Unexpected Freedom

Getting to Know our Emotional HouseholdJust as a sweet-smelling and beautiful lotuscan grow from a pile of discarded waste,the radiance of a true disciple of the Buddhaoutshines dark shadows cast by ignorance.Dhammapada, verses 58 – 9Somebody has asked the question, ‘What is emotion?’ I can’tsay I know how to answer that question directly. I’m not evensure it would be very useful to try and say what emotion is.It’s like asking, ‘What is gravity?’ If we were to look in aphysics textbook, we would find detailed mathematicaldescriptions of how gravity works, but they still don’t explainwhat the force of gravity actually is. It can be described interms of its effects, and accurate predictions can be madeabout how it affects matter. Similarly, it might not be difficultto come up with psychological or neurophysiologicaldescriptions of emotional activity, but I suggest that theyprobably wouldn’t be all that helpful.However, I’m pleased the question has been asked, sinceI’m sure most of us have found out that we can’t really applyourselves to the practice of awareness without encounteringstrong emotions. We quite rightly feel a need to understandthis dimension of ourselves.A useful way to approach the understanding of emotionsis by considering not what they are but rather how we can45