“Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself.” — Dalai Lama
On one beautiful day many millennia ago, the Buddha was teaching a student about the nature of life. The youngster was having a hard time understanding the lesson on self-inflicted pain, so Siddhartha started explaining it with a metaphor.
The Buddha asked the student: “If the person is stuck by an arrow, is it painful?”
Without hesitation the student replied: “It is.”
The Buddha went on: “If the same person is stuck by a second arrow, is that not even more painful?”
Once again, the student agreed: “It is.”
This is what Sidhartha was waiting for. Taking a deep breath, he showed the student the nature of suffering: “In life, we cannot always control getting hit by the first arrow. However, the second arrow is how we react to the first. With this second arrow, comes the possibility of choice.”
A lot of times, unfortunate events happen that derail you from the course. This is the first arrow. The problem is that most people make the situation even worse by complaining, freaking out, or blaming their predicament on others. That’s the second arrow.
The first arrow, you can’t control. The second arrow you can guard against. This parable illustrates an ancient mantra that philosophers from many parts of the globe from time immemorial have tried to hammer home. Bad stuff happens, don’t make it worse by fretting about it.
While driving, if someone cuts you off, don’t cuss at them. Yes, what they did is dangerous. However, it won’t help things if you start swearing and behaving uncontrollably. In fact, you might get distracted and cause an accident. Just forget about it instead.
This is a mindset to cultivate in any situation. In today’s world, we are facing a crisis. A pandemic has hit our shores. People are freaking out. Many are saying that it’s OK to be not OK, but is it really?
The Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual authority of Tibetan Buddhism, sees the need for what he calls an emotional disarmament. Instead of succumbing to your emotions, it’s important to keep a calm head. That’s what will get you safely through any troubles ahead.
“In recent years I have been stressing “emotional disarmament”: to try to see things realistically and clearly, without the confusion of fear or rage. If a problem has a solution, we must work to find it; if it does not, we need not waste time thinking about it.” — Dalai Lama
There are three key principles from the Dalai Lama that are quite useful to keep in mind for the current times. If applied, they can help in protecting you from the second arrow, the self-inflicted one.
Principle of Interdependence
The whole world is interdependent. That is one of the key tenets of Buddhism, one that the Dalai Lama believes is important to constantly remind yourself of. Often, this realisation of things being linked is an aspect of the sudden flash of genius that hits individuals when they reach enlightenment.
“We Buddhists believe that the entire world is interdependent. That is why I often speak about universal responsibility.” - Dalai Lama
One fundamental Buddhist scripture, the Samyutta Nikaya, describes how Buddhists view causality. In the world there is a complex interplay of causes and effects which leads to certain things happening, and others never coming to fruition.
“When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be. With the cessation of this, that ceases.” — verse from the “Samyutta Nikaya”
This is very similar to the scientific view of how the world works. Life on Earth is based on varied interactions between different organisms and their environment. You can see various cycles, feedback loops, and chains which regulate how things take place in nature.
Interdependence is something that can be illustrated by what happened in the current Covid-19 crisis. A tiny virus passed over from bats to another animal, and from there to humans. This took place in one small market in China, but after a few months it hit millions of people around the world.
As ancient philosophers liked to repeat, humans are social animals. All people are interconnected with other people in large networks. And these links are actually much closer than you might think. Scientific experiments have shown that you can connect any one individual in the world with any other individual, often in six steps or less.
This is why you should always keep in mind that what you do has an impact on other people, and what other people do has an impact on what you do. For example, if you buy a little pack of cocaine from your neighbourhood drug dealer, you are directly contributing to the gang violence happening in places like Mexico or Colombia. Your little innocent fun means real people die.
Or today, if you are not socially distancing, you might become a vector of transmission for the virus. While you might have very light symptoms, you can pass it on to someone else, which could contribute to somewhere down the chain someone’s grandmother dying.
Most people don’t realise the influence their behaviour really has on the world, and on everyone else around them. Keeping the principle of interdependence in your mind gives you a wider perspective on your actions. It can help you in making the right choices.
Principle of Impermanence
This too will pass. One lesson from history is that time flows and nothing stays the same. Humanity has faced similar pandemics before. These pestilences created a lot of havoc, but they all went away eventually.
One key principle of Buddhism is that of impermanence. Everything changes. All things in the world are locked in a continuous flow of coming and going, of arising and disappearing. The Dalai Lama was born before World War 2, and throughout his life has seen many things come and go.
“As a Buddhist, I believe in the principle of impermanence. Eventually, this virus will pass, as I have seen wars and other terrible threats pass in my lifetime, and we will have the opportunity to rebuild our global community as we have done many times before.” - Dalai Lama
In Buddhism, impermanence is the basic trait of existence. You can observe it on yourself. You were born a helpless baby coming out of your mother’s womb. Over time, you grew and your body started changing. Now, you are at a certain point in your life. Yet the current moment too will pass.
In the “Diamond Sutra”, life is compared to a flash of lighting.
“So you should view this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.”
This is something to always keep in mind. If you are facing a particularly hard part of your life, it will pass. You might be recovering from a hard operation. You are in lots of pain. However in time this will diminish, and you will feel better. You might be waiting out the current health and economic crisis. It too will disappear. You just need a bit of patience.
To remind themselves of this principle, people in Tibet build sand mandalas. These are elaborate geometric patterns created using coloured grains of sand. Bhikkus spend countless hours in making something beautiful, only to destroy it with one swoop of the hand. It’s a great metaphor for existence.
Focusing on impermanence as the defining characteristic of how things work can unburden your mind. These types of techniques are increasingly finding their way into normal psychotherapy practice.
With mindfulness-based techniques, practitioners try to show their suffering patients the ever-changing nature of human experience.
“They can invite patients to investigate the changing nature of their own lives and experiences and to focus on changing thoughts, emotions, and sensations.”
Principle of Compassion
For the Dalai Lama, compassion is something that gives him a deep sense of inner tranquility, and mental peace. For Buddhists, being compassionate towards others is a fundamental prerequisite for feeling well. Since everything is interconnected, doing good things and caring about others will come back to you in a positive way.
“From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes.” - Dalai Lama
According to the Dalai Lama, there are two types of emotions: constructive and destructive. Anger is a destructive emotion, because not only does it harm your relationships with others, it also ruins your health.
“If you harbour hateful thoughts or intense anger deep within yourself, then it ruins your health; thus it destroys one of the factors for happiness” - Dalai Lama
Anger can further lead to hatred, which can lead to bad actions. Instead, what you should do is cultivate good emotions. The most important of these is compassion. According to the Dalai Lama, compassion contributes to both mental and physical health. This ancient Buddhist wisdom has been confirmed by much research done by modern researchers.
“Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.” - Dalai Lama
The takeaway
The pandemic, and your financial situation are all first arrows that hit you. You can’t really do much about them. However, don’t make the situation worse by shooting yourself with a second arrow. Instead, reframe your negative thought patterns into something more positive.
“It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.” — Dalai Lama
Keeping the three principles in mind can help you put the Dalai Lama’s words into practice.
• Principle of Interdependence: All things in the world are connected. This also applies to your emotions. One emotion could give rise to another one, which could lead to actions that you might later regret.
• Principle of Impermanence: All things flow. Everything comes and goes, and even this hard time will pass.
• Principle of Compassion: Remember to widen your circle of concern. Show compassion towards other human beings, animals, but also the planet as a whole.