A lightly edited transcript of a talk given online at the Priory in 2020.

These are challenging times we’re living in, and we might all find ourselves sitting with strong, persistent, recurrent feelings: fear and anxiety; despair, perhaps also. So it seems good to offer a reminder of how we sit with feelings, what that means and what we do in our practice when feelings arise. This is a basic aspect of our meditation and practice, and it’s always good to review these things.

First of all, I just want to say a bit about how feelings and thoughts interact. We’re probably all aware of how our thoughts influence our feelings, so the thoughts that arise add fuel to the feeling that’s present. We can end up going round and around in our heads, and that then perpetuates the feeling, makes it stronger. And equally, our feelings influence our thoughts. So if we’re feeling anxious, that tends to generate anxious thoughts, and then we can get caught in a spiral of anxiety. In addition, how we think and feel affects our actions and how we interact with other people, and then that gets reflected back at us. So if I feel irritated and I snap at someone and say something unpleasant, then they get defensive and tend to snap back, and then that makes me more grumpy and irritable. And so we set up cycles with our thoughts and feelings. We get stuck in ruts with our conditioned responses, and we end up going round in the same loops, reacting in the same ways.

Meditation helps us to break through these patterns. Meditation is an opportunity to explore very closely the thoughts and the feelings that arise within. The basis of our practice is to explore the question, “What is this in this very moment? What feeling or thought is right in front of me here now?”

Thoughts arise and they come and go. They don’t have to be a problem. And we have some pretty clear directions as to what we do with thoughts in meditation. We don’t suppress them; we don’t push them away. We let natural thoughts arise, but then when we notice that we’re caught in a train of thought, we disengage from that so that we’re not identifying with the thoughts. And then the thoughts come to disturb us less. And it’s similar with feelings: as we explore the feelings that are present, that takes us deep into questioning, “What is this being here? Who am I?”

Feelings have a very strong impact on how we think of ourselves. So for example, if I feel very anxious, then I’m probably not aware of anything much else. That anxiety fills my field of vision, and then that emotion seems to entirely define who I am right now. If that tends to happen often, then it solidifies further so I think “I am an anxious person”, and then it becomes part of my personality. We all have certain emotions or traits that we identify with and that seem to be inexplicably linked with who we are. We tend to attach to our emotions, even those ones that obviously cause us suffering. In a changing and threatening world, these emotions give a sense of who I am, and it’s reassuring for us to think that we know roughly how we will react in given situations, so that the unknown isn’t quite so unknown. But as we’re aware, feelings are not a reliable refuge. How often are we surprised by our emotions and our reactions? We have to investigate these feelings, and to do so is scary, because who will I be without those familiar emotions and responses?

In meditation, we explore the feelings that arise by just sitting with them. We don’t analyze them with our heads, because that’s a distraction. That’s an attempt to escape from actually being with the feeling right now. So for example, if we realize that we’re anxious, it might be tempting to ask why, because we feel that would help us to understand the anxiety. Well, that answer might be helpful, but searching for this answer is not zazen. And anyway, it’s not uncommon for there to be just free-floating anxiety with no obvious cause. In zazen, we sit with the feeling, whether or not we understand its cause. Insights into that feeling may arise, but if they do, we don’t hold on to them. What’s important is that we keep sitting with the feeling. And similarly, as we sit, we may come to see how one feeling underlies another. For example, beneath anger and irritation, there’s usually fear of some sort. But we don’t have to keep following our feelings back, trying to come to some sort of end point or beginning point, because that too can be a distraction. At some stage, we have to just sit with the feeling that’s present, or the feelings, because actually, there’s often a mix of feelings there. It’s just that one tends to come to the fore at any one time.

Usually what this means is that we have to sit in the heart of pain or discomfort of some sort, and that’s difficult. That’s why we tend to squirm away and try and escape from doing this, distract ourselves. In zazen what we do is to just be with what arises. We sit with the pure feeling, right in the heart of it, with no judgment, complete acceptance. We don’t get caught up in the thoughts of how we’d like to change the circumstances so that we can be rid of the discomfort. Although obviously, if there’s something good that we can do to alleviate the situation, it’s fine to do it. But we come to see how the worrying, fearful mind adds to the situation with all the thoughts. So we sit with the feeling, let go of the thoughts that try to coagulate around it, and then we can learn what that feeling has to teach us.

I’ll give an example that we can probably all relate to in some way. I’ll use for the example a physical feeling rather than an emotion, but it’s a similar process with any emotion that arises. Imagine I’m meditating, and suddenly I’m aware of a sharp pain in my abdomen, and immediately I start worrying: “Oh, it’s this again. I thought I was over that. Is this something serious?” And then I start projecting into the future. “Will I have to go to the GP? Oh, it’s going to be really inconvenient. Will I need tests?” We don’t actually need to do all this thinking, not during a meditation period. Though if it really does seem good to get up and go and take some medication, that’s fine. But if we ask, “What is this here now?”, we can see that there is some physical discomfort, and there’s a lot of worry and mental chattering. We can just be with the discomfort. We don’t even need to label it as pain. Just be with the sensation, feel the nerves discharging. Then we may find that, amazingly, in this moment, it’s actually not so bad, if we’re not worrying about how we’re sure it’s going to get a lot worse. So we come to see that the discomfort right now, in this moment, is not as solid or substantial as it seemed at first, or threatened to become. Now, the pain probably won’t miraculously disappear, but we do get a different perspective on it. And in this moment, the situation is bearable. We can cope with it if we’re not piling on the thoughts that the worrying, fretful mind adds to the situation. And then, from this basis, I can go on to see what is good to do next.

I think we can find, as we sit with feelings of all sorts, that we come to see how particular emotions become associated with physical sensations. For example, if I’m anxious, that might feel like a sort of a fizzy fluttering in the stomach. Shame or dread can sometimes be experienced as being like a cannonball sitting in the stomach. With these sorts of experiences, if there’s a feeling that’s around quite a lot for me, then I can become familiar with that sensation, and it almost becomes like an acquaintance. “Oh, it’s that again.” We don’t need to try and describe or analyze the sensation.

With any feeling that arises, we don’t have to label it. So we might call it something, for example “pain”, for the sensation that I’ve just been describing. But we have to be careful, because any word, any description, brings with it associations that colour our experience and then solidify things further. And in this area, an important lesson that came to me was to see that if, for example, I’m sitting with anxiety or dread about something that might happen in the future, there’s a certain energy there. But equally, if I’m sitting with excitement or looking forward to something in the future, there’s the same sort of energy there. In both cases, there’s a similar sort of sensation of having a knot in the stomach. The main difference between the two things is the types of thoughts that are associated with the feeling.

As we go on, we come to see that even with difficult emotions like fear and anger, if we can just be still with them, we can sense that there is an alright-ness to the presence of that feeling. It is ‘just this’. And then, much of the time in meditation, we’re willing to sit with non-specific feelings, perhaps just a sense of unease, and these ‘low grade’ feelings can be subjected to the same wordless exploration of zazen. In meditation, we’re not going searching for feelings to sit with. There’s plenty to sit with without doing that!

As we go on further, and we become that bit stiller in meditation, we become more familiar with feelings arising and dissolving. We can recognize more readily our habitual patterns, what triggers our reactions. And much of the work of meditation is seeing, “Oh, it’s that again”, and then we keep letting it dissolve. The feelings are part of what is right now, but we don’t have to identify with them and be driven by them. And it is absolutely vital that we don’t judge the feelings, we don’t get into, “They shouldn’t be there.” Whatever is present we allow to be there. Don’t hold on to it. Don’t push it away.

It’s interesting to see those times when we do something that we might feel a bit ashamed of, or when we feel we’ve done something that’s unacceptable. If we look closely, we see that what’s unacceptable is really our behaviour more than the feeling, how we acted on the feeling. So perhaps if we behave in a petty way towards someone because we’re irritated, when we look at the feeling, it may seem that, alarmingly, I feel as though I really hate that person. But if we explore that more, we see that that’s just a label that we are applying to a strong emotion. The strong emotion itself can be accepted. The important thing is that we don’t act on it in an unskillful way.

It’s really important to stress again, that it is okay that feelings and emotions arise as we continue in our practice. We can uncover surprising things about ourselves, and meditation brings to our notice feelings and tendencies that we weren’t aware of. This can sometimes be extremely uncomfortable, and it can threaten the image that we have of ourselves. And this is a very important part of the process, part of questioning who I am. As we sit and look at the wall, we come face-to-face with precisely what we need to see and work on. And we can come to know that whatever is present when we sit is part of this, and it is fine as it is, the feeling can just be there. There’s no need to try and change it into anything else. The feeling, if we sit with it, will show us its nature, which is that it is empty, impermanent and insubstantial. The feeling is not the whole story. However fearful or angry, etc we may be, there is more. And meditation points us to that more, that bigger picture. By accepting difficult emotions, those feelings that we wish weren’t part of us, we are taking a step in the right direction. To embrace the feeling in meditation can be a very helpful step forward in letting the feeling be as it is, to know that it is fine as it is. Mind you, we have to go on from this.

It’s worth remembering that it’s not just difficult emotions that we explore in meditation. We have to be willing to question and let go of all feelings, even the pleasurable ones, and that includes contentment and joy. These feelings, of course, we have less tendency to question, but we have to subject them too to the same wordless exploration in Zazen, because if we hold on to them and we’re not willing to let them pass, then we get trapped in a one-sided understanding that ultimately is a dead-end. So yes, positive emotions will arise as we go on, but it’s by no means a straight equation that the more we meditate, the happier we’ll be. Positive emotions are a by-product of meditation; they’re not the aim of meditation. They’re not the refuge. And we have to be careful not to set up an ideal of spiritual maturity where we aim to remain serene as we go through all of life’s challenges and situations. It is not about trying to get beyond the feelings that arise in us, to get to some sort of higher self. If we try to leap too quickly in this direction, rejecting what arises, then we can cut ourselves off from our feelings, and we risk becoming numb, uncaring, indifferent.

If we try to stamp out our feelings, they just seem more powerful, because by trying to combat them, we invest them with a solidity that they don’t have. And if we try to ignore our feelings, we are denying ourselves access to the very gateway that we have here now to come to know the truth. So acceptance is the key, as well as great patience and gentleness with ourselves. And then, as we continue, we can become more confident that we can just sit with whatever arises. We also come to see that holding on to our feelings is actually our choice, even though it can be difficult to acknowledge that. So for example, it can be that we’re more comfortable holding on to some long-standing resentment, because if we were to let go of that resentment, it would seem like a huge climbdown. It could feel like a great chunk of me was falling away. And actually this is what is required of us at times, and indeed on occasions like that, we can see very clearly what is meant by letting go of the self. To surrender to a situation like that isn’t easy. In fact, it’s very scary, so we may prefer to hold on to our suffering, because even though it’s unpleasant, at least we’re in familiar territory. As we watch our feelings dissolving in meditation, we find that these feelings that we would do almost anything to avoid, we can actually be with them. Sit still with them. We might be afraid that we won’t be able to cope with what arises. But in the present moment, as we meditate, we can be still with whatever is here.

Now, it’s when we look beyond the present moment that we can’t cope. We lose focus and we fret about the implications of the future. Here now we can realize that the feeling isn’t solid. It’s flimsy, insubstantial. It dissolves into space. We can note that it is empty, and then the feeling may coalesce and reappear in the next moment, but we can just be with it, let it dissolve again, and then it doesn’t matter if the feeling goes or stays, it doesn’t disturb us like it used to. And then we can begin to see the insubstantial nature of these feelings. It’s a little bit like looking through a tattered curtain when we meditate, it’s often like we’re looking through the holes in that curtain. We can clearly see that the feeling isn’t real. But then we leave our cushion, we go into daily life, and the feeling seems to be still there and continues to trip us up. It’s like we’re still seeing the fabric of the curtain, rather than the holes. But we keep going, because that’s what we need to do.

We can’t doubt what we have experienced in Zazen. We’re heading in the right direction. We have to keep meditating, but then we can go further with exploring the feelings, so that we’re not looking at them from the outside, from a mind of duality. There is ‘me’ here, watching the feeling ‘there’. We have to let go of the one who observes and the one who meditates. It’s not quite enough to sit with the feeling as we meditate, we have to be the feeling. And that’s not the same as identifying with the feeling that I was talking about earlier, because we’ve moved on from there. To be the feeling means there’s no separation between me and the feeling. So when the feeling dissolves, who am I then? And this step comes about by taking acceptance and trust to a deeper level. There is just meditation – just the experience, not chopped up, labelled, divided and separated. There’s no gap between me and the experience of meditation. And if the feelings are insubstantial, then the me that seems to exist in the middle that’s doing the feeling is also less substantial. And phrases such as, “I am afraid” or “I am angry” have less meaning, and as we keep wearing away at the self, in this way, the edges of the self blur.

Feelings can arise quite strongly still, but they don’t have to coalesce to form a ‘me’. There can be more space around the feeling to dissolve into, so that there’s an opening out – no limits or boundaries to the meditation. So the feelings dissolve, and we still keep exploring, what is this?

What I’ve been describing isn’t easy, and it’s a continual unfolding, a continuous process of being with the feelings that arise in each moment, being those feelings, letting them dissolve. And it really doesn’t work to try to shortcut or bypass the process. We can’t say, “Oh, well, I’ve seen that fear is insubstantial”, and the next time try to leap to a place where we’re not afraid. Because, as we’ve seen, we’re then imposing a concept and pushing away what has actually arisen. We’re not actually accepting the fear that is present now. Each time, we have to allow the feeling to be what it is, and to dissolve, and then there is just one flowing movement of being.