The second arrow
Separate the pain that happens to you from the extra suffering you add on top.
This lesson comes from the Buddhist tradition. You don't need to share the faith to find it useful; take what helps and leave the rest.
In an early Buddhist teaching, the Buddha compares two people who are hurt by something painful. One has trained their mind, and one hasn't. Both feel the pain, he says. The difference is what happens next.
The untrained person grieves, laments, and turns the pain over and over. They are hurt twice.
“Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows.”
The first arrow is the hard thing itself: the loss, the rejection, the anxiety, the ache. You often don't get to choose it.
The second arrow is what we add on top. It tends to arrive so quickly that it feels like part of the first. Learning to tell them apart is most of the skill, so let's practise.
Spot the arrows
You applied for a job you really wanted, and this morning a short rejection email arrived. Here are some things that might follow. Sort each one.
- A sinking feeling in your stomach
- "I'll never get a decent job."
- Disappointment that this job won't happen
- "I'm an idiot for getting my hopes up."
- Replaying the interview all evening, hunting for what you did wrong
- Tears, later that evening
- "I shouldn't be this upset about one email."
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The shapes second arrows take
Once you start looking, second arrows tend to come in a few familiar shapes:
- Blame: "Why am I like this?" "It's my own fault."
- Forecasts: "This always happens." "It'll never get better."
- Fighting the feeling: "I shouldn't feel this." "I need this to stop, now."
- Feelings about feelings: anxiety about being anxious, shame about being sad. Researchers who study panic call one version of this "fear of fear".
Not every pain that lasts is a second arrow
Your dog died last week, and you still cry every day. Is the crying a second arrow?
Watch out for the third arrow
Once you start noticing second arrows, there's a trap waiting. You catch one, and think: "There I go again. I can't even do this right." That's another arrow, aimed at the noticing.
The practice is gentler than that. Notice the second arrow, perhaps name it ("ah, a second arrow"), and set it down. Then turn back to the first arrow, the thing that actually hurts, and look after it.
You realise you've been calling yourself pathetic all morning for feeling anxious. Then you think: "Great, I'm even failing at not judging myself." What's going on?
What it can look like in Maya
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Try it with something of your own
Think of something that hurt or worried you in the last few days. Something everyday is best while you're learning.
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Echoes in other traditions
- ACT
"Clean" pain is what life brings; "dirty" pain is what struggling against it adds.
- Stoicism
Epictetus taught that we are disturbed not by things, but by our judgements about them.
Finish the lesson
Answer the question above to complete the lesson.