Chapter 25 Chapter 2 Emotions and Pain-7

One might argue that not all emotions are painful—what about love, joy, creative inspiration, devotion, ecstasy, peace, unity, contentment, comfort, etc.?We also believe that emotion is necessary in poetry, ballads, and art.Our definition of pain is uncertain and rather limited.Siddhartha's definition of suffering is broader, but also more specific and clearer. Certain kinds of pain, such as anger, jealousy, and headaches, have a decidedly negative quality, while others are more subtle.For Siddhartha, any pain of an uncertain and unpredictable nature.For example, love may be pleasurable and satisfying, but it does not appear by itself.It is dependent on someone or something and therefore unpredictable.A man's love depends on at least one object, so in a sense he is always bound.And there are countless other hidden situations.Therefore, blaming our parents for our depressed childhood, or ourselves for our parents' disharmony, is futile because we fail to see the many hidden, interdependent causes and conditions.

There is a Buddhist proverb that is not easy to translate, which roughly goes like this: All rangwangs are happy, and all shenwangs are miserable. "Lang" means "self," while "Wang" means "strength," "right," or qualification.And "Xian" refers to "others".Broadly speaking, happiness is defined as a person who has complete control, freedom, power, ease, without obstacles, without constraints.This means freedom to choose or not to choose.Can be peacefully active, or peacefully laid-back. There are things we can do to turn the world around to our advantage, such as taking vitamins to make us strong, or drinking a cup of coffee to pick us up.Yet we cannot hold the world still so that another tsunami does not occur.We can't stop pigeons from hitting windshields, and we can't control other motorists on the highway.A large part of our lives is spent trying to please other people, primarily to make ourselves comfortable.Living with someone who is constantly losing their temper is not a good thing; however, we cannot keep another person's mood high forever.We can try, and sometimes succeed, but such maneuvers require a lot of repair and maintenance.Saying "I love you" once early in a relationship isn't enough.You have to do the right thing - send flowers and care right down to the end.If you miss it just once, everything you've built can fall apart.And sometimes, even when you are caring, your partner may misunderstand, may not know how to accept it, or may not accept it at all.A young man looks forward to sharing a candlelit dinner with the girl of his dreams, imagining how the night will unfold and how he will win her over; but, that's just his imagination, his guesswork.Whether there is any basis or not, it is just a guess.Basically, we can't always be 100% ready.Therefore, our obstacles and opponents only need to prepare one percent to be able to do all the damage.

We may think that we are not really suffering.Even if it's suffering, it's not that bad.We are not living in slums, or being massacred in Rwanda.If this attitude comes from genuine contentment and appreciation of what you have, then to some extent this appreciation is what Siddhartha would have considered desirable.But we are seldom truly content; there is a never-ending nagging of our hearts to get more out of life, and this dissatisfaction leads to misery. Siddhartha's answer is - to cultivate awareness of emotions.If you are aware of emotions when they are rising, even a little bit, you cannot limit their activity; they become like teenagers with a guardian.With someone watching, Mara's power would weaken.Siddhartha was not hurt by the poisoned arrows because he was aware that these were just illusions.In the same way, our own powerful emotions can become as harmless as flower petals.When the nymphs approached Siddhartha, it became clear to him that they were like rings of fire, made only by fusion, so they lost their allure and could not move him in the slightest.In the same way, the spell of temptation can be broken simply by understanding that the object of our desire is in fact a composite phenomenon.

Awareness begins to develop when you start noticing the damage that emotions can do.When you have awareness -- for example, if you know you're standing on a cliff and walking it's not so scary, it's actually quite exciting.Not knowing is the real root of fear.Awareness doesn't get in the way of your life, it makes it more fulfilling.If you are enjoying a cup of tea and understand the sweetness and bitterness of transient things, you will be able to really enjoy that cup of tea.