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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