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“ I’m attached to this planet. I want it to survive. I’m attached to democracy. I want it to flourish. What can I do? I want peace in the world. I don’t want war. I don’t want cruelty. What can I actually do?”
Margaret Cullen
Those are questions a lot of us are asking right now. And in today’s interview with our guest, Margaret Cullen, she offers an answer that may surprise you as much as it surprised me.
Margaret is one of the early teachers in the mindfulness movement who has written a book that’s out just this week called Quiet Strength: Find Peace, Feel Alive, and Love Boundlessly Through the Power of Equanimity.
I know equanimity from my practices in Tibetan Buddhism as a practice in which we try to equalize our feelings toward friend, enemy, and strangers. It’s a way of kind of clearing the pallet before you can genuinely cultivate love and compassion beyond your immediate friends and family.
But Margaret talks about equanimity in a different context, as a way of maintaining mental balance without pushing away any of life’s complexity and turmoil.
Listen to this interview as she talks about the power of equanimity in our day-to-day lives.
What is equanimity?
Scott Snibbe: Margaret, it’s a pleasure to have you on How to Train a Happy Mind. You and I know each other from the Bay Area meditation and mindfulness community, and it’s nice to have you here formally to talk about your new book.
Margaret Cullen: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invitation, Scott.
Scott Snibbe: Your book is about equanimity. I want to start by asking you what that means to you, both from your book’s perspective and your own perspective.
Margaret Cullen: I’ll start with my personal perspective. It’s something I seek, that’s why I wrote about it. I wrote about it because I work on it. I look for it, I aim for it, and I don’t come by it naturally or easily.
I have to confess, I’ve yet to find the right elevator pitch for equanimity because it’s quite subtle and quite profound. The more I explored it, the bigger it got, which is part of what I love about it. Of course, I need to reduce it to something digestible for these kinds of conversations.
My first pass at that is the ability to feel fully the range of human experience, everything that’s possible for us to feel as human beings, without getting caught in any kind of stickiness, rejection, attraction, or spacing out, which we know from Buddhist philosophy. I would extend the definition of equanimity for the contemporary world, and this is where it gets subtler, to include the ability to recover more quickly.
Equanimity is the ability to feel fully the range of human experience, everything that’s possible for us to feel as human beings, without getting caught in any kind of stickiness, rejection, attraction, or spacing out.
The reality is that we all get hijacked here and there. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t. Equanimity allows us to recover as quickly as possible from being hijacked.
Scott Snibbe: That’s a good way to put it. I was surprised reading your book because I come more from the Tibetan and Mahayana Buddhist tradition, and we use that word a lot, equanimity. We learn it as eliminating our bias, equalizing our feeling toward others.
In particular, through the meditation on friend, enemy, and stranger, which you include in the book. But you emphasize this definition, which I think comes more from the Theravada tradition, of non-reactivity, impartiality, inner balance. That’s how I was trying to think about these two definitions. There’s inner balance and outer balance. Obviously inner balance needs to come first.
Margaret Cullen: I’m not sure there’s necessarily an order. It feels like a cycle we can intervene in anywhere, and it will be meaningful. We can be hijacked and practice impartiality toward all beings and become more equanimous. We can be hijacked and turn inward, allow the emotion to arise and pass away, and become more equanimous.
How equanimity helps you in personal relationships
Scott Snibbe: You talk about this in your first chapter. You write about how equanimity helped you overcome some pretty difficult issues with your mother, in a retreat that happened with Sharon Salzberg. I wonder if you could tell that story?
Margaret Cullen: Yes, of course. That was the first time I practiced equanimity as a formal practice, and we did it for about a week. I think we had done maybe a week on each of the Brahmaviharas on that particular retreat, a long time ago in the desert. The phrases we were given for equanimity were something like: “Your happiness and unhappiness are the products of your thoughts, actions, deeds, and circumstances, and not my wishes for you. Knowing this, I will continue to wish for your happiness.”
“Your happiness and unhappiness are the products of your thoughts, actions, deeds, and circumstances, and not my wishes for you. Knowing this, I will continue to wish for your happiness.”
In many ways, it was like the heart of the 12-step prayer. I had been working with the phrases in all the silent practices, sitting practice, bringing my mother to mind, bringing different people to mind.
Then I was walking out in the desert very early in the morning. The phrases start getting a life of their own when you’ve said them tens of thousands of times on retreat. I was walking in the desert with a picture of my mother in my mind, and the phrases came to me: “Your happiness is the product… It is not my responsibility.”
It seems so obvious to say it. I think most of us would shake our heads and say, of course. But emotionally, many of us have a different formula, a different calculation around that. We can have the intellectual understanding, but in my case, my mother had a lot of mental illness throughout my life: severe depression, suicidality, personality disorder… a lot of things.
I was her lifeline. I was her ray of sunshine. In my child’s mind, I understood that my job in life was to keep her from the brink, from falling into the abyss, whatever that was. I wouldn’t let her go there. That became quite burdensome, as you can imagine.
In my mind, to let go of that job, of trying to make her happy, was to not love her and to not be a good daughter. The genius of these simple phrases was that it doesn’t mean I don’t love you to understand that I can’t make you happy.
I got it in that moment. Even saying it now, this was at least 40 years ago, I have chills because of how much suffering and delusion and confusion were created by that over many years, and how liberating that moment was.
Scott Snibbe: It’s asking too much of a child to be responsible for their parent’s happiness, to say the least. You say the word love, and I think it’s hard for a lot of us to define that word. What do you mean by love when you love your mother but you’re not responsible for her happiness?
It’s asking too much of a child to be responsible for their parent’s happiness, to say the least.
Margaret Cullen: Loving-kindness, the first of the Brahmaviharas, taught me so much about what love is and what it isn’t. Loving without attachment is very different from the kind of love most of us are taught in our families of origin and in a romantic context.
Loving without attachment is very different from the kind of love most of us are taught in our families of origin and in a romantic context.
I’ve really taken that to heart. I’ve explored that, especially with the people who are closest to me, where I’m the most attached, to begin to tease apart what is love? I think of it as unconditional goodwill and unconditional friendliness. Attachment points more toward me. I need you to be, fill in the blank, happy. That’s a big one. You and I both have daughters, and it’s really hard when they’re suffering. It’s very hard not to feel attached to their happiness, and to let go, and to trust. I’m not good at that.
The Serenity Prayer and the 12-Step Program
Scott Snibbe: It’s so hard as a parent. And to realize they need to go through their own problems in order to grow. They actually need difficulties to become whole human beings.
You mentioned the Serenity Prayer. This feels like a wonderful bridge between Christianity and Buddhism. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” It’s relatively recent, about a hundred years old, and it became popular in AA and other recovery movements.
We have a version of this in Mahayana Buddhism from Shantideva. One of my favorite books in the world is A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. He says it even more simply: “If you can do something about a problem, why worry? If you can’t do something about a problem, why worry?”
“If you can do something about a problem, why worry? If you can’t do something about a problem, why worry?”
It sounds straightforward, but tell me more about your experience with the Serenity Prayer and that sentiment.
Margaret Cullen: I joined a 12-step program in my twenties because I was a compulsive eater. This was before I got involved in Buddhism. I wasn’t willing to believe in God, and that has never really worked for me. But I learned something about surrender and the power of that.
In the context of the 12 steps, surrender tends to be to God, and it’s based on a Christian model. But many people do 12-step programs and don’t believe in God. I think taking refuge in something greater than myself brings equanimity. It brings trust. It allows us to surrender. Taking refuge is a way to relax the ego. In some ways, that contraction of the ego is what stands between us and equanimity.
Taking refuge is a way to relax the ego. In some ways, that contraction of the ego is what stands between us and equanimity.
Taking refuge
Scott Snibbe: I like how you put this. Your approach to refuge in the book feels quite original. If you believe in God, you can take refuge in God. If you’re a Buddhist, you can take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. There’s also the notion of karma. You talk about taking refuge in the truth, which is very nice. That’s really what dharma means, it just means truth. It doesn’t mean Buddhism. It means things that are actually true.
In Mahayana Buddhism, we also talk about taking refuge in people’s fundamental goodness. It’s not universally accepted in all forms of Buddhism, but in Mahayana it is a refuge. You don’t have to be Buddhist to take refuge in the idea that beneath it all, maybe very far beneath it, there is a kind of fundamental goodness, fundamentally healthy universal needs that we all share.
Unpack that a little more. What is the truth for people who aren’t Buddhist or Christian? What can they take refuge in?
Margaret Cullen: First, I want to respond to taking refuge in basic goodness. Just hearing you say it again is like honey on my heart. There’s something so sweet about that refuge. I can feel myself relax into it. It’s the opposite of mistrust.
There’s something so sweet about that refuge. I can feel myself relax into it. It’s the opposite of mistrust.
So what is the truth? One way of thinking about truth from a Buddhist perspective, a parsing that has been incredibly helpful to me, is that things change. That means things are pleasant sometimes, unpleasant sometimes, and neutral sometimes. It’s hard to argue with that. They’re never always good. They’re never always bad.
It also means there is a dimension to life that is impersonal. It isn’t all completely about me. There are other dimensions. The more we look, the more the impersonal grows in our awareness and the personal shrinks. That reduces the ego reactivity that gets in the way of equanimity.
These are truths from a Buddhist perspective that, having taught in mainstream mindfulness-based settings, I find are very universal. They’re not particularly Buddhist. I think of them as universal truths.
They’re related to impermanence as a fundamental truth. But if we really live as though these are true, not just nodding our heads and saying, yes, things change, then we have to confront uncertainty as a truth. That’s uncomfortable. It’s inextricably bound to impermanence. Things are constantly changing. We can take refuge in ideas that support us in the reality of uncertainty, but we can’t erase uncertainty altogether.
Feel more, react less
Scott Snibbe: It’s one thing to say things change, but to actually feel it, that’s what we call realization in Buddhism. It’s feeling something, not just saying it or knowing it.
You unpack some misconceptions about mindfulness. I think a lot of people assume becoming less reactive through mindfulness means feeling less, that it’s synonymous with less emotion. But you contradict that strongly in your book.
You cite a study by Antoine Lutz at the University of Wisconsin showing that advanced meditators actually feel pain more, at least according to their brain activity, but they recover more quickly and don’t have the anticipatory anxiety.
Talk about that. How does this relate to equanimity? Are we actually feeling more if we’re experiencing equanimity?
Margaret Cullen: Yes, we are feeling more. I have a quote at the beginning of the book from Matthew Brensilver, a mindfulness teacher. I love this quote. He says, Equanimity deepens the poignancy of our lives while draining it of melodrama. That’s such a beautiful distinction. Melodrama is not the same as poignancy. Melodrama is the additional reactivity. Poignancy is feeling deeply.
Equanimity deepens the poignancy of our lives while draining it of melodrama.
It turns out that indifference, apathy, and detachment, as opposed to non-attachment, are near enemies of equanimity. We think, I’ll just withdraw and I’ll be equanimous. No. Equanimity is an expression of love. All the Brahmaviharas are expressions of love. The first three are love in different contexts, and the fourth, equanimity, is love without attachment, love with impartiality. Without love, it’s not equanimity.
Because we’re talking about a way of being in the world in which our usual ego defenses are softened, equanimity is a state of deep vulnerability. We feel more. It’s supported by the wisdom that allows us to react less.
How can equanimity help with activism
Scott Snibbe: That would be a good slogan. Feel more, react less. I haven’t heard it put that way before.
Let’s get real. There are a lot of things people are feeling intensely and reacting strongly to right now in the world. The protests, the conflicts happening globally, the issues people are pulling their hair out over on all sides of the political spectrum.
How does equanimity help with that? For someone listening who feels deeply frustrated about the state of the world, how would they use these tools?
Margaret Cullen: Equanimity could not be more important than it is right now. We’re in a moment that feels like a perfect storm of causes for outrage, coming daily from the highest levels of government in the United States and around the world. It isn’t exclusive to us, but for those of us who live here, it feels like an onslaught that, for many, is unprecedented. This is amplified exponentially by social media and algorithms designed to activate our nervous systems and make us more outraged.
So where does equanimity fit when it comes to taking action in the world? It’s critical. The problems are so big. What some call the polycrisis, climate change and democracy, for example, two enormous issues. It’s very easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s very easy to fall into despair.
What we’re aiming for is exactly what we were just talking about. How can I widen my window of tolerance so I can feel this, feel it deeply, let it matter to me, and not be overwhelmed by it? Being overwhelmed is one of the near enemies of compassion.
Equanimity allows me to feel what’s happening, let it arise and pass, take refuge, and create some space around it. From that space comes the wisdom to act in the most beneficial way, knowing what I can and cannot do. Applying Shantideva or the 12-step prayer to our troubled world: I care about this planet. I want it to survive. I care about democracy. I want it to flourish. I want peace. I don’t want war or cruelty. What can I actually do?
If I can’t draw wisdom from the feeling of being deeply moved by injustice, then I can’t respond effectively. I’m just flapping my wings. And if I bring constant outrage into my community, raising the overall level of activation, I’m not helping others respond well either. They may feel more outrage, or guilt that they can’t fix everything, and then they shut down. We need equanimity to discern what each of us can do. There’s no contribution too small when it comes to the problems we’re facing.
If I bring constant outrage into my community, raising the overall level of activation, I’m not helping others respond well either. They may feel more outrage, or guilt that they can’t fix everything, and then they shut down.
Scott Snibbe: There’s a phrase you and your husband use that might seem at odds with this. You say, “It’s not my emergency.” Can you explain the story behind that and how it relates to walking that line between doing all we can and not getting hijacked or overwhelmed?
Margaret Cullen: It came from a comment a physician made at a party. She had been an ER doctor for decades and was remarkably equanimous. My husband asked her how she managed all that intensity. She said, “I just remember it’s not my emergency.” It’s a beautiful example.
If every case that came in were her emergency, she couldn’t do her job. Imagine how you feel in an emergency. Your mind narrows. Your cognition tightens. Your body tenses. Your jaw gets tight. You rehearse how bad things are. You worry. None of that allows you to perform surgery or intervene skillfully. You don’t even have access to the full databank you need to practice medicine if everything feels like an emergency. You have to find a way to be equanimous.
Scott Snibbe: I agree with you, but I can imagine someone listening, especially an activist, saying the opposite. Many activists want us to feel that it is our emergency. They might say people aren’t taking the situation seriously enough. If I role play that person and say, “It is our emergency. We do need to panic,” what would you say?
Margaret Cullen: I would ask, how does panic help?
It brings to mind a story a rabbi told me. She went to Minnesota with a multifaith group during a protest. There were many religious leaders present. Even among them, some people were very upset and angry. The organizers were skillful. They brought equanimity and lowered the temperature so they could go into the streets effectively.
If they had gone out fueled by anger, the risk of escalation and backlash would have been high. It was essential that the organizers, in subtle ways, cooled things down enough so they could act from their love of justice rather than their hatred of injustice.
If they had gone out fueled by anger, the risk of escalation and backlash would have been high. It was essential that the organizers, in subtle ways, cooled things down enough so they could act from their love of justice rather than their hatred of injustice.
Struggles with mental health
Scott Snibbe: That puts another spin on it. It’s not just feeling without reacting, but also orienting your feelings toward what’s constructive.
In the book, you’re brave in sharing your own struggles with mental health, eating disorders, even shoplifting. Can you talk about how equanimity helped you work with those?
Margaret Cullen: I mentioned earlier that the 12-step program was my first real exposure to equanimity. It was powerful, there’s so much wisdom there. The proof is in the lived experience. Part of it is surrender. Part of it is learning to step out of the contraction of the ego, to let go and trust.
In my case, and I think for many people, addiction is born out of mistrust and fear. Fear that you’re not going to be okay. Fear of your own feelings. Fear of suffering. That fear drives us to consume or behave in ways that help us not feel, to try to find safety in whatever we’re addicted to.
In my case, and I think for many people, addiction is born out of mistrust and fear. Fear that you’re not going to be okay. Fear of your own feelings. Fear of suffering. That fear drives us to consume or behave in ways that help us not feel, to try to find safety in whatever we’re addicted to.
Through the 12 steps, there’s surrender, and there’s also taking a moral inventory. That’s hard because addiction is often accompanied by behavior we’re not proud of. In my case, that included shoplifting. It was embarrassing to write about. It was poignant to revisit that young woman who was in so much pain. The moral inventory meant acknowledging that behavior, making amends where possible, and seeing the connection between the addictive pattern and the shoplifting.
Over time, and certainly by the time I wrote the book, I could see clearly that living in alignment with your values is the ground of equanimity. Once you begin meditating seriously, you start to see that any behavior in your life that isn’t aligned with your values will eventually rise to the surface and ask to be seen.
Once you begin meditating seriously, you start to see that any behavior in your life that isn’t aligned with your values will eventually rise to the surface and ask to be seen.
The importance of personal integrity
Scott Snibbe: One critique of mindfulness is that, in the way it’s sometimes taught, it’s detached from ethics or morality. Clearly that’s not how you understand it. But can you explain where ethics comes in? Because for many people, mindfulness is presented as simply letting things pass by. You’re saying it requires personal integrity. Where does that fit in the Buddhist path, or even in a secular mindfulness path?
Margaret Cullen: I’m so glad you asked that. It’s not a practice that’s just about paying attention. It’s designed to give us insight. Insight meditation connects the dots. My behavior is linked to my well-being. When I do this, I feel this way.
I wrote in the book about launching the first MBSR course for physicians at Kaiser. It was interesting to later read criticisms of MBSR claiming corporations use it to make employees more compliant. At Kaiser, at the time, there were serious concerns about how medicine was being delivered and how staff were treated.
Rather than making doctors go along with everything, many of them said, I’m not doing this. Some actually quit. I was just the teacher, just the messenger. But it certainly didn’t make them more compliant. If anything, it had the opposite effect.
Suffering is universal
Scott Snibbe: Earlier you talked about suffering and the way we collapse into ourselves, into ego. You write about this in the book, how in your twenties you encountered Buddhism and had thought suffering was a personal defect until you heard the First Noble Truth, that suffering is universal.
Can you talk about how that opened you up? A lot of people are put off by that first teaching, that life is suffering. I’m glad it landed differently for you.
Margaret Cullen: It landed so powerfully that it was the moment I got on the path and never left.
I went on a 10-day silent retreat without ever having meditated for a single minute. I had no idea what I was doing. My boyfriend at the time, a Moroccan Jew who was a musician and a real estate broker, had gone on a 10-day retreat and came back a different person. I thought, what an unlikely person to meditate. But something in him had shifted. I was curious, so I signed up.
One of the first teachings I heard was the Noble Truth of suffering. When I heard that suffering is universal, something inside me completely relaxed. I was the same young woman who had been trying to hold up the sky for my mother my entire life, who felt there was a lot wrong with me.
This teaching gave me a way to take it less personally. It was more helpful, in that moment, than the therapeutic approaches I had been using, which I still believe in, but which sometimes made me feel more personally defective. In meditation practice, suffering is universal. I don’t have to make mine a special case. And there’s a way out of it.
In meditation practice, suffering is universal. I don’t have to make mine a special case. And there’s a way out of it.
How to develop equanimity
Scott Snibbe: You wrote that you honestly thought everyone else was happy except you. I’m sure many people can relate to that.
What are ways people can practice this in everyday life? You’ve described the inner experience of equanimity, but how do we develop that muscle?
Margaret Cullen: Meditation is one of many ways. It’s a wonderful way to access equanimity. There are also many others. I’ve talked about getting out of the small self. When we’re hijacked or reactive, we fall into a trance of whatever the narrative is. We want to break that trance, the spell of outrage or fear or inadequacy or the belief that we’re the only one who’s suffering. If we can break the spell, we regain access to wisdom and equanimity. In many ways, equanimity and wisdom are closely linked.
How do we break the spell? We take refuge. Taking refuge is a kind of surrender that interrupts the trance. Humor can break the spell. Getting out of ourselves and into nature can break the spell. Asking questions about impermanence and the impersonal can help. Is this personal? Will this change? How will this look in ten years?
All of these can be doorways into equanimity.
Scott Snibbe: Can you say a bit about the meditation you’ll be leading? We’ll include it in the episode following this one.
Margaret Cullen: I wanted to lead the practice I described earlier, the one I did on retreat that led to the insight about my mother. It’s not taught that often outside the context of a Vipassana retreat, so I thought it might be helpful for your listeners.
It’s a guided equanimity practice using the phrases I mentioned earlier in our conversation.
Scott Snibbe: Thank you, Margaret, for joining me to talk about your book Quiet Strength. It’s a creative blend of Buddhist wisdom and personal experience that I think will benefit many people. I appreciate you sharing it with us.
Margaret Cullen: Thank you, Scott.
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Credits
Hosted by Scott Snibbe
Production and Marketing by Isabela Acebal
