Emotions can become raw materials for enlightenment.

This is a first draft of the introduction of a book on working with disturbing emotions using Buddhist methods and insight, which is currently being edited, but thought that I would share and see what feedback I can gain from the Hub community.

Within Buddhism, there are five main disturbing emotions, but first we look at how these disturbing emotions arise out of the mind in the first place. They are Anger, Attachment, Jealousy, Pride and Ignorance.

Before we take a look at each of the five main disturbing emotions, we must first look at how these disturbing emotions arise out of the mind in the first place.

In Buddhist thought, the very source of disturbances within themselves have no substance; they are illusory and cannot hold up to the great brilliance of enlightened mind, but we can use the opportunity to embrace them, no matter how uncomfortable they are in the moment. I think that if we can witness and own our responsibility to them and integrate these teaching, it can reveal to us in our consciousness, then we can truly liberate them from leading or overpowering our mind.

If we can simply open up to observing that our feelings come and go, like the waves on the beach, we will learn to see that our emotions can become messengers of wisdom. So it is wise not to suppress or totally avoid our emotions. One moment we may feel angry, however in the next moment, we can think of something far more interesting and the original angry thought disappears into space.

When we learn to become aware of the world and our part in it, we will see that we create everything that we feel, touch, smell, see and hear. Our minds are so powerful that we create our own heaven and hell experiences on earth. It is not to say that some emotions are good and some are bad, this is dualistic mind talking. There is no black and white in the realm of emotions, however if we can understand that our mind is inherently rich, creative and empty at the same time then we will have an easier time in recognizing our own Buddha Nature. There are so many colors in the rainbow!

To start off with we can start to begin to look at our minds as ‘MIND’ instead of ‘MY MIND’, and not judge it as your own, this is a profound acknowledgement. If we can become aware of what is going on with mind in every moment, we can see how spontaneous and creative it can be and the enormous potential that it contains. We can learn to recognize when we are hot, cold, angry, jealous, sad or happy etc... However if we look deeper still and look behind the emotion, we can see that the true nature of mind is expansive and unlimited. There is no flavoring or coloring, it simply is aware in and of itself; this is our true nature.

When we can truly be honest with ourselves, then we can really become present and attentive with what is going on in front of our nose, and do whatever gives more benefit to others and ourselves in any given situation. If we can learn to become deeply relaxed then we can really witness our mind at work, this practice becomes a subtle investigation of knowing the qualities of the mind. Meditation can help build this awareness, even in our stressful busy lives.

If we choose to simply ignore our emotions, we will never truly discover the wisdom behind them. If we embrace them and let our life be our natural teacher, then our inner teacher will then develop and become stronger to guide us.

Emotions can become raw materials for enlightenment, that is, if we don’t use the old ways of dealing with emotions, such as shame or guilt. We can learn to become neutral to viewing the highly volatile emotions we see in others and ourselves as interesting and imaginative. They are even laughable and see that they are not lasting and therefore cannot take them seriously at all. Disturbing emotions can give us meaningful insights into ones own nature, especially when we can learn to extract the wisdoms from them.

So on a practical level, when a disturbing emotion appears in the mind, it is an opportunity to look directly at its essence, until we realize that in fact it has no real existence at all. We cannot however take a shortcut; bypass the experience of the emotion, as we are not being sincere in the experience of understanding the inherent wisdom that it contains.

To be continued…