Unpleasant emotions - Sam Harris Daily Meditations 2022.10.09

Sam Harris

Do this practice in the midst of unpleasant emotions

Today´s meditation is dedicated to making meditation a useful tool for liberation (or freeing) from the state of being captured by unpleasant emotions. Or, simpler: from feeling bad.

In this meditation, Sam Harris focuses on one particular type of negative emotions: he talks unpleasant feelings about oneself that arise when one recalls some situation such as a personal failure, a difficult conversation etc.

Harris concludes the meditation with one central insight: if you just observe an emotion, you will notice that it decays pretty fast. So he sais:

The half-life of any negative mental state is remarkably short and just noticing that beyond any other insight you might have into the nature of consciousness, can be incredibly freeing.

Anger management - Tibetan style

Using unpleasant emotions to develop and strengthen meditative skills has an old tradition.

Rather than suppressing or ignoring them, the meditator is asked to vividly recall anger, hate, greed, jealousy etc, to experience these feelings to the maximum while staying aware of them. This way, they will automatically self-liberate.

In the book "Self-Arising Three-fold Embodiment of Enlightenment", an entire chapter is dedicated to this practice.

Here is an excerpt on what today we would call "anger management". This extract starts from the task of dealing with thoughts and concepts. But then the author uses anger (an emotion) as an example of thoughts and concepts. They didn´t always make razor-sharp distinctions between categories as we have them.

https://youtu.be/HlsnG-26NLA see text here

It is a meditation on impermanence (anicca)

What kind of meditation is this? One could also see it as a meditation on impermanence: nothing stays. Anger, thoughts, a life...

As such, the meditation is the first of the three "liberating ways of looking" identified by Rob Burbea in "Seeing that Frees".

• Anicca (impermanence)

• Dukkha (unsatisfactoriness of everything)

• Anatta (seeing everything as not-self)

Dealing with negative emotions - Tibetan style and modern

In order to demonstrate how the same topic is dealt with in Tibetan Bon meditation and in modern secular version of Sam Harris, I quote two texts. Sam Harris´s text is the source for the audio version above.

Dealing with negative emotions - Tibet

Third with respect to taking up the mass of conceptual thought as the path, it is said that the mindstream of any individual, who takes up the movement of conceptual thought in even a single day can have 21,000 thoughts. When taking them as the path, there is no more than one way. For that reason, at the moment a thought arises be mindful of it. Whether it arises as a subtle, coarse or elaborated, or is good or bad or any kind, do not deliberately let go of the thought. Even using effort do not reify the thought,do not let yourself get caught up in it. Those of highest capacity via the view gain mastery over the thought, like snowflakes falling into the ocean. Those of middling capacity via the meditation capture the thought as soon as it arises like a morning frost being touched by the sun. Those of lesser capacity, take up the meditation, practice holding thoughts mindfully without chasing after them, like someone who's angry and about to hit someone, but then does not chase after this ordinary afflictive emotion. Thus at the time when anger arises, look straight into it and see that it does not exist in the mind as an independently existing object. Directly look at it and recognize its essence. By cutting out its source and cutting to the root, you become like a thief leaving from an empty house, not knowing the whereabouts of the treasure. By searching, nothing is to be found. By holding the view, nothing is seen The essence of anger is immediately liberated from the ground and its roots. Being purified, it immediately fades away leaving no trace. Initially nothing comes from anywhere. And the present moment, nothing substantial stays nothing goes anywhere. Making the determination that in this state, everything becomes calm in and by itself and fades away in and by itself. (Gyaltsen, S. T., Gurung, G. S., & Brown, D. P. (2022, April 29))

Dealing with negative emotions - Sam Harris

Once again, we were experimenting with negative emotion. Snd what I'm hoping you to discover when we do this sort of thing is that there's a place to stand prior to it that is not implicated in it. You can simply let it arise and subside and this is no less true for emotion that comes on you unbidden in direct reaction to something that's happened in your life. You can find this place of simply witnessing what's appearing and it's incredibly useful to do this. So as you go about your day and you find yourself entangled with strong reactions or emotions, see if you can find even a moment before you are swept away become interested in the pattern of energy. And to be clear, this is not a way of distancing yourself from the emotion. In fact, it is a willingness to feel it, even more intensely to fully experience. It is that willingness to give it all of your attention that cuts through it. Because your thoughts in that moment are part of an effort to no longer feel. What in fact is arising, whether it's anger or sadness, or fear, simply be willing to burn up with whatever emotion is appearing. If you do that, you'll see that the half life of any emotion is very, very short. We're talking moments, not minutes. Certainly not hours.

Resources

Burbea, R. (2015). Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising (English Edition). Hermes Amāra. https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00SI7PQD8

This book is praised by Michael Taft, one of the best contemporary teachers, in is "Best meditation books of 2020"

https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-2020.html

Gebel, Till. (2022j, August 29). Sam Harris’ Daily Meditations: Self arising / Self liberation. Till Gebel. https://www.till-gebel.com/post/self-arising-self-liberation

Gyaltsen, S. T., Gurung, G. S., & Brown, D. P. (2022, April 29). Self-Arising Three-fold Embodiment of Enlightenment: [of Bon Dzogchen Meditation] (English Edition) (2nd ed.). Mustang Bon Foundation. https://www.amazon.com/Self-Arising-Three-fold-Embodiment-Enlightenment-Meditation/dp/195695001X

Quote on anger management

Third with respect to taking up the mass of conceptual thought as the path, it is said that the mindstream of any individual, who takes up the movement of conceptual thought in even a single day can have 21,000 thoughts. When taking them as the path, there is no more than one way. For that reason, at the moment a thought arises be mindful of it. Whether it arises as a subtle, coarse or elaborated, or is good or bad or any kind, do not deliberately let go of the thought. Even using effort do not reify the thought,do not let yourself get caught up in it. Those of highest capacity via the view gain mastery over the thought, like snowflakes falling into the ocean. Those of middling capacity via the meditation capture the thought as soon as it arises like a morning frost being touched by the sun. Those of lesser capacity, take up the meditation, practice holding thoughts mindfully without chasing after them, like someone who's angry and about to hit someone, but then does not chase after this ordinary afflictive emotion. Thus at the time when anger arises, look straight into it and see that it does not exist in the mind as an independently existing object. Directly look at it and recognize its essence. By cutting out its source and cutting to the root, you become like a thief leaving from an empty house, not knowing the whereabouts of the treasure. By searching, nothing is to be found. By holding the view, nothing is seen The essence of anger is immediately liberated from the ground and its roots. Being purified, it immediately fades away leaving no trace. Initially nothing comes from anywhere. And the present moment, nothing substantial stays nothing goes anywhere. Making the determination that in this state, everything becomes calm in and by itself and fades away in and by itself. (Gyaltsen, S. T., Gurung, G. S., & Brown, D. P. (2022, April 29))