Misfortune & The Second Arrow

An offering after the tragedy in Buffalo, NY. Buddhism talks about the two arrows of suffering, the first arrow being the primary suffering incurred, and the second arrow being mental suffering about what occurred. This talk may be helpful for anyone suffering from misfortune.

Transcript

Misfortune and the Second Arrow This talk is an offering in response to a recent mass shooting in Buffalo,

New York and the suffering of the people dealing with its aftermath.

There is a concept of the second arrow in Buddhism.

The idea is that if you get hit by an arrow,

You feel pain and you feel suffering,

Physical pain from the actual arrow in your leg.

There is a second arrow you are hit with,

Which is mental suffering,

Which goes all along the lines of,

Why did I get hit with this arrow?

Who shot this arrow?

Why am I suffering?

How did this arrow arrive?

Buddhism separates these arrows because one involves your physical suffering and the other as part of the nature of suffering is your mental suffering.

The first arrow is very difficult to remove and it is difficult to go through life without getting hit with the first arrow.

The second arrow is a little bit more on the optional side and can be done away with by your spiritual development.

I will repeat this again at the end of the talk,

But the cause of the first arrow is attachment and the cause of the second arrow is perception.

Hopefully at the end of this talk you will be able to understand and even explain it to someone else.

Part of looking at events like these is whether your view of the world is shaped by self-determination or if it is shaped by faith and how you personally see the world being run.

In Hinduism,

Particularly in the Bhagavad Gita,

The Hindu Hindu text,

There is a long passage where it talks about the interplay between faith and self-determination.

How sometimes if an individual struggles enough they can overcome their faith and how sometimes no matter how much the individual struggles they cannot change their destiny.

One example of this in your regular life would be someone who is descended from perhaps a generation of alcoholics,

Maybe he is seventh generation,

But he struggles and he struggles and he struggles and he is able to remain sober.

Another example of this may be someone who adopts a healthy diet,

Never smokes,

Never does any drugs or has any alcohol or has any bad habits and runs marathons but he drops it at 40 from a heart attack.

Meaning how much of that is self-determination,

How much of that is faith.

There's a line in the Matrix 2 where Morpheus says,

Where others see coincidence,

I see providence.

Meaning there was some meaning and some purpose as to why things happened this way.

As to why some people survived in an event like this and why some people died.

So if you read the news there was a man who was shot in the neck and he survived.

He was discharged home from the hospital the same day.

There were others who were shot and they died right on the spot.

If you took a bullet to the neck,

If you moved a little bit to the left,

A little bit to the right,

You would not survive.

So if that man survived,

It is quite likely there is a reason for his survival.

If someone passed away,

There may be some reason for that too.

There were many,

Many more factors at play than what you might even normally consider.

Meaning did you go to the store by accident or were you there at the store on purpose?

So there is a report in the news that one person went there to pick up a birthday cake for their grandson for a birthday party.

What if events had gotten differently?

What if three days before this event the grandson got COVID and the birthday party was canceled?

Then that person wouldn't have gone to pick up a cake.

What if someone was held up in traffic and didn't make it to the store on their usual time?

Or what if someone was called into work and didn't go to the store that day?

How many things had to happen in those individual people's lives for them to show up at that store at that day at that time?

The world events had to align for those people to meet up.

I'm reminded of the plane that was shot down in the Ukraine war in 2014 where a plane was shot down by a missile.

And there were stories that followed afterwards of the people who were not meant to survive but survived.

Meaning someone had a ticket on that flight and they missed the connecting flight and so they didn't get on that plane.

And as a result of one person not showing up for that flight,

Some person who was on standby received their ticket and they went on their flight and died.

And there were always events like this where somehow something happens and you narrowly avoid disaster or someone on the other hand is in the wrong place at the wrong time and they underwent some tragic fate.

How much of this is coincidence and how much of this is fate?

Sometimes there's attacks,

Terrorism,

Or war where a bomb goes off and the three people surrounding it die.

One person is in a corner and he survives.

There are war stories where an entire battalion gets wiped out and only a few soldiers live and some of them live with guilt for the rest of their lives,

Wondering why they were spared and others were not.

If you looked at it in a different way,

Maybe they survived because they still had yet purpose left to fill in life and it was not yet their time to go.

And if they died,

Perhaps their purpose in life had been fulfilled and now they were being recalled back to God.

Do you see a hidden and invisible hand in all this misfortune,

Allowing some people to live and some people to perish?

As philosophy and spiritual seeking have gone through time,

I have come to start to look at death in a different way.

And the idea is you see the true cause of death and the true cause of death is birth and you look at all the circumstances of one's death as simply incidental.

So in Buddhism you have the idea of dependent origination.

I talk about this in a different talk where it starts at ignorance going to formations leading to consciousness leading to materiality mentality leading to the sixfold base the contract of feeling the clean craving being birth and death.

But the idea is that which is before death is birth.

And so you see that the primary cause of people dying is people being born.

That the moment you were born you are a mortal creature and one day you are destined to die.

There is no way around that.

There's an interesting Hindu story of a woman who talks about when she confronts the man who killed her son.

And the man apologizes to her and says I am so sorry for killing your son.

And the woman says oh don't worry about it you are forgiven.

It wasn't you who killed my son it was death.

Then the character of death comes out and appears in the story and he says no that's not correct I didn't kill your son.

It was time that killed your son.

The idea is that all people are meant to die whether it's now five years from now ten years from now fifty years from now it is always meant to happen.

It is just a matter of time.

Looking into the circumstance of the death is an example of the second arrow the mental suffering that is secondary to the primary suffering.

I'm going to go through a sequence of events as if things were different and the idea is to help you think about what this means to have a second arrow and how it just changed depending on how you look at things.

So let's say instead of a mass shooting there was a fire at the building and then everyone died as a result of the fire and some escaped and some lived.

And then you could look into it and say is that a natural fire or is that a fire by lightning storm or equipment malfunction or something like that.

And then you could say there was a flood what if there was a flood and everyone passed away or what if it was mass car accidents or what if it was a hurricane and what if were something absolutely unusual like a meteor strike.

How is the second arrow different?

So there was an incident in the news last year where there was a tornado that went to a town somewhere in the Midwest and there was a story where there was an Amazon warehouse where because there was a tornado watch they didn't allow the workers to leave until the tornado was gone.

And one man talked to his wife and the wife said everything's clear where we live just come home but they wouldn't let the man leave.

And the man stayed at the Amazon warehouse and the tornado tore through there and the man was one of the few people who died.

And then the wife blamed Amazon but then someone asked her are they really at fault and do you really blame them that badly?

And she said well I guess you know it's one of those things it was kind of fate or along those lines.

But the idea is in these different scenarios there is an increasing involvement in providence meaning the more human the more it is viewed as a human cause the more you might have some of the second arrow suffering.

Meaning the more that death might be attributable to human error or human effect the more you might suffer from second arrow effects.

Meaning if it were the cause of a single person versus the cause of negligence versus something you know a fire started by someone versus a fire started by a lightning strike then if it were something really unusual like a meteor strike which came down from the sky and smashed on top of everyone you wouldn't blame someone in that sort of scenario.

And because you don't blame someone you don't suffer from that second arrow effect.

Part of this is from a false view of permanence meaning you're expecting to live until 75 until old age and never have a problem.

This also happens when people get sick and they say why am I sick or why did this happen?

Fortunately when we look at our possessions sometimes we don't look at it that way and that's sometimes how I explain things to people.

The body is like a car and when you reach a hundred thousand miles in your car and your transmission goes out or your brakes go out or something kind of goes bad there are fewer questions as to why this happened.

There's shall we say less second arrow effect.

You don't start to blame things as to why your car has gone bad when your car has been driven 200,

000 miles you just understand the car is old and it falls apart.

Part of this is from modern medicine and also having death as sort of a foreign presence in our lives.

If you went back 200-300 years ago before modern medicine young people died on a regular basis and there wasn't really much explanation at the time and so it was just an accepted thing that people died suddenly sometimes and that sometimes when you saw them that was the last time even though they appeared healthy.

Now we seek a reason for death and sometimes along with seeking that reason we seek an accounting of why why why why did it happen.

And so you look at the deaths of an individual if it were heart attack or stroke,

Murder,

Lung cancer or suicide as to why it happened.

So if someone had a heart attack you may say did the doctor check for them did they complain about something you know did they ignore their own symptoms if they had a lung cancer you might ask did they smoke you know were they exposed to something some environmental exposure if it was murder who killed them and why did they kill them and if it was suicide you know you might say who didn't try to prevent it or were they taking their medicine or who is to blame for this who is the cause of the second error.

So I remember a case where I had two people with something similar happen some sort of foot injury so one lady fell at a place of a business and you know suffered a foot injury and she was very unhappy about it there was an open thing on the ground and her foot got stuck and and then she was suing the business and very angry about it and I had another person who fell at home there was some sort of hole in the ground in the mound where the foot got stuck and basically suffered a foot injury and so both these individuals suffered some sort of foot injury meaning the first arrow was the same for both people but only one person suffered the second arrow the woman who blamed someone else for her suffering and sought redress for it the first person because it was his own house there wasn't really anyone to blame and because of that his suffering was less.

If you look at the current events of the present aftermath of the smash shooting there is a search for what they are saying is justice suing anyone who is involved social media companies the arms manufacturers there's great you know anger against the shooter some of the search is motivated more by anger and revenge rather than any other sort of motive some of this is in a mistaken belief that by seeking justice in a session such as this their anger will go away as I discussed in detail on the talk anger the only thing that would actually help their anger is actually forgiveness so forgiving the person that committed this crime and forgiving everyone who might have been involved as well only then can you let go of your anger and move on.

If you looked at the shooter from a different point of view you would see that he has doomed his life as well his fate is now tied in with his act and for the rest of his life it will travel with him if you believe in some sort of religion then as I say in a previous talk there's no such thing as a long-term injustice everything gets squared away at some point if you're angry at his family and what they might have done or might not have done understand that his family suffers as well they've done some new stories on some of the families of people who parents of children who committed some sort of terrible crime and allow them to fade away and hide for the rest of their lives because his family will now face shame for the rest of their life before you glory in that think about how painful that might be meaning you look at some people with you know autistic children who sometimes misbehave in public or screaming or you know behave strangely and the parents have different emotions there's one emotion where they're a little bit embarrassed that their child is behaving this way there's an emotion where they hope that other people are kind to their child even though their child is different and a third emotion is a deeply rooted love because it is still their child no matter what they do no matter what they say no matter how they behave or what they've done they have blood ties to this child and they cannot shed this attachment so their son has committed a national crime of devastating proportions if you are get second guessing what might have been done to prevent this you might wonder how much the parents are second guessing how much they how they raised their child how much guilt they might have for what kind of happened if they're blaming some self for their cause and yet at the same time still bound by love to this person so some of them might wonder did i do the right thing and give birth to you i would look also to the example of the amish there was an amish shooting several years ago where the amish are very religious and they tried to practice what they preached and they it appears they did it they forgave the shooter who shot one of their amish people the shooter died as well and they buried the shooter no one would claim his body and not only did they bury the shooter they held and they attended his funeral as well knowing that no one else had come to it the idea is they really tried to practice turning the other cheek and loving all people as children of god there's also an aspect of finding meaning in death meaning did these people all die senseless lives or were there some meaning into it there's as i mentioned in the talks about suffering suffering ceases to be suffering when you find meaning in it when this suffering leads to some sort of good or benefit meaning if their the suffering the loss of these lies leads to some meaningful improvement in the people left behind if it helps their other family members if something in the world improves because of these people losing their lives then perhaps it will not be so great a tragedy meaning there are many ways people can die you could die of old age sitting on a toilet you could have a heart attack at dinner and fall face first into your soup you can fall down a sewer manhole you could be eaten by a tiger you could get cancer you could have had a heart attack you could be walking around a construction site and have a brick fall out of the sky and hit on your head or you could even be bitten by a snake the idea is death is inevitable but not all are given a chance to live meaningfully there was a recent shooting in california where they said a an older doctor charged the shooter and in doing so he distracted him and everyone else was able to chip in and take the shooter down and so some people might say this is a tragedy others might look at it as say this man died saving the lives of other people not everyone is given such a glorious sort of passing or such a meaningful passing meaning some people just die in the bathroom where they they die in bed or they collapse outside while taking a walk or they die in an icu after lingering there for months and months and months and somehow this man was given a death where he was saving someone else's life is that really a tragedy there's a story in spartan history the spartans were a very militarized greek society where everyone did military service all the spartans and they reveled in the sort of glory of dying for their city and so for the spartans the greatest honor was to die defending your city and so there's a story of an old man who survived all the battles he was in and kind of was not in active military service and at one point the city was threatened and the army was assembled and so this old man put on his armor he got his weapons and he went out there with the rest of the army and the king saw him he saw this really old guy and he said you know said to one of his aides let's have him you know go back to the city and do some work doing something else we don't want him there's no reason for this old man to kind of die senselessly in you know in battle and so the old man you know heard the king's wishes and he walked up to the king and he said is it not true my king that we believe death in defense of sparta to be the highest glory that anyone could achieve and the king said yes we still believe that the old man says then i ask you to allow me this honor i am going to die anyways but i wish to die defending the city if you would please allow me to stay and the king was moved by his plea and allowed him to stay and he died after that battle there's that um that scene in brave heart where where uh mel gibson talks about the same thing there are people who were deciding whether to stay or run in the battle and the character uh william wallace says to them if you run you will live if you fight there's a chance you will die but if you are old one day and you've lived a long life and you are dying in bed you know wouldn't you give all these days between this day and that from a chance to come back and tell your enemies that they can never take away your freedom even if they take your life could you come back and send that message and it's an inspiring kind of he says in such a inspiring way that all the men decide that they will fight they will chance death because they find it is worthwhile so the idea is to find meaning in your suffering and if you find meaning in your suffering your suffering will be much less so as i said in the beginning of the talk there's the two arrows there's the first arrow and there's the second arrow the nature of the first arrow is attachment so you suffer the first arrow because attachment you are suffering because of love because of desire you love someone or something or somebody and they are subject to impermanence they are subject to old age and sickness and death and when impermanence comes for them and they die or they get sick or something happens like this you suffer because you are losing them that suffer is bound by your love there's no way around it if you love someone you will suffer when they pass so that first arrow as long as you love cannot be avoided the second arrow as i said in the beginning is from perception and wanting to know the why and wanting explanation for the why and this is where if you change your perception you can remove the second arrow and if you see meaning in it or if you don't seek to know the why and you just accept it you will not suffer the second arrow i will leave you with two quotes from chinese philosophers one is from manshia who says when something is brought about though there is nothing that brings it about then it is heaven that does it when something arrives though there is nothing that makes it arrive then it is destiny that does it the next quote is from shinzu who said you must not complain against heaven its way is simply thus and so one who understands clearly the respective allotments of heaven and humankind can be called the person of utmost achievement only the sage does not seek to understand heaven thus the greatest cleverness cleverness lies in not doing certain things and the greatest wisdom lies in not pondering certain things this will conclude my talk i ask that if you receive better from this talk that you perform one good deed the deed is not bound by size only by sincerity thank you