The Wisdom Within Our Emotions

There's a question that seems to arise in almost every conversation I have about meditation and spiritual practice—whether with the mentees I work with, dharma friends, or in my own quiet moments of reflection. It's a question that takes many forms but always circles back to the same fundamental struggle: how do we work with the parts of ourselves we'd rather not face?

The emotions that feel too intense, the thoughts that seem too persistent, the reactive patterns that leave us feeling stuck or ashamed. This isn't just a meditation question—it's perhaps the most human question there is. Yet I've found that approaching it through the lens of Buddhist practice offers us a framework that can be both practically helpful and deeply transformative.

What I'd like to explore here is an invitation to reconsider our relationship with difficulty itself, and to examine whether our instinct to "get rid of" what we don't like might actually be keeping us from the very freedom we're seeking.

Because this covers such a large part of our human experience, I thought it might be useful to stay in the realm of meditation with this topic, since at least we have some kind of structure to apply it to. But of course, everything I'm going to share applies to our life in general. If you'd like to keep it to the meditation realm, that's also fine.

The Buddhist Perspective on Afflictive Emotions

Let me start with a little background on Buddha Dharma and some perspectives I've heard from my teachers and come across in my studies. The reason I'm saying this first is because the Buddha Dharma is not singular in its way of working with afflictive emotions or difficult emotions.

We can see in some of the foundational teachings of Buddhism that these emotions are described as something to discard, something to either remedy heavily or get rid of entirely. These afflictive emotions—namely ignorance, craving, aversion, jealousy, and pride (and of course there are many subsidiaries of those, but those are the five main ones)—are described as something to be gotten rid of, something to be cleansed, to be purified, to be seen and remedied.

For those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, the vehicles of Buddhism—we could say the foundational vehicle, the greater vehicle, and the vajra vehicle (the indestructible vehicle)—they all work together actually. So when we see a statement in the foundational teachings that we need to remedy these heavily, that we need at all costs to not fall victim to these five afflictive emotions or any of our emotions for that matter, in the Mahayana and Vajrayana, it can change. In the greater vehicle and the vajra vehicle, it can expand into a wider view of what that means. But that doesn't deny that the foundational teachings and that approach are useful.

My Personal Practice Approach

Something practical here: For me, I'm trying to apply Mahayana modalities, sometimes Vajrayana, but that's quite difficult. Mahayana modalities really center around noticing others, centering compassion, centering what we call the prajnaparamita—the wisdom that goes beyond, the wisdom of non-duality in Buddhism. We center that combined with compassion.

So we de-center this sense of "Oh, this is poor me experiencing this emotion." Instead, we recognize all beings are in pain and struggling with their varieties of these afflictive emotions and other kinds as well. This takes the center out of the I, the me, the "mine" environment. It de-centers the idea that we're some kind of lone individual experiencing this individual pain, and it universalizes it to a certain degree.

That leaves room to recognize that the emotion, the essence of the emotion, might be quite different than how we're viewing it. So we start to open up our view, and that starts to play with Buddhist non-duality or prajnaparamita, this wisdom gone beyond, or at least the practices that lead to that.

That's something I work with when I can. But when I'm overwhelmed, that's really difficult to do, and I need to find some kind of remedy, whether it's grounding the body and mind through shamatha or meditative awareness practice, focusing on kind conduct, or focusing on, "Okay, I'm really experiencing a lot of anger right now. I need to watch my mind and be careful with what I do with my body and speech so I don't harm others." All those kinds of practices are part of the foundational vehicle as well.

The Thread That Connects All Buddhist Vehicles

Either way, the thing that threads through all three vehicles of Buddhism is watching the mind, becoming aware, strengthening awareness in meditation, and being willing to look at the mind. Because if we're not willing to look at the mind and be honest with ourselves, we're going to constantly resist that which we don't like. So even in the foundational vehicle, even though we're providing remedies and fixes for specific thoughts and emotions, we still need to understand what they are. We still need to get to know the mind.

Primarily, I see meditation and Buddhism as a way to get to know the mind, not a way to get rid of things. Even if, as I said, we are applying a remedy, we still need to get to know that afflictive emotion quite well. Of course, meditative awareness is our gateway into that because we start to see a little bit more objectively. We start to create some space in meditation between ourselves and what we're experiencing—our thoughts, our emotions, our beliefs, our ideas, all of that.

This is extraordinarily important, and a lot of well-known Buddhist teachers in the West start there. They start with: just sit and watch your breath, just sit and be present, just sit and bring the attention back to the moment again and again and again. That's because the mind that veers off of the moment into reflecting on the past, future, etc.—the mind that does that often is very stuck to its emotions and thoughts. So it's much easier to get stuck in our subjective experience if we're not able to create some space and see the experience in the moment.

In meditation, we start to develop an ability to watch the thinking mind, to watch emotions arise and fall, and this creates a gap between reactivity and response, where we want to respond with more compassion, with more awareness of which emotions and actions are going to be destructive and which are going to be constructive.

A Note on Emotions in Buddhism

Another quick side note here: Some people believe Buddhism says to get rid of all emotions. I personally haven't seen that. I've seen more of the teaching to get to know your emotions and to get to know their nature specifically, because that's what eventually liberates us—getting to know their nature.

Also, there are positive emotions that we encourage in Buddhism, emotions connected to loving kindness, compassion, and so forth. So I haven't seen a teaching saying to get rid of your emotions entirely (at least in the beginning). But as I said, we need to create enough skill in our meditation, enough awareness that we are able to watch our emotions as they arise and fall, and we're also able to create a little bit of space so that we can make decisions aligned with compassion and love in our life toward ourselves and others.

The Mahayana Approach: Bodhicitta and Opening Up

That's all part of foundational Buddhism and, of course, starts to veer into the greater vehicle or the Mahayana. But Mahayana is interesting because Mahayana really centers this non-dual wisdom or prajnaparamita combined with an attitude we call bodhicitta—the mind of awakening, the mind that really aspires to wake up for the benefit of all beings. A mind that wants to see oneself and others see the truth, the truth that liberates from suffering.

That attitude, as one reflects on it and meditates on it more and more, sort of starts to take over one's life and, of course, also drives the purpose of meditation. Then, as it's designed to do, we naturally begin to see more and more of our mind. We're able to open up to that seeing because we genuinely want to—and this wanting itself starts to work against that resistant attitude of "Just give me the fix, give me the pill, I want off the ride."

This circles back to those conversations I mentioned having with people, and honestly, with myself too. You know, those internal dialogues we have about our own emotions and thoughts where part of us is essentially saying, "Give me the pill, I want out." That whole mentality.

In my sense of the Buddhist path, especially Mahayana and Vajrayana, it really is asking us, it's challenging us to open up some curiosity, some questions towards experiences in our life—physical, mental, emotional—that we don't like. As I already said, just meditating itself provides a lot of room for that because we start to see our mind. We start to see, "Wow, there's all this stuff I've been ignoring, or pushing away, or being distracted from. What do I do with this?"

Part of the process is just seeing it. In and of itself, that is incredibly healthy. But of course, we have to know that it's okay to see it, it's okay that we're not perfect, it's okay that we have thoughts and emotions that we don't like.

The Vajrayana Perspective: Emotions as Wisdom

I think the Vajrayana really thrives in this. Again, all vehicles have things to say about this, but the Vajrayana really starts to challenge the idea that we need to get rid of our emotions. Actually, from a Vajrayana perspective, the emphasis goes more towards knowing the essence, the nature, the non-dual essence of the emotions. That's really the primary thing. Of course, we see that in the Mahayana through the prajnaparamita teachings, Heart Sutra, and so forth, but it really culminates in the Vajrayana.

Then it leads to this perspective that not only do we not want to reject our emotions, the emotions themselves, when we're able to see their essence, have wisdom—they have innate wisdom within them. Now, this can get confusing because one might think, "Oh, well now it's okay to just do whatever I want and act out all my emotions, anger, etc." And the teaching says be careful—that's not what it's intending. That will lead to more suffering.

So it's really a kind of fine line what the Vajrayana is describing here because we're opening up to our emotions, we're not rejecting them, but we're also not acting them out. We're not taking them so seriously. We start to see their illusory quality in meditation. We start to see their nature is not fixed. And then, of course, we can start to see their essence.

There are many means of practice here. I'm not talking too much about the practice, but Vajrayana has all kinds of ways through deity yoga, through working with the subtle body, through working with nature of mind practices. There are all these wonderful ways to see that emotions are wisdom, essentially. And once that's the case—which in itself is quite a developed experience (I don't personally have that experience, but I'd like to work towards that)—once one has that, one's pretty free, meaning one doesn't have to abandon their emotions or be under the foot of one's emotions either.

Breaking Free from Emotional Reactivity

Because if you really look at it, most of us, myself included, are just led around by our emotions. I mean, we have an emotion, we have an idea, a belief, a thought, and boom—we're stuck there, we're personalizing it. And there's nothing wrong with you or me for that; it's just a habit pattern we're trying to change.

So we could even say there's a mini liberation in not following after one's emotions but also not rejecting them. And then, of course, the practitioner develops that over time until the wisdom nature comes out, which you all can study through a Vajrayana master and understand those teachings a little bit more. They're very precious teachings we find in the Vajrayana tradition.

The Heart Sutra's Teaching on Form and Emptiness

But even when we read the Heart Sutra, when we read the Diamond Cutter Sutra, we can see flavors of this. We can see flavors of what it's pointing to. The Heart Sutra is not pointing to a nothingness. It's pointing to when we find inner space in our own minds, in our emotions, in our perceptions, and so forth, but yet nothing ceases.

One famous quote from the Heart Sutra is, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form." More or less, this is a big teaching, but the "form is emptiness" part is the space. We have to find some room to move. If we have no room to move, we're just completely inundated by our emotions, beliefs, identities, and thoughts. So "form is emptiness"—when we practice that through meditation, we start to cut through that.

But then there's "emptiness is form," which is saying, it's not just space. There's space within everything, including our emotions, yet they still arise. They continue to arise as illusions.

So we have these two: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." And then the quote continues, but I just wanted to briefly mention the first two parts, which are enough to start reflecting on what we experience—our emotions, and so forth—they're not solid, they're not fixed. We can play with them, we can learn to dance with them, and then at the same time, they can continuously appear as the wisdom nature itself.

This is one of the more precious teachings in Buddhism that, of course, we study, but we come to really experience it through meditation over time. I just mentioned that because for me, that's not necessarily something I feel at fault for not seeing. It's just something I aspire to. It's an intention I have to see that more and more and to pursue that kind of freedom.

Clarifying What Freedom We're Seeking

If we don't know what kind of freedom we're pursuing, we're going to get stuck. So if we're pursuing a freedom where we wish to cut off our emotions and become blank and thoughtless, we're setting ourselves up for struggle. Not only is this approach difficult in itself, but the Buddha also described this as not liberation—that's not awakening. That's some other kind of meditative state entirely.

This is why I think when we study the dharma, we get a little bit more clear on what we're seeking, and then, of course, we seek that. We put energy into knowing that, we put energy into seeing it directly in our meditation, and this is really important. But even just keeping the thought in mind when an emotion arises: "How can I allow this experience to be?" we can start to loosen the clinging.

Now, in the beginning, we can't just do that through a thought process, but as we meditate, we learn to do that. There are lots of methods for that.

Practical Methods: The Handshake Practice

One of my favorite methods for initially getting this going is the handshake practice from my teacher, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, because we learn to do it less cognitively, meaning we don't have to use our thinking, logical mind for that, even though that's also useful. Instead, we go to the feeling. We go to the feeling world. We become aware of the body and feeling world. We open to the feeling with compassion, with mindfulness and awareness.

Then over time, we start to see, "Oh, the emotion or feeling can exist, it can play out, and I don't have to follow it, and I can feel it." Not only does it help us to feel more free within our emotions, but also we start to develop more compassion for ourselves and others.

Of course, there are also lots of practices through traditional shamatha and vipashyana, meditative awareness and insight meditation in Buddhism. In all three vehicles that I mentioned, we have different practices of shamatha and vipashyana, and these are also really important. I like to combine handshake practice with other forms of vipashyana.

The Sacred Work of Opening

The path I'm describing isn't easy, and I want to be honest about that. Opening to our experience rather than shutting it down can feel counterintuitive, even frightening at first. But what I've found—both in my own practice and in witnessing others—is that this opening creates a kind of spaciousness that allows for genuine transformation.

We begin to see that the emotions and thoughts we've been pushing away aren't actually the solid, permanent things we imagined them to be. They're more like weather patterns in the sky of awareness—arising, shifting, dissolving. And in that recognition, we find a freedom that doesn't depend on having the "right" emotions or the "perfect" state of mind.

Whether you're just beginning to question the impulse to shut down difficult experiences, or you're deepening an existing practice of opening and inquiry, I encourage you to be patient with yourself. This is sacred work, and it unfolds in its own time. The invitation is simply to stay curious, to keep asking questions, and to trust that the willingness to look—really look—at what is present is itself a form of compassion.

In the end, what we're cultivating isn't the absence of difficulty, but a way of being with whatever arises that honors both our humanity and our deepest aspiration for freedom.