Subjects of Equanimity
摘要
Continuing to consider equanimity as a mode of vibrant being, this chapter looks at four dynamic figures or flexible types—the “priest without borders,” the “person with belly,” the hunter, and the playful person (homo ludens). They have been enduring objects of philosophical speculation and felicitous meditation in both Eastern and Western traditions. Each has been seen in its own way as embodying dimensions of the fluid and processual character of lived experience. Together, they exemplify the balancing and coordination that issue from harmony with the interdependent workings of the contexts in which they emerge. They refigure the apparently determinative factuality of this world as being comprised of nothing other than starting points from which the truest potential for resonating with it may be realized. They are figures of the possible. And, finally, they point to more ways equanimity dissolves the excesses or extremes of dogmatism, certainty, and finality. No single subject position outlined in this or the previous chapter can possibly exhaust the manifold nature of equanimity as it may be lived. Nonetheless, each is remarkable for the clues it offers for how to embody the existential space necessary for appreciating that, as Ortega y Gasset neatly observed, “Life is many-sided…. Every moment and every place opens different roads to us…life is a permanent crossroads, a constant perplexity” (Man and People, p. 45). How to manage this ambit of incredible possibility demands a continual flexibility of being, the willingness to experiment at any time with subjectivity, with our place in the world. The equanimous subject is clearly recognizable in those moments of detachment from the determinative and equally the strictly utilitarian and familiar.