"There’s a passage where the Buddha describes how a wise person and a foolish person differ in the way they react to pain. They both feel pain. ... But they react in a different way. The foolish person, when struck by a pain, reacts in a way that adds more pain. The classic analogy is of being shot by one arrow and then turning around to shoot yourself with another arrow ...
"What this means is that when you find yourself suffering over something, you’ve got to look at which arrows are coming from outside and which ones are the ones you’re shooting. This comes down to a fairly abstract principle that the Buddha mentions in another passage—that when you experience a feeling of any sort, pleasant or painful, part of it is just a potential for the feeling coming from your past karma; the rest is the way you actualize that potential with your present intentions, your present karma. You fabricate the potential into an actual feeling of pleasure or pain.
"... This principle applies to issues outside as well, such as your relations with other people. How many arrows do they shoot you with, and how many times do you shoot yourself with your whole quiver of arrows? They may say one thing that gets you upset. They say it once, but then you say it over and over and over in your mind. If you could fire arrows in rapid succession with the speed with which you can think these harmful thoughts, you’d be a great archer."
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