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2021-04-21 Harmony of Zen and Vipassana (3 of 5) The Suchness of Emotions | Otter.ai

2021-04-21 Harmony of Zen and Vipassana (3 of 5) The Suchness of Emotions

Insight Meditation Center13min

Gil Fronsdal

00:01

Emotions are probably not what we think they are. Maybe the way we think about and conceive them in some way keeps us from being liberated and free. Maybe it even keeps our emotions from having a certain kind of freedom.

Gil Fronsdal

00:30

I am very fond of the idea that in English, the Latin root for the word emotion, "motion" means movement. And the "e" part, the prefix, means "out." So "moving out." I like to interpret this as all emotions are processes. They are activities, movements. And they all want to move out. They all want to spread or process themselves. Our inner life has an amazing capacity to process emotions. So, to let them unfold or dissolve – to unfold in a way that there is some wisdom in doing this. We often interfere with that wisdom. We interfere with a natural process.

Gil Fronsdal

01:23

I love this way of thinking that cutting vegetables in the kitchen, I might cut my finger. It might bleed and I have a responsibility or opportunity to take care of it. Maybe by washing the wound and putting a bandaid on it to protect it. But the actual healing I cannot do. Physiologically, this is a much more complicated event than I could ever possibly engineer or understand. To send the right antibodies, proteins, hormones or whatever is involved in the right combination of things and make the whole thing healed again. What I do is keep the wound clean, safe and protected. The body has the wisdom to heal the wound, usually.

Gil Fronsdal

02:28

The same thing with our emotional life. Our hearts, our inner life, know something. If we get out of the way, and allow our emotional life to unfold, it can move to some resolution, or solution, some unfolding or place, depending on the emotion that is there. Many times we don't allow that, because we are so involved – either in the emotion, reacting to it or something – or we are spinning the story even more.

Gil Fronsdal

03:08

They say that one of the leading causes for depression (not the only cause – I don't want to give that impression), but one of the leading causes is rumination. One of the things that makes grief more difficult than it needs to be is rumination – thinking, rehearsing, remembering, feeling guilt and blame, and all kinds of things. That gets in the way of trusting and respecting the grief.

Gil Fronsdal

03:43

It is like a beach ball that we are constantly kicking before we can pick it up and hold it gently in the palms of our mindfulness. Instead of keeping the momentum going all the time, in mindfulness practice, we are learning how to get out of the way, with a deep respect for our emotions.

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