Questions & Answers 3
from the Seminar „Peace in daily life“ with Thay Phap Nhat
from the Seminar „Peace in daily life“ with Thay Phap Nhat
Q: Are there actually no emotions in the present moment? Is there no emotionality in what is happening in the present moment?
A: There is no seperation between the absolute level and the relative level of reality. The present moment includes the emotions that are arising in it. We can observe in the present moment that a strong emotion is coming up. We know that the emotion is there, and it will not vanish just because we know it.
Furthermore we can observe that because of this strong emotion we want to say something. In some cases we are able to calm down and we refrain from saying something. Also this is observable. In the present moment there are three things always present: Our body, our mind and the environment. When there is an emotion arising in us, this emotion belongs to the realm of the mind. While it is arising, we can at the same time observe our body. If for example there is anger coming up, we recognize that our face is becoming red, our heart is beating faster and our breath is getting shorter. As we are observing these things, our body will calm down again. The more we observe our emotions, the more experience we have in dealing with them, and the better we will understand them.
Once we know our emotion well enough, it will still come up, but it will not be as strong as before. After some more time we will recognize: „If I continue to talk with this person, my strong emotion will come up again.“ Thanks to this realization we will know when to withdraw from the conversation. In this way we can keep our inner freshness alive. In order to be successfull in this practice of looking deeply we need some training.
The more we observe our emotions, the more we can understand them. This is not only true for anger, but for all kinds of emotions. In the same way we can learn to understand the situations in our life, and thanks to this we have the opportunity to choose the direction for our life. Our mind is like a CD-Player. If our CD-Player is playing a music that we don't like, why don't we change the CD?
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