Repression vs transformation
zenguitar
Bad BuddhistNew England Veteran
Greetings, wise Sangha. I have a question about meditation and how it deals with negative emotions. If I feel, say, anger or anxiety, I try to handle this by deep breathing while focusing on the breath for a few minutes. And the technique often works; the negative emotion subsides over time, and I feel better.
But a few days later, when the same trigger situation occurs, I find I often respond with the same negative emotion, at the same level of intensity. So I wonder if my meditation practice is just repressing the bad emotion, that is, pushing it back into the subconscious mind so it can rear its ugly head again later, rather than eliminating or transforming it.
It's a little frustrating to me since sometimes I feel I'm not really progressing on the path, just treading water.
Any advice? Perhaps I am just meditating incorrectly? I look forward to hearing your insights.
Comments
How long have you been meditating?
How long have you been having these emotions?
If there is a great disparity between one action and the other (ie, you have been meditating for less time than you have been experiencing the emotions) is it any wonder it takes time?
As the young novice priest once said "Good Lord God, grant me patience - but fer chrissakes, hurry up!"
The fact that you are AWARE of the arising and the processing, means your mind is coming round to the consideration that control is required.
The next time you feel such an emotion welling up - take a rubber band, place it round your wrist - and snap it, hard.
That will bring you back to the present pretty damn sharpish.
After a while, your own thought-processes will apply the 'snap'....
I've learned this the hard way. Through struggle. As we all do. And you will as well even regardless of what we say.
So let me say it. All emotions are workable. Negative ones are workable as well. Workable means you meet it fully. Fully means free from wanting to get rid of it or wanting it to be there. Essentially you need to surrender and totally feel, process and see what the emotion is communicating free from the judging mind.
Then you may find that what you considered an emotion was something radically different.
Generally most people play the game of using meditation or spirituality as a means to get rid of something and cultivate another. This is fine until a curiosity and stability is found within practice. Then practice can become about exploration and a tremendous willingness to be vulnerable and meet all circumstances.
In any case attention is important. Care is important. Kindness is important.
Today I was so lonely and sad. I dove into it. And now I am so calm and relaxed. Until the next storm and next storm and hahaha.
In my life I've found letting go to be intimacy with whatever is occurring without picking it up as something I can own or fixate on. This probably won't make any sense until you experientially figure this out.
I wish you well.
Good point and good idea, @federica.
@zenguitar, your OP is for all of us
The assumption is somehow, Buddhism (if we do it right) will vaporize our negative experiences, feelings, emotions and soon we'll have that sweet little Buddha smile plastered to our lips, negative emotions bouncing off of us right, left and center. OK, that was my initial assumption
@Taiyaki's post is a more experienced version of what I'm coming to understand. Your post is beautiful T, and I really needed to hear this today
We don't repress the negative stuff nor does it bounce off our our Buddhist Teflon armor. It is a whole different relationship to the 'negative' stuff that happens.
Thanks everyone, I guess I had been hoping (naively) that meditation would make the negative emotions simply go away. I guess a wiser view is that meditation helps us to better attend to and understand (and care for) those emotions. But I still need to internalize that wisdom in my life.
Pema Chodron says in book on meditation that it is 5 things: being a friend to yourself, seeing what is there, sitting with difficult states, being present, and making no big deal of it.
Mr Cushion is your friend.
See, I think all we moderns have half absorbed Dr Freud with his theory of some entity called a subconscious...
What if it doesn't really work like that ?
I think that the reality is it takes a long time, that the old conditioned responses keep on surfacing long after the original reason has passed.
And we need to sit with them, and recognise them as old ghosts...
I don't think so. The scriptures say that only enlightenment can actually remove these defilements so that they don't resurface. For example, only a "non-returner" is actually freed from ill-will. Suppression of the defilements is used to make the mind temporarily clear and calm. With that clarity, then one can investigate them, understand them and finally be rid of them.
A lot of the instruction on jhana and samadhi talk about suppression vs transformation. Suppression is not a bad thing, it helps you attain wisdom.
That's why the Buddhist path is 3 fold path. Sila, Samadhi and Pranja. Samadhi supresses, Pranja transforms.
This is a good description IMO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhyāna_in_Buddhism
Thanks, this is good information. Though I think there is something like a "subconscious" in Buddhism, @citta, called the seed consciousness? Though I could be wrong.
Italian Buddhist psychotherapist Giulio Cesare Giaccobe states that the problem with negative thoughts (which consequently trigger negative emotions) is that they seem to spring automatically in us, while positive thoughts have to be willingly introduced into our subconscious mind, through a conscious work of our will, or through a voluntary reprogramming operation.
"The operation we have to do ultimately is to replace involuntary negative thoughts with voluntary positive thoughts," he says. In a nutshell, Right Thought consists in the elimination of negative thoughts and the construction of positive thoughts in its stead.
His HH the Dalai Lama appeals to the practice of the Four Contemplations, that is, replacing a specific negative emotion with a specific antidote: to overcome anxiety, concentration on breathing. To overcome anger and hate, practice compassion. To overcome lust and attachment, practice the contemplation on impermanence and death.
Above all, the step that can't be bypassed is patience. It takes long years of practice to even be aware of your negative emotions as they arise, let alone have the cool-headedness not to act on them. Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck compares sitting practice with the metaphor of a furnace. "A zendo is not a place for bliss and relaxation, but a furnace room for the combustion of our egoistic delusions," she says.
In Western psychology, we're encouraged to, for instance, beat a pillow as hard as you can every time you feel angry to sort of give your anger an outlet. In Buddhist psychology, instead, we learn that every time we act out on a negative emotion, even in this harmless way, we're watering the seeds for these emotions to keep sprouting in our minds, rather than inviting them to leave.
I have always been very temperamental and impulsive, so keeping check on my anger is like my besetting work in progress and has become second-nature to me. For whatever reason (I'm a Latin, a Scorpion, a Dog Dragon, you choose) I tend to bite back. Hard. It hurts. Both ways, unfortunately. So whenever I feel anger rising, I hold fast to the sentence of the Buddha: "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned."
I have been burned so bad in the past by giving in heedlessly to my anger, that thinking of the consequences of my actions reminds me of the futility of the feeling.
In the end, the feeling always passes, as does your momentary agonising over it. But you might have to live down many years your clumsily acting on it.
There is @zenguitar , its called alaya vijnana in Sanskrit.
It seems to me though that it differs in some important regards from Freud's subconscious
I will come back to it when I have time to do it justice..
_/_
Even though I am not as well read or educated in Buddhist thought as many here, but in a practical sense, I have discovered that resisting the urge to suppress, has a very behavioral aspect to it. When we relate to our own emotions in a patient, kind, accepting and compassionate way, we are learning to relate to life in a patient, kind, accepting and compassionate way.
The lessons I learn when resisting urges to suppress emotions, takes me towards inner peace and acceptance. Abiding by my worrisome emotions with kindness, patience and understanding, transforms me to a better person. A person less prone to judgement and condemnation and a person open to recognizing the beauty in everything.
If the purpose of my practice is to make worrisome emotions go away, I am cheating myself of all of the benefit of seeing the world as the beautiful place it is.