Meditation and the Path of Emotion
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One of the very big misconceptions about meditation practice is that it will help you not to feel things too strongly—except for maybe peace, goodwill, and bliss (whatever that means). Eventually perhaps this will become true, but for most us, when strong feelings—especially strong negative feelings—are encountered, we view this as a failure of our practice. Like, if I was better at meditation, I could avoid becoming enraged when called an asshole by another driver (who was the asshole in this case, let’s face it) or the fact that my neighbor’s dog poops on my lawn every single day. I could avoid sorrow when my love is unrequited or I find that a dear friend is ill. I could avoid anxiety when I have to find a new job or have a scary appointment with the doctor.
In the sort of spiritually materialistic world we live in, we could find many suggestions for how to achieve such a state of implacability. Some of them are about avoiding dangerous situations (physical, emotional, spiritual) altogether by just staying home. Some direct you to assert yourself in the face of difficulty by taking strong action, fighting back. Some revolve around restructuring the way your mind works so that you only think the thoughts that make you happy and “attract” good things—or, when bad things happen, you replace your sad and weary thoughts with perkier, brighter ones.
There is nothing wrong with making efforts along these lines. It is vitally important that we take precautions against danger by safeguarding ourselves on all levels. We should react boldly when it is called for. And of course we should examine our thoughts for self-sabotage and try to craft an inner environment of joy and positivity.
However. If we do so with the intention of creating a life where anger, sorrow, and fear have no place, then I’m afraid we will be quite disappointed.
My dear friends. Please know that I wish for you only peace, joy, and love. But it is impossible to avoid the sorrows of being human and actually, if it were, we would cease to be human. At the core of anger is great vitality. At the heart of sorrow is love. Underneath fear is sadness, which is soft and workable. When you turn toward anger, sorrow, and fear, in some way you are gaining access to vitality, love, and great tenderness. You can’t separate them.
It would be a very small being indeed who could tolerate only the so-called positive feelings. You are capable of a vast range of emotion and connecting with this storehouse also connects you to poetry, passion, and your own brand of utter brilliance. We have a choice: feel it all or go home.
So it behooves us greatly to learn to meet our difficult emotions and our meditation practice can help in two ways:
First, by teaching you how to sit (literally) with yourself as you think, feel, and experience whatever arises, always returning to breath, you learn to ride the waves of grasping, aggression, and avoidance with equanimity—not by ignoring them, but by allowing them to be exactly as they are.
Second, your meditation practice gives you a tool for encountering those strong emotions that you simply cannot let go of, no way, no how. Sometimes it happens during practice that deep, deep emotions arise and it is not possible (or advisable) to “just let them go.” In this case, your can slightly alter the meditation technique for as long as you need to. Rather than make your breath the object of awareness (as it is in classical shamatha practice), you could make your emotion the object of awareness. Not the story of the emotion (I feel this way because…. I wouldn’t feel this way if… I could stop feeling this if only…) but the feeling of the feeling: the heat or chill or constriction or weight of it. Make that the object of awareness and, when attention strays, which it will, just as in normal shamatha practice, bring it back. Place your attention on your feeling over and over until the feeling begins to dissolve—and then come back to breath.
In this way, as meditators, we are learning to create a world for ourselves where we are unafraid of anger. Unafraid of sadness. Unafraid of fear. It’s not that we don’t feel such things, but they do not knock us down. This is a far more expansive, joyful, and and humane way to live. And, as Chogyam Trungpa writes in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. “The key to warriorship is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery.”
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29 comments
Love, just love your email today. I have wanted to feel ALL my emotions, happy, bliss, anger, sorrow, fear, the whole shebang of them. No more hiding. No more “pretending”. Meditation was very difficult at first but whoa the rewards have been incredible. When will we ever learn that there may just be perfection in imperfection? Some times I can only do it for 15 minutes, other times an hour or longer. Some times not at all.
Pema Chodrun is my most fave Buddhist. She never pretends she is perfect. She admits her own difficulties!! That’s why I love and respect her so much. Her books lift me, encourage me, and there is such solace in all of them. I’m thinkin you are much like Pema. Many many thanks. Kathy
I feel exactly as you do–about my practice and also about the amazing Pema. So inspiring and encouraging. With love, Susan
Thank you for your message. Strong negative emotions behooves my meditation. I push it away and I get lulled into daydreams. But your teaching of making it part of meditation is a good way to teach me to lead me slowly back to the breath with gentleness and awareness. I will use it when I feel these strong negative feelings (sadness, anger and many others). I just love your blogs especially on how to approach imperfections and difficulties in meditations. A lot of teachers and books I cannot understand. But yours is a much simpler and direct approach.
You are very welcome! So glad we’re practicing it all together.
And that’s why I call you ‘Coble,’ like you’re on my foabtoll team. So, go out there and knock some heads, Coble!
Cheers!
thank you so much for helping me. I find myself consumed by fear and almost unable to function. I do believe this will help.
I truly hope so. Wishing you well, lulu, and sending love. S.
Lulu: When there is no one to support me (at times) I have found this is the ONLY way to rid myself of the toxins of fear! You are NOT ALONE.
I find my meditation works best after I’ve done some yoga. Even as little as 15 min is amazing with this combo. My body always relaxes and my mind too.
Hang in there kiddo. It will happen for you.
Thank you so much for today’s message.
Pleasure.
The gift of your supportive meditation teachings have been such a beautiful resource for me personally. I’ve had the opportunity (whether I wanted it or not) to embrace your experience in The Wisdom of the Broken Heart. A note of my heartfelt gratitude for your willingness to put forth your work in the world.
p.s. Your cat brought such a moment of humor into the moment!
Denise, so glad this has been helpful and I hope your heart is finding strength in the broken places. And here’s to cute cats when you need them! Love, S
Thank you, I needed the reassurance that emotions didn’t mean my meditations are not working.
One of my favorite stories about meditation and negative emotions comes from Ram Das. I once heard him say (as I recall) “After more than 40 years of meditiating, chanting, devotional practice, etc., I would have expected to have dropped at least one of my afflictions: anger, greed, avarice, lust, etc. But not one has gone; they are all still there. But what *has* changed is that where before they were these huge, all-consuming mental states, now they are more like these little friendly ’schmoos’ that show up to visit from time to time. “Hey, it’s lust! How you doing, long time no see – what’s new with you?”" :^).
When I remember that Ram Das can retain these emotions after all the cushion time he’s done, it helps me to retain perspective (and to work on non-entanglement) when these “schmoos” visit me.
Love.
Chuck: Enjoyed your post so much as it is somewhat of a fantasy I’ve had to rid myself of every kind of fault, but oh yeah, “they still be there”.
However, as you say, they have changed from dominating my thoughts, to finally tempering them with gentleness and finally some kindness for myself too. Thank you so much for your thoughts.
Kathy
Ditto Chuck O. And Kathy Willard.
One kind of meditation that helps me also is loving-kindness directed to myself. I mean if there is a negative self-talk going on inside my head, Loving-kindness meditation to oneself is a good way to dispel the negative self-talk, faults and judgements. Then a clear and uncluttered mind is then open to give love and kindness to others. It is not a one-shot sitting. It may take several days of sitting on this to register.
Got that from Stephan Bodian from “Meditation for Dummies”. He explains it better than me.
Kathy and Katherine – Thank you for your reminders re: gentleness and lovingkindness. It’s an ongoing balancing act for me between openness/accepting that the “schmoos” will always be there, and working to apply appropriate mindfulness and remedies, to “schmooify” emotions which are not yet “schmooed” (my new favorite word :^). When in doubt, lovingkindness, combined with mindfulness (to hopefully avoid “idiot compassion”), is basic go-to goodness. Again, thanks for the reminders. And thank you Susan, for such insightful teachings, and for providing this wonderful resource.
Since we’re talking about emotions, I can’t not mention a favorite book, “Destructive Emotions”, edited by Daniel Goleman. It recounts the 2000 mind-life conference with the Dalai Lama, Goleman, Alan Wallace, Paul Ekman, and other leading Buddhist and western psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers on the subject of East-West approaches to mind, emotions, and the latest discoveries in brain science. Wonderfully written, stimulating, and highly recommended. One part that sticks with me is Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard’s session, where he offers a description of a destructive emotion as “one which obscures the way things actually are”, or leading away from clear vision. That’s stuck with me, as it provides a useful (for me) way to examine emotions while avoiding “good/bad” labels, and seems to also mesh well with Susan’s article re: not being afraid to clearly see and acknowledge our emotions.
This is a wonderful book, and a great dialog to be privy too. Thanks for recommending it.
I’m going to get that book. I thought I had posted a new comment yesterday about seeing a video that suggested when difficult emotions arise, to look at them with “curiosity”. Wow, how this changed my views, so instead of dread or gawd I so dislike some thoughts I have, I just try to see them now with curiosity, for the majority of these darn thoughts are not who I am at all, nor what I truly believe in my heart either. I can be like a sponge that soaks up the collective negatives, but they are not my true feelings. Thank you, thank you sooo much. I am so grateful for Susan’s site. It feels so darn good to know others views too. Just love it.
I seem to be behind on reading your posts, but this one in particular spoke to me–especially the “failure of our practice” piece. I’ve been going through meditation and mindfulness training for awhile and doing my best to remain calm and compassionate as much as possible. I was doing amazingly well the first 4 months and now that I’m going through a difficult time, it has all seemed to fall by the wayside and I can’t stay mindful or peaceful no matter how hard I try. I would love advice or words of encouragement on how to get back on that horse. I feel whenever I make a conscious effort, negativity and bitterness wins out. Thank you for all of your words always.
Hi Kellie. What an excellent question.
Of course we all go through difficult times and find it hard to keep up with our practice. And when our calm and compassion go out the window, it’s even harder to sit because we feel that being freaked out and feeling harsh are signs of failure.
I have a few suggestions:
1. When you fall off the horse practice-wise (i.e. don’t practice for one, two, three, or a thousand days) you are allowed to feel really, really bad–but only for 12 seconds. Then you must let that go and simply come back to practice the next day. Repeat as needed.
2. The effort to remain calm and compassionate is at the heart of so much sadness and aggression. There is no requirement–NONE WHATSOEVER–that you feel peaceful. If there were, we would all be failures, automatically. Instead, as you notice anxiety, negativity, or bitterness, please turn toward them. If you’re on your meditation cushion, allow them to be present without fighting. Just feel them much as you would feel cold if a brisk breeze suddenly blew through the room or heat if you took a sip of too-hot coffee. If you notice that you become caught up in the story behind the feelings (”I feel this way because I’m a failure…nothing ever works out for me…just when I think I’m getting somewhere, I find that I am not…”), simply let that story go and come back to the truth of the feeling–which is never the story behind it, but is simply the sensation of it.
3. If you’re off the cushion and such things arise, do the same thing. Only instead of returning attention to breath (as you would on your meditation cushion), return attention to whatever is going on around you–the conversation you’re participating in, the vista outside if you’re on a bus, or the laundry you’re folding.
All efforts to get back on the horse only keep us in the mud. Developing some sense of presence while in the mud is what propels us back up.
Please let me know if this is useful.
Wishing you only good luck–Susan
Most of my days are quite peaceful, lovely, but not all of em!! Today, things went sooo wrong and my body was a complete mess, aching all over. Finally got home, had a bite, cup of tea, and began my yoga. BINGO, my body feels 8o% better and by tomorrow with a good nights sleep I will be back to myself. The cost zero, the benefit PRICELSS.
So glad to hear this!
Kelly, I think it is such a common thing for all of us to fall by the wayside. I heard one saying that life can feel as though we are walking backwards thru molasses. I think it is enough at such times to just put one foot in front of the other, and not make our journey harder. Just one day at a time, one foot at a time, until we return to our practice, and get back on the horse. Even horses must graze once in a while right? At such times we may not think things are changing but oh, they are for nothing is stagnant. The BEST thing is that you are reaching out to all of us. I love that Kelly for it makes it easier for me to reach out and others too. Love Kathy
Thank you both Susan and Kathy for your kind words of encouragement. I was beginning to feel like a “wanna be Buddhist” that could practice when things in life were going well, but the minute life got rough I crumbled. It sounds like we all may have possibly faced these challenges at one point.
I’m trying to use all I’ve learned over the past few months to help me cope with the end of my relationship and instead of allowing things to be what they are, I feel I’m resisting, which goes against everything I’ve learned, and I find that I and only I am fighting with myself. When I attempt to sit, it seems all I can do is think about what went wrong. Can anyone advise on the best way to meditate while dealing with turmoil? I feel turning to meditation will help but it’s counterproductive right now as the peace and quiet is the perfect environment for these thoughts to creep up. Again, thank you all so much.
Kelly: I have found combining a few different modalities helped me and brought me different kinds of relief. i.e. I would Journal my feelings to try and sort them out. I’ve done a walking meditation when sitting felt impossible. When I have been drained and strained in all ways, physical, emotional, spiritually, and intellectually as well it just helped me break things up a bit. I remind myself too that millions, not just a few are going thru exactly precisely the very same thing. Some things have required short term professional assistance. It gave me some clarity, and support without any judgments. I often have done some volunteer work here and there. Yep, there are many tools that helped me really get to know myself. I shall “always” be a work in progress, no magic bullet, but if you just keep lookin, askin, hopin, and lovin, you will get thru this. You are already helping others. Yes, you are. Love Kathy