Pain, illness, fear, and hunger make clear thinking difficult. They undermine efforts to behave well toward others. These effects have become obvious to me in this hospital bed, where I’ve hung out for seven days without eating, feeling pain ranging from mild cramping to agonizing pressure, and suffering with ongoing nausea that at one point morphed into twelve hours of retching.
To my chagrin, I’ve seen myself act more selfishly and distractedly than usual. When visitors arrive I sometimes talk about my dilemma non-stop, whereas other times I stare blankly without truly hearing what they say about their own trials. I try to remain focused on the needs of others, but it’s hard.
As never before, I understand how maturity and effectiveness can be undermined by adverse states of body-mind. But I’m trying to cut myself some slack and simply review the effects of starvation and pain on my actions and words. I want to learn from this experience but not suffer excessively because of it.
Life inevitably veers in unwanted directions. How much misery we feel depends to a large extent on how we respond to fate. This is true when life disappoints us, and also when we disappoint ourselves.
People sometimes slight us, leading to mild irritation. But as we mentally replay the offense later, we may build up resentment or even rage. Of course, we could instead view the occasion from a broader perspective and forgive the insult. Similarly, a personal gaffe can be made worse by negative obsession, or better by viewing it as a learning experience.
Before we begin to mature as adults, we may not be aware that such choices exist. Resentful obsession seems like the natural and inevitable response to an insult. Humiliated rumination seems like the deserved consequence of social mistakes.
Fortunately, as we gain skills we learn to transform resentment into forgiveness. We abandon narrow focus on a single slip-up for a broader and more compassionate perspective on our personality.
When we are faced with really serious illness or other trying circumstances, our resources can get overwhelmed. Our healthier skills are most likely to fail us when we are hurting, hungry, frightened, or lonely. Not only are we more likely to overreact to minor injustice, and to act childishly, we are more likely to punish ourselves afterward.
My system has seldom felt so physically stressed as it does now. As already mentioned (in this essay and the last), the duress has increased my tendency to behave with embarrassing immaturity and selfishness. Before I started paying attention to this cause and effect relationship, I had begun to berate myself for getting so far off track.
Yesterday during a conversation about these issues with a dear Buddhist friend, we talked about how the Buddha distinguished between what he termed the first and second darts.
Fate throws the first dart into our sphere. For instance, an unexpected major illness arises. It could be anything. For the sake of argument, let’s imagine sudden pain arises in the abdomen and doctors discover a nest of abnormal blood vessels near the pancreas, along with a bleeding aneurysm. Prolonged hospitalization becomes unavoidable, along with its discomforts and inconveniences.
We toss the second dart ourselves. Perhaps it penetrates consciousness in the form of worry: does a cancer lurk under that tangle of vasculature? Is death on the march? The second dart drives resentment and frustration: plagued by worry and feeling persecuted, we complain and act out. The second dart accentuates our misery. If we simply experienced unavoidable hardship without layering on toxic interpretations and retaliations, we suffer less.
During yesterday’s conversation with my friend, we came up with the idea of a third dart. We use this missile to attack our unskillful response to fate. Just as the second dart arises in reaction to the first, in that we worsen a bad situation by distorted thinking, the third dart flies as we reject our own negativity. We could choose to be compassionate toward the second dart: “Oh jeez, I yelled at that phlebotomist after he jabbed me a third time trying to suck blood out of my arm. How predictably human I am! When he comes back I’ll apologize.” Quite often, however, we instead launch the third dart and berate ourselves for shortcomings: “How ugly of me to sound so hostile! Didn’t I learn anything from all those years of meditation and acceptance practice?”
Notice we won’t be susceptible to such self-reproach if we don’t value skillful behavior. The red-faced tailgater leaning on his horn as traffic slows for a yellow light is unlikely to suffer from the third dart, though he is hitting himself hard with the second one. He probably won’t be blaming himself for his intolerance. In this sense, being self-critical shows more maturity than being self-righteous. Even so, the third dart does little to actually improve our responses. It simply makes us pay a higher price after we misstep.
The third dart is a danger to those of us who hope to tread a spiritual path, because we replace helpful noble intentions with damaging self-criticism. We feel painfully aware of our inadequacy compared to the highest exemplars, like the Buddha or Christ. To intend skillful behavior is edifying, but to punish ourselves for human failings is destructive. We gain nothing from the third dart.
I’ve been pulling a lot of third darts out of my butt lately. A prolonged hospitalization for a confusing, painful illness is a great way to lose one’s grip and begin acting unskillfully. Instead of giving in to my inclination to beat myself up afterwards, I’m working to recover my balance as quickly as possible: correct my behavior, apologize to whoever I hurt, and forgive myself. I yank out the third dart and keep aiming for my better path.
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