I recently heard a Buddhist scholar compare the existence of a human being to that of a hurricane. The hurricane isn’t really one thing, is it? It’s a collection of warm air, moisture, wind, etc. It arises out of disparate elements to become what we recognize as “a hurricane,” blows hard and fierce as it moves, and then eventually dissipates again and goes back to not being a hurricane anymore. The speaker pointed out that we even give hurricane’s human names. Imagine if a hurricane were conscious, it would probably feel like it was a solid, permanent being, just like we do. But like the hurricane, our consciousness arises from disparate phenomena, and eventually peters out and disappears forever. Even if the same elements came together again in exactly the same way, it wouldn’t really be “us” again, anymore than one hurricane is the same hurricane as the last.
The metaphor works on other levels, too. The hurricane picks up indiscriminately as it goes. So does an un-mindful consciousness. The hurricane has a whole in the middle of it. It doesn’t have a center. Neither do we! Alternatively, the hurricane has a calm center and that’s what we should strive for.
I like thinking of myself as a hurricane. Plus it reminds me of the song from Hamilton:
In the eye of the hurricane there is quiet/
for just a moment.
Everyone deserves to be treated kindly. Think about how much you’ve suffered in your life. Whether it’s been great or small, your suffering was and is your own to bear. Remember that everyone you meet is suffering, too. Just as much as you, if not more. Many people have ailing parents who need care, if they even still have parents at all. They have failed and/or failing relationships. Mounting debt that follows them. Personal psychological baggage that weighs them down and makes everything difficult. At the very least, even the most serene and unencumbered person you could meet–the Dalia Llama, for instance–is dying. Even if they aren’t suffering from this affliction, it is something they must inevitably face, and that alone should warrant compassion and patience. But as I said, most of us suffer greatly under the burdens of ourselves. The next time you are inclined to speak to or think about someone in an unkind way, try to see them as a terminally-ill patient who is suffering mentally and physically every moment, and send compassion their way instead.
Don’t get angry, but we need to talk about emotions.
On second thought, get angry if you want. Don’t let me tell you how to live your life.
But it’s not going to do you any good.
Being angry–just like being jealous, being anxious, being disappointed, and even being sad–is just a bit of mental indigestion.
Ok, now I can tell you’re getting angry again, because I just suggested that when you were bawling your eyes out after Aunt Henrietta died it was basically like stomach cramps in your brain. How dare I! Aunt Henrietta was a saint, and she deserves to be remembered that way.
Listen, I didn’t know your Aunt Henrietta, but I’m sure she was a wonderful person. She probably had some flaws that you didn’t know about, but maybe you’re right. Maybe she was a saint. Anyway, she’s not the point.
The point is that you felt sad when she died, and that’s perfectly understandable. It’s natural! It’s unavoidable, even. Wouldn’t you say?
Ah, and now we’re getting closer to my point.
When she died, did you choose to feel sad? Did you think to yourself, “Everyone else always seems ‘sad’ when people they love die, so I guess I’ll go ahead and be ‘sad’ too.” Unless you’re Patrick Bateman, that’s probably not how it happened.
This guy struggles with emotions, too.
You didn’t choose to be sad, the sadness happened to you. We know this is how emotions work, because we say things when we feel strongly about something like “it came over me” or “it welled up inside me.” We recognize that feelings aren’t something we do, but something that is done to us. It’s a state of mind that we are put into.
Doesn’t that seem strange to you at all? If you aren’t the one who decides to be sad–or angry, or jealous, or even happy–then who is? How does it happen?
More importantly: Why do we let it happen?
If you know anything about Star Trek, you probably know Vulcans don’t feel emotions. That’s a common misconception by the uninitiated, actually. The truth is, Vulcans are extremely emotional people, but they learned long ago to control their emotions for the greater good. They embrace logic and reason, rather than feeling.
And they’re in good company. Long before Vulcans were invented by Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, the Stoics were espousing the virtues of remaining unemotional in the face of challenges. Folks like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius recognized that when one lets their emotions dictate their decision-making it more often than not leads to poor choices. Rationality–logic and reason–was the path to true happiness in life.
It’s a nice thought, of course. Generations of fans have watched Vulcans in the various iterations of Star Trek and thought, “Gee, it sure would be nice to be able to control my emotions like a Vulcan.” And the introspection stops there.
“I’m doing it! I’m Vulcaning!”
Because we are conditioned to believe that emotions are important. Particularly when we feel them. How many times have you sworn you wouldn’t get angry about something and then found yourself getting angry anyway.
“Well I wasn’t going to get angry but I didn’t expect you to say that!” It’s like we are slaves to our feelings. We don’t even question it. When we’re caught up in an emotion, positive or negative, it feels like it takes over our body and our thoughts. We really are trapped by it.
But we don’t have to be. That’s what this post, this blog, this entire lifestyle, is all about.
Are you familiar with the Buddhists? Leaving aside the unfortunate dark side of the religion-slash-philosophy, pretty much every version of Buddhism espouses the benefits of meditation. Why? Because it’s a way to get your thoughts under control.
Most of us walk around our entire lives thinking about all kinds of things, and never questioning where the thoughts come from.
“They come from me,” you might say. “I think my own thoughts, obviously.”
But do you?
“I am, therefore I think. I think.”
Think of a city right now. Any city will do. Just think of a city somewhere in the world. It could be someplace you visited, someplace you want to visit, someplace you’ve seen on the news… It doesn’t matter what city it is.
I’ll give you a moment.
Do you have it? Have you got that city in mind?
Great. Now, why did you think of that city in particular? You could have picked literally any city in the world, right?
Well, actually, no. You couldn’t pick, for instance, any cities that you don’t know exist. In fact there’s only really a handful of cities famous enough around the world for most people to know about. There are countless cities in every country that have never appeared in print, never shown up on the news, and are never visited by tourists. You couldn’t very well pick one of those cities, could you? You can’t think of something that you don’t have knowledge of.
So why did you think of that city in particular?
You may have picked the city you got married in. Or the city your favorite TV show takes place in. Or you may have thought of a random letter of the alphabet first and then just picked the first city that came to mind that started with that letter. (Notice the use of the common phrase “came to mind.” That’s an instructive phrase.)
But even if you had your reasons for picking the city you did, why did you think of that reason? If you picked the city where you went on vacation three years ago, why? Why didn’t you pick the city you went to last year? Or that you want to go to next year?
I won’t belabor this exercise anymore, because I think I’ve said enough to make my point: You can give all sorts of reasons for why you thought of what you did, and even give reasons for those reasons, but at some point you have to recognize the fact that you didn’t choose to think about what you thought about. At some point, the thought just “came to you.”
The above exercise came from philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris. He uses it to demonstrate the illusion of free will, which isn’t that different from what I was doing. But my point isn’t to disavow you of your illusion of choice (that will come later), but rather to emphasize the point that your mind spontaneously creates thoughts. It’s only after the thought is created that you attach meaning to it.
As the meditation practitioners like to say, “Thoughts think themselves.”
I say, “Emotions feel themselves.”
Can you recall a time in your life when you were just having a really rotten day? Hopefully that’s never happened to you, but unfortunately for most of us it’s quite commonplace. Remember your rotten day, and how everything just seemed to be going wrong. The world seemed at odds with you. People were extra rude, the weather unpleasant, the food you ate wasn’t as good as it usually is.
You know what kind of day I’m talking about. You end the day feeling worn out, angry, and victimized by the universe.
But ask yourself now, in the light of rationality, if you really believe that the world was different that day? Is it possible that the universe really did conspire against you? It is likely that somehow, in this cosmic lottery, your name came up as the one to get punished?
If you don’t believe in God, then you shouldn’t believe that’s true, either. Doesn’t it make more sense, instead, that something was off about you? Rather than everyone around you being rude, suddenly, wouldn’t it make more sense that you were just more sensitive to them? Instead of the weather being unusually unpleasant, doesn’t it seem more likely that you just didn’t like it?
I’ll answer for you, since I can’t actually hear you talking to your computer screen: Yes, it is almost without a doubt that you were the problem.
It wasn’t the world that was different, but your perception of it. And guess what? You had no control over that. You couldn’t have predicted you would wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and that things that normally didn’t bother you would suddenly be cause for extreme irritation.
It happens to everyone sometimes.
Like the thoughts you think, the emotions you feel come from within you. They are not a direct reaction to stimuli, but a spontaneous event that can cause a reaction. Here’s a thought experiment:
Imagine an experiment in which a subject can be unconscious but have their eyes open. The brain is functioning, the neurons are firing, but there’s “nobody home.” The experimenter holds up a picture in front of the eyes of the subject, and it’s a picture of someone the subject has said they hate. It’s Hitler, or Simon Cowell, or, god-forbid, Caillou.
Everyone hates Caillou.
Do you think the subject will become angry? Will their blood boil because this picture is in front of their eyes?
Certainly not. Even if their brain registers some kind of unconscious reaction to the picture–a spike in activity in the area that controls emotions–the reaction is meaningless without a conscious agent to act on it. The “feeling” isn’t a feeling, because it’s not being felt. It’s reduced to nothing more than an automatic chemical response–because that’s all it is.
Much like indigestion. (Yes, we’re back to Aunt Henrietta.)
When we get indigestion, we can feel uncomfortable, and it might even cause us to make choices (like taking some antacid). But we don’t attribute meaning to it. We don’t treat the indigestion as important in an of itself. And we certainly don’t attach to it as if we were the authors of the indigestion.
You don’t choose to feel angry, you don’t choose to feel sad. The feeling happens to you.
What you do get to choose is what you do with that feeling.
If you’re a Vulcan (or a Stoic), you recognize it for the meaningless bit of mental indigestion that it is, and you let it go.
The Vulcan Buddha 