened hand holding your daughter where you're still allowing your daughter to be her, but you're kind of loving her a little more gently? And it really helped the mother kind of reframe and understand the felt sense of equanimity a little bit more, of like allowing the world to do its thing without getting too locked in to the hyperbole and the control. And remember like how we are as a mother. Can we feel into equanimity and relate to the world with a little bit more ease? So many people in our community are mindfulness teachers, caregivers, therapists, counselors, coaches, wellness professionals who are helping other people. And it's their job to provide care for people, many of whom are severely depressed, suicidal, addicted to things, suffering from chronic pain. They're kind of in dire straits. Do you have, say, any equanimity phrases or words for caregivers who are burned out these days, especially after COVID?

Speaker 2 · 29:48Yes.

Speaker 2 · 29:49And also I really appreciate the story that Joseph, of course, not having children, has so much wisdom about for mother. And I just want to share that I think one of many reasons why I pursued this idea of equanimity, or it pursued me, was that in many ways, with my own daughter, I failed to be equanimous, raising her. I became a mother late. She's my only child. I really had trouble bearing her pain. And I was very attached to making sure she didn't suffer. And of course, I failed at that. And I also think, in some ways, handicapped her because of my lack of equanimity in raising her. Fortunately, you know, she's an adult now, and we talk about it and sometimes we even joke about it. And over the years, I have used that practice. I think as parents, it's one of the stickiest places where we get the most confused about how much control we have over the well-being of others, but it applies to all the providers you talked about in your last question as well. Just reminding myself, especially with my daughter, that she has her own trajectory and doing the equanimity phrases with her in my own heart was incredibly helpful and continues to be. I continue to work that edge, even with my adult child, who's very much in her own life now. So I just want to acknowledge how challenging it is with our kids. And in terms of providers, I wrote about in my book, I hope it doesn't sound too simplistic to people, but there's a catchphrase my husband and I heard someone say at a party long, long time ago, that has been so helpful to us. We were talking to an emergency room doctor who had been doing that work for a long time and loved it. And we said, How do you manage all that intensity every single day with life and death and time pressure and so much at stake? And she said, I remember it's not my emergency. That just became this catchphrase for us. It was so clear that in her case, if it was her emergency, she couldn't do her job well. But I think that's actually true for a lot of us, and certainly for providers, to really be present, we have to remember that it's not our emergency. We can fully show up with our skills and love and presence in whatever way we do that for people who are in crisis.

Speaker 1 · 32:44And to be able to understand what is our emergency and what is not takes a great deal of wisdom too. I just pulled up some equanimity phrases for listeners to get a sense for what we're referring to as what an equanimity phrase is. I'll just share a few, some of which speak to the fact that it's some of the things that we think is an emergency for us

Speaker 1 · 33:10actually isn't. This feeling is here, and I am still okay. I don't have to fix this right now. Even this is part of the path. Balanced in praise and blame, balanced in gain and loss. You're speaking about the vicissitudes. And then in terms of equanimity phrases for others, like say our kids, phrases that can remind us that they have their own karma, their own trajectory, their own life. Some phrases include, you are the owner of your actions, not me. Your happiness and suffering are not mine to control. I care about you deeply, and I release the need to manage you. May I respect your path even when I don't understand it. And these phrases are so powerful. And again, I feel like some of them relate to say uh an understanding of karma or belief in karma.

Speaker 2 · 34:12We're getting a little Buddhist geeky here, but I have to find this quote because it's come up before, but I don't know that Khalil Gibran believed in karma. He probably didn't, that wasn't his tradition. I don't know what his version might have been, but he wrote that beautiful poem about our children are not our children. And I can't remember all the words right now, but Betsy Rose put it to music so beautifully. I can think of her singing this gorgeous poem about how they have their own destiny. So I think we can believe that even if we don't believe in karma.

Speaker 1 · 34:53Yeah, absolutely. And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, speak to us of children. And he said, Your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. I can imagine Betsy singing this. I see her every once in a while here in Berkeley. Where are you located, by the way? I'm in Berkeley. Oh, you are. Yeah, I'm on uh Josephine and Cedar for whatever it's worth.

Speaker 2 · 35:37You are I'm on just off Cedar on Poina Vista and Euclid.

Speaker 1 · 35:43Oh, that's funny. Maybe you'll take you to tea or lunch one day. We can talk shop sometime. I'm a dad of a seven-year-old now, and I think this is the hardest to practice with. I can understand why the Buddha's parents wanted to protect their son from suffering, and I want to do everything

Speaker 1 · 36:06I can to protect my daughter, but I also know that I can't control things and I need to let her fight more and more of her battles, even though I cry thinking of that. You mentioned earlier that when loving kindness meets suffering, it's compassion. When loving kindness meets, you know, the well-being of others or success of others, it's mudita, sort of form of joy. With equanimity, I don't know if you're playing with these phrasing a little bit, but you said when loving-kindness means vulnerability, it can be equanimity. I think that's true. I wonder if loving kindness meets I'm wanting to say identity, but I don't feel like that fits right. I've never heard a teacher say that it meets something to create equanimity before. So I'm just curious if you can kind of speak to the vulnerability piece and if there's something else there too that I'm not quite getting yet.

Speaker 2 · 37:07I'm not sure if you're driving at this, but what occurred to me when you asked that was the poignancy of loving-kindness, seeing the futility of defending the self and those efforts. There's something very poignant about that, about seeing that through the eyes of love, of seeing all that flapping around we do, all that rumination, all that energy, all of that treading water in place and not getting anywhere as we attempt to defend and curate our experience. So, in that sense, yeah, I'm not sure I would have a simple way of phrasing that, but that's part of the vulnerability that we're talking about. It's the vulnerability of how useless, in a sense, our attempts are to defend the self, as well as how little control we have over the happiness of our loved ones and a lot of outcomes that we can be very invested in. There's vulnerability in just kind of accepting, I would say, in an ultimate sense, we're talking about the fact that we are a part of the world and that there's tremendous freedom and relief in being connected to everything. There's a lot of pain and suffering in our ideas of being separate from everything. But as we well know, there's a giving up of a lot of illusions in that surrender. And that's the poignancy and the vulnerability of equanimity is the poignancy of giving up those illusions of control

Speaker 2 · 39:07and that I have a self and that this self can do these things in the world, that I have more agency in some sense than I think that I do. And that I can protect myself from pain and suffering, that I can protect my loved ones from pain and suffering. It's a very poignant kind of Don Quixote windmill quest in a sense, human and poignant.

Speaker 1 · 39:37Beautiful. For me, when I hear you talk about that, it rings true. And I come back to Vedana in the sense that like, how can I feel all of life? It's pleasantness and unpleasantness, and neither pleasantness or unpleasantness, and surrender my need to make it into something, or react, or identify, or crave for you know, sense pleasure, or becoming, or creating an identity around it. Just as a side note, for those who would like to deepen their awareness of what we're talking about with the second foundation, I highly recommend a book on the four foundations of mindfulness by Bhikkhu Analio. And he really breaks down these links between you know, mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feeling tones, largely that can be quite physical, and then mindfulness of mental volition or thoughts and things that come up in the mind, the thought world, and just how powerful it is sensing into the power of surrendering the flailing and the as you talked about of just being human and how poignant that is. Margaret, thank you so much for talking about this. I feel like we're scratching the tip of the iceberg here. I hope this is helpful for our listeners, and this is going to be something that I dig into a lot more over the coming months. But I'm wondering if there's anything else that you'd like to share with our audience that hasn't been said, or if you have a message for people interested in this, maybe plug your book. What would you like people to know?

Speaker 2 · 41:29Thank you. This has really been a very rich conversation and such a pleasure to speak with someone who's deeply familiar with Buddhist philosophy, which is really at the heart of the book, although it is a kind of big think approach to equanimity, but that's been my path. And I also think that Buddhist philosophy has done a better job of articulating equanimity than any other tradition. But I think the only other thing I want to say is that like the other Brahma Fiharas, we all have equanimity. It's foundational, it's fundamental to being human. It's not anything anybody has to manufacture

Speaker 2 · 42:10that like mindfulness, like the four immeasurables, we're uncovering, we're creating the conditions to experience more of what is fundamental to our nature and not to make it something lofty and unattainable and something we have to strive for. It can be very simple, it can be in a moment of clear seeing. It's like every step you take, you lose balance and you regain balance. So I think that's what I'd like to close with. Just very down-to-earth equanimity is within everyone's grasp. It's part of who you are. Our world and social media do a pretty good job of distracting us from it, but everybody has it.

Speaker 1 · 42:55Beautiful. Margaret Cullen, thank you so much for your wisdom and your teachings and your presence today. For everyone listening, I hope that you find her new book called Quiet Strength. Find peace, feel alive, and live boundlessly with the power of equanimity. I will put a link to the book in the show notes along with a link to Margaret's website. You can find all of her other great writings there. I think there's some interviews with her there too. Margaret, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 · 43:35Thank you again, Sean.