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I'd like to drop into a core Buddhist teaching and investigate how all the wisdom that's packed into some of the

Buddha's early teachings. This one is called the Two Arrow's teaching and I think when we

investigated from a contemporary lens we start to see just some profound insights that are also very well, as we'll see, borne

out by contemporary neuropsychology and whatnot.

So first I'm going to read you the teaching

and then I'm going to piece by piece

unpack it and sort of investigate what's in there and then at the end

we'll have a meditation that's based on some of these insights. So here we go.

When a naive person and by naive the Buddha's not saying dumb or an

educated he's just meaning someone who hasn't yet developed a spiritual

practice where they've developed mindfulness and some other tools.

So when the naive person has a painful feeling, they lament with self-pity and so they feel two pains.

One is physical and the other is mental

as if they were first shot with an arrow, that's the physical pain,

and then chose to shoot themselves with a second arrow so that

they would feel even more distress.

When the naive individual has a painful feeling they immediately resist it they become obsessed with it for they're trying to get rid of it

They seek to escape the painful feelings by craving anything that makes them feel good immediately.

Why?

...