The Second Arrow : letting go of unnecessary suffering.

There is a popular story in Buddhism — The Tale of Two Arrows. Once a man ventured into a forest and he was struck with an arrow of a Hunter. He was hurt in the arm and he started to bleed. The hunter panicked and ran away. The injured man looked around for help but there was no one to help him. He started worrying — Will I survive?; There has been so much blood loss, will I lose my arm?; How will my family survive after I die? and so on and so forth goes the story.

The first arrow was the real arrow shot by the Hunter. The second arrow was self-inflicted by the injured man through his worries. The pain from the first arrow is inevitable and inescapable but the pain and suffering from the second arrow is hugely conditional. The thoughts and patterns that arose in his mind are uniquely his worries and concerns. The worries are not based on facts but on “Could be’s” and “What if’s”, which unfortunately have no grounding in reality.

Where can we explore this on our yoga mats? We can listen to the mental chatter, the stories we tell ourselves. Imagine you are in a pose experiencing a large degree of tension in a muscle that feels hard and stuck. Imagine the difference between being agitated by this, frustrated, imagine the mental talk and even the effects elsewhere in the body, a clenched jaw or frown. Now take the same scenario and imagine yourself cultivating a degree and patience and acceptance around what is, after all, a normal, common human experience, tension in the body. Imagine yourself letting go of the mental chatter and instead tuning into the sensations of breathing. Noticing the breath and softening with the inhales, as you release with the exhales, a bit of space might come in. Maybe something now can shift a little. Letting go of the stories and the mental chatter, we learn to let go of resistance and tension. The first arrow maybe be inevitable but the second arrow is optional. We can learn to let go.

“When we truly begin to let go happiness will no longer just be our friend, it will become our home.” Yung Pueblo.