The emotional and the spiritual

You sometimes hear people speak as if spirituality and emotions were, or should be, two separate things, as if emotions were even a hurdle to overcome (or, euphemistically, an "opportunity"). You know, all that enslaving clinging and aversion ... I, on the contrary, think that most of what we call spirituality has an emotional motivation behind it. When I say emotional I'm not just referring to the usual five or six basic emotions (anger, sadness, joy, etc.) but also to the countlesss subtler ones, such as trust, admiration, awkwardness, expectation, and to all those intricate emotional states that can't be described with a ready-made label. As I understand it, the spiritual search is a response to disillusionment with life, longing for meaning, helplessness in the face of suffering, bereavement, existential restlessness, curiosity, etc., all which are, at least in some way, emotions. It is also concerned with achieving certain mental states, like inner peace, acceptance, reconciliation, trust, compassion, awe, adoration or bliss, that are also of an emotional nature.

Even if you're practising meditaton with the aim of developing equanimity, cultivating a mental state above emotions (or is is below?), both your commitment to the practice and the benefits you expect it will yield have a strong emotional component. (In a sense, emotion and motivation ar often aspects of the same reality. Emotion: anger; associated motivation: punching and kicking. Emotion: embarrassment; associated motivation: hiding under the table.) For instance, imagine that you get up early in the morning in time for your daily meditation session, but you're terribly sleepy and just want to snuggle back into bed. While you're considering whether to give in to temptation you hear the resounding voice of Dharma urging you to stick to your commitment to the practice, giving you an anticipatory taste of guilt. You consider the alternatives, choose to be good, sit on your cushion and sleep-meditate with a clean conscience. The emotional dimension of this simple event is quite clear. And as to the results, you're expecting the practice to lead to a happier, more fulfulling life (the stated aim of the Buddhist path is to erradicate suffering), which is obviously an emotional goal.

Emotions are what makes us human, what ultimately gives meaning to (or takes it away from) our lives. A spirituality that claims to be above the emotional, that looks down on emotional needs, sounds grotesque and self-delusional. For example:

[I]f your partner is also a Vipassana meditator, whenever passion arises you both observe it. This is neither suppression nor free licence. By observing you can easily free yourself of passion. At times a couple will still have sexual relations, but gradually they develop toward the stage in which sex has no meaning at all. This is the stage or real, natural celibacy, when not even a thought of passion arises in the mind. This celibacy gives a joy far beyond any sexual satisfaction.

(S.N. Goenka in The Art of Living, by William Hart, chapter 5)

The comment I pencilled below that paragraph some three years ago reads "BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS BOLLOCKS". I haven't changed my mind since. Natural celibacy? Celibacy giving joy? Sex having no meaning? Give me a break! Another example from Goenka:

[H]ow can I go to a baseball game or a football game and not react?

You will act! Even in a football game you will act, not react, and you will find that you are really enjoying it. A pleasure accompanied by the tension of reaction is no real pleasure. When the reaction sops, the tension desappears, and you can really start to enjoy life.

So I can jump up and down and yell hooray?

Yes, with equanimity. You jump with equanimity. [handwritten comment: "COME ON ..."]

What do I do if my team looses?

Then you smile and say "Be happy!" Be happy in every situation!

This seems to me the basic point.

Yes! [handwritten comment: "LUDICROUS"]

(ibid., chapter 7)

And I wonder, is it okay to react to your girlfriend leaving you, to the departure of a loved one, to the diagnosis of an incurable cancer, to a terrorist attack? Or do I also have to "act", smile and be happy? What a whole load of BS. Emotions are there for a reason! They are a precious gift! Unless it gets you into trouble (in the case of anger, for instance), there's nothing wrong with feeling emotions and acting (or reacting, if there is any difference) from them. And unless you are going through an emotional rough patch that demands some action to break self-defeating patterns, there's nothing wrong with letting emotions sweep over you, be they pleasurable, painful, lustful, joyous, sympathetic or otherwise. By just observing them from ten feet above the ground and never "reacting", in the hope that your passions will eventually subside and make way for the real, blissful, equanimous, enlightened you, you will turn into a self-deluded arrogant cretin! I've met many of them: people acting enlightened, ignoring, misinterpreting or fabricating their feelings, hiding behind an unconvincing and irritating persona. What a sad way of generating a greater pathology than the one you were running away from in the first place.

Emotions are what gives human existence all its depth. Without them friendship would be a habit, music would be a succesion of notes, sex would be a biological function, death would be a formality, stories would be detached factual accounts, wars would be a complication, life would be a period of time, spirituality would be a branch of philosophy. So then, emotions or no emotions?