What Buddha Might Not Have Taught You About the Second Arrow
Feeling bad about feeling bad makes you feel bad (and so you feel bad)
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.” — Baruch Spinoza
The Parable of the Second Arrow
According to the Buddha, any time we suffer misfortune, two arrows fly our way. The first arrow is the bad event itself, which certainly can (and often does) cause pain. The second arrow is our reaction to the bad event, the suffering we attach to our pain. This secondary pain, he tells us, is always self-inflicted.
What you might not have been told, however, is that there’s often a third arrow in response to that second arrow. Sometimes there’s even a fourth arrow in response to that one! In fact, every now and then, hundreds of them start raining down to the point that you end up feeling like Borromir from Lord of the Rings.
To give you an example, let’s say I step on my son’s toy lego (first arrow), but instead of accepting this pain, I react by getting angry (second arrow). But then, I get mad about the fact that I’m angry (third arrow). So now I’m really angry. As a result, I lash out at my children for failing to put their toys away, and also my…
