People often think that Buddhism is all about letting go. These last few days I’ve learned that it’s about staying just as much.

My dharma teacher and dear friend Dana even says that when someone is having a rough time, telling them to just let go of it is positively the worst thing you could do. That’s so true!

So what to do then with our emotions? This weekend I’ve had the opportunity to be a staff member in a meditation program led by Dana. The emphasis on the teachings she gave was on not being afraid of ourselves, and staying, even when it gets really uncomfortable. So why would we stay with all our yukky stuff in the first place?

I’ve had my own experience with yukky stuff the day after the program when I had a photo shoot. I was still feeling very raw and naked after the dharma program, and this came through in the pictures that were taken. Somehow I couldn’t bring anything to the picture than my raw and almost broken look.(1) So then on top of this rawness, I started feeling guilty to the photographer and like a ‘bad model’. Naturally to say, things only got worse.

There’s a famous teaching from the Buddha where he asks his students what is the difference between an enlightened being who experiences the whole range of emotions, and a non-enlightened being, who also experiences the same range of emotions? The non-enlightened one, after experiencing a particular emotion, something that could be compared to being hit by an arrow, then sticks another arrow in herself in the form of a judgement about that emotion. The enlightened being experiences the emotion, and leaves it at that one arrow, in stead of piling them up by reacting to that emotion by rejecting it, and them being angry at rejecting it, and then hating yourself for being angry and so forth.

That’s what I did at the photo shoot. In stead of just feeling raw and exposed (and maybe calling of the shoot) I put one arrow in after another by not being honest about my experience and beating myself down over it.

So I’m taking Dana’s lead once more, by trying to just stay with whatever I'm experiencing. Trying to minimize the amount of arrows that I put in myself, and allow myself to be just a human being experiencing human emotions. That’s hard enough, strangely!

Have a lovely week,

Geertje

Ps: a very interesting dharma talk on emotions by Andrea Fella can be downloaded through this link on audiodharma.org


(1) Now this is nice in one shot, but not in all when you are supposed to be a model. My sister now jokes that I should specialize in anti-depressants adds (“I specialize in looking broken!”)