How to choose happiness? Part 3: But what about me?
on pain and how we use emotions
Note: This is a 6-part series. See the introduction to the series for links to other posts in this series.
In the Sallatha Sutta SN36.6, the Buddha discusses how a typical person always feels the pain of any event as two arrows: the first arrow being physical pain, and the second arrow being the mental pain associated with sorrow, grief, anger, anxiety.1
On one hand, this teaching makes a lot of sense. Why suffer unnecessarily by shooting ourselves with a second arrow? But on another hand, it goes against the grain of the current social zeitgeist — who is the Buddha to gaslight us and tell us our mental suffering is our own doing? Removing that second arrow doesn't change the fact of our physical pain nor the oppressive social structures around us! The first arrow of pain is still there, still searing, and we are still just as stuck. And oftentimes that second arrow of pain can feel immaterial next to that first arrow of pain.
If anything, we often find that we are dependent on transmutation of felt pain into mental anguish for our motivation to act. Anger at injustice fuels our will to fight. Anger gives a sense of certainty and reaffirmation that we are in the right and the world is wrong. The more intense our anger the more just and righteous we feel. Stress keeps us alert to future, incoming arrows of pain. Grief tells us to recreate what once was good in our lives. Ambitions and desires keep us striving and on our path. As paralyzing as the pain can be, pain also keeps us going.
Our very survival often intimately depends on these emotions, and we oftentimes demand others2 to feel anger, sorrow, fear, emotional pain so that they may act. Oftentimes we wouldn't know what to do without a lot of pain and unhappiness, and so we hold on. With happiness, we would have to radically reprogram ourselves and find new directions.
Maybe I’ll write about this in the future, but ever since childhood I have been super guarded with my deepest sorrows. Not so much because it felt vulnerable or that I needed to protect myself from the world. Rather, I guarded my sorrows like treasures — I was (maybe still am?) afraid that if I released them cathartically, I would lose those feelings, and an accompanying sense of what was most precious, forever. I thought (still think?) I would lose me.
There’s also the Cūḷamālukya Sutta MN63 which has a parable of the poisoned arrow, discussing pragmatic themes. The idea is, sometimes you don’t need to know the whole reason and background of an arrow of suffering to justify pulling it out. Some lines of questioning may be helpful, but many are not.
And we can make the same demands of ourselves, as well.