The Arrows of Emotion
April 21, 2010
There’s a famous discourse when the Buddha talks about pain, how the wise person experiencing pain feels it as the pain that comes from being shot by one arrow. The person whose mind is not trained turns around and shoots himself with another arrow. But it’s not really just one arrow—there are lots of arrows. There are all the emotional pains and the distress that we feel over physical pain. An important part of the practice is learning how to recognize that first arrow and not start shooting ourselves with all the other ones.