As a Canadian, the issue of people removing snow from the sidewalk is a big deal. Some years ago, I lived near a house where they never removed the snow. It piled up until it was almost four feet high, and some partial thaws meant that underneath all that snow was ice. Every time I had to walk in that direction I cursed the owners (there was an SUV that came and went, so I knew it wasn’t uninhabited). One time, I did slip, and I was furious, even though the pain of the fall was minor.
Thing is, I don’t enjoy being furious or upset. Oh, a little anger is sometimes nice enough, but overall it’s an unpleasant feeling unless you’ve been having even worse emotions like fear, despair, powerlessness, or self-pity.
This is what Buddha called the second arrow. If you’ve been shot by an arrow, you’re in pain. If you’re upset that you’ve been shot by an arrow, you’re adding additional suffering.
Let’s run through three scenarios. Imagine each of them briefly, as if they happened to you:
1) You turn a corner and trip over a fallen branch, falling. You’re a little hurt (abraded hands), but basically okay. How upset are you?
2) You slip on some ice someone was supposed to clean up and fall. You’re a little hurt, but basically okay. How upset are you?
3) You’re walking down the street, and someone sticks out their leg and trips you, then laughs at you. You fall, but catch yourself. While a little hurt, you’re basically okay. How upset are you?
If you’re a normal person either #2 (negligence) or #3 (active malevolence) upsets you more. Probably, it’s the asshole who tripped you. (You might also get upset at the branch and kick it, swear at it, or enjoy breaking it, but hopefully not.)
The point here is that being upset makes your suffering worse. It also doesn’t deal with whatever caused the problem. Picking up the branch you tripped over, getting the city to fine the person not shoveling their snow, and either calling the cops or in times and places where it’s allowed, beating the hell out of the guy who tripped you might make sure there are no repeats.
You can do any of those things without being upset, through cold, clear calculation. If you don’t remove the branch, you or someone else could trip over it again. If you don’t convince the homeowner to shovel the snow, same thing. If you don’t make the tripper decide tripping people is a bad idea, he’ll do it again.
Much of why we get upset is that we have expectations about how other people should behave or even how the world should be. (How dare that branch trip you up!) Then, we think that if someone hurts us, we should get upset.
But, again, being upset doesn’t hurt the other person (though a display of anger might make a difference if you can make them scared of you) and doesn’t get them to change their behaviour. Indeed, in the case of the tripper, they want you to be upset. Your anger is part of their reward, just like how online trolls are trying to make you angry.
Being upset does hurt you, though. It makes your suffering worse.
But if you believe you should be upset, you will be.
So the first step is to ask yourself: What benefit there is to being upset? Do this all the time when something makes you upset, just ask yourself, “Does this help? Do I like feeling this?” Maybe you do (usually in the case of anger), but most of the time, the honest answer is gong to be no.
Over time, if you keep doing this, you’ll be upset less and less. You’ll change the reflex.
We add suffering to almost everything. If you get a bad headache and are upset because it “isn’t fair,” that adds suffering to the headache. If you get upset at yourself for doing something stupid, that adds suffering. I used to be like that; I stopped when I realized that, after decades of being harsh with myself, my behaviour hadn’t changed. In other words, being upset when I made a mistake wasn’t reducing the number of mistakes, it was just making me unhappy. (When I did stop being too self-critical, mistakes decreased somewhat, ironically.)
Buddha’s Second Arrow is the low-lying fruit, the easiest way to reduce your suffering — suffering which doesn’t help you deal with whatever issues you face. When you’re cool and calm, you’re more likely to fix whatever the problem is — if it can be fixed — faster and more competently than you are upset.
Pull out the second arrow.
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Joan
This really resonates with me because at the moment I live tucked under the Canadian border in a city with bad car brain worms.
The city plows the road for cars but not the sidewalks. They used to, in the 90s, but we can’t have nice things anymore lol. I report the people who don’t shovel their sidewalks, and my husband goes around and plows the surrounding sidewalks and grits the icy patches that we frequently encounter. The city is leaving money on the table but not fining these people, frequently rich landlords since they’re usually rental houses.
I’m encouraged when I see people try to kick holes in the ice walls so that you can climb in and out of the street. It would still be impossible to live here in a wheelchair or if you were any kind of fall risk. What’s crazy is that we’re the inner city: 1 in 3 households here don’t own a car. That’s a high percentage of pedestrians for an American city, and yet you’d think we’re invisible with how sidewalk care isn’t even an afterthought. But we’re not gentrified yet, so the inner city is still black/brown and poor. Might be why, I don’t know.
Instead of getting mad I try to funnel that energy toward my efforts to get out of here so they get my tax money for as short a time as possible haha.
bruce wilder
there is also an interpersonal aspect to this — emotions, felt and acted out, function in the context of social relations
having a conversation solely or primarily with yourself is slightly schizo. having a purposeful interaction with responsible others can be well-grounded, though enacting a narcissistic drama seldom persuades others
DRNRG
This was useful. Thank you, Ian.
Paul
This is argued very systematically in Anger and Aggression by James Averill. Much of what we call emotion is actually our acting out of a given social role that we have internalized as appropriate for the situations we encounter. He makes exceptions for a few primitive reactions that are almost more like reflexes, but anger is not one of them.
Jan Wiklund
On the other hand, being upset over the trolls who think they have the right to rule the world gives us the energy needed to bring them down. So that’s a fine thing.
Bill H.
Forgiveness is a useful tool in pulling the second arrow. When you forgive someone for a transgression, you do not benefit the transgressor (he need not not aware you have done so), you benefit yourself, as you rid yourself of the anger and hate which you were carrying.
someofparts
My aggression is just transmuted fear. Like creatures in the forest if we frighten them. So fear is the second arrow that needs to be removed. Getting rid of the fear gets rid of the aggression it triggers too.
Bill H.
@someofparts
A friend of mine cites road rage as an example of your point. “I am angry at him,” he says, “not because he offended me but because he frightened me.” The solution, he goes on to say, lies not in taking out my rage on him, but in conquering the fear that resides within myself, for fear is the source of my rage.
NR
Another way I’ve heard it put is “Holding a grudge is like you taking poison and hoping the other guy dies.”
mago
Yeah, anger often arises from confusion, not knowing what’s happening.
Of course all the five negative emotions, which we’re all prone to, bring suffering to ourselves and others. (attachment, jealousy, anger, ignorance, and arrogance).
There are antidotes, but not attempting explanations here.
There’s another aspect to the Buddha’s teachings on suffering known as suffering on top of suffering as in you lose your job, get sick, your dog dies and your wife leaves you. I’ve lived that country western song as have most of us. It’s called samsara this world in which we dwell.
Wishing everyone a peaceful way and cessation of suffering.
Ian Welsh
Put your miscellaneous comments, unrelated to the topic, in the open thread, not here. (Speaking of something I didn’t let thru.)