One Dart or Two Darts?

Another selection from the Saṃyutta Nikāya

Offered initially on January 22nd, 2024. Light revisions on April 13th, 2024.

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Good evening, readers. I was traveling last week—and this week, too—visiting still-living family and fetching items from family members who are no longer with us. For that reason, finding time to write (and even finding time to read) has been a challenge. Still, there has been some time, and I spent it with another story from the Saṃyutta Nikāya. This story’s lesson is less plain and, therefore, less evident than the story involving “moving mountains.” Yet both stories offer an unadorned picture of the human condition and capture my attention for at least that reason.

The story for this week’s post concerns, on its surface, a difference between the “uninstructed worldling” and the “instructed noble disciple.” But I’m interested in the many questions that lie below the surface. There are questions concerning pain and pleasure, aversion and attraction, mind and body, and, ultimately, the possibility of detachment or attachment to suffering. I was drawn primarily to questions about painful feelings and our reactions to them. So, that is where I’ll direct my words today.

From one perspective, Saṃyutta Nikāya 36:6 presents the Buddha addressing a group of practitioners on the necessity and non-necessity of experiencing painful feelings. No matter who we are, where we are, and how we are—the only thing that seems to matter is that we are—painful feelings arise. Some of these painful feelings we cannot help but experience; other painful feelings we need not experience, and whether we experience them appears up to us. Interestingly, both types of feelings are likened by the Buddha to arrows or darts.

The Buddha says it’s like being struck by at least one dart whenever there is a painful feeling. This one dart’s striking us is the cause of the painful feeling. Moreover, this feeling is classified by the Buddha as “a bodily one, not a mental one.” All of this is necessary, which means that, as long as we live, we cannot help but be struck by darts sometimes. Perhaps this is all that the First Noble Truth means: There is suffering in this life.

Sometimes, however, when we have been struck by a dart, because of which a painful feeling arises, “immediately afterward,” we are struck with a second dart. A painful feeling is present, yet it has been “caused by two darts.” Here, the painful feeling is not just a bodily feeling. Instead, we feel “two feelings—a bodily one and a mental one.” The Buddha continues, speaking of the “uninstructed worldling”:

While experiencing that same painful feeling, he harbors aversion toward it. When he harbors aversion toward painful feeling, the underlying tendency to aversion toward painful feeling lies behind this. While experiencing painful feeling, he seeks delight in the sensual pleasure. For what reason? Because the uninstructed worldling does not know of any escape from painful feeling other than sensual pleasure. When he seeks delight in sensual pleasure, the underlying tendency to lust for pleasant feeling lies behind this. He does not understand as it really is the origin and the passing away, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of these feelings. When he does not understand these things, the underlying tendency to ignorance in regard to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling lies behind this.

For these reasons—namely, the underlying tendencies present along with an absence of understanding—the uninstructed worldling (or we, because this story is really about us and our lives) dwell in “birth, aging, and death”; dwell in “sorrow, lamentation, and pain”; dwell, in a word, in suffering, says the Buddha.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

The introduction of a second dart makes the whole matter rather complicated. We could ask, for instance, whether the painful feeling initially mentioned by the Buddha remains a single, painful feeling or whether it fractures into something with many parts. What is the relation between the painful feeling caused by the first dart and the second dart, between the bodily painful feeling and the mental painful feeling? We could also ask for some details concerning these “underlying tendencies” and look to studies in contemporary neuroscience for information. What are such “underlying tendencies”? How are they related to each other? Is there a discernible progression from one to the next?

I’m interested in something related to the last question. The second dart invites aversion into the story, an aversion that is powerful enough to encourage escaping from the first dart’s painful feeling. The escape manifests as the pursuit (or lust, we read) for pleasant feelings.

Call this series of events “swingin’ on the spectrum.” It’s a form of dancing. At one end of this spectrum, there are excruciating feelings; at the other end, there are highly pleasurable feelings; and closer to the middle, there is space—not much, as I imagine—for feelings that cannot comfortably be called painful or pleasant. Sometimes, we use the word “neutral,” though sometimes that seems lacking, too.

For some of us, perhaps a lot of us, we swing from one part of the spectrum to the other, preferring to find ourselves on the pleasurable side as much as possible—though we’ll begrudgingly accept neutrality too—and wishing to avoid at all costs the painful side. Or should I assume that this is the case for you, too? Is this movement and its accompanying preferences present in your own life? Do you find yourself, whether often or occasionally, reacting to painful feelings by thirsting for something pleasurable to “take the edge off”? Are your general preferences as I described mine: lots of pleasure, some neutrality, and only a little pain?

I can see that I dance this dance often. Indeed, bringing awareness to this sort of behavior—swinging from one edge of the “feeling spectrum” to the other—has been at the center of my practice for some time. Only it’s not prompted by literal darts piercing my body; its cause is the interaction between my expectations and preferences and the way in which things appear with consistent and steady indifference to them.

What are they? Nothing fantastic. I want to do well at things where I invest time and energy, and I want confirmation that I am doing well in easily identifiable ways. I want the approval, care, and support of others, and I want to see and feel their approval, care, and support in immediate, apparent ways. The italics are intended to highlight that it is not so much what I want that contributes to painful feelings. It’s the way that I want them that does.

A line from the A.A. Promises comes to mind: “They [the Promises] are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.” Sometimes slowly—and sometimes not in easily identifiable, immediate, or obvious ways. And that is painful. It’s painful because there’s doubt; it’s painful because there’s uncertainty. It’s painful because it reminds me of the insubstantiality of what I am. My stories are just stories; there’s nothing to hold onto, nothing that offers sure and true security, and this life is without solid ground. It’s unsurprising that I leap with great enthusiasm to anything that promises always to be there and without fail, no matter how unlikely. All in the pursuit of a firm foundation on which to walk each day—all in the pursuit of mostly pleasure, some neutrality, and, I find myself conceding, a little pain, too. There it is again!

I wrote a few weeks ago about the Museum of Broken Relationships and that one of the museum’s creators

always imagined her museum as a “civic temple where melancholy has the right to exist,” where sadness can be understood as something other than a feeling meant to be replaced. She doesn’t like when people praise her museum’s “therapeutic value.” It insists that sadness needs curing.

What does it mean to say that “melancholy has the right to exist” and deny that “sadness needs curing”? How do we remain wherever we are on the “feelings spectrum” instead of lusting for our current position’s opposite, which need not be a pleasure and sometimes is pain? These questions are alive for me right now.

I suspect that the museum’s creator has responses to these questions. She, similar to the “instructed noble disciple”

understands as it really is the origin and the passing away, the gratification, the danger, and the escape in the case of these feelings. Since [she] understands these things, the underlying tendency to ignorance in regard to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling does not lie behind this.

For these reasons, the Buddha says, she does not dwell in “birth, aging, and death”; she does not dwell in “sorrow, lamentation, and pain”; she does not dwell in suffering.

For some additional reading, please consider:

What Is Karma?

Moving Mountains

Kobun Chino Roshi on Karma: Part Two

The translations and quotations of SN 36:6 are from “In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pāli Canon,” edited and introduced by Bhikkhu Bodhi.

The quotation concerning the Museum of Broken Relationships is from Leslie Jamison’s collection of essays, “Make It Scream, Make It Burn.”