The Ocean of Dharma quote for this week -- Rinpoche makes a very useful distinction between the energy of an emotion and when that emotion becomes conflicted through attachment to ego. If we can avoid the attachment element, emotions as energy will come and go; but as soon as they get caught in the web of ego needs, we've bitten the hook.
CONFLICTING EMOTIONS
Ego presents a twofold barrier: conflicting emotions and primitive beliefs about reality. You might call conflicting emotions anti-shunyata, anti-emptiness, because they do not allow or experience any space or lubrication to develop things. They are solid and definite. It is like the analogy of the pig, the symbol of ignorance, which just follows its nose and never sees any direction of any kind at all. It just keeps following , constantly guided by impulse. And whatever comes in front of its nose, it just consumes it and looks for the next one....In this case, we are talking about emotions as primitive emotions. Take the example of anger, for instance. There is the primitive, conflicted quality of anger and there is also the energetic quality of the anger, which is quite different. Conflicting emotions are those that are purely trying to secure ego's aim and object, to fulfill ego's demand. They are based on constantly looking for security, maintaining the identity of "I am." Conflicting emotions also contain energy, which is the compassionate nature, the basic warmth and basic creative process. But somehow in that situation of primitive emotions, there is very little generosity of letting energy function by itself.
~ From "Fruition," in Glimpses of Shuntaya, page 53.
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