Sadness

Sadness is a commonly experienced emotion, impacting on body and mind, which may last anywhere from a few seconds to several hours. Why write about sadness on Valentine’s Day? “Grief doesn’t end, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. It is not a sign of weakness, nor lack of faith. It is the price of love.”

A 2018 study suggests that feelings of sadness or anxiety might be linked to increased “chitchat” between two areas of the brain. In the study, a group of researchers listened in on electrical conversations in the brain — in other words, the signals that brain regions send to one another. When a person is feeling down, they found, the communication increased between brain cells in two specific regions of the brain involved in memory and emotion.

It’s unclear whether this increased brain communication is a cause or an effect of a bad mood, the researchers noted. However, the findings allowed them to home in on the part of the brain where the action is.

What helps?

Getting away from the neuroscience, let’s look at something else. Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun’s experience, people just need help in learning how not to run away.

Be kind to oneself. This does not mean pampering one’s neurosis. Kindness toward all qualities of one’s being. The qualities that are the toughest to be kind to are the painful parts, where the person feels ashamed, as if they do not belong, as if they have just blown it, when things are falling apart.

The idea of maitri, loving-kindness or friendliness, means sticking with oneself when a person does not have anything, when the feelings are that the person is a loser. This becomes the basis for extending the same unconditional friendliness to others.

If there are whole parts of oneself that a person is always running from, that they even feel justified in running from, then they are going to run from anything that brings them into contact with their feelings of insecurity.

We start with taking a close look at our predictable tendency to get hooked, to separate ourselves, to withdraw into ourselves and put up walls. As we become intimate with these tendencies, they gradually become more transparent, and we see that there’s actually space, there is unlimited, accommodating space. This does not mean that then you live in lasting happiness and comfort. That spaciousness includes pain.

We may still feel confused and sad. What we will not do is bite the hook. Pleasant happens. Unpleasant happens. Neutral happens. What we gradually learn is to not move away from being fully present. We need to train at this very basic level because of the widespread suffering in the world. If we are not training inch by inch, one moment at a time, in overcoming our fear of pain, then we will be very limited in how much we can help. We will be limited in helping ourselves, and limited in helping anybody else. So let’s start with ourselves, just as we are, here and now.

Excerpted from Practicing Peace, by Pema Chödrön