2022-06-17 Wise to Emotions (5 of 5) Reactive and Non-Reactive Emotions

9:18PM Jun 18, 2022

Speakers:

Gil Fronsdal

Keywords:

upwelling

emotions

reacting

dharmic

conceit

arise

distinction

meditation

lake

capacity

naturalness

happening

source

triggered

tension

wells

sense

ambition

reactively

depend

So on this fifth talk on becoming wise with emotion towards emotions, I want to talk a little bit about attention to the source of our emotions. Know where they the emotions arise from. And certainly there are layers of sources from within. And a little bear I talked about that yesterday is that certain emotions might have other emotions that are the source for it or that immediate predecessor for it. Anger might be hurt, or fear. Joy might be very the source within it within us. It might be praise to our conceit, then result, energized, joyful Leave about that. Or it might be this delightful sense of freedom or ease, that comes when conceit disappears. And when it's not there, and and so, but the the teachings of the Buddha, there's a distinction between two sources are two kinds of emotional lives. And one is, I like to call dharmic. And the other we call non dharmic. Some people might call it spiritual and worldly, some people call it Yeah, you know, there's a variety of things they call this, but at the heart of the Buddhist teachings on mindfulness is this distinction between that which belongs to the sensual world, and that which belongs something deeper, that is the non sensual world, and the spiritual and non spiritual, it's not, it's not a criticism or denigrating of the, what's maybe non spiritual or that which is essential. But there is a distinction between that which emotions to get that get triggered by our reactivity. And those emotions that are not I'm not arising reactively to something, but rather, emerge flow through us, arise out of us, almost, almost independent of the conditions around us. So if I am in a hurry to get somewhere and driving somewhere, and someone is driving really slow, my eagerness my strong desire to get someplace is frustrated. And I might get and get angry, or get afraid, reacting to the person who's driving slow. In other situations, same situation, I might be trying to need to go somewhere, maybe I'm need to get there on time, but I'm driving in a relaxed, open way, someone's driving slow. And, and I see it, and I say, Oh, someone's driving slow and looks like someone who maybe is old and, and is, you know, just trying to drive carefully. And so I let it be. And I use it as occasion just to relax. And in that relaxation, that just be the being with his duration. There's no room more deeply, that I'm not reacting to anything, but there's a feeling of contentment or a feeling of gratitude for the day in the sky and, and things like that. There might be a sense of care and love for the person in the driving slow. And, and I don't, I'm not, it's not being triggered by what's out there. It's just kind of a natural kind of upwelling of warmth for someone who's driving carefully and caring for them. They're, we sit and meditate. And we might feel like we're you know, very ambitious to get really deeply concentrated right away. And, and that ambition to get you know, and maybe we have a bad feeling for ourselves. We feel like we've somehow

don't succeed very well and things in our lives and And meditation is supposed to help us and, and this was an alternative to the challenges of life and, but I have to be successful in meditation. And then we're not met, we're not getting concentrated. And so that already there's a built up tension behind doing the meditation. And so when meditation is not going successfully, we react to that we get angry at meditation, angry at ourselves angry at Buddhism, you know, angry at the world. Reacting there, there's on the surface more I think of it more the surface level of who we are. We're carrying the tensions and stresses emotional, physical, mental, and those stresses, when they're touched by, by the world, they get triggered. When when we have a great capacity, and lots of space and ability to be open, to be relaxed, to be present. And without those surface tensions, stresses, then in for someone who's really mature in this practice, there are no triggers. things occur and that they don't eat. So when if we hold up our mind, in Buddhism, this idea of holding up conceit, and something comes along, that threatens that conceit, there's like a collision. And then there's a reaction to it. If there's no conceit, something comes along and criticizes us. And you know, normally maybe it doesn't hit our concede it just goes right through. But that's going right through that capacity to not be caught, not be reactive, not have something up there that inside that the world hits. Next, a room for the upwelling of a lot of wonderful emotions, there's an upwelling of healing upwelling of movement towards harmony, movement towards unification, there's upwelling of contentment, or peace, sometimes joy and happiness. And these are these, there's this data, which is up that wells up is not reactive. That is what's dharmic dharmic emotions dharmic feelings are those that arise in the space where kind of an empty space in us in certain kind of way empty of, of tension and empty of a holding on to certain emotions, empty and having certain kinds of demands on the situation or expectations or cravings or ambitions or, or a strong sense of self that we're protecting or hiding or something. And so the dharmic emotions are those, the kind of non dharmic are the ones that arise when there's a collision with something hard inside of us. The, the non they the that's the non dharmic. The dharmic is when there's nothing in there. And there's space and things can go right through. But more importantly, there's space for things to well up. And the classic analogy for this simile for it is that of a mountain lake, where there's no rivers or rain that fills the lake. It's getting completely refreshed from an underground found underground spring that's welling up from the bottom of the lake, spreading this fresh water throughout the lake. So in the same way this we're not getting we're not depending on input from the world around us. The rivers coming into a lake, or and we're not depending on the rain, all the thoughts and ideas we have in the mind in order to have this upwelling, but rather there's more like settledness relaxation, real sense of presence attention to here, and then an upwelling of of has a chance to arise. We have within us a tremendous capacity dharmic capacity for a flow for a naturalness of positive emotions. Things like love and care and joy and contentment. Gratitude, delight, gladden compassion beautiful, beautiful states. And but they're not states that we make happen. reactively

they are almost like a gift. that comes when we our capacity to be present, is expansive and open. And we're patient and available without the stirring up, or the agitation of reactivity of a lot of desires that are pushing us around a lot of aversion pushing us around, there's a settledness happening. So this distinction between those emotions that are born out of our reactivity, and those that emotions that arise from a deeper upwelling, that's not is not a React reaction, but is more like the, the innate capacity of our system psychophysical system to express itself to manifest something that is responsive and in harmony with our environment, with what's happening. So I don't know how well, I've articulated this, but I think maybe well enough this distinction to maybe give you something to reflect on this weekend. To think a little bit about the source of the different emotions that come through over the next few days. Are the emotions, more reactive emotions, even the joyful ones? are they reacting to something that's happening in the world? So that is, you know, it's touching some hitting something inside there that then just reacts? Or is there an upwelling? Is there an Naturalness is there a kind of almost as if you're getting out of the way, and something wells up dharmic Joy dharmic happiness, that doesn't depend on the conditions of the world, reactive emotions depend on the conditions of the world. And, and the world being ourselves as well. The dharmic are those which are independent, non dependent, and have a certain kind of way.

So. So then, one announcement that some of you might be interested in that in a few weeks, a couple of weeks, July 9, through insight retreat center, we're going to have a day long retreat online on Zoom, and that I'll be teaching. And if some of you would like to kind of continue this deeper away, then you know, for a day long, you can go probably to the Insight retreat center.org website, or at some point in the next while it'll probably be announcement about this on the IMC website to on the What's New. So thank you all. And and I was thinking that may be on next Monday, next week, maybe to continue with this theme of emotions, but maybe to go through and choose five different emotions to consider and reflect on how to practice with and what we've been talking about this week might apply to particular situations. So thank you.