Emotions and Cake
Feelings are not good or bad in and of themselves. Some people come to Buddhism with the impression that we have to become unfeeling to be Buddhists, like robots or something. This is not the case. It’s not about eliminating feelings. I don’t know if that’s even possible, although we certainly do have an ability to bury our feelings deep down and not address them. That’s probably not a good thing to do.
In Buddhism for Beginners Thubten Chodron says, “The Buddha taught various antidotes to counteract negative emotions such as anger, attachment, jealousy, and pride. He also taught techniques to cultivate positive emotions such as love and compassion.”
It almost feels like we shouldn’t be labeling emotions as positive or negative. But it’s a shorthand way of thinking about the emotions that help us versus the ones that get in our way. Like Mr. Wallace says in Pulp Fiction: “Pride only hurts. It never helps.”
I don’t want you to have the idea that you should be ashamed of yourself if you get angry or jealous a lot. These are feelings we all experience and we have to work on ourselves in order to be able to manage them. We can be grateful that the Buddhist practices we’re learning about can help us learn how to put down things that don’t serve us. These feelings I’m calling negative are the ones that inspire us to not make the best choices. They’re the feelings that stop us from seeing things clearly and appreciating things.
Thubten Chodron goes on to say, “For example, suppose we’re attached to chocolate cake. Even while we’re eating it, we’re not tasting it and enjoying it completely. We’re usually either criticizing ourselves for eating something fattening, comparing the taste of chocolate cake to other cakes we’ve eaten in the past, or planning how to get another piece. In any case we’re not really experiencing the chocolate cake in the present.”
Our attachment to things gets in the way of our happiness. If we can actually just enjoy a piece of cake, then we can learn how to find some happiness in life. If we can’t, then we’re going to have a hard time.