Feelings are a very ancient part of us. They are evolution’s first attempt at thought. While conceptual thought takes place in the mind, feelings take place in the body. While thoughts are in general mainly visual and auditory representations of external events, feelings are kinesthetic representations of sensations. So we talk about having a heavy heart, as if sorrow is a burden we physically carry, or feel a dropping sensation when we’re disappointed, like a tree-dwelling primate discovering that a branch will not bear its weight, or we feel warm toward someone, as if we were physically in contact with them. (I suspect that most, if not all, our feelings mimic actual dangers and benefits our early ancestors encountered.)
Feelings, like thoughts, are interpretations of reality rather than reality itself. Feelings are meant to indicate whether things we perceive are potential threats, benefits, or are neither. When the mind has interpreted something as a potential threat, our feelings are unpleasant. This motivates us to withdraw, freeze, fight, or push something away. When the mind considers something to be a potential benefit, we have pleasant feelings, which motivate us to move closer, or to hold on. When something seems to have no relevance to our well-being, we feel nothing. We usually ignore things that fall into this category.
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Although both thoughts and feelings are inner presentations created in order to help us navigate life, feelings are often much more effective motivators than their more recently evolved cousins, thoughts. What feelings lack in subtlety, they more than make up for in brute force. Have you ever tried getting someone to taste a new food, and they just won’t do it? “Try this,” you say, “it’s delicious!” Your friend, their expression somewhere between skeptical and disgust, refuses. You try again, “Really, this is wonderful! You must try it!” Your friend is unmoved, because your words carry almost no force compared to the feelings they are in the grip of — feelings that tell them not to risk trying something they might not like. Our feelings act like they’re our boss, and we tend to go along with them, assuming that we’re their servant.
Unfortunately, being part of our ancient wiring, feelings aren’t necessarily very wise when it comes to directing our actions. We often avoid doing things that are good for us, because our feelings indicate that something bad will happen if we do. Think of the essential phone call you keep putting off. Even though intellectually you know that there will be unpleasant consequences from the delay, your heart sinks when you think about it, and your resistance is like running into a brick wall). We also do things despite knowing they are bad for us, because our feelings tell us they’re beneficial. Think of “eating your feelings.”
(Sometimes our feelings can be very wise indeed, though. You can have a feeling that someone is not to be trusted, even though you can’t pinpoint why. Such a feeling can save your life.) A substantial part of our spiritual practice involves learning not to let our feelings be our boss, but instead to learning to see them as advisors whose advice may be good or bad, and that we can pick or choose from.
The Buddha talked about the unwise person becoming emotionally reactive because they are “yoked” (saññutta) to their feelings. They don’t experience any sense of separation between their sense of self and the feelings they experience. And this is how we are most of the time when we react to other people with anger, hatred, or contempt — when our love fails. We are yoked to our feelings so that when they go one way, so do we. In an effort to disengage from unskillful emotions towards others, we can give our feelings space, observe their impermanence, look so closely at them that we start to see them as insubstantial, and engage in “creative reductionism” so that we simply see them as pleasant and unpleasant. But seeing them as not being part of us is another very powerful technique that can allow us to move from conflict, to peace, and thence to love.
Imagine a blue sky. In it, due to the prevailing weather conditions, gradually appears a single, white cloud. If you watch the cloud carefully you’ll see that it’s constantly changing shape, evolving, dissolving in some places and materializing in others. After a time, the cloud dissolves completely, and we are left once more with a clear blue expanse. We can see this as an example of impermanence, but we can also ask the question, “Was the cloud intrinsically part of the sky?” Of course it wasn’t. The sky was there before the cloud appeared, and remained after the cloud had gone. Even if the clouds completely obscure the blue for a while, they are never truly part of the sky.
It’s just the same with our feelings. They appear when conditions are right. They constantly change while they’re in existence. Eventually, they pass away. Yet your being—an ever-changing and indefinable stream of materiality, energy, feeling, thought, and emotion—remains. The feeling was never an intrinsic part of you. It was just a temporary phenomenon, ever-changing as it passed through you on its way from non-existence to nothingness.
We can see that our feelings don’t even arise entirely in dependence on ourselves. Instead, they result from the meeting of whatever-it-is-we-are with the world. They are co-creations of “self” and world. (Yes, feelings can arise from our thoughts, but our thoughts are in turn derived from, and are representations of, the world.)
Feelings are not consciously created. You don’t make them happen. They come from ancient parts of the mind that are inaccessible to conscious awareness, and they are simply received. You feel feelings in the same way as you hear sounds: they are delivered to you.
Neither can you will them out of existence. You can’t simply dispel depression or anxiety by saying, “Begone, unwanted feeling!” How can something that you simply receive, and can’t control, be “you”? This is what the Buddha was talking about when he said:
Form is not yourself. For if form were yourself, it wouldn’t lead to affliction. And you could compel form: ‘May my form be like this! May it not be like that!’ But because form is not yourself, it leads to affliction. And you can’t compel form: ‘May my form be like this! May it not be like that!’
Feelings being insubstantial, there is nothing there for us to hold onto. We can call them “our” feelings but we can never possess them. How can something we can never hold onto be “us”?
Talking or reading about all this is one thing. Maybe it’s puzzling. Maybe it’s frustrating. Maybe it gives rise to feelings of resistance. The thing is, this is a practice. It’s not an intellectual exercise. The point is to practice observing. Get beneath your intellectuality, and see what’s really there. Be mindful.
Observe feelings as objects of attention. Let yourself notice their coming-into-being and their going-out-of-being. Notice how you do not choose them, and how instead they simply arise. Unyoking yourself from them, notice how you do not have to go in the direction they are trying to take you. An unpleasant feeling does not need to make you react with aversion, nor does a pleasant feeling have to lead you into craving or grasping. Your feelings are advice, not commands. You don’t have to let them be your boss. Let your feelings be, and remain free.
Lastly, as you observe feelings you can remind yourself, as the Buddha advised many times, “This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.” This is a powerful yet underused tool.
The thing is to keep looking, observing, reflecting. This is our practice. If we do that, then we will start to recognize that our feelings — and everything else that makes up whatever-this-is — are not ours, not us, not who we are. Then we’re a step closer to awakening. We’re a step closer to dismantling this obstacle that is our belief in a separate self. We can disentangle ourselves from the anger, hatred, resentment, and contempt that cause our love to fail. We can return to loving, and as we do so we can realize that others, caught up in delusion, are yoked to their own feelings, and we can desire that they be free as well.
When we free ourselves, we naturally want to free others.
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