AWARENESS AND EMOTION
Student: You said in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism that vipashyana or awareness works more with the emotions. Could you explain that?
Chogyam Trungpa: The awareness of what's around you includes the emotions. You can't have emotions without being aware of something. If you hate somebody, if you dislike them intensely, you are not only disliking that person, but your dislike includes the environment, that black cloud that the person has created around you. So actually, a sense of openness is there. That's how the emotions work. You don't try to destroy, subjugate or suppress your emotions at this level of practice. You are in tune with the style of the emotions that are taking place. So you have the antidote. The emotions and your practice go hand in hand, side by side. Normally, we feel undermined by our emotions, and we feel bewildered by them. But once you have a sense of being in contact with the emotions, from that sense of familiarity, a sense of openness takes place....You might think that you have a problem with the emotions and I as a teacher will present you with a technique to control yourself. But instead we should give people some sense of experience and how awareness works with the general environment, which is what emotions are, basically.
From "Meditation: The Way of the Buddha," Talk Four, Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado, July 1 1974. Edited from an unpublished transcript.
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