The Second Arrow

The Buddha is said to have asked his students:

"If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?"

"It is, sir."

"And if the person is struck by a second arrow in the same place — is that more painful?"

"Yes, sir, much more."

"In life," the Buddha said, "we cannot always avoid being struck by the first arrow. Pain visits everyone. But the second arrow — that one we shoot ourselves."

What the second arrow is

The first arrow is the thing that happens. You stub your toe. A friend cancels. The flight is delayed. A loved one says something thoughtless. The body gets sick. The job ends.

The second arrow is what we do next.

The second arrow is the story we tell about the thing that happened. The story that this delay is unfair. The story that this friend doesn't really care. The story that we are not the kind of person whose body cooperates with their plans. The story that this layoff means we are unworthy.

The first arrow hurts for a few minutes. The second arrow can hurt for years.

The Buddha was not saying that the first arrow doesn't matter, or that pain isn't real. He was saying that most of our suffering is the second arrow, and that the second arrow is, often, the one we have some choice about.

A small practice

The next time something goes wrong today — and something will — see if you can notice the moment between the first arrow and the second.

The first arrow: the email is rude. That hurts a little. (First arrow.)

The second arrow, on its way: They've always had a problem with me. This is going to come up in the meeting Friday. Maybe I should send a sharp reply. Maybe I should escalate this. (Second arrow, third arrow, fourth arrow.)

You will not always be able to stop the second arrow. But sometimes you can notice it. Just noticing — ah, here is the second arrow — gives you a small space between the seeing and the acting.

In that space, sometimes, you can choose not to draw the bow.

What this is not

It is not denial. The first arrow is real. The pain is real. The Buddha never said don't feel the pain. He said: don't multiply it by feeding it stories that aren't yet true.

A practice for many years.

I shoot myself with second arrows still, more often than I would admit. The progress is not in eliminating them. The progress is in noticing them faster.

Last week's second arrow took me three days to put down. Today's took an hour. Maybe tomorrow's will take ten minutes.

That is the work.