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I was just looking to see what Ajahn Brahm has to say about emotions in his book ''Mindfulness Bliss and Beyond."

He says:

"When you are deluded by emotions, you take them to be important, and 'mine'. You can get so sucked in that you seek even unpleasant emotions like sadness repeatedly. Why is it that many people go to a movie with a box of tissues, knowing, from reviews that it is a tearjerker? It is because they are attached to emotions, delight in them, and identify with them. They don't want to be free.

Superpower mindfulness focused on emotions uncovers the reality of whether you want to be free or not. It pushes aside your preferences. You recognise that emotions are seductive sirens beckoning you to their treacherous rocks. But in their essence they are but mind objects, causally conditioned, like weather fronts passing overhead, having nothing to do with you. When you see the truth, you are detached from emotions and free from their tyranny. "



I think this is very true. Certainly in the West we have a tendancy to indulge in emotional reactions to everything. Ajahn Brahm has already given the example of movies and if we look at literature, music etc etc a lot of it is a feast of emotional indulgence over imaginary situations, just for the sake of it. Furthermore we can regard it as somehow 'good' and 'healthy' .

Opera is an interesting example of that with somebody taking ages to die as they sing an emotional and dramatic aria and so forth...and everybody loves it and has the tissues in action....again and again. So I think we have to examine all of that too, noticing how we have constant reactions to 'entertainments' which are illusory situations anyway.

Just as 'all the world's a stage' when we follow emotional reactions to 'entertainments' ....so it is with the rest of our lives.

Disagree with this post ? Watch your reactions.