Mindful Equanimity and Homeostasis
Neuroscientist Antonio Demasio’s new book The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Culture. (2018) New York: Pantheon Books notes the very important role homeostasis plays in human life and well being. In some ways homeostasis is about the arising, falling, and balancing out of all things important to human life. Homeostasis plays vital roles in human feelings and emotions, motivation for actions, 
identification of internal states, monitoring positives and negatives, and the realities of progressively positive human development. It is also important in experiencing joy and happiness. Let’s review some core characteristics of homeostasis; it will soon become clear that meditative equanimity and homeostasis have many things in common. Perhaps human homeostasis and equanimity have deep innate, naturalistic tendencies in some people. Here are some characteristics.
- Homeostasis is the ultimate balancer of all things, causes, conditions, and outcomes.
- It relates to all bio-psycho-social-spirtual conditions in life.
- This inner self-balance allows us to cope better with suffering, and also allows us to fully experience joy and happiness – all of which arise and fall, thus balancing out.
- From a survival perspective homeostasis enables the propagation of species. It is the key driver of our evolutionary processes and change. Impermanence is in place here.
- It enables us to evaluate positive/pleasant, neutral, and negative/unpleasant experiences.
- Such judgments become part of our on-going consciousness.
- Sounds somewhat like the Middle Way in Buddhist Psychology.
- It is the stabilization of all life systems – the master regulator of it all.
- Much of it in autonomic/unconscious, but eventually a good deal of it enters our consciousness. We use it!
- In energetic ways homeostasis manages all our mind-body energies toward equilibrium, but it is beyond maintaining the status quo.
- It is a highly positive force working to maintain healthy life and development.
Now that you have a good idea about what homeostasis is, you may want to meditate on it and notice it in your mind and body. After that meditation, enter deeper practice and notice the homeostasis of your equanimity when you encounter it.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha
Author of Mindful Happiness
stress and reactivity over the holidays and time with family, see the edited listing below. I have added some skills that were not included in the Sounds True listing.
realities the issues of rampant self-referencing and entitlement seen in so many people today – “Me/Mine Mind” (my terms). As we make our way through samsara, we condition/reinforce ourselves to the desire/attachment for sense pleasures; we understand that such states are temporary, and that we cannot hold onto them. Thus we are soon back in dissatisfaction as a norm. We crave too much; we crave too often. We lack mindful abilities and skills to be content and satisfied with what we have right now. This does not imply that you not work at personal improvement; it does imply that to do so in an authentic manner, requires great mindfulness, self-understanding, and patience.
thoughts, emotions and behaviors associated with the first arrow. Second, is life purpose. Why are we here? We are here to live, to be, to learn, to experience, to cope, to love, to be spirit, and to find our deeper personal meanings. Impermanence is third. Nothing stays exactly the same; everything is in a state of change. Bad experiences do not last forever, and good experiences do not last forever – in fact because we desire them they may be more short-lived. Ultimate reality is next. All the problems we face (troubled love, the lack of it, finances, jobs, family relations, loneliness, illness, etc.) test our resolve and skills. To use the true ways of reality or the way things are (impermanence, emptiness, dependent origination, and no-self) in our service is to become more resilient to our suffering. These teachings and ways of being require much practice and understanding. It is not that you will not suffer; it is hoped that you will not react so harshly to your suffering and see it as simply one form of our temporary reality. Gratitude is the next doorway. Do your best to have gratitude and contentment with what you do have now – whatever the immediate personal experience is. We humans often take for granted many positive aspects of our lives, until we lose one of them. Have gratitude as your norm. Next to last, be in your true self. Yes, you will have negative emotions and suffering. And yes you will have joy and happiness. The highest form of happiness is to learn not to suffer so much even when you are suffering. Live in full honesty with who/what you are. Also seek to find meaningful pathways to lasting happiness, which is most often not attached to possessions. Love yourself more, and love others as well. Lastly, be and act in compassionate ways to yourself and to others. This is the most true pathway to lasting happiness. Be kind, and act to put the interests of others ahead of your own self-interests.