Mind's content and emotions

simpo_ SG

Hi All,

This is just a sharing of my understanding only. Nothing definitive.

Emotion that we know of results from being absorbed/focus on the content of the mind. The content of the mind are the story, ideas and thinking. Depending on the content, we either reacte aversely or become attracted to it.

Anger (the emotion) is the result of disliking the content. This dislike is the desire of not wanting the content to happen the way it is.

Sadness (the emotion) is the result of feeling not being able to change the content. If the content is about a situation and the idea that one is unable to change it, the resultant emotion is sadness. Desire that are not met and content implies an unchangeable situation results in sadness.

Happiness (the emotion) is the result of having achieved the result shown in the content. Happiness is the temporary attainment of the desired as shown in the content

In all situations described above, desire are involved. Content >> Desire >> emotion.

According to the flow, the content is the first cause of the resultant emotion. Desire is formless, but can be felt when the emotion manifest.

Emotion involves physical sensation also. Specific Body parts tense or relax giving rise to bodily sensations that form part of the overall experience of the emotion.

If according to the cause-effect flow as i understand it, if contents are not becoming caught-up into, in theory the desire will not arise. And the subsequent emotion should not arise too. In another word, if awareness can learn not being caught-up by the contents of mind, emotion as we know it should not arise.

The resultant feeling of not being caught up in the mind's content is bliss. Whether bliss is another type of emotion or not is not important, though.

Note... if the Bliss becomes a content subject and is attached (desired) to, the cycle of emotion will restart again... as dictated by the flow cycle.

Dhjdgdhjd SG

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realization SG

From time to time, I've pondered how emotions arise.

Previously, I've come across the viewpoint that emotions arise regardless and so long as one doesn't follow after them with thoughts of resistance (mainly referring to negative emotions here), they will subside on their own. Resistance to negative emotion courses that very emotion to perpetuate.

What you're saying is more in line with what I'd always understood to be true - and which is also based on modern psychology - that thought must necessarily precede emotion. And you have also brought in the important understanding that it is the thought of desire/aversion that necessarily decides which type of emotion arises. (Did I understand what you're saying?)

Thanks for this sharing. It's illuminating...

An Eternal Now SG

Simpo is definitely right… Emotions only arise when there is involvement in content, and contents are always imagined and not true. Especially, the contents of emotions always involvon of a personal self with vested interest at stake (fear – insecure about self-interest, desire – craving for self-interest, anger – aversion for self-interest, etc). Imagine you don’t exist – what kind of problems can there be? That is why no-self realization can effectively cut off and attenuate such emotions.

Fully awakened beings realize that the self and objects in the contents imagination are completely false and baseless… They no longer dwell in contents and constantly abides in the nondual, nonconceptual, direct, immediate mode of perception. All their actions arise nonconceptually and spontaneously as well with no emotional involvement.

An Eternal Now SG

In short, it is because emotions have an utterly illusory basis (imagined contents) that they can be permanently cut off and attenuated through awakening.

If not, if emotions had a physical or biological cause, then afflictions cannot be liberated.

Pegembara SG

Emotions can be biological too. For example fear can also be induced by mind altering drugs. Even the body's fight or flight response can be induced by injecting adrenaline into a person.

They arise from prior causes/conditions and will cease. They are not controllable. Seeing them as impermanent and not self helps free one from their grip.

An Eternal Now SG

They are not controllable (no agency) but they can be permanently atenuated by removing its root cause via wisdom. The root cause is ignorance, and ignorance is completely illusory.

This is why an arahat is incapable of fear, anger, craving, agitation and so on. Even if a monster pounces on him, the arahat is incapable of fear. Even if an arahat falls from a thirty floor building, he is incapable of fear (there is a dhammapada verse about an arahat rushing down from a very high pole fearlessly and buddha comments that an arahat withh defilements removed is incapable of fear)

Biological conditions are secondary conditions and not the primary cause. The primary cause is ignorance and the notion of ‘I’. Drugs (e.g. Anti depressants) deal with secondary conditions but can never eliminate the root cause of afflictions.

realization SG

They are not controllable (no agency) but they can be permanently atenuated by removing its root cause via wisdom. The root cause is ignorance, and ignorance is completely illusory.

Even biologically induced emotions may be attenuated?

The situations you mentioned above are what would conventionally induce fear (monster pouncing on an arhat, or arhat falling from a 30-storey building). But, I was just about to bring up situations like Post Natal Depression which is caused by hormonal imbalance and not necessarily caused by faulty thinking. And like what Pegembara said, what if someone were to inject adrenaline into an arhat? What then?

An Eternal Now SG

Drugs and biological conditions cannot directly cause afflictive emotions because afflictive emotions require the delusory notion and sense of a self. If you are in a nondual, nonconceptual, direct, immediate mode of perception (NDNCDIMOP) of the sensate world as it is, such imaginary contents are completely absent, and will not arise, unless there are remnants of self-delusion that can give rise to imaginary contents and emotions (in which case one no longer experiences the NDNCDIMOP). The only discernable difference in experience is the way bodily sensations are felt. Usually a sickly man is more angry, simply because bodily sensations are more unpleasant than usual. However in NDNCDIMOP (which becomes the effortless, even perpetual mode of experience after anatta realization), there is only unpleasant bodily feeling but no emotions at all.

The arhat will only experience difference in physical sensations. He may experience differences in the way thoughts formulate (maybe more alert, etc), but it will be impossible to give rise to afflictive emotions, fear, craving, etc.

When afflictions are removed, it is impossible to have depression.

Because removing affliction (removing root cause) is not as easy as taking pills (controlling secondary conditions), there is no other way around other psychiatric and psychotherapeutic methods to treat depression.

You cannot offer Buddhism as a solution to someone’s depression (long-term yes, short-term no) because it can take years of practice before one achieves liberation.

allkosong SG