When I think of an enemy I get angry
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Emotion
Emotion, on the other hand, refers to the active responses that arise on the basis of those feelings. On the basis of an unpleasant feeling, we may well give rise to ill will (which is an emotion). When we’re not being mindful, these emotion responses arise automatically. When we do have awareness, however, we have more choice over how we respond.
When you call to mind someone you don’t get on with, you bring into your mind a host of unpleasant associations that are tied to that person. These give rise to unpleasant feelings. Then one of two things can happen. If we lose our awareness, then it’s likely that the emotional response of ill will will arise on the basis of those unpleasant feelings.
However, if we maintain our awareness we have choices. We can choose to experience the unpleasant feelings that arise spontaneously, and we can choose to wish that person well.
Learning to be comfortable with discomfort
One important thing to remember is that things that feel unpleasant are not necessarily “negative.” One example is feeling ashamed. Feeling ashamed is not a pleasant experience (it’s an unpleasant feeling), but it’s considered positive in Buddhist psychological terms because it’s an emotion based on an ethical sensibility. It feels unpleasant to know that an action we’ve performed isn’t congruent with our ideals of how we’d like to behave. So “unpleasant” doesn’t always mean “bad.”
And not everything that feels pleasant is positive, of course. It’s possible to take pleasure from being unkind, and unkindness is an ethically negative emotional state.
One of the things that we have to learn in meditation is to be comfortable with discomfort — so that we don’t react inappropriately and create negative emotional states that will only lead to more suffering in the future.
Write a comment