The Buddha once asked a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow is it painful?” The student replied, “It is.” The Buddha then asked, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?” The student replied again, “It is.” The Buddha then explained, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. This second arrow is optional.We do not have to wait long for life to bring us moments of difficulty or challenges. These can give rise to difficult emotions of greater or lesser intensity, such as sadness, anger or hurt. For as long as we live we will encounter such moments. Therefore, one of the most useful skills we can develop is how to work with such events and the subsequent emotions.
The Buddha's teaching, quoted above, is a useful strategy to remember. He distinguishes between the pain we naturally feel in life, and the pain that we shape ourselves. For example, we may naturally fall ill by picking up a virus or some illness that is doing the rounds. However, we may then add to our problems by the way we respond to the illness or the way the illness gives rise to a host of negative thoughts about ourselves or how our life is going. In other words, the pain is natural, but we create suffering by how we perceive the event and the physical sensations, how we judge them, and how we respond to them.
When something difficult happens to us, we have a tendency to commence a whole bunch of mental processes that can lead to more difficulties and create suffering — often thus adding more pain than there was originally. We dont like what is happening, and then start finding fault in ourselves or others, blaming, judging, and generally feeling sorry for ourselves.
This teaching is grounded in our mindfulness practice. We are trying to develop the skill to be able to open up to these strong emotions without either letting them discharge themselves in blame or self-pity, or running away from them or distracting ourselves from them as is easy in today's society. In doing this we just try and let the moment be, without adding. Because life is complex we will encounter many situations in which elements are not ours to control, or in which things happen without malicious intention. Paradoxically, sometimes it is right and appropriate just to be sad.
