•

feelings and emotions from the perspective of Buddhism

•

how can meditation change the way you view your feelings?

•

when you are angry or have a great emotion, you grasp that feeling of anger as real

•

but when you meditate or contemplate on those sensations: anger, fear, or anxiety, you experience these feelings of anger as not real, not concrete

•

in our daily hectic lives, we experience emotions as real, but it is like a movie which seems real to you when watched at a certain speed, but when you meditate you come to a slower, more peaceful speed in which you can see the same movie as a series of frames and you realized that these emotions are not real

•

but this leads to the question: what does it even mean to say that emotions are real?

•

it's not found in Buddhist doctrine that feelings aren't real

•

yet it is a common theme in Buddhist thought and writing

•

our feelings are not guides to reality, they are not entirely trustworthy

•

meditation is a technique for, among other things, giving yourself some critical distance to your feelings to avoid being misled by them

•

experiment

•

showed three pictures for one second: hatchet/pot, squirrel/alligator, snake/rope

•

first exposed subjects to one of three different conditions

•

happy music

•

no music

•

scary music

•

happy music didn't have much effect compared to no music

•

but scary music had a pronounced effect, i.e. made people more likely to interpret the pictures as the scary version

•

explanation for why brain built like this where our feelings can influence our perceptions

•

real life scenario: taking hike, learned that you are in rattlesnake terrain, you will be modestly fearful

•

To a man who is afraid, everything rustles.

•

if you see a lizard or a coiled rope, for a second you might think it is a snake because you are fearful of snakes

•

from natural selection's point of view this makes since: this kind of fear and expectation of danger would increase the chances that organisms reach the age of reproduction

•

even if you jump out of the way 99 times out of a 100, being fearful that one time will help you survive whereas not being fearful may not

•

natural selection designs organisms ultimately to do one thing, i.e. to get genes into the next generation

•

genetically-based traits that are conducive to getting genes into the next generation and helping organism survive long enough to do that, are the genes which will ultimately define the organism

•

being habitually fearful is a trait encouraged by natural selection

•

seeing the world clearly is also a trait encouraged by natural selection and these two natural habits are constantly in conflict

•

Buddhism says we should be skeptical of our feelings and that they are not truthful guides to our reality

•

evolutionary psychology also indicates a certain amount of skepticism makes sense

•

psychological studies have shown that people who have watched violent movies such as Silence of the Lambs tend to afterwards see menacing expressions on faces of pictures shown to them

•

politicians know that it is easier to change the opinion of people when they are in an emotional state, e.g. to create fear so that people will be more likely to political situations in terms of that fear

•

quotes:

•

To a man who is afraid, everything rustles.

•

Sophocles