You Are Not Your Reactions: Part 1

Whether we’re talking about our physical actions, our speech, or the activity of our mind, especially our mental and emotional activity, they are really nothing more than reactions. And they are quite interesting when we study them closely.

You don’t have to be, say, a “jealous person,” but any individual can be provoked and suddenly become very jealous or possessive. Afterward, that same person might even wonder: “Why did I become so jealous?” Or someone who generally doesn’t feel very attached might suddenly find themselves reacting as if they were completely attached. In response to a particular set of causes and conditions, someone who is normally a secure person will react in quite an insecure way.

These tendencies to react are stored in the stream of mind, and when they are activated by certain causes and conditions, these “seeds” will give rise to corresponding reactions. The person who is not usually very attached will act from attachment; someone who is not jealous will act with jealousy; a person who is not insecure will act in an insecure manner; and someone who is generally peaceful will become aggressive.

When such reactions occur, we need the capacity to separate ourselves from the reactions that are happening. This is especially important for a meditator. What is the point of being a meditator without being able to look at our reactions or neurotic behavior in this way? But this doesn’t mean that meditators don’t have this kind of reaction, like anyone else. Meditators react.

So my point here is that your meditation is separate from your reactions, and those reactions are past habitual tendencies that have been stored in the stream of mind.

Sometimes, when you are meditating and the meditation is going very well with a very clear and unobstructed meditation, there are no seeds or tendencies present. But on other occasions, even a skilled meditator can react. It seems almost as though these reactions emerge directly from ignorance, but they also arise from a need for the ego to break into the world. Of course, our behavior is distorted most of the time, and there is not much consideration when we are reacting in this way. But still, I think it is quite interesting to note that a skilled meditator can react in very conventional ways, so to speak, and appear quite jealous, angry, or insecure.

When we are reacting, even if it is not apparent externally, internally there is still a reaction. Of course, external reactions are much easier to control and work with. The internal reaction is much more difficult.

So during these internal reactions, the first skill needed, when you are feeling jealousy or any of the negative emotions, in relation to a situation, to a particular person, or in response to some disturbing speech, is the development of a kind of second awareness. Such awareness can see through the reaction and the whole process, knowing what is happening and knowing that it will simply wear itself out.

This kind of awareness has a mature quality: the capacity to see that these complex emotions are quite deep and that it will take time for them to be completely cleaned or eliminated. Until that point is reached, complete enlightenment is not attained, but at the same time, even now, we can be aware that this is not so threatening, because it is not solid. It is not black and white. These internal reactions do not create negative consequences, so they are not dangerous in that sense. They are similar to any other thoughts that do not generate consequences, unless you become attached to them and amplify them.

Second, if you can avoid being hard on yourself, you can also allow your ability as a practitioner or a mindful person to avoid the common confusion and maintain your sense of sanity beyond these reactions. When you can remain untroubled and observe all of this the way you would observe a child’s emotions, it will wear away very quickly and help burn the seeds in the stream of mind. When this happens a few times, or after many times, at some point a person gains real confidence.

With these tools, although you may still react, it does not leave you completely dominated or controlled. You do not become the reaction itself, losing your sense of your own sanity. You do not lose the thread of the work you are doing to become sane and become free to move beyond.

Most of the time people are not very aware. So they are not conscious that these are simply reactions, that reactions happen, and that a person is not the reaction they are having. There is a separate person, a whole person, but this is only a very small part of the whole that is reacting.

Often there is some confusion about this, which is also a lack of awareness. It is as if a small part of the whole is seen as the whole thing. Not only that, but at the same time there is tremendous judgment about how bad it is, or how terrible.

So there can be a considerable amount of self-aggression that arises along with this lack of awareness. The unconscious mind reacts automatically in an aggressive way and labels the behavior as wrong or horrible. Internally, we display a puritanical view of the self, an expectation that we should be as pure as the Buddha, without any reaction, and then we try to prevent all of this from exploding inside.

This kind of dynamic happens within you and causes explosions. It prevents us from being able to work with the mind in a mature way and in accordance with the practices we have learned. We can strive to reach balance, first by becoming aware that such reactions exist, and then by not needing to repress or condemn ourselves at the same time.

Read Part 2 of this article here.

Originally published at Mangala Shri Bhuti