The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.
The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.
Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Wednesday, 23 October 2024

Two Arrows

Most of the world’s great spiritual teachers have used metaphors, parables, and allegories to convey their teachings. The use of such devices usually allows sometimes complex concepts to be more easily understood by the listener or reader.

One of the Buddha’s allegories helps to explain how we can often get into self-perpetuating and repeating cycles of pain, harm, and suffering. The Buddha has often been known as the Great Physician because his primary teaching was to teach the mechanisms of suffering: how suffering arises, and how we might heal ourselves of suffering. Indeed, his first Noble Truth tells us that ‘suffering exists.’

Before continuing it is worth taking a closer read of the word that has been translated as suffering in the English language.

Suffering, in the language of the Buddha, does not simply mean the same as pain. It can be better translated as a mixture of English words such as: discontent, dis-ease, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, or restlessness.

The Buddha distinguishes between pain and suffering. One of the best known of his allegories to illustrate the difference is that of the Two Arrows.

Imagine that you have been struck by an arrow. It is painful. The pain may be physical, such as a wound to your leg or arm. It may be emotional, perhaps a loss of someone close to you. It may be psychological, for example, becoming depressed or anxious. In each case the pain of the arrow is real and something we feel.

The key insight of the Buddha was that, having been shot by the first arrow of pain, we then react and shoot a second arrow. This arrow may be directed at someone else, whom we blame for shooting the first arrow. In many cases, too, we shoot this arrow at ourselves. We blame ourselves for being foolish, stupid, or simply careless.

This second arrow is the arrow of suffering.

By taking this second arrow out of our quiver and shooting it we trap ourselves in a snare of which there seems no way out. Shooting this arrow we believe to be capable of relieving us of our pain.

Yet, most often, instead of relief from pain, shooting this second arrow only results in further pain, to ourselves or others. Sadly, all too often when we shoot the second arrow at someone else, the other person (unless they have learnt the lesson of the two arrows) is likely to fire yet another arrow back. The arrows then begin to fly back and forth, inflicting further, and greater pain, with each shot.

The allegory of the two arrows does not try to teach us how to not shoot the first arrow. Nor is it attempting to educate us on how to dodge the first arrow.

The first arrow is inevitable. Being human places us in situations which are painful or hurtful.

The second arrow, however, is not inevitable. This is the teaching the Buddha is trying to make; How to not shoot that second arrow.

Because the first arrow is unavoidable, then we can learn to accept the pain, be open to what it is telling us. Most pain - whether physical, emotional, or psychological – has a message for us.

By shooting the second arrow we do not allow ourselves to hear the message.

Although the Buddha when speaking this allegory was talking about our individual lives, we can clearly identify the shooting of the second arrow also in our collective lives.

The lesson in our collective, social, and global lives is no different.

We must learn to not shoot the second arrow.

Leave that second arrow in the quiver.


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