Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich,
and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.
Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
I was recently asked if Buddhists cry, which, ironically, made me laugh at first,
but then I realized "Do Buddhists cry?" is actually a pretty good question.
Well, yes, of course I cry.
I rarely if ever cry today about something that upset me yesterday.
I cry about things that hurt the moment I feel pain, but never about something
that already occurred in the past or hasn't even happened yet.
Now, I've been trying to wrap my head around why that is, and I've concluded that it's related
to the important distinction I often talk about between feelings and emotions.
Here's a refresher: a feeling lasts between 45 seconds and a minute-and-a-half. That's it.
The feeling then moves on to make room for a new feeling; they move like clouds in the sky
or traffic on a busy street: one feeling comes, another feeling goes.
That's why we can fluctuate from feeling excited to annoyed, jealous, overjoyed,
frustrated, elated, all in an hour's time.
All of our feelings are perfectly natural and healthy human responses to stimuli.
But, emotions? Emotions are a completely different ball of wax.
Emotions start out as a feeling, but as time goes on, they have less and less to do
with our original feeling, and more to do with how we feel or think about what
we are feeling, if that makes sense.
We then either consciously or habitually pick an emotion with which to express the feeling.
That's why I say the two are related, but they are not the same.
I mean, how often do we FEEL hurt but EMOTE anger, for example, or we FEEL vulnerable but
EMOTE fear? Especially when a feeling is new to us and we don't know what to do with it.
Think of emotion as a verb; an action. It's what we DO with a feeling,
whereas a feeling is, well... what we feel.
We don't FEEL emotions, we feel feelings. We EXPRESS emotions.
I think that best illustrates the distinction and why even though a feeling is brief,
we can emote anger long after something has upset us.
It's why we continue emoting sadness, deflation, and so on, long after the initial
feeling came and went. Instead of moving on from a feeling in a minute or so,
we get stuck analyzing it and constructing a narrative around the feeling,
a story we tell ourselves about how we "should" or "shouldn't" be feeling something,
sometimes even a justification about how rational our emotion must be in order to fit
what we think is unfair, for example, often about something someone has done
that we strongly believe they shouldn't have, or... you get the picture, instead of just
acknowledging the feeling and moving on from it, we stretch it out, sometimes for
decades, as we try to use it to support some part of our preciously held identity or belief.
An easy example of how often we do this is when we say things like, "She wronged me
"ten years ago so my anger today is totally justified." We get very precious about it
because we think that if we move on from our feeling of rage, for example,
then the person who wronged us has somehow gotten away with something,
but the opposite is actually true. If we are still upset about it, that means they still have
a hold on us, whereas if we let it go, it means we are totally free.
So don't get all defensive about your emotions just yet, you might be protecting
the very thing that drives you crazy.
So while yes, of course, I feel sadness like everyone else and naturally cry, for example.
We don't have to turn that feeling into an emotion, that is: construct a narrative
about it or be upset today about something that upset us yesterday.
Perhaps looking at other feelings would serve as a better example:
just like everyone else, I feel anger from time to time, and it lasts about a minute or so,
but by being aware that I can choose to let the anger go or let it affect what I'm about
to do or say, I choose to channel the energy towards something constructive because
I already know that if I don't, it will turn and express itself as something destructive,
starting with destroying my own inner peace and then spreading outward.
To channel energy, we must first understand it. If we know that pain is usually at the
heart of our anger, for example, then we work with the hurt, not with the anger.
That's why I think that pause between impulse and response is so important;
it gives us a chance to ask ourselves what is really going on below the surface.
Now, you may not want to hear this, but forgiveness is actually the only way
to neutralize the pain of anger so we can go on living in peace.
And forgiveness has nothing to do with whether the other person who angered us
asks us for forgiveness or even deserves it, it's that WE deserve it.
I mean, whatever harm was caused by the other person is bad enough,
why make it worse on ourselves by adding insult to injury? When you get angry
with someone, you're not punishing them, you're actually punishing yourself.
And the longer you stay mad, the longer you have to live with that toxicity.
The FEELING of anger is perfectly natural and understandable; the EMOTION of anger?
It's a waste of time as far as I'm concerned.
When I feel sadness, I don't try to suppress or push it down, I feel it, but I remind myself
that anytime I feel something from the past, I leave the present moment to get there
and overlook the situation in the present by focusing on the past.
Gosh, I really still don't think that I'm making sense of any of this.
Feelings, as you know, are difficult to explain because they aren't facts. And emotions
are even worse because they aren't rational, they are what I often call the potholes on an
otherwise smooth path toward euphoria.
Think about it: the only thing that stops us from being euphoric in the present moment
is being hung up on the past or the illusion of a future.
Now, I can see why blaming someone else for our emotions sounds appealing,
but if we don't deal with the underlying tendency to react, then another person
will upset us, and then another one, and another one, until we're almost always angry,
yet never facing or dealing with the root cause of our anger: ourselves.
WE are the problem. All those other people are mere opportunities for us to work past
our anger, hurt, what have you, to learn to deal with the feeling in a healthy manner
so that we don't let our moods affect our manners. So do you see why a feeling
is so temporary and why an emotion can last for so long? Why anger is often referred
to as a punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake?
Some people are extremely committed to never looking at themselves in the mirror,
so to speak, getting to know their own demons, as it were, and that commitment can
be channeled toward healing ourselves, liberating ourselves from the binds of anger
and resentment, and giving ourselves the greatest gift ever: forgiveness, liberation,
and the present moment.
Having said all of that, you don't have to agree with me on any of it.
This is just an invitation for you to evaluate your own behavior and determine whether
you are being controlled by others or if you are in charge of your own inner peace;
a space from which healing can cure our deepest hurts, biggest challenges,
and celebrate the purest bliss.
As the Dalai Lama says: Your happiness and your own good fortune are in your own hands.
Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless
and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com,
where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project,
watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.
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Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼