Sound Advice on Emotions

 This morning, I went to the Fed Ex Kinkos to scan a document for school. I happened to be carrying a copy of Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler's book Art of Happiness at Work. Just as I was about to turn in my copy card, the clerk there told me to keep the card and save it for a later time when it could be refilled with money as needed. As I was inserting my card into my already 'over-carded' wallet, the clerk must have seen the image of Dalai Lama on the cover of the book. She suddenly brightened up and asked me what book I was reading by His Holiness. After I told her a bit about it, the clerk mentioned that she is from Tibet, and was quite glad to see that the Dalai Lama was known in Canada and was even being read. She even seemed somewhat surprised to hear that the Dalai Lama's book was on the bestseller list for many weeks, particularly his Art of Happiness series.
    I think one of the most valuable lessons I am learning from this book is how to look at emotions in any given situation., such as work or in meetings. My usual mental map of emotions is that they are signs of something that is concrete, solid and 'real'. If I am feeling hurt, there must be some solid and tangible reality 'out there' that makes me feel this way. If I feel a pain in my finger, it must be caused by something solid and enduring, such as a piece of broken glass or a hammer. But if one looks deeply into the situation, are these external objects so solid and enduring? Glass may seem powerful, but exposure to broken glass requires many conditions, including the original breakage, contact on the surface of a finger, neurons to register pain sensations in the brain, etc. And this is only the beginning: there are also attitudes, perceptions, memories and interpretations that lead into the experience of a painful moment. I add to the situation such thoughts as "stupid me for not seeing the broken glass," or "now my finger is irreparably damaged". And there are attitudinal factors that also lead to how I frame pain in mind. So given all these things, can I really say that some single thing 'causes' suffering? When I examine the complexity of the single moment, I see that there is often no one thing to blame for it.
    The Dalai Lama urges us to consider "the fundamental cause of various problems", when he describes:

  the reality that everything is interconnected. If there are certain problems in the workplace,  or layoffs and one is having difficulty finding a job, there are always many factors at play. So, you experience dissatisfaction. You suffer. Maybe some worldwide economic conditions or even some environmental problems may be at the root of the problem. In those cases, it does no good to take things so personally and complain to the company, or perhaps direct your anger toward one individual boss. (p.31)

Here, the Dalai Lama points out two interesting ways of  looking at emotions. The first is to see that emotions often arise from very complex and intertwined factors. It isn't just one person who causes me a problem, but one's challenges are often the result of many interlocking forces, attitudes, and even personal choices that things arise as they do in the mind. In that case, is it useful to target one thing for arising situations? The caveat here is that even these factors are going to change from one moment to the next. There is no sense in rigidly sticking to some form of blame, either toward oneself or a single 'cause' of grief.

A second interesting approach is to look at the social and emotional value of emotions, rather than automatically linking emotions to fixed realities. For example, if I am upset or envious toward others, I might consider: what value does harboring and feeding this emotion have on my existence? Is it something worth 'feeding' or does it only create detriment to me? Considering emotions in this way, I am no longer feeling that an emotion corresponds to some concrete fact. Sometimes, emotions are deceiving. I might feel strongly about something, but that strong feeling might be based on distorted thoughts about the value or significance of an event.

In this way, rather than trying to appraise emotions based on their correspondence to reality, I might want to consider what role this emotion plays in my life. Is the emotion really signalling to me something that I could investigate in a constructive way, to see what's going on? Or is it only feeding its own misery or agitated state? Through seeing emotions as interdependent on multiple factors and possibilities, one is able to adapt a wider range of choices and perspectives on them.

H.H. The Dalai Lama & Cutler, Howard C. (2003), The Art of Happiness at Work.  New York: Riverhead Books