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How to deal with sorrow?

betaboybetaboy Veteran
edited June 2011 in Buddhism Basics
Namaste,

What's the Buddhist way of dealing with sorrow? Most people, when confronted with this question, create a metaphysics out it, saying sorrow is impermanent, there is no self, etc. etc. Surely, this doesn't help. Realizing anatta and all that is no doubt important, but it's the final step. Presently when one is in pain, what's the coping mechanism, according to Buddhism?

Beta

Comments

  • seeker242seeker242 Zen Florida, USA Veteran
    A Zen Master spoke to this once. He said "The answer is to let go, to put it down. But I can't tell you how to let go. You have to learn this for yourself. We use meditation practice to learn this because no one can tell you how to do it".

    :)
  • TheswingisyellowTheswingisyellow Trying to be open to existence Samsara Veteran
    Invite your pain to sit with you, stay with it, no stories added to it, know it is part of you and you shouldn't reject or suppress it. Sometime the hardest thing can be our greatest teacher. This is what I do with all afflictive emotions, I get to know them and know they are part of me and my life. Sitting with them I get to know them and eventually get to see them for what they are, in this I am able realize its cessation.
    All the best,
    Todd
  • santhisouksanthisouk Veteran
    Sorrow is life. We can only ease it by looking at the bright side and letting time pass by. Sorrow will pass just as all things do.
  • DhammaDhatuDhammaDhatu Veteran
    edited June 2011
    Sorrow comes from a sense of loss

    A sense of loss comes from impermanence

    Impermanence happens due to various reasons/causes

    Buddhism encourages developing understanding of reasons/causes for impermanence

    Kind regards
  • IronRabbitIronRabbit Veteran
    Sorrow due to loss may illustrate impermanence - understanding impermanence may mitigate sorrow - but sorrow does not dissolve until death manifests impermanence. While living sorrow can be overlooked - temporarily - by conditioning the mind with so called "positive affirmations" - or forcing focus on the sunny side of life - sorrow lives alongside all other emotions and feelings as one trudges the path. The pain of sorrow can be like demonic possession when loss is great. The story of the Buddha on the night he entered into enlightenment involved a meeting with the demons. Since neither resistance nor hiding ever seemed to work against them, he finally invited the demons to sit and chat with him: welcoming them. He made friends with the demons, and suddenly they ceased to bother him. If profound sorrow cannot be made a friend - then creating a space in which sorrow may dwell within one may be the best that can be done.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Namaste,

    What's the Buddhist way of dealing with sorrow? Most people, when confronted with this question, create a metaphysics out it, saying sorrow is impermanent, there is no self, etc. etc. Surely, this doesn't help.
    Actually yes it does, enormously.
    My father died last October, aged 90. I was with him as he died, and supported my mother in her grief and need.
    That pretty much is the way you have to train the Mind to accept things.
    Everything else is mere subterfuge and pretence.
    Realizing anatta and all that is no doubt important, but it's the final step. Presently when one is in pain, what's the coping mechanism, according to Buddhism?
    To absolutely completely totally and entirely accept that this is inevitable.

    Sorrow manifests.
    Suffering is optional.

  • DhammaDhatuDhammaDhatu Veteran
    ...sorrow does not dissolve until death manifests impermanence...
    never heard that before.

    :scratch:
    On seeing a form with the eye, he does not lust after it if it is pleasing; he does not dislike it if it is unpleasing. He abides with mindfulness of the body established, with an immeasurable mind, and he understands as it actually is the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom wherein those evil unwholesome states cease without remainder. Having thus abandoned favoring and opposing, whatever feeling he feels, whether pleasant, painful, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant, he does not delight in that feeling, welcome it, or remain holding to it. As he does not do so, delight in feelings ceases in him. With the cessation of his delight comes cessation of clinging; with the cessation of clinging, cessation of becoming; with the cessation of becoming, cessation of birth; with the cessation of birth, ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair cease. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.

    Mahātanhāsankhaya Sutta


  • grout4cakegrout4cake
    Evey experience we encounter is an opportunity to practice waking up and helping others.Sorrow puts us in touch with the same pain,grief,hopelessness that millions of other being experience at any given moment. We can use our emotions to make powerful headway in our practice and develop our compassion

    Set aside 20 minutes to begin this practice., when you become proficient ,it can be shortened.
    Breathe in your sorrow as a dark,hot claustrophobic cloud and then breathe out compassion, light and space in which the same suffering may be relieved.Continue this for say,5 minutes. Then move to the suffering of those close to us,breathing in the dark overwhelmingness of it, then breathing out the cool, loving compassion. Repeat this same exercise for those close,then to those who are only acquaintances, then those anywhere in the world and finally for those we may dislike or consider enemies. In this way our sorrow can become tool of our own awakening as well as healing ,for ourselves and others.

    It is extremely effective way to heal our powerful negative emotions as well as amplify our compassion for all beings,even for our enemies.The name of this practice is known as tonglen if you want to read more about it
  • newtechnewtech Veteran
    You deal with sorrow, lamentation and any other affliction by not clinging :).

  • StoicBuddhistAlexStoicBuddhistAlex Veteran
    Namaste,

    What's the Buddhist way of dealing with sorrow? Most people, when confronted with this question, create a metaphysics out it, saying sorrow is impermanent, there is no self, etc. etc. Surely, this doesn't help. Realizing anatta and all that is no doubt important, but it's the final step. Presently when one is in pain, what's the coping mechanism, according to Buddhism?

    Beta
    Hello =).

    Well from my own understanding.

    Be thankful that in the first place that good thing hapened to you, but also reflect that all is impermanent and in constant change. You still have your life and mind. Use them to achieve contement. An remember we are from the all(universe) we return to the all

  • SpacelessSpaceless
    Namaste,

    What's the Buddhist way of dealing with sorrow? Most people, when confronted with this question, create a metaphysics out it, saying sorrow is impermanent, there is no self, etc. etc. Surely, this doesn't help. Realizing anatta and all that is no doubt important, but it's the final step. Presently when one is in pain, what's the coping mechanism, according to Buddhism?

    Beta
    These people are happy that something for you to learn from dun you think likewise? What types of pain you may wish to elaborate, materialism, emotional, life & death issue, relationship pain, body pain, illness etc so that professional assistance given would be more helpful to you. Hope you enjoy every moment your life :thumbsup:
  • auraaura Veteran
    Evey experience we encounter is an opportunity to practice waking up and helping others.Sorrow puts us in touch with the same pain,grief,hopelessness that millions of other being experience at any given moment. We can use our emotions to make powerful headway in our practice and develop our compassion...
    It is extremely effective way to heal our powerful negative emotions as well as amplify our compassion for all beings,even for our enemies.The name of this practice is known as tonglen if you want to read more about it
    :om:

    Yes!
    I once heard the Jewish proverb version of tonglen from a Jewish friend:
    A rabbi reassures a mother mourning the death of her only child that a healing balm to relieve her sorrow can be made from some common herbs, but one of those herbs must be found growing specifically in the garden of a household that has never known sorrow.
    The woman goes in search of the missing herb that must come from a household that has never known sorrow. Her neighbors tell her that surely the herbs growing in their own gardens would never do, as their households have surely known sorrow... but perhaps the next house down the road might be more fortunate.
    The woman wanders the countryside in search of the missing herb but no matter where she goes she cannot find a household that has never known sorrow.
    She eventually returns home to her own house. The rabbi asks her if she has found the missing herb for the remedy. She replies that she has not found the missing herb from a household that has never known sorrow, but that she has no more time to look for it, for she has become far too busy helping all her neighbors who have endured so many horrible sorrows!
  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    Turn towards the feeling of sorrow and do not disturb the feeling. Let it wash you.
  • compassionate_warriorcompassionate_warrior Veteran
    Sorrow is normal. Let it happen. Don't cling, and it'll pass.
  • ZaylZayl Veteran
    edited June 2011
    I confide in others.

    OO! almost forgot, I'll watch a drama too. look up Clannad and Clannad After Story (season one and two respectively) and watch it all the way through, thank me later.
  • taiyakitaiyaki Veteran
    a while ago i listened to talk by ram dass on this subject. ram dass wrote this letter to a family after being asked to. the family's daughter was killed.

    http://www.kotapress.com/section_articles/healingArts/altTherapies/rachel_ramDass.htm

    loves infinite embrace and acceptance can only dissolve the sorrow. our ego's want to run away, but our hearts embrace it totally.
  • AmeliaAmelia Veteran
    What's the Buddhist way of dealing with sorrow?
    I think it is accepting and then letting go. That doesn't mean feel it and force it away-- to me, it means being with my sorrow, and crying if I feel like it. I try to observe the subtleties of the emotion as it goes through its tones, until, finally, there is that moment of release in which the sorrow is not as clinging as it was, or I have even changed my mind. Eventually, it ebbs away, like a wave.

    For grieving and large issues, it is a bit different, as the sorrow continues to ebb inwards and outwards at different scales of intensity for much, much longer. The lesson is that everything passes.



  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    One thing that helps me and eventually comes anyhow is to relax the trying to figure things out and just regognize that this is sorrow. It simply is sorrow.
  • footiamfootiam Veteran
    Just live and do what you have to do. Let sorrow take care of itself.
  • santhisouksanthisouk Veteran
    It arises, remains, and passes away. :)

    metta
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