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The Second Arrow (Episode 162)
185 Plays2 hours ago
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. In this episode, we explore a powerful Buddhist concept that mirrors Stoic wisdom: the Second Arrow. The first arrow is the pain life throws at us - rejection, loss, failure. The second arrow? That's the one we shoot at ourselves through our reactions, stories, and judgments.
Michael Tremblay discusses the Buddhist parable of the second arrow and what it means for practicing Stoics.
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Transcript
Introduction to Buddhism's Second Arrow
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Michael Trombley, and I'll be doing a short solo episode here on a concept from Buddhism called the second arrow.
00:00:14
Speaker
ah The reason
Conversation with Noah Rashida on the Second Arrow
00:00:15
Speaker
I wanted to to focus on this in this episode was I had a recent conversation with Noah Rashida. He's the host of the secular Buddhism podcast. It was a great conversation. And he raised this idea in Buddhism of what's called the second arrow.
Comparing the Second Arrow to Stoic Ideas
00:00:31
Speaker
And it struck me as something so similar to stoicism, so similar to to to many stoic ideas that I wanted to spend more time digging into it, talking about the idea and how it compares to what the stoics have to say about it.
00:00:44
Speaker
And so I have three goals for this episode. I want to explore a bit of Buddhism that I think is valuable and will be helpful for listeners. Second, I want to show the connections between Stoicism and Buddhism. I'm always fascinated when separate traditions seem to come upon something objectively true about the world and describe it in their own way with their own language. And so I think both Stoicism and Buddhism hit on this idea of the second arrow. They just use different language to talk about it.
00:01:13
Speaker
And third, I wanna better understand this idea from a Stoic perspective. And so talk about what the what the Buddhists would have to say about it, but then link that back to how the Stoics address it.
Understanding the Second Arrow: Personal Reactions and Suffering
00:01:25
Speaker
I also wanna caveat before we jump into it that I'm not a Buddhist expert. So I'm comfortable with Stoicism, but I don't have that same level of expertise with Buddhism. So I may get things wrong here or over interpret things to be more similar to Stoicism than they are in reality. but that's That's part of it. It's part of whenever you try to um step outside your comfort zone a bit. So um looking forward to it and and hope you enjoy.
00:01:50
Speaker
So what is the second arrow? What is that idea in Buddhism? Well, it's an idea about our participation and suffering. The idea that our suffering depends, at least in part, on the stories we tell ourselves. So this idea was introduced by the Buddha, but Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh describes it as follows. He says, if an arrow hits you,
00:02:18
Speaker
you will feel pain in that part of your body where the arrow hit.
First Arrow vs. Second Arrow: Pain and Reaction
00:02:23
Speaker
And then if a second arrow comes and strikes exactly at the same spot, the pain will not be only double, it will become at least 10 times more intense. The unwelcome things that sometimes happen in life, being rejected, losing a valuable object, failing to test, getting injured in an accident, are analogous to the first arrow. They cause some pain.
00:02:45
Speaker
The second arrow fired by our own selves is our reaction, our storyline, and our anxiety. All these things magnify the suffering.
00:02:57
Speaker
So that's the idea of the second arrow. Such a stoic idea immediately stood out to me. And this is the idea that there are things that are outside of our control, to to use some stoic language here, that happen to us. And those things hurt. Sometimes and sometimes they're unavoidable. right They're just a part of life. They're outside our sphere of control.
00:03:19
Speaker
But there is this second order of suffering that we can experience where we react to that first first experience, that failing of a test, that that experiencing rejection, that getting injured. And we we add a reaction to that. We add a storyline. We pile upon that, our own anxiety. And so we magnify the pain. And so what could have been one arrow becomes two arrows.
00:03:44
Speaker
um And as Titch points out, the pain of that second arrow is not not only double but sometimes up to 10 times more painful because it's already hitting a sensitive spot. And so if you've been studying stoicism for a while, that might sound really familiar, but I wanted to compare it to some stoic quotes that I think describe the exact same phenomenon.
Seneca and the Imagination's Role in Suffering
00:04:05
Speaker
So in Seneca, in his letters on ethics, letter 13, Seneca says, we are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.
00:04:20
Speaker
And when I take from that Seneca quote is I take the same idea, which is to say when Seneca says we're more, when we suffer more in imagination than reality, what Seneca means is we hurt ourselves more with these second arrows than we experienced first arrows. We're so afraid of these first arrows. We're so worried about them that we experience a number of second arrows. ah We experience a number of.
00:04:45
Speaker
terrible experiences anxiety concern worry That comes from our own stories comes from our own imagination. It doesn't necessarily reflect reality Another line here from stoicism that I think captures this idea comes from Epictetus He says in handbook five.
Epictetus on Judgments and Disturbances
00:05:04
Speaker
It isn't the things themselves that disturb people But the judgments they form about them And that again is, is I think this is maybe where stoicism takes this idea of the second arrow and goes a bit further. If Seneca, if, excuse me, if stoicism deviates with Buddhism at all here, they go so far as to say, well, maybe these first arrows don't even hurt us at all unless we let the second arrow in. Unless we add that story, we add that narrative, we add that ah reaction to it.
00:05:42
Speaker
And that's a that's ah very famous hard line that Epictetus takes, but that's his point. And I think it's hitting on the same idea here. Another quote from Epictetus, this is Discourses 1.1, the very start of his Discourses. He says, I must die, but must I die bawling? And that points to the same idea. I must die. That's the first arrow. That's the thing that's going to happen to us that is outside our control. We have nothing to do about it.
00:06:12
Speaker
But must I die bawling? He asks as kind of a rhetorical question. The answer is no, i I don't have to die bawling. No, I don't have to be emotionally destroyed by my own death. No, I don't have to be overcome with anxiety around my own death. That is the second arrow. That is the reaction. That is the storyline. And that's a that's a fun division there. I you must die. You must feel that first arrow, but you don't have to die bawling. You don't have to experience that second arrow.
Marcus Aurelius on Removing Judgments
00:06:44
Speaker
One last quote from the Stoics that I think captures this idea of the of the two arrows comes from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. This is book 12, passage 22. Marcus says, that all is as thinking makes it so, and you control your thinking. So remove your judgments whenever you wish and then there is calm, as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of a waveless bay.
00:07:14
Speaker
And again, just like Seneca, just like Epictetus, Marcus is hitting this idea that everything that is comes about, everything that we experience inside of our minds comes about because of the way we think about it. um And we control our thinking. So if we remove our judgments, if we remove our reactions, our storylines, our anxiety,
00:07:36
Speaker
we remove that second arrow. And so we experience smooth water, a waveless bay, that's the metaphor, but really a smooth mind. ah We don't experience the anxiety we've come to expect from these reactions.
00:07:50
Speaker
So I hope it's clear from those that I really do think the Stoics are hitting it on this same idea here. They're both coming, the Buddhists and the Stoics, to the same reaction from different perspectives. Which is to say objectively, there are two things when you experience an event. There is the objective event itself.
00:08:10
Speaker
And then there is the storyline we tell about
Different Perspectives: Buddhists and Stoics
00:08:12
Speaker
it. There is our reaction to it. And often our reaction is worse. It causes us more suffering than the first thing. That's that's point number one. That's Seneca's points about we suffer more in imagination than reality. Another point here is that sometimes that first arrow doesn't have to hurt us at all.
00:08:30
Speaker
um So, you know, maybe depending on how stoic you are, how Buddhist you are, look, there's, I'm not going to say um sometimes those first arrows don't matter, but but some of them do, right? If somebody um insults you or if you perceive an insult to have occurred,
00:08:47
Speaker
that's not necessarily a first arrow at all sometimes it's only second arrow if you take offense to it sometimes you know that's that that doesn't have to be something that hurts on its own it's not like when we stub our toe when we stub our toe look there look there's pain that is a first arrow and then if we're so upset with ourselves oh so stupid for stubbing my toe or oh we make up the story why does this always happen to me poor me um then we've added a second arrow on top of a first but sometimes That first is just that first one doesn't even exist. It doesn't even have to be an original pain. um That's what I think Epictetus is getting at when he says, you know, it's not the things themselves that disturb us, but the judgments we form about them.
00:09:28
Speaker
And so so so that's that's a such a crucial idea that both the Stoics and the Buddhists are getting at.
Do Stoics Overlook First Arrow Pain?
00:09:36
Speaker
One thing I wanted to call attention to as well is that I think the Buddhist emphasis though has some upsides that the Stoics maybe miss or I really like some one of the ways that the Buddhists focus with describing this as a second arrow.
00:09:53
Speaker
um I think one thing the Buddhist view does best is talking about the second arrow is that It recognizes the first impression as an arrow and as something that is painful or can be painful um I think sometimes that stoic line about you know, it's not things themselves that disturb people but the judgments they form out them sometimes that it makes it seem like if we if we're suffering at all we're failing as stoics and Um, you know, if, if, if somebody rejects me and that hurts me, um, I've, I've failed in some way, even in that first response, even in that first reaction. And in one sense, the Stoics do think that right. They do think that the perfect person, the sage wouldn't experience that first pain of rejection because they wouldn't have, um, you know, gotten their hopes up on something outside of their control like that.
00:10:50
Speaker
But I think what the but the Buddhist idea does a really good, does a good job of changing the emphasis is that you know we're not sages, we're not enlightened, we're not the Buddha, we're not the sage in the Stoic language. And so at our current level of progress as just normal people, that first arrow is going to be painful. When somebody insults us, we are going to feel that first arrow of pain We are going to feel that first ah ah first degree of suffering if someone rejects us. If we lose an object we care about, we will hurt. Your job then becomes not to add to that pain.
00:11:32
Speaker
your job as Seneca puts it is not to you know not to suffer an imagination just to say not suffer unnecessarily but if that's our job that doesn't trivialize the first pain that first pain still stands it still matters and I think that framing it's a bit more of a It's a bit more of a palatable framing than the stoic view, than Epictetus's hardline view. um I think it's a better way of thinking about things for dealing with hard moments. I think of things like sickness, the death of a loved one, real real failure in life. you know When you really fail a goal, you put yourself all in on.
00:12:14
Speaker
um It's okay for those first things to be an arrow. It's okay for them to hurt um Just don't make it hurt more than is needed and sometimes when we're practicing stoicism We don't forgive ourselves for that first
Self-Compassion and the Second Arrow
00:12:31
Speaker
arrow. We expect that first arrow not to hurt and I don't think that's realistic. I don't think that is it's certainly that may be a long-term goal, but it's not a goal in the moment um And that's another thing that I think the Buddhists really get right or understand that the Stoics sometimes miss is that sometimes we can add that second arrow just by judging ourselves. So if
00:12:59
Speaker
That second arrow doesn't have to come from anxiety or catastrophizing the external event. we can We can add an arrow just by being frustrated with ourselves, for experiencing something, frustrated with ourselves for not being able to get over something or having an emotional reaction in the first place.
00:13:16
Speaker
And I think that is just as dangerous. ah It is just as dangerous as the other kinds of mistakes we can make of Stoics of getting our hopes up about things outside of our control or valuing things external to us, valuing things that are indifference. We we want to avoid making those kinds of mental mistakes, but the pain of of anger or frustration with our with experiencing that first arrow, that can sometimes be an even worse second arrow. And so, you know, in in my own life, I've never gotten past any anxiety I've felt by hating my anxiety. I've never gotten past
00:14:01
Speaker
my anger by being angry about being angry. I've
Mindfulness and Managing Reactions
00:14:06
Speaker
tackled it by being more present and mindful in the moment. I've tackled it by accepting, and accepting as the Stoics would say, the things that are outside of our control. And I really do think our first reactions to things are outside of our control in the sense that in the moment we couldn't be different than when we are, right? It's it's in our control to change our character long-term, develop ourselves long-term.
00:14:30
Speaker
But in the moment that reaction can't be different than it is and so I think we have this responsibility to ourselves to Accept that there are first arrows in this world even as stoics things that will hurt us But certainly ah at our current level of progress, maybe not for the sage may not for Socrates um maybe not from for for ah the Buddha but for us there are first arrows that will hurt us and And so our job then becomes not to to to accept those and to not add to them unnecessarily, but to also not fight against the suffering and pain that they bring, right? If you get rejected or rejection hurts, now don't add another layer to that, which is to say, don't catastrophize and say your life is over, but also don't hate, be frustrated with yourself or or hate yourself for feeling that first arrow.
00:15:23
Speaker
Those are both examples of second arrows, and that's something I think the the Buddhists really call attention to and ah in a way that I really like, and point us instead to kind of mindfulness of just, you know, ride that wave of the first pain, ride that wave of the first arrow. let's Let's not add anything to it. And I think that's an important idea that the Stoics sometimes fail to emphasize.
00:15:46
Speaker
And that's really what I wanted to hit on today. I wanted to hit on that idea of the second arrow. And I wanted to cover how I think that idea is also captured in stoicism. The Stoics recognize this idea that look, we we face an impression and it's a big part of our job when we face that impression to not add a second arrow, not add pain that was unnecessary, that was of our own creation.
00:16:11
Speaker
But I think what the Buddhists get right is they give they give a little bit more space for that first arrow being painful. They have a little bit more fit space for accepting the pain of that first arrow because a large part of our pain from the second one, again, as I was saying, can come from either catastrophizing, but also from that self judgment. And so working on that goal of being mindful, if your goal is to not experience that second arrow practice, just being mindful, which means being present and not passing judgment.
00:16:43
Speaker
And so with that's that's what I wanted to hit on. I think it's a really cool idea, one that I'm focusing on putting into practice. ah Let me know what you think. And I'm gonna close off with that passage again on the second arrow. So one more time.
00:17:01
Speaker
If an arrow hits you, you will feel pain in that part of your body where the arrow hit. And then if a second arrow comes and strikes exactly at the same spot, the pain will not only double, it will become at least 10 times more intense. The unwelcome
Conclusion: Applying the Second Arrow Concept
00:17:18
Speaker
things that sometimes happen in life, being rejected, losing a valuable object, failing to test, getting injured in an accident, are analogous to the first arrow. They cause some pain,
00:17:31
Speaker
The second arrow fired by our own selves is our reaction, our storyline and our anxiety. All these things magnify the suffering. So again, that's that that's the idea of the second arrow in in Buddhism and something I think any practicing Stoic or person looking to live better can incorporate into their own life.
00:17:56
Speaker
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Podcast Ratings & Feedback Info
00:18:04
Speaker
to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become.
00:18:14
Speaker
more stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyre.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.