Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche - Wikipedia

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche - Wikipedia

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Mingyur Rinpoche in 2016
Title Rinpoche
Personal
Born 1975

Nepal
Religion Kagyu Nyingma

Part of a series on
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Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (/ˈjɒŋɡeɪ/; born 1975)[1] is a Tibetan teacher and master of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. He has authored two best-selling books and oversees the Tergar Meditation Community, an international network of Buddhist meditation centers.


Contents
1Life
2Books
3References
4See also
5External links

Life[edit]

Mingyur Rinpoche was born in Nepal in 1975[1] the youngest of four brothers. His mother is Sönam Chödrön, a descendant of the two Tibetan kings Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Deutsen. His brothers are Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Tsikey Chokling Rinpoche, and Tsoknyi Rinpoche and his nephews are Phakchok Rinpoche and the reincarnation of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, known popularly as Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche. From the age of nine,[1] his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche,[1] taught him meditation,[1] passing on to him the most essential instructions of the Dzogchen and Mahamudra traditions.

At the age of eleven, Mingyur Rinpoche began studies at Sherab Ling Monastery[1] in northern India, the seat of Tai Situ Rinpoche. Two years later, Mingyur Rinpoche began a traditional three-year retreat at Sherab Ling.[1] At the age of nineteen, he enrolled at Dzongsar Institute, where, under the tutelage of the renowned Khenpo Kunga Wangchuk, he studied the primary topics of the Buddhist academic tradition, including Middle Way philosophy and Buddhist logic. At age twenty, Mingyur Rinpoche became the functioning abbot of Sherab Ling.[1] At twenty-three, he received full monastic ordination.[1] During this time, Mingyur Rinpoche received important Dzogchen transmissions from Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche.[1]

In 2007, Mingyur Rinpoche completed the construction of Tergar Monastery in Bodhgaya, India, which will serve large numbers of people attending Buddhist events at this sacred pilgrimage site, serve as an annual site for month-long Karma Kagyu scholastic debates, and serve as an international study institute for the Sangha and laity. The institute will also have a medical clinic for local people.[2]

Mingyur Rinpoche has overseen the Kathmandu Tergar Osel Ling Monastery, founded by his father, since 2010. He also opened a shedra (monastic college) at the monastery.[3]

In June 2011, Mingyur Rinpoche left his monastery in Bodhgaya to begin a period of extended retreat. Rinpoche left in the middle of the night, taking nothing with him, but leaving a farewell letter.[4] He spent four years as a wandering yogi.[5][6]

During the first few weeks of this retreat, Rinpoche had a near-death experience, likely due to a severe form of botulism. This may have been the result of choosing to eat only the meals that were free and available to him after allowing himself to run out of money. The near-death experience, according to Rinpoche, was one of the most pivotal and transformative experiences of his life. After continuing with his retreat for four years, he later returned to his position as abbot. [7][6]

Books[edit]

1. (with Eric Swanson) The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness ISBN 0-307-34625-0, Harmony Books 2007 (bought)
2. (with Eric Swanson) Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom ISBN 978-0-307-40779-5, Harmony Books 2009 (to buy)
3. (with Torey Hayden and Charity Larrison) Ziji: The Puppy Who Learned to Meditate ISBN 978-0-95638580-2 2009 
4. (with Helen Tworkov) Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism ISBN 978-1-61180-121-7, Shambhala Publications under its Snow Lion imprint. 2014
5. (with Helen Tworkov) In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying ISBN 978-0525512530 2019

References[edit]

1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j Mingyur Rinpoche Bio
2. ^ The Young Monks of Tergar Monastery Archived August 1, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
3. ^ "Kathmandu Tergar Osel Ling Monastery". Tergar.org. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
4. ^ Tergar International: [http://tergar.org/resources/letter-from-yongey-mingyur-rinpoche-before-entering-retreat/ Letter from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche When Entering Retreat | Tergar International of Nepal
5. ^ "In exclusive first interview...", 27 Nov 2015, lionsroar.com
6. ^ Jump up to:a b Lion's Roar staff (15 July 2016). "Mingyur Rinpoche reveals what happened during his four years as a wandering yogi". Lion's Roar. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
7. ^ "In exclusive first interview...", 27 Nov 2015, lionsroar.com

See also[edit]
Namchö Mingyur Dorje

External links[edit]

Official biography of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Mingyur Rinpoche

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche possesses a rare ability to present the ancient wisdom of Tibet in a fresh, engaging manner. His profound yet accessible teachings and playful sense of humor have endeared him to students around the world. Most uniquely, Rinpoche’s teachings weave together his own personal experiences with modern scientific research, relating both to the practice of meditation.

Born in 1975 in the Himalayan border regions between Tibet and Nepal, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is a much-loved and accomplished meditation master. From a young age, Rinpoche was drawn to a life of contemplation. He spent many years of his childhood in strict retreat. At the age of seventeen, he was invited to be a teacher at his monastery’s three-year retreat center, a position rarely held by such a young lama. He also completed the traditional Buddhist training in philosophy and psychology, before founding a monastic college at his home monastery in north India.

In addition to extensive training in the meditative and philosophical traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Mingyur Rinpoche has also had a lifelong interest in Western science and psychology. At an early age, he began a series of informal discussions with the famed neuroscientist Francisco Varela, who came to Nepal to learn meditation from his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Many years later, in 2002, Mingyur Rinpoche and a handful of other long-term meditators were invited to the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Richard Davidson, Antoine Lutz, and other scientists examined the effects of meditation on the brains of advanced meditators. The results of this groundbreaking research were reported in many of the world’s most widely read publications, including National Geographic and Time.

Mingyur Rinpoche teaches throughout the world, with centers on five continents. His candid, often humorous accounts of his own personal difficulties have endeared him to thousands of students around the world. His best-selling book, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into over twenty languages. Rinpoche’s most recent books are Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism, Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom, and an illustrated children’s book entitled Ziji: The Puppy that Learned to Meditate.

In early June, 2011, Mingyur Rinpoche walked out of his monastery in Bodhgaya, India and began a “wandering retreat” through the Himalayas and the plains of India that lasted four and a half years. When not attending to the monasteries under his care in India and Nepal, Rinpoche spends time each year traveling and teaching worldwide.

Detailed Biography of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

MINGYUR RINPOCHE –DETAILED BIOGRAPHY

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche was born in 1975 in a small Himalayan village near the border of Nepal and Tibet. Son of the renowned meditation master Tulku Urgyen Rinpocheand Sönam Chödrön(a descendant of the two Tibetan kings Songtsen Gampo and Trisong Detsen),Mingyur Rinpoche was drawn to a life of contemplation from an early age and would often run away to meditate in the caves that surrounded his village. In these early childhood years, however, he suffered from panic attacks that hinderedhis ability to interact with others and enjoy his idyllic surroundings.Mingyur Rinpoche's maternal grandfather, Lama Tashi Dorje, was the most respected Lama in thewhole Nubri area and he had a very close link with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.He was the head of Pema Choling Monastery, in Nubri, and Mingyur Rinpoche's earliest meditation teacher, when he was just a small boy.At the age of nine, Rinpoche left to study meditation with his father at Nagi Gonpa, a small hermitage on the outskirts of Kathmandu valley. For nearly three years, Tulku Urgyen guided him experientially through the profound Buddhist practices of Mahamudra and Dzogchen, teachings that are typically considered highly secret and only taught to advanced meditators. Throughout this time, his father would impart pithy instructions to his young son and then send him to meditate until he had achieved a direct experience of the teachings.When he was eleven years old, Mingyur Rinpoche was requested to reside at Sherab Ling Monastery in Northern India, the seat of Tai Situ Rinpoche and one of the most important monasteries in the Kagyu lineage. While there, he studied the teachings that had been brought to Tibet by the great translator Marpa, as well as the rituals of the Karma Kagyu lineage, with the retreat master of the monastery, Lama Tsultrim. He was formally enthroned as the 7th incarnation of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche by Tai Situ Rinpoche when he was twelve years old.Three Year RetreatWhen Mingyur Rinpoche turned thirteen, he begged both his father and Tai Situ Rinpoche for special permission to enter the traditional three-year retreat that was set to begin at Sherab Ling Monastery. It was highly unusual for someone so young to make such a request, but they both consented and soon Mingyur Rinpoche began his retreat under the guidance of Saljey Rinpoche, a learned and experienced meditation master who had spent half of his life in strict retreat.During the next three years, Mingyur Rinpoche practiced the preliminaries, which prepare the meditator for advanced contemplative practice; the development stage, which uses visualization and sacred sounds to transform the processes of ordinary perception; the completion stage, which involves working with the subtle energies of the body; and Mahamudra, a form of practice that allows the meditator to directly experience the luminous clarity of the mind’s true nature. The great diligence that Mingyur Rinpoche demonstrated throughout the retreat resulted in his attaining an extraordinary level of mastery over the mind and emotions. At this time, he completely overcame the panic attacks that had troubled him as a child, discovering first-hand how meditation can be used to deal with challenging emotionalproblems.When Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche completed his three-year retreat, his beloved teacher Saljey Rinpoche passed away, leaving vacant his key position at Sherab Ling monastery. To replace him, Tai Situ Rinpoche appointed Mingyur Rinpoche as the monastery’s next retreat master, making him responsible for guiding senior monks and nuns through the intricacies of Buddhist meditation practice in the next three-year retreat. The seventeen-year old Mingyur Rinpoche was one of the youngest lamas to ever hold this position.Overseeing Sherab Ling MonasteryMingyur Rinpoche continued to receive important transmissions from his father and Khenchen Thrangu, an important Kagyu lama. When he was nineteen, he enrolled at Dzongsar Monastic College, where, under the tutelage of the renowned Khenpo Kunga Wangchuk, he studied the primary topics of the Buddhist academic tradition, including Middle Way philosophy and Buddhist logic.When he was twenty years old, he was asked to oversee the activities ofSherab Ling Monasterywhile its abbot, Tai Situ Rinpoche, was away for an extended period.In his new role, he was instrumental in establishing a new monastic college at the monastery, where he worked as an assistant professor while simultaneously carrying out his duties as retreat master for a third three year retreat. Throughout this period, which lasted until he was twenty-five, Rinpoche often stayed in retreat for periods of one to three months while continuing to oversee the activities of Sherab Ling Monastery. When he wastwenty-three years old, he received full monastic ordination from Tai Situ Rinpoche.Important TransmissionsDuring this period, Mingyur Rinpoche received an important Dzogchen transmission from the great Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, a renowned teacher from the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. For a total of one hundred days, spread over a number of years, this great meditation master transmitted the “oral lineage” of the Heart Essence of the Great Perfection. These teachings on the breakthrough (trekchö) and direct leap (tögal) of the Dzogchen lineage are extremely secret and may only be transmitted to one person at a time. Much like he had studied with his father years before, Mingyur Rinpoche received a pithy meditation instruction and returned for more teachings only once he had directly experienced what was taught. This rare form of teaching is known as “experiential guidance.”

In the years that followed, Mingyur Rinpoche continued to study the five traditional subjects of the Buddhist tradition (Madhyamaka, Prajnaparamita, Abhidharma, Pramana, and Vinaya), in addition to other important topics. He also continued to refine his meditative realization through daily practice and periodic solitary retreats.To this day, Mingyur Rinpoche continues his own studyand meditation. More recently, he received important Dzogchen transmissions from Kyabjé Trulshik Rinpoche, including the Transmitted Teachings of the Nyingma School (Nyingma Kama) and Fourfold Heart Essence (Nyingtik Yabshi). He also participated in transmissions of Jamgon Kongtrul’s Treasury of Precious Treasures (Rinchen Terdzö) and Treasury of Instructions (Damngak Dzö), which took place at Sherab Ling Monastery.Buddhism and ScienceIn addition to his extensive background in meditation and Buddhist philosophy, Mingyur Rinpoche has held a lifelong interest in psychology, physics, and neurology. At an early age, he began a series of informal discussions with the famed neuroscientist Francisco Varela, who came to Nepal to learn meditation from his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Many years later, in 2002, Mingyur Rinpoche and a handful of other long-term meditators were invited to the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin at the request of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. There, Richard Davidson, Antoine Lutz, and other scientists examined the effects of meditation on the brains of advanced meditators. The results of this groundbreaking research were reported in many of the world’s most widely read publications, includingNational GeographicandTime. Follow-up studies were carried out at Harvard University, MIT, and other important research centers.Rinpoche continues his involvement with this research and contributes actively to the vibrant dialogue between Western science and Buddhism. He is an advisor to the Mind and Life Institute and participates as a research subject in the ongoing studies of the neural and physiological effects of meditation.Rinpoche’s teaching style has been deeply influenced by his knowledge of science. He is especially well-known for his ability to enrich his presentation of the ancient insights and practices of Tibetan Buddhism with the findings of modern science. It is his hope that the emerging relationship between these seemingly disparatefields will yield key insights to help us realize our full human potential.ActivitiesIn addition to his responsibilities at Sherab Ling Monastery, Mingyur Rinpoche is the abbot of Tergar Osel Ling Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal, and Tergar Rigzin KhachöTargyé Ling Monastery in Bodhgaya, India. He also teaches regularly throughout Europe, North and South America, and Asia, where he leads a growing number of Tergar Meditation Centers and Meditation Groups.Rinpoche is an internationally-acclaimed author.His first book,The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, debuted on theNew York Timesbestseller list and has been translated into over twenty languages. His second book,Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom, explores how difficult emotions and challenging life situations can be used as stepping stones to discover joy and freedom. Turning Confusion Into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism, gives detailed instruction and inspiring advice for those embarking on the Tibetan Buddhist path in earnest. Mingyur Rinpoche has also written an illustrated children’s book, entitledZiji: The Puppy that Learned to Meditate.View more at tergar.org/books.One of Mingyur Rinpoche’s greatest passions is bringing the practice of meditation to people from all walks of life. He is working with professionals from a wide range of disciplines to adapt his Joy of Living retreats for use in different contexts, including hospitals, schools, prisons, and leadership training. As part of this effort, he is developing programs to train facilitators and instructors to teach the practice of meditation in these varied settings.In early June, 2011, Mingyur Rinpoche walked out of his monastery in Bodhgaya, India and began a “wandering retreat” through the Himalayas and the plains of India that lasted four and a half years. When not attending to the monasteries under his care in India and Nepal, Rinpoche spends time each year traveling and teaching worldwide

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프로그램 소개

한국 불교 수행

1. 송광사 방장 현봉 스님이 들려주는 ‘선(禪)이란 무엇인가’, 
2. 미황사 금강 스님이 지도하는 간화선 수행 그리고 
3. 해인사 국일암 명법 스님이 들려주는 ‘마음치료 이야기’

위빠사나(남방불교) 수행

미얀마 파욱 선원을 중심으로 세계인이 수행하는 사마타 위빠사나에 대한

1. 파욱 사야도의 강의와 
2. 일묵 스님의 수행 지도 

서구 마음챙김 수행

1. <붓다 브레인>으로 불교와 뇌과학의 접점을 찾았던 릭 핸슨의 뇌과학 강의와 
2. <받아들임>으로 세계인의 공감을 끌었던 타라 브랙의 RAIN 수행 지도

티베트 불교 수행

티베트 불교의 중심을 이루고 있는 중관에서부터 보리심 수행까지를 티베트 불교의 고전 <입보리행론>, <람림>, <입중론>을 통해 만난다

프로그램 시간표

상세 프로그램

한국 불교 수행 11월 5일(목)송광사 방장 현봉 스님이 들려주는 ‘선(禪)이란 무엇인가’, 

미황사 금강 스님이 지도하는 간화선 수행 그리고 

해인사 국일암 명법 스님이 들려주는 ‘마음치료 이야기’

프로그램 강사 소개
현봉스님

조계총림 송광사 방장
강연주제 선(禪)이란 무엇인가?
금강스님

해남 미황사 주지
강연주제 간화선의 수행 지도
명법스님

은유와 마음연구소 대표
강연주제 선(禪)과 마음치료 강의와
실시간 질의 응답
참가 신청

위빠사나(남방불교) 수행 

11월 6일(금)미얀마 파욱 선원을 중심으로 세계인이 수행하는 사마타 위빠사나에 대한 파욱 사야도의 강의와 일묵 스님의 수행 지도

프로그램 강사 소개
파욱 사야도

미얀마 파욱센터 큰스님
강연주제 사마타 위빠사나란 무엇인가?
일묵스님

제따와나 선원 선원장
강연주제 사마타 위빠사나 수행 지도
참가 신청

서구 마음챙김 수행 

11월 7일(토)<붓다 브레인>으로 불교와 뇌과학의 접점을 찾았던 릭 핸슨의 뇌과학 강의와 <받아들임>으로 세계인의 공감을 끌었던 타라 브랙의 RAIN 수행 지도

프로그램 강사 소개
릭핸슨 (Rick Hanson)

신경심리학자 & 명상지도자
강연주제 마음과 뇌의 연결성 &
명상이 뇌에 미치는 영향
타라 브랙 (Tara Brach)

세계적 심리학자 & 불교명상가
강연주제 팬데믹, 부처님의 가르침을
통한 마음의 치유 ‘끌어안음’
참가 신청
티베트 불교 수행 11월 8일(일)티베트 불교의 중심을 이루고 있는 중관에서부터 보리심 수행까지를 티베트 불교의 고전 <입보리행론>,<람림>, <입중론>을 통한 만남

프로그램 강사 소개
달라이 라마 (Dalai Lama)

명상웹컨퍼런스 축하 메시지
욘게이 밍규르 린포체
(Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche)

강연주제
사랑과 자비를 가지고 사는 삶과 티베트 불교 수행의 이해
청전스님

달라이 라마의 한국인 첫 제자
강연주제
<입보리행론>에서
배우는 보리심
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Working with emotions

Working with emotions


Working with emotions

by Venerable Thubten Chodron on Jun 18, 2011 in Fear Anxiety and Other Emotions

People worldwide want to know how to work with their emotions—how to prevent being overwhelmed by painful ones and how to enrich the wholesome and loving ones. As a young person, I had no idea how to do this, and it was Buddhism’s perspective on this that first attracted me. So I will begin with my journey leading to the Buddha’s teachings, continue with the methods the Buddha recommended to work with emotions, and conclude with a few observations about the future of Buddhism.

I came to Buddhism rather unexpectedly, or so it may seem. As a child, I was curious about religion, and as a teenager, my mind teemed with spiritual questions: “Why am I alive? What is the purpose of life? What happens after death? Why do people fight and kill each other if they want to live in peace? What does it mean to love others?” Growing up in a reform Jewish family in a predominantly Christian suburb in the USA, I asked my teachers and the religious leaders around me. The answers that satisfied them nevertheless left me dry.

Studying history at university, I came to learn that almost every generation, for hundreds of years, wars were fought in Europe in the name of God. Disillusionment with organized religion overcame me, for wasn’t religion supposed to make people more peaceful and harmonious? In reaction, as a young person in the sixties, I took part in some of the social protests of the times, as well as turned to the various distractions offered to my generation.

I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UCLA and, after working for a year, traveled in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. I wanted to learn about life through experiencing it instead of reading about it. After a year and a half, I had learned a lot, but still lacked understanding of the meaning of life. Nevertheless, feeling that the purpose of life must have to do with benefiting others, I returned to the USA, taught elementary school in Los Angeles, and pursued graduate studies in Education at USC.

One summer vacation, I saw a flyer about a meditation course taught by two Tibetan monks, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Zopa Rinpoche. One of the first things they said at the course was, "You don’t have to believe anything we say. You are intelligent people. Listen to the teachings; think about them logically; test them out in your own life experience. Use the teachings that help you in your life and leave those that don’t make sense on the back burner."

"Whew," I thought. "Now I’ll listen." If they had said they would tell us the Truth, I would have left. I liked Buddhism’s open-minded approach and began to listen and to practice the teachings. As I did, I was surprised to find that what the Buddha taught over twenty-five centuries ago in ancient India applied to my modern American life. I wanted to learn more.

During a retreat after the course, I realized that if I neglected this opportunity to learn the Dharma—the Buddha’s teachings—I would regret it at the end of my life, and dying with regret never appealed to me. Thus, instead of resuming my teaching post that autumn, I went to Kopan Monastery, Lama and Rinpoche’s monastery outside Kathmandu, Nepal. My parents were hardly thrilled about their daughter once again putting on a backpack to visit a third-world country. But for me, the spiritual urge was strong, and I had to follow it.

Once there I attended the teachings that the lamas gave in broken English to the variety of Western travelers passing through Nepal in the mid-seventies. In addition, I reflected on them, practiced them as best I could, and participated in the community life at Kopan. After some months, I decided I wanted to become a nun. Why? I wanted to focus my life on spiritual development and knew that to do this effectively, I needed to direct my energies. Living in vows provided that conducive lifestyle. In addition, as I reflected on the vows, I saw that I really didn’t want to do the things they proscribed. Thus the vows were a protection against acting upon my attachment, anger, and ignorance—emotions and attitudes that Buddhism sees as the origin of our suffering and unsatisfactory state. In addition, the vows helped me to clarify my ethical values and to live by them.

I requested Lama Yeshe for permission to ordain. He said yes, but asked me to wait. This waiting period, which lasted nearly a year and a half, was wise, for it helped me become clear about my motivation. I also had to face the questions and challenges posed by my family and friends, which strengthened my motivation. In the spring of 1977, in Dharamsala, India, I was ordained by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, the senior tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Our mind is the source of happiness and suffering

What attracted me to Buddhism? I was taken by its ideas, perspectives, views, and practices. In particular, the Buddha’s teachings on how to work with emotions—how to subdue disturbing emotions and enhance positive ones—provided both a logical framework and practical techniques with which I could work. What, then, is the Buddha’s perspective on emotions?


Each of us wants to be happy and to avoid suffering. Our mind—specifically its attitudes, views, and emotions—are the primary factors contributing to our experience of happiness and pain.

Each of us wants to be happy and to avoid suffering. From a Buddhist viewpoint, our mind—specifically its attitudes, views, and emotions—are the primary factors contributing to our experience of happiness and pain. This view flies in the face of our usual perception of things. For example, most of us instinctively feel that happiness is "out there" in an external person, place, or object. We think, "If I only lived in this house … had this career … married that person … moved to that place … bought this car, I’d be happy." We are taught to be good consumers—not just of possessions, but of people, ideas, spirituality, and everything else as well—in our search for happiness. However, no matter what we have or how much we have, we are perpetually dissatisfied.

Similarly, we feel that our problems have been thrust upon us from outside. "I have difficulties because my parents yelled at me, my boss is inconsistent, my children don’t listen to me, the government is corrupt, others are selfish." Thus we devise wonderful advice for others to follow and believe that if they only did what we suggested, not only would our problems cease, but also the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, when we tell other people how they should change so that we can be happy, they don’t appreciate our sagacious advice and instead tell us to mind our own business!

This innate world view that happiness and suffering come from external sources leads us to believe that if we could only make others and the world be what we wanted them to be, then we would be happy. Thus, we endeavor to rearrange the world and the people in it, gathering towards us those we consider happiness-producing and struggling to be free from those we think cause pain. Although we have tried to do this, no one has succeeded in making the external environment exactly what he or she wants it to be. Even in those occasional situations in which we are able to arrange external people and things to be what we want, they don’t remain that way for long. Or, they aren’t as good as we thought they would be and we are left feeling disappointed and disillusioned. In effect, the supposed path to happiness through external things and people is doomed from the start because no matter how powerful, wealthy, popular, or respected someone is, he or she is unable to control all external conditions.

This supposed path to happiness is also doomed because even if we could control external factors, we still would not be fulfilled and satisfied. Why? Because the source of true happiness lies in our mind and heart, not in possessions, others’ actions, praise, reputation, and so forth. But we must examine this for ourselves, so the Buddha asked us to observe our own experiences to see what causes happiness and what causes misery.

For example, we have all had the experience of waking up on the wrong side of the bed. Nothing in particular happened to cause us to be in a bad mood; we simply feel lousy. But, interestingly, just on those days we feel grumpy, we encounter so many uncooperative and rude people. Just on the day we want to be left alone, so many obnoxious people descend upon us! Suddenly, the way our spouse smiles appears sarcastic, and our colleague’s "Good morning" seems manipulative. Even our pet dog no longer seems to love us! When our boss remarks on our work, we take offense. When our friend reminds us to do something, we accuse him of being controlling. When someone turns in front of us on the road, it feels they are deliberately provoking us.

On the other hand, when we are in a good mood, even if our colleague gives us some negative criticism on a project, we can put it in perspective. When our professor asks us to redo a paper, we understand her reasons. When a friend tells us that he was offended by our words, we calmly explain ourselves and clear up the misunderstanding.

That our interpretations of events and responses to them change according to our mood says something important, doesn’t it? It indicates that we are not innocent people experiencing an objectively real external world. Rather, our moods, perspectives, and views play a role in our experiences. The environment and the people in it aren’t objective entities that exist from their own side as this or that. Instead, together with them, our mind co-creates our experiences. Thus, if we want to be happy and to avoid suffering, we need to subdue our unrealistic and non-beneficial emotions and perspectives and enhance our positive ones.
Working with emotions

Let’s look at some of the methods the Buddha prescribed to transform specific emotions. Reflection on impermanence and the unpleasant aspect of a person or thing counteracts attachment. Cultivating patience and love opposes anger, and wisdom demolishes ignorance. Thinking about a difficult topic or reflecting that all we know and have comes from others eliminates pride. Rejoicing prevents jealousy. Following the breath diminishes doubt. Contemplating our precious human life dispels depression, while meditating on compassion counteracts low self-esteem.
Reflection on impermanence and unpleasant aspects counteracts attachment

When our mind is under the influence of attachment, we cling to people, things, or circumstances, thinking that they have the power to bring us happiness. However, since these things are transient—their very nature is to change moment by moment—they are not safe objects to rely on for long-term happiness. When we remember that our possessions do not last forever and our money does not go on to the next life with us, then the false expectations we project upon them evaporate, and we are able to cultivate a healthy relationship with them. If we contemplate that we cannot always remain with our friends and relatives, we will appreciate them more while we are together and be more accepting of our eventual separation.

Contemplating the unpleasant aspect of things we are attached to also cuts false expectation and enables us to have a more balanced attitude towards them. For example, when we have a car, we will definitely have car trouble. Therefore, no benefit comes from getting too excited about having a new car, and no great catastrophe has occurred if we can’t get a car. If we have a relationship, we will undoubtedly have relationship problems. When we first fall in love, we believe that the other person will be everything we want. This skewed view sets us up for suffering when we realize that he or she isn’t. In fact, no one can be everything we want because we are not consistent in what we want! This simple process of being more realistic cuts attachment, enabling us to actually have more enjoyment.
Cultivating patience and love opposes anger

Having exaggerated certain negative aspects of a person, thing, idea, or place, we become angry and unable to bear it. We want either to harm what we think is causing our unhappiness or to escape from it. Patience is the ability to bear harm or suffering. With it, our mind is calm, and we have the mental clarity to figure out a reasonable solution to the difficulty. One way to cultivate patience is by seeing the disturbing circumstance as an opportunity to grow. In this way, instead of focusing on what we don’t like, we look inside and develop our resources and talents to be able to deal with it.

Seeing the situation from the other’s perspective also facilitates patience. We ask ourselves, "What are this person’s needs and concerns? How does she see the situation?" In addition, we can ask ourselves what our buttons are. Instead of blaming the other person for pushing our buttons, we can work to free ourselves from those buttons and sensitive points so that they cannot be pushed again.

Cultivating love—the wish for sentient beings, including ourselves, to have happiness and its causes—prevents as well as counteracts anger. We may wonder, "Why should we wish those who have harmed us to be happy? Shouldn’t they be punished for their wrongdoing?" People harm others because they are unhappy. If they were happy, they would not be doing whatever it is that we found objectionable, because people don’t hurt others when they are content. Instead of seeking punishment or retaliation for harms done to us, let’s wish others to be happy and thus free from whatever internal or external conditions precipitate their negative actions.

We cannot tell ourselves we must love someone; rather we must actively cultivate this emotion. For example, sitting quietly, we begin by thinking and then feeling, "May I be well and happy." We spread this thought and feeling to dear ones, then to strangers, and to people we find disagreeable, threatening, or disgusting, and say again and again to ourselves "May they be well and happy." Finally, we open our heart and wish happiness and its causes to all living beings everywhere.
Thinking about complex topics and recognizing our indebtedness to others eliminates pride

When we are proud, we cannot learn or develop new good qualities because we falsely believe we have attained all there is. When a Buddhist student becomes arrogant about his scholarship or practice, his teacher often instructs him to meditate on the twelve sources and eighteen elements. "What are those?" people ask. That’s the point—just hearing the names, let alone understanding their meaning, makes us realize we have a lot to learn and thus dispels arrogance.

When we are proud, we have a strong feeling of self, as if whatever qualities we are proud about are inherently ours. Reflecting that everything we know and have has come from others quickly dispels this arrogance. Any abilities due to genetics came from our ancestors; our knowledge came from our teachers. Even our artistic, musical, or athletic abilities would not have surfaced had it not been due to the kindness of parents and teachers who encouraged and taught us. Our socio-economic status is due to others who gave us money. Even if they gave it to us in the form of a paycheck, it was not ours to begin with. Our education came from others. Even our ability to tie our shoes came from those who taught us. Looking at our lives in this way, we are indebted to others’ kindness. We have much to be grateful for and nothing to be arrogant about.
Rejoicing dispels jealousy

The jealous mind cannot endure the happiness of others and wishes that happiness for ourselves. Although we want to be happy, jealousy itself is a painful emotion, and we are miserable when we are under its influence. Rejoicing, on the other hand, celebrates goodness. We always say, "May everyone be happy," so when someone is, we might as well rejoice in it, especially if we didn’t even have to make any effort to bring it about.

We may start by rejoicing in the happiness we already have, enabling us to realize that we are not completely bereft of joy even though we may not have what we want at the time. Then we focus on others’ goodness and happiness and rejoice in them. While this initially may seem uncomfortable due to the force of the jealousy, if we persist in recounting the goodness and happiness of others, our mind will, in time, become joyful. "Isn’t it wonderful that Susan excels in sports? How great that Peter was promoted and that Karen got a new car! Bill and Barbara have a caring relationship; I’m happy for them. Jane’s meditations are going well, and Sam has a lot of contact with his spiritual mentor. That’s great."

Thinking positive thoughts in this way automatically makes our mind happy. It shifts our perspective from focusing on what we don’t have to the richness in the world.
Following the breath diminishes doubt and anxiety

When our mind is turbulent, spinning in doubt or anxiously imagining worst-case scenarios, the Buddha recommended that we focus our attention on the breath. Sitting comfortably, we breathe normally and naturally. We place our attention either at the nostrils, feeling the touch of the breath on our upper lip and in the nostrils as it passes in and out, or at the belly, being aware of the rise and fall of our abdomen as we inhale and exhale. Should our attention shift to the doubts and anxious thoughts, we recognize this and then patiently but firmly bring our focus back to the breath. By doing this continuously, the runaway thoughts begin to calm down, and the mind becomes clear and calm.
Contemplating our precious human life dispels depression

Often we take our opportunities and fortune for granted and focus on what we lack instead. This is tantamount to ignoring all the delicious food in a large buffet and complaining, "There is no spaghetti." Instead of becoming depressed because we are ill, we can remember that we are also fortunate to have others who help us when we don’t feel well. Even if they don’t help us as much as we would like, they still are there for us, and we would be hard put if they weren’t. Something is always going well in our lives, and it’s important to remember those things that are.

In addition, we have human intelligence and the opportunity to encounter a spiritual path. This opportunity in itself is cause for great rejoicing. No matter if we are sick, lonely, imprisoned, or going through hard times financially, we still can take refuge in the Three Jewels—the Buddhas, Dharma, and Sangha. We can practice our spiritual tradition no matter where we are, who we’re with, or what the state of our physical body, for genuine spiritual practice does not depend on certain external implements or actions but involves redirecting our mind towards constructive emotions and realistic attitudes. Thus for as long as we are alive, we can be happy about what is going right in our lives and at the opportunities we have for spiritual practice. Even when it comes time to die, we can rejoice at a life well-spent and dedicate all the goodness we created for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Meditating on compassion and on our Buddha nature counteracts guilt and low self-esteem

When we suffer from guilt and low self-esteem, we put all attention on ourselves. There is little space in our mind for thoughts of others, and everything related to ourselves is overblown. Guilt is an inverted feeling of self-importance: "I’m the worst one in the world, unforgivable," or "I’m so powerful that I can make all these things go wrong." This is totally unrealistic!

Compassion is the wish for sentient beings, including ourselves, to be free of suffering and its causes. Meditating on it works in two ways. First, we think, "I am a sentient being, worthy of happiness and freedom from pain, just like everyone else. I have the Buddha nature—the underlying purity of mind—just as all living beings do. Therefore, I can wish myself to be happy and to be free of suffering, and I know that these are achievable goals because the basic nature of my mind and heart are pure. The clouds that cover them can be dispelled." Thinking in this way helps overcome depression.

In addition, spreading our love and compassion out to others alleviates the pain of the self-preoccupation lying behind guilt and low self-esteem. By taking the focus off of ourselves, compassion enables us to realize that everyone is in the same position. Thinking of others and reaching out to them pulls us out of the isolation of guilt and low self-esteem.
Wisdom demolishes ignorance

From a Buddhist perspective the ignorance misapprehending the nature of reality is the root of all other disturbing attitudes and negative emotions. To dispel it, we cultivate wisdom, which is of three types: the wisdoms of learning, thinking, and meditating. First we must learn from qualified teachers, either by listening to talks or reading books. Then we think about what we have learned, examining it thoroughly to test it logically and to make sure we have understood it properly. Finally, we integrate the meanings of the teachings into our lives through meditation and continuous practice.

For example, we listen to teachings on profound reality, the emptiness of inherent existence. We read about and study these concepts, and then discuss them with our friends as well as think about them ourselves. When our understanding is correct and refined, we then familiarize ourselves with emptiness in meditation, first by investigating the nature of reality and then by focusing single-pointedly on it. When we arise from meditation, we try to hold this newfound meaning in mind as we go about our daily life’s activities, so that this wisdom will be integrated into our mind and life.

Since all the other disturbing attitudes and negative emotions are rooted in the ignorance misapprehending reality, developing this wisdom is a general antidote to all of these. However, since cultivating the correct view is difficult, takes time, and requires effort, we practice the antidotes explained above, which are unique to each particular emotion. By pacifying these emotions even a little, our mind becomes clearer and more tranquil, which makes the development of wisdom easier. For this reason, we learn not only the specific methods to counteract each disturbing attitude, but also wisdom as the antidote to all of them.
Our responsibility

Subduing and transforming our mind is a process we alone must do. While we can pay someone to clean our house or fix our car, hiring someone to get rid of our negative emotions doesn’t work. I can’t ask you to sleep late so that I’ll feel refreshed or to eat so my hunger will go away. Just as we must sleep and eat ourselves to experience their benefits, we must practice ourselves in order to let go of our harmful emotions and to nourish our constructive ones.

The Buddha’s teachings explain many techniques for subduing our disturbing emotions and for cultivating positive ones. Just learning these techniques does not transform us. Reading a book with instructions on how to type does not give us the ability to sit down at a computer and type perfectly. We need to practice and train ourselves. In the same way, we must reflect on the techniques taught by the Buddha and then practice them consistently over a long period of time. The Tibetan word for meditation, gom, has the same root as the word meaning "to familiarize." Familiarization takes place with effort and over time. Similarly, we say we "practice the Dharma," meaning we train ourselves in certain attitudes and emotions over and over again. In short, there is no shortcut for transforming our mind.

However, since the disturbing attitudes and negative emotions are not the very nature of our mind and because they are based on misconceptions, they can be eliminated through cultivating realistic views and constructive emotions. Our mind and heart are a stable base for this transformation, and if we cultivate wisdom and compassion over time, they will increase infinitely. It is our responsibility, for our own as well as for others’ happiness, that we engage in the practice to do so.
Future prospects for Buddhism

Over a period of many centuries Buddhism spread throughout Asia. Now, with modern transportation and communication facilities, it is quickly coming to Western nations. Nevertheless, it faces many challenges both in Asia and in the West.

In Asia, Buddhism is widely accepted, but not widely practiced among its adherents. In some places people have neglected to learn the meaning of the ceremonies and rituals. In others the religious hierarchy could be re-invigorated by broadening educational opportunities for nuns and laypeople. Buddhist institutions need to be more engaged in helping society.

In the West, Buddhism risks becoming another consumer good, tailored in order to suit the tastes of the public. The Buddha’s teachings have always been a challenge to society and to our egos. We must be careful not to dilute their essential power in the name of spreading them to more people. In addition, we must abandon our hidden wishes for an "instant fix" and be prepared and happy to practice for a long time. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that one of the biggest hindrances for Westerners is the expectation to gain realizations quickly and easily. This attitude makes some people give up practice when their fanciful ideas are not actualized.

While Buddhism has much to offer in Asia and the rest of the world, the extent to which it is able to do so depends on the quality of its practitioners and teachers. Thus we must try to improve our own learning and practice as well as support others who are doing so. As individuals and as Buddhist institutions, we must take personal responsibility, create and maintain harmony, and look out for the common good.

Related Posts:
Working in a jail
A Buddhist nun in high school
Reviews of “Working with Anger”
The Mind and Life III Conference: Emotions and health
The Mind and Life VIII conference: Destructive emotions
Ruminating
Building courage and compassion
Disappointment and delight—the eight worldly concerns



About Venerable Thubten ChodronVenerable Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha’s teachings in our daily lives and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners. She is well known for her warm, humorous, and lucid teachings. She was ordained as a Buddhist nun in 1977 by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in Dharamsala, India, and in 1986 she received bhikshuni (full) ordination in Taiwan. Read her full bio.
View all posts by Venerable Thubten Chodron →

How to Work with Emotions - Lion's Roar

How to Work with Emotions - Lion's Roar

How to Work with Emotions

BY POLLY YOUNG-EISENDRATH, SHARON SALZBERG, JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN, JOHN TARRANT AND DZOGCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE| APRIL 25, 2019

Sharon Salzberg, Judith Simmer-Brown, John Tarrant, and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche discuss skillful and unskillful involvement with emotions, offering new perspectives on how to think about and engage with our emotional lives. Originally published in the Summer 2008 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly.

Woman with long hair surrounded by galaxy

Photos by Cecilia Lee.

Many of us were originally attracted to the dharma, perhaps initially to meditation, because we had problems with our emotions or emotional problems. After practicing Buddhism over time, however, some of us feel that we still have emotional difficulties—sudden outbursts, emotional withdrawal, or a critical judgment of our emotionality—that we hadn’t expected would continue after some skill in practice. A number of books have been written to address these issues. Among them are Harvey Aronson’s Buddhist Practice on Western Ground (Shambhala, 2004) and Dan Goleman’s Destructive Emotions (Bantam, 2004). Still, much confusion remains about the relationship between the dharma and our emotional lives.

In the past couple of decades, as we have studied human emotions through the lenses of neuroscience, psychology, and psychotherapy, we have clarified more fully how and why our emotions present special challenges in our relationships with others and ourselves. The early founders of psychoanalysis, especially Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, witnessed the fact that emotional dynamics from our early lives shaped habit patterns in our minds and hearts with strong staying power. Freud dubbed this power a “repetition compulsion,” and Jung called it an “autonomous complex.” Both described how certain fundamental emotional patterns, when triggered in adults or children, can set the stage for an entire drama played out within or between people (with ready-made scripts).

Contemporary neuroscience now recognizes that the limbic brain (the mid-brain, between the frontal cortex and the brain stem) is the seat of fight-flight reactivity and many aspects of unconscious emotional memory. This part of our brain contains powerful motivators to perceive and to act, driving us to react in certain ways that may fall outside of our awareness until we have acted them out. For example, brain researcher Joseph LeDoux, in his book The Emotional Brain, explains that memories triggering the flight-fight response “are rigidly coupled to specific kinds of responses … wired so as to preempt the need for thinking about what to do.” In our families, close relationships, and work environments, this kind of triggering can cause impulsive discharges of emotional reactions or non-communicative walling off of our reactions. Neither of these is a mindful response. In the lively discussion that follows, the participants give clear and detailed examples of their own emotional development through applying the wisdom of the dharma. –Polly Young-Eisendrath

 

Buddhadharma: Many of us think of emotion as the most important part of life, the thing that makes us human. Whether it’s love or beauty or pleasure, much of life is a search for particular emotional experiences. When people hear about things like nonattachment and mindfulness, they may fear they’ll have to give up their emotional life. Yet they also want to be free from the painful grip of emotion. What happens to our emotional life when we fully take up the Buddhist path?

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche: I wouldn’t say that losing our emotions or thoughts is something we need to worry about. When we meditate, they’re still there. They don’t go away. We couldn’t lose them, even if we wanted to [laughter].

Sharon Salzberg: I’m reminded of something that Ajahn Chah, the Thai meditation master, said: “As you meditate, your mind will get quieter and quieter, like a still forest pool. Many wonderful and rare animals will come to drink at the pool, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha.”

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Can we find a place in the middle, where one is neither overcome by emotion nor repressing emotional states? That is a place of discovery, exploration, and enrichment.

—Sharon Salzberg

I love the image of the wonderful and rare animals. The stillness is not a constraint; it’s not holding down or repressing any experience. Everything still arrives, but what makes the difference is how all of those wonderful and rare animals are greeted.

I know that people have a fear that meditation will lead to a kind of barrenness. I hear it often. People think that if they were to practice meditation ardently and get proficient at it, everything would morph into a gray blob and they wouldn’t feel anything anymore. Of course, that’s not what it’s all about. Intention and motivation are what’s vital. Why do we act the way we do and how do we relate to those emotions? Are we subsumed by them? Are we overcome? Are we propelled into actions that we later regret? Do we try to hide emotions or do we denigrate ourselves for our emotions?

So can we find a place in the middle, where one is neither overcome by emotion, which often leads to negative actions and consequences, nor repressing and avoiding our emotional states? That place in the middle, which is mindfulness, is a place of discovery, exploration, and enrichment.

Buddhadharma: Would you say the full range of emotion, from rage to passion, is included? Do all the animals in the zoo arrive?

Sharon Salzberg: [Laughs] By practicing mindfulness, we are also changing the conditions that will affect what might arise. But I don’t think it would be realistic to say that we assume control over what will arise in our experience. Control per se would not even be desirable, because in the space of tremendous rage or passion we can be free nonetheless, and perhaps utilize the energy within those emotions for something more positive in our lives.

John Tarrant: Freedom is just freedom, and it’s either there or not. It doesn’t matter what you’re feeling. In the long arc of a practice, most people do find that they have less intense aversions and so forth. They have less of what you would call disturbing emotions. But it’s also true that when it comes to so-called disturbing emotions, we can ask, who is it disturbing and why is it disturbing? The disturbance is measured against a framework that is illusory. Your disturbing emotions have buddhanature—just as much as your nice calm ones do—and they may actually be more likely to lead to a deeper level of awakening than your nice calm ones.

Ponlop Rinpoche: When you enter the Buddhist path, the point is not to get rid of emotions or thoughts. The important thing is to be mindful of the emotions arising—whether they’re good or bad, or however you might choose to define them. As we progress along the path of meditation, as Sharon and John have expressed, the key point becomes developing a stillness in which we find freedom from the disturbing elements of emotions.

Buddhadharma: In evolutionary terms, biologists talk about emotions as necessary and adaptive, and many psychologists regard emotions as central to who we are. Yet emotions in Buddhism seem to be regarded as a problem. Why is that?

John Tarrant: It’s true that when people talk about emotion in the Buddhist context, usually they’re talking about something that creates a problem. But what’s wrong with emotion, anyway? An emotion is something that arises because we have a body, an incarnation, and in that realm everything is a little bit imperfect. We can’t get anything quite the way we want it to be, and emotion is the indicator of that. There’s also the lizard-brain level of emotions, a reflex. But having an emotion is different from having an emotional problem, which is usually caused by fighting with the emotion, not exploring or having curiosity about it.

Judith Simmer-Brown: It’s important to note that we’re looking at this question through the lens of a Western psychological word, which is something we often do as modern Buddhists. Yet until recently, there’s been very little work done in Western psychology on what emotions actually are.

What we call “emotion” is, at its heart, an energetic experience that doesn’t have to be painful.

—Judith Simmer-Brown

From a Buddhist perspective, emotions are experiences that are not just thoughts; they have some kind of color and texture, which we try to work with directly when they’re painful. There’s an enormous science in Buddhism devoted to recognizing the experience of emotion. This is quite different from Western psychology, which has tended to be heavily interpersonal and management-oriented. However, some psychologists are beginning to appreciate that we can work with the direct experience of our state of mind. That’s a very fruitful way to appreciate that what we call “emotion” is, at its heart, an energetic experience that doesn’t have to be painful.

Sharon Salzberg: Emotion is an element of relationship. It is how our awareness relates to an object—to a circumstance, a person, mortality, anything that presents itself internally or externally. As a manifestation of relationship, emotion can be quite distorted, based in ignorance, so we misconstrue what we’re actually encountering. On the other hand, it can be based in something more truthful and wise and clear, and therein lies the tremendous variety of emotions we experience.

Ponlop Rinpoche: When we look at the term “emotion” as it’s used in the West, it is problematic. I’ve talked with psychologists and psychotherapists about it, but I can’t find one definition of emotion in the Western context. For that matter, from a classical Buddhist point of view, there’s not really a separate topic we would call emotions. Emotions would appear to be part of the wider topic of kleshas, the mental states or experiences that cause torment or discomfort for body and mind and that make the mind unsettled. Kleshas are also said to be subtle and proliferating, a latent tendency, an affliction of the mind.

Emotions can be disturbing and destructive when not experienced with mindfulness and compassion. But if we are able to see clearly what the true nature of the experience is, emotions can have tremendously powerful wisdom and compassion.

Buddhadharma: According to many religions, and in the popular mind as well, there are good emotions and bad emotions. Does Buddhism make this distinction?

Judith Simmer-Brown: A lot of moral judgments are made about emotions. From my own study of abhidharma and from relating to my teachers, I find that there is a much more pragmatic approach toward emotions in the buddhadharma. Emotions have qualities that can lead us to create pain for ourselves and others. What we might label in the language of morality as “good” or “bad,” we would consider instead as more or less conducive to awakening or to compassionate relationship with the world. It is not so much about an external moral judgment of the kind we encounter so much in the West.

Emotions themselves become problematic for us because of what we do with them. They can develop into karmic thought patterns that cause greater pain for us or lead us into negative speech or harmful bodily actions. The activity of the emotions has the potential to cause greater confusion, turbulence, lack of clarity, and suffering—or not. Good and bad are clunky words to describe what the traditional teaching and our meditation experience tell us about emotion. The moral judgment doesn’t fit.

Sharon Salzberg: I agree. In Buddhism, we tend to think more in terms of what is skillful and unskillful. Skillful refers to those states that, when cultivated, lead to the end of suffering. Unskillful refers to those states that, when enhanced and nurtured, lead to more suffering.

That’s a powerful shift for people to make. Instead of falling into the old, conditioned habit of regarding anger or fear as bad, wrong, weak, or terrible—or considering ourselves bad, wrong, weak, or terrible people for having such emotions—we see them as states of suffering. This is a profound transition. It elicits the possibility of responding to ourselves, and to others in the grip of emotions, with compassion rather than rejection or hatred.

John Tarrant: Western psychology has made a partial contribution to our methods of working with emotions. Psychology intended to become a science, and everybody thought it would be. But it turned out that it wasn’t. In large part, it is a normative agent of the culture and the society, and that runs counter to the genuine practice of inquiry. Psychology takes the approach of fixing an emotional problem in order to make a person function again. That may be the goal of a society or a culture, but that is not necessarily the goal of a wisdom tradition. Anybody who has been in any tradition of depth has noticed that people who have what look like pathological emotions might be taking a positive step toward disassembling their old way of being, so that a new, greater possibility can come through. If you’re always fussing at and fixing your mind, you don’t get that journey.

There’s also a kind of voluptuousness about what’s given by the psyche, which at some level is what’s given us by the universe. We can take a housekeeping attitude toward the emotion or we can take the ride and see what discovery is happening. Not a thrill ride, but more a quest. The problem is not the emotion; the problem is being at war with the emotion or acting out the emotion.

Ponlop Rinpoche: I agree completely that how skillfully or unskillfully we work with emotions determines whether the experience of that emotion is what we call bad or good. It is not about emotions, but about how you experience them and handle them. Emotions often come to us as a surprise. When you experience the emotion without skillful means or wisdom, the emotion can be destructive.

In response, the Buddhist teachings present three basic ways of working with emotions. The first approach is mindfulness, which can prevent the destructiveness of the emotions and make them beneficial and useful. The second approach is to bring the emotions to the path of wisdom, by transforming them into something that helps bring benefit to ourselves and others. The third approach, the Vajrayana approach, is to look straight into the essence of the experience of emotion, where we will find tremendous energy and the power of awakening wisdom.

Judith Simmer-Brown: One of the things I’ve found most valuable about Buddhist practice and teaching has been discovering that we don’t really feel our emotions all that often. When there’s an emotional impulse that arises—and I’m talking particularly about the painful ones, the kleshas—we tend to either indulge in it, acting out some kind of catharsis or building an intense storyline around it, or we suppress and bury the emotion. We’re afraid of it. One of the tremendous benefits of Buddhist meditation for me has been to be able to sit with an emotion, to experience it, rather than to feel I have to do something with it immediately or get rid of it.

When we truly feel the intensity of the painful, obsessive, destructive emotions, we deepen our capacity to understand how painful habitual patterns work in our lives.

—Judith Simmer-Brown

One of the great contributions of meditation practice to Western society has been to point out the difference between a managerial approach and an experiential approach. It has brought so much more attention and richness to the description of what emotional life actually is.

Buddhadharma: Many people feel that inspiration and artistry come out of the richness of emotion. How does meditation practice affect the creative aspect of the emotions?

John Tarrant: Spiritual practice is either plumbing, in which case you’ve got a fixed goal and you’re tinkering with the pipes. Or it’s an art, in which case your goal is not predetermined, because you’re in a discovery process. All arts are like that. But while you’re on the journey, you don’t need to be messed up. I don’t think our wisdom tradition necessarily holds to the nineteenth-century idea of the messed-up genius. Although if you’re a messed-up genius, that’s fine too. It’s not wise to go around rejecting the material that life has given you, including the experiences that people think you shouldn’t have. On the surface, you might sometimes disturb others, but ultimately, if you are not disturbing to yourself, that will mean other people aren’t disturbing to you either. There will be much greater compassion, in fact I would say much greater empathy, because there’s not even the level of distance implied by the term compassion. You really are the other in some sense, and that’s the source of your creative imagination.

Ponlop Rinpoche: Emotions have very powerful creative energy. Many visual artists and poets are inspired by emotions. We create beautiful products from some of our emotions. So it’s good to see and appreciate the beauty of such emotions, even when they’re seemingly destructive, like strong passion or aggression. When you transform that into a piece of art, it becomes so beautiful. You not only find peace and creativity through such expression, but many other people also find peace and enjoyment through looking at your creation. Within the world of creativity, there’s a strong element of releasing your emotion or finding the wisdom of emotion, and we can find peace or relief through the artful expression of emotions.

Buddhadharma: What’s the difference between the feeling of relief from releasing one’s emotion creatively and finding relief by getting something off your chest?

Ponlop Rinpoche: The act of just releasing and expressing is very temporary. It gives brief relief and a sense of freedom, but the root of your emotions is still there. With meditation, one can get to the root of all the emotions and see the true wisdom within them.

Judith Simmer-Brown: Our tendency to act on emotions comes from the fact that we’re afraid to feel them. Mindfulness cultivates the ability to fully experience emotions. Like most of us, I’ve only ever learned things the hard way. I’ve learned that emotions are painful when I feel them, that kleshas are genuinely painful. But when we truly feel the intensity of the painful, obsessive, destructive emotions, we deepen our capacity to understand how painful habitual patterns work in our lives. We get to see how our acting out of anger has caused incredible pain for us and for many others. Being able to experience my anger fully, and feel the pain before I act, gives me the opportunity to let go, without repeating the habit of releasing the emotions in some kind of fit. The real relief is in letting go.

When we act on our anger, we are actually practicing anger, training in anger. We are deepening and reinforcing the patterns and tendencies by impulsively acting. With mindfulness, we can see the chain we’re caught in, and we can also see the purity at the root of the emotion. To see the alternative is a fantastic relief, not at all like the temporary relief of getting your emotion out.

John Tarrant: I don’t experience expressing emotion as relief. Paying attention is what leads to a transformation. Paying attention is actually the best form of love we have to bring to our lives. If we pay attention, we find freedom, rather than relief. Relief is erecting an alternative fantasy world to live in, until it breaks down too.

Ponlop Rinpoche: And it will [laughs].

John Tarrant: Freedom is freedom. Full stop. Freedom can be edgy and scary and surprising and wonderful and all that, but it’s freedom, which is ultimately a more loving and interesting thing than just unloading an emotion.

Buddhadharma: But it’s still freedom from something, isn’t it?

John Tarrant: I completely disagree. Vajrayana people talk about spaciousness. Shunyata is on your side, you might say.

Ponlop Rinpoche: Are you talking about what we call self-liberation?

John Tarrant: Yes, a little taste of it anyway. If you’re looking to release your emotion, you’re trying to make your universe and yourself small. You’re accepting a cheap prize, when something much larger might be available.

Buddhadharma: And the world is currently driven by…

Sharon Salzberg: Getting big prizes.

John Tarrant: You could have a genuine plastic toy!

Ponlop Rinpoche: Freedom made in China.

Buddhadharma: We’ve talked about trying to find relief through releasing emotions. What about feeling bad and guilty about our emotions, and keeping them bottled up for fear of the negative consequences? Isn’t that just as problematic?

Sharon Salzberg: As we’ve been talking, I’ve been recalling myself at eighteen, going to India to learn meditation with S.N. Goenka. I did an intensive ten-day retreat, then another one, and then another one, and somewhere in there I was experiencing tremendous anger, which I was very uncomfortable with. I was not very psychologically sophisticated. I knew I was very unhappy, but I really didn’t know the constituents of my internal world, so finding this anger shocked me. I marched up to Goenka at one point and, looking him in the eye, I said, “I never used to be an angry person before I started to meditate.” I laid the blame on him, exactly where I felt it belonged. When I got through the distress of facing this newly discovered wealth of anger, I found out that the actual freedom was in recognizing it without shame, without falling into it, without identifying with it. That’s what real kindness is. We can get caught in thinking that kindness means that we can only smile and acquiesce or be complacent and passive. We’re confusing action and motivation. We cultivate kindness as the basis of our intention, so that our motives are increasingly about connection rather than fear and alienation. To find what we feel is the best response in a particular situation demands mindfulness in a bigger context. Such larger mindfulness means it’s possible that we could come from a genuinely kind place and also have an intensity or fierceness in our actions if the context invites it.

Buddhadharma: So you would make a sharp distinction between mindfulness and hypervigilant management of emotion?

Sharon Salzberg: Yes, very much so.

Buddhadharma: Mindfulness allows for mistakes, does it not? One might end up expressing anger, as you did with Goenka, and some kind of discovery could result. If you’re in an intense relationship, like raising a teenager, you can’t go off and find a cushion every time an emotion arises. Trying hard to be skillful with every emotion at every moment…

John Tarrant: That would be the real mistake.

Buddhadharma: Often our strongest emotions come up with the people we’re closest to. If you’re raising children, for example, you have plenty of opportunities to see your emotional framework writ large, to see how often your emotions are a way to lay your worldview down on others.

John Tarrant: Yes, we seem to like to interfere with other people’s business. There’s an interesting way in which spiritual people, not just Buddhists, can be sneaky about their emotions, validating them by reprimanding other people, which is usually not a path to wisdom. Families make it hard to get away with that, and it seems you can’t raise a child without making an idiot of yourself. For that matter, you can’t love without making an idiot of yourself. It’s a perfect joining of things. It’s not a mistake.

Judith Simmer-Brown: I was in a Buddhist-Christian dialogue about ten years ago, and one of the longtime Trappist monks said with great pride that he couldn’t remember the last time he was angry. I muttered under my breath that he obviously didn’t have a family. If you create a bubble around yourself and think that having or expressing emotions is a problem, that’s a sad life. Our emotions carry our very best features, and as Ponlop Rinpoche was saying earlier, they are fundamentally wisdom. Chögyam Trungpa once said that emotions are like a game we started because we just enjoyed them so much, and then they got out of hand. We became afraid of them. But at bottom they are a vivid display of our fundamental wisdom and brilliance. We forget that we created them in the first place, because of all the extra baggage they carry.

It’s a blessing to be in situations that drive you crazy, because it helps you develop a deeper heart. Being a wife and mother has forced me to take greater responsibility for the games I started. These people in my life who push my buttons are my greatest teachers and dearest friends. I’m grateful that I can remember vividly the last time I was angry.

Ponlop Rinpoche: Not all monks are angry-free, by the way. In my experience, the Vajrayana masters are always angry [laughter]. Ever since Tilopa, they’ve been shouting. I’m just kidding, of course.

John Tarrant: The Vajrayana tradition and the koan tradition seem to me to have some similarities. You meet the surprise and wonder of life as it arises, finding out what instructions life has for you rather than what instructions you have for managing life.

Even in the moment when you experience the most destructive emotion, such as rage, if you can penetrate to its essence you find tremendous space and energy, luminosity.

—Ponlop Rinpoche

Buddhadharma: We’ve talked about mindfulness and attention to emotions. There is also an aspect of Buddhist practice that has to do with cultivating certain emotions. Is it necessary to practice mindfulness effectively before cultivating loving-kindness?

Ponlop Rinpoche: I’ve been teaching three steps in working with emotions, inspired by the Buddhist teachings. The first step is to have a mindful gap. Usually when we experience any emotions, we just embrace them and become that emotion. There’s no gap between you and the emotion. It’s very helpful to notice, “Oh! I am experiencing an emotion here.” It slows down the speed and gives you room.

Once you have this gap, you can see the emotion clearly. That’s the second step: seeing clearly. This allows you to see what kind of skillful means you might apply, what kind of wisdom might make the emotion useful and beneficial. The third step is letting go. You let go of your fear, your anger, your jealousy. You don’t need to keep them.

Sharon Salzberg: It is helpful to address whether it’s necessary to do mindfulness practice before cultivating positive emotions. I’ve seen so many people for whom the process is done in reverse. Mindfulness and loving-kindness are so clearly reciprocal and mutually supportive. There are many people whose mindfulness is challenged by a corrosive habit of self-judgment, criticism, and self-hatred. Therefore, it is quite hard to come to a space of being mindful of very difficult and challenging emotions. For people like that, which is many of us, loving-kindness or compassion practice actually creates the ground out of which they’re more able to do mindfulness genuinely.

Ponlop Rinpoche: That’s very true.

John Tarrant: In koan practice you find mindfulness practice at times, but also kindness. In the beginning, when somebody starts hanging out with a standard koan like, “The whole world is medicine. What is the self?” they will go through all the usual concentration phenomena, but then they might have some sort of transformation, which is prajna emerging. At the same time, they may also just find themselves kinder. It’s based on prajna, but sometimes the transformation can start happening in the darkness in a nonrational way. It’s a kind of creative move by the universe that happens when you expose yourself to it. What I like about koans is that they have an unpredictable nonlinear effect, like poems or music do.

The truth is that, as you keep going deeper into the meditation path, the categories—mindfulness, awareness, loving-kindness—just slide around. There are fewer boundary lines and categories. Your feet find a path, and the path rises to meet your feet.

Judith Simmer-Brown: These various elements are mutually supportive. The clear-seeing that Rinpoche was talking about gives us a kind of aha! experience that reveals the contrast between habitual patterns and a fresh emotional life, and that allows us to act with loving-kindness in our relations with others, rather than obsess about the people who have insulted us or attracted us, or whatever. Kindness and attention work so closely together it becomes hard to separate them.

John Tarrant: Yes. Loving-kindness is a practice, but at the same time if you really pay attention you might find, as I do with koan work, that kindness starts coming up from below. You suddenly find you have a loving attitude toward life. That happens because kindness is not something added to awareness. It’s fundamental to the nature of awareness.

Buddhadharma: That suggests that our traditional ideas about emotions being kind of gooey and awareness being dry in fact fall apart.

John Tarrant: The opposition between paying attention and cultivating loving-kindness ultimately falls away.

Judith Simmer-Brown: The distortion of our clear-seeing is part of the painfulness of emotion. We are removed from the direct experience of the way things are. The painful way we experience emotions and our distorted view of reality are completely intermingled.

Buddhadharma: So if you lose the distortion, you wouldn’t necessarily lose the intensity of emotion, but you would experience it differently?

Judith Simmer-Brown: The energy is completely different without the distortion. Practice helps you see just how much you are caught in your own little house of mirrors, how totally you distort your perspective in the midst of intense emotion.

Buddhadharma: How do we find the wisdom in emotion, as several of you have been hinting is possible?

Ponlop Rinpoche: From the Vajrayana point of view, it’s a little bit like what John said about koan practice. We work mostly from the prajna side of things, but at the same time we employ special skillful means to see the true energy of emotions. Even in the moment when you experience the most destructive emotion, such as rage, if you can penetrate to its essence you find tremendous space and energy, luminosity.

Many of the Vajrayana practices suggest that we not abandon the emotions but rather work with their pure energy. The pure energy will lead us to a complete state of awakening, because emotions are primordially free. The intensity of emotions has a quality of sudden awakening, right here within the very moment of samsaric experience. From the Vajrayana point of view, all the practices are directed toward seeing the essence of emotion rather than working with the conceptual or judgmental aspect of mind. We can go beyond that and see the power of the raw and naked state of emotions.

Buddhadharma: When a surge of emotion comes up, then, it always presents the possibility of awakening?

Ponlop Rinpoche: It’s already in the state of awakening. We just have to discover that. From the Mahayana perspective, we would think in terms of transforming, whereas in Vajrayana we don’t need to transform anything. In Mahayana, you work with emotions in a more conceptual way. In Vajrayana, you go straight to the naked state of the emotions, within which we find tremendous space, emptiness, clarity, luminosity, and vividness—what we call the clear light mind.

John Tarrant: I would say that koans are more on that Vajrayana side of things too.

Buddhadharma: Where you’re breaking down concepts utterly.

John Tarrant: Well, you recognize something that was already there that you hadn’t noticed.

Ponlop Rinpoche: Exactly.

Judith Simmer-Brown: Doesn’t the recognition also carry with it a kind of enjoyment?

John Tarrant: Yes, but I don’t know if at that point you would call it emotion. There’s delight, a large sense of life. It’s not a checked-out kind of bliss. It’s more appreciation and relish.

Ponlop Rinpoche: The naked and raw state of emotions has the quality of bliss and emptiness inseparable, which is beyond joy versus agony. It’s self-liberation, self-freeing. Emotions free themselves. We don’t need to free them.

Buddhadharma: We’re back to not being able to get rid of the emotions.

Judith Simmer-Brown: You don’t want to.

Ponlop Rinpoche: You don’t need to.

Judith Simmer-Brown: So there’s nothing to be done?

Ponlop Rinpoche: The problem is, you’re trying too hard. Just relax and enjoy the wild ride [laughter].

Buddhadharma: That’s sublime, but I know that some of us are also in need of a first-aid kit for those times when we have a volcanic upsurge of emotion and feel inadequate in the face of it. Are there one or two things we ought to remember at those moments to recall the clarity and creativity, the wisdom you’ve all been talking about?

Sharon Salzberg: I would say that one of the first things to do is to notice the add-ons. There’s the arising of the emotion, which is its own state, but on top of that we add a future, we add a certain kind of reaction, like shame or exaggeration. Or perhaps we add comparison, by holding ourselves up to an ideal we’re not attaining. We certainly add a sense of self—I’m such an angry person. We just add and add. So probably the first thing to try to do is to release some of those add-ons, so we can come back to the original experience. Then we can maybe let ourselves be with the basic emotion in as mindful a way as possible. That will open up a little space, and in that space, we see can options.

That reminds me of an article I saw in the New York Times about mindfulness in the classroom. One of the fifth graders was asked, “What is mindfulness?” And he said, “Mindfulness means not hitting someone in the mouth.” I thought that was a fantastic answer. It implies knowing what you’re feeling when you’re feeling it, not fifteen consequential actions later. It implies having a relationship to that feeling, so you’re not completely lost in it and identified with it. It implies being able to make some choices. Mindfulness is not hitting someone in the mouth. That’s my new working definition of mindfulness.

Ponlop Rinpoche: That’s a great koan.