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WheelWalker
(9,402 posts)The Buddhist parable of The Second Arrow goes like this:
You are walking in the woods and suddenly you get struck by an arrow (someone fires an arrow at you) and it hits your arm and it really really hurts–it is very painful and you feel that physical pain in your arm, and it’s bleeding. And then immediately your mind starts to think, “Oh my god! what’s gonna happen? What if I bleed to death? What if this is infected and I can’t walk back home properly? Or I lose energy and I can’t get back to my family? What’s gonna happen to my family? What’s gonna be happening to my husband/wife/my children? What’s gonna happen to me or what’s going to happen to their future, how will they be doing?”
The Buddha described the first arrow as the physical pain and the second arrow is what your mind does–it starts thinking about the worst scenario that can happen (catastrophizing, minimizing, blaming). And the Buddha says, “be warned of the second arrow.”
More generally, life can be seen as two arrows. The first arrow is what we experience, one moment to the next. The second Arrow is how we respond to the first arrow. Whether the first arrow (our experience) is pain or pleasure, the second arrow (our mind) can exacerbate the suffering or enhance the pleasure of the experience of the first arrow.
Be aware of the Second Arrow.
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