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From Poison to Medicine - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 10, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

From Poison to Medicine

Welcome, everyone. Can I have the volume just a little bit higher? I don't want to have to be yelling. How does that sound? Does that sound okay? Welcome. It is nice to see you all.

I'm sitting here with a little bit of a heavy heart about what is happening in the world, just to acknowledge that. Emotions arise; it is part of being human. This practice offers a way to ask: how can we find freedom in the midst of emotions? I know there was a time in my life when I thought freedom meant I wouldn't have any emotions. They were too messy and just got in the way. That played no small part in my decision to become a research scientist early in life, because I thought scientists clearly didn't have emotions. That turns out to be ridiculous, but that is what I figured.

Freedom With Emotions

How can we find freedom with emotions? We don't get to choose when emotions arise, when they leave, their intensity, or their duration. As much as we would like to control them, only have certain ones, and only feel them in convenient settings, we don't get to choose any of that.

What would it mean to not be pushed around by our emotional life? To not be compelled to run away to avoid feeling things, or to always be chasing after certain emotions? What would it be like to have freedom, ease, and steadiness with the emotions that life brings us?

One aspect of freedom is recognizing that emotions are part of the richness, depth, and beauty of life. Part of freedom is allowing a whole range of emotions—not just the ones we like or that are socially sanctioned. Let's be honest, we have the capacity for all of them, and we don't want to disown parts of ourselves, try to pretend they don't exist, or excise them. What we can feel emotionally is enormous if you take in all the different flavors and intensities: from mild irritation to murderous rage, from mild fondness to deep unconditional love, from basic contentment to intense joy. Freedom with emotions means being able to have this whole range. This variety provides a vitality and richness to life, keeping us from just living on the surface.

Being Present and Unknotting

Another aspect of freedom is actually being able to be with our emotions without feeling overwhelmed or out of control. It means not tipping over into a state where we lose our faculties, and not feeling like we have to get rid of them. We allow them to be there and remain present so we can learn the lessons they have to teach us. One way to consider emotions is as messengers communicating from ourselves to ourselves.

Part of this freedom is also learning to unknot emotions when they get tangled and messy. Sometimes we feel tight and constricted, either because we are trying to avoid something, wanting more of something, or just feeling a wave of emotion without even knowing what it is. We want to be able to untangle things when we find ourselves lashing out or closing down.

Freedom also means having confidence that whatever emotion arises, we can be with it. It means knowing it is not going to send us into a spiral that we can't work with. Sometimes we have a fear of emotions. For example, maybe we avoid consoling somebody who received a terrible diagnosis or lost a loved one because we are afraid of the sadness that might arise. Or maybe we avoid difficult conversations because we are afraid of our own anger or their anger. Freedom is having the confidence that we can stay in the experience as best we can—not cold or detached, but truly present—knowing that it's okay, even if it is exactly what we don't want.

Our Relationship to Emotions

Notice that what I have been talking about is our relationship to emotions: the way we respond, react, and hold them, instead of pushing them away, shoving them down, or fabricating what we think we should feel.

All of us have an emotional life. Some people have a very rich emotional life they are in touch with and have the vocabulary to describe. For other people, it might not be so clear—maybe just "mad, sad, glad." That's okay; we start where we are. We can gently increase our emotional vocabulary and awareness just by occasionally asking, "How am I feeling right now?"

Jack Kornfield¹ writes in one of his books about his time as a monk in Thailand. When he came back to American culture, he realized he didn't really have a rich emotional life. Being a monastic had made it much simpler for him to remain steady and quiet, but he had completely detached himself from his emotional life. He found a long list of emotions and had to familiarize himself with them, asking himself, "What does awe feel like? How is disappointment different than just sadness, frustration, or thrill?" So, it is normal to have different levels of emotional vocabulary.

It is also important to say that whatever ideas we have about which emotions are appropriate, and how they should or shouldn't be expressed—these notions are always historically and culturally situated. There is no one right way to be with them. In the Buddha's time, they didn't even really have a single word that translates directly to "emotion." They sliced up the human experience differently, categorizing mental states and bodily states.

Emotions are a mixture of both. If we pay attention to our inner life, we'll discover that every emotion has a physical, somatic aspect and a mental aspect. Part of the way we can work with emotions is to tease apart those two aspects and be with the physical one—the tightness in the throat, the fluttering in the belly, or the heartbreak.

Resistance and the 90-Second Rule

One common relationship to emotions, especially in the Dharma subculture, is resistance. It turns out that often it is not the emotions themselves, but our resistance to the emotions that causes the difficulty. I heard this in a Dharma talk years ago, and I have since heard a neuroscientist independently validate the idea that an emotion itself only lasts for about 90 seconds. It arises, we feel it, and it passes away.

You might say, "Wait, I've been angry for hours, days, years! What do you mean 90 seconds?" It is fascinating how the story—the mental part, the narration of "I shouldn't be having this," "Who do they think they are?", or "I can't believe this is happening again"—fuels the emotion and keeps it around. If we look closely at the emotions that stick around, we aren't usually holding an openness to the physical experience. We aren't saying, "Wow, sadness feels like this. I have pressure behind my eyes, heaviness in my shoulders, and I feel like I want to collapse." Instead, we keep going with the stories. It is human nature to have a narrative, but it turns out that is extra. If we can take away some of the authority of this narration, the emotion just starts to atrophy.

We might know we have resistance if we feel uncomfortable talking about emotions or frequently distract ourselves so we don't have to feel them. Electronic devices are designed to do precisely that. Or maybe we procrastinate because we don't want to be with our emotional life. We might even believe that spiritual practice means we should become emotionless. That turns out not to be true; spiritual people, of course, have emotions. What is different is perhaps the duration. Anger is there, and then it's gone. Sadness is there, and then it's gone. We don't stop being human or stop caring about things through spiritual practice.

Attraction to Difficult Emotions

We might also have a certain attraction to emotions that can get us into trouble. We might like the exhilaration and self-righteousness of anger or hatred. It makes us feel powerful, with a strong sense of "me against the world," feeling justified to do whatever we want.

We might also be attracted to greed or lust. There is a juiciness in being attracted to things, always looking for the next thing to want—an entire industry on Madison Avenue supports this. We lean forward into it, thinking, "I don't have it now, but the next moment will be better." We might even have an attraction to anxiety, believing that if we worry enough about potential problems, they won't happen. We might use worry to indicate that we care, even though it drains our vitality.

The downside to getting caught in hatred, greed, or anxiety is that it doesn't allow the best forms of ourselves—our greatest wisdom—to come out. It takes a lot of energy, leaves us feeling depleted, and keeps us chasing after the next thing.

The Poison Tree

Here is a story, also from Jack Kornfield, that I appreciate very much. Imagine a tree that has poisonous fruit. This poisonous fruit might represent greed, hatred, anger, or whatever difficult emotion we struggle with. We might say, "Let's cut this tree down before anyone gets hurt. We don't want anybody else to eat this fruit, and we don't want to eat it ourselves." When faced with stress, loss, conflict, depression, or sorrow, we might think we just have to chop it down and get rid of the poison. I've done my fair share of this, as we all have.

With a little more maturity and life experience, we discover that opening to what life brings requires deep, heartfelt compassion for everything around us. Encountering the poison tree, a person might say, "Let's not cut it down. Instead, let's put a fence around it." The fence protects us and protects others, letting everybody know that danger lies there, but allowing the tree to have its own life. It is compassionate, but of course, it takes energy and effort to maintain fences.

A third type of person—or maybe the same person in a different situation—encounters the poison tree, sees the poison, and has a different response. They say, "Oh, perfect. Just what I was looking for." They examine the fruit, take it apart, learn its ingredients, isolate a little bit of it, and combine it with something else to make medicine out of the poison. They transmute it into something healing for themselves and others. They aren't afraid of it, and they have the confidence and wherewithal to discover what's helpful, leave what's not helpful behind, and combine it with a dash of compassion, loving-kindness, and wisdom to make medicine.

Turning Poison Into Medicine

What are some ways we can make medicine out of these emotions? If we view emotions as messengers communicating from ourselves to ourselves, we can briefly reflect on why an emotion is arising in terms of how it might be useful. Instead of automatically judging it as good or bad, we can ask: "How can this be helpful? What can I glean from this? Where is the medicine inside?"

Daniel Ingram² offered a helpful list of ideas that supported me years ago when I felt awash in emotion. He suggests looking into an emotion and asking if there is a wish for ourselves or others to be happy. Can we tune into that wish? Is there a wish for the world to be a better place? Is there a wish for someone to understand something that could make their life easier? Or maybe there is just an aspiration for things to be better, for tranquility, or for the end of suffering. These are wholesome, skillful wishes. Perhaps they are what is fueling the emotion, disguised inside it.

Can we have a gentle inquiry to see if there is an aspect related to compassion? Compassion has a softness in the heart that can undo the brittleness we find in emotions that have a strong sense of "us against them." There is a verse in the Dhammapada³: "Hatred never ends with hatred; by non-hatred alone does it end. This is an ancient truth." I like the literal translation of "non-hatred" rather than "love," which is literally what the Pali⁴ says, because it leaves room for all kinds of things. It doesn't have to be love; it can be a sincere wish for suffering to end or simply some respect for their humanity.

When we find ourselves in unskillful emotions, we can look for the skillful underpinnings. For example, fear can have, as part of it, a wish to protect and take care of ourselves and others. Anger might just want the world to work well, wanting there to be less misery and suffering. Frustration often comes from care—when we choose not to express our anger destructively because we care, we feel frustration. We can tune into that care without repressing anything. Desire is rooted in the fundamental wish to be happy, which is natural. If we find ourselves judging everything as "good" or "bad," perhaps we can tune into our high standards—our wish for things not to fall apart, and our recognition of the beauty and strength in ourselves and others. In this way, we can do the work of taking the poisoned fruit and turning it into medicine.

The Wounded Healer

I want to reiterate that this is not easy or fast. We have deeply ingrained patterns of how we express emotions, often reinforced by our families and communities. We might have beliefs that we shouldn't feel certain things, or conversely, that whatever emotion we have must be expressed freely all the time. We can start where we are by simply examining our beliefs. We can ask ourselves, "What scares me about this emotion?" or "If I were to fully feel this emotion in the body, without trying to tamp it down, what would happen?"

Our emotions are such a rich part of our human experience. I don't think humans will ever get to a point where we have them all figured out. We will never be robots; there will always be a kaleidoscope of richness, depth, beauty, and ugliness in our inner life.

There was a time when I worked as a chaplain at San Francisco General Hospital. There is a lot of suffering in hospitals. I discovered the concept of the "wounded healer"⁵. The notion was that our own wounds, our own difficulties, our own emotions, and the unfinished business in our hearts are what allow us to connect with others. Our vulnerability and our own emotional life are what allow us to show up authentically. The best chaplains were the ones who knew what it was like to be wounded. This was incredibly helpful because otherwise, we might feel like we have to have all the answers or appear invulnerable, which is just a big way of denying ourselves.

Conclusion

Turning poison into medicine with our emotions means finding freedom with them. My wish for all of you is that you can find freedom with whatever emotions come your way. It doesn't mean it's not messy, and it doesn't mean it's pretty or easy. But I hope you can find freedom in whatever life brings you. Thank you.

(Normally I open for questions, but tonight I would rather do this without a microphone. If people want to come up and talk to me, you're welcome to. Thank you, and I wish you a wonderful rest of the evening.)