Have you ever noticed that when something hurts, you sometimes end up hurting yourself a little more?

Perhaps your back aches, and before long you are telling yourself that you're weak. Perhaps you feel overwhelmed, and within moments the thought arrives that everyone else seems to cope, so there must be something wrong with you. Even a small mistake can quickly become proof that you are not enough.

This painful pattern is exactly what an ancient Buddhist teaching, the parable of the two arrows, describes so clearly.

The teaching of the two arrows

In the Sallatha Sutta, the Buddha explains that when we meet pain, it is as if we have been struck by an arrow. This first arrow is unavoidable. It might be physical pain, a loss, a disappointment, or simply the feeling that life has become too much to hold. Nobody escapes the first arrow, because it is part of being human.

Yet so often, we do something extra. We pick up a second arrow and shoot it into ourselves. The second arrow is the story we tell about our pain: that we should be coping better, that we are being self-pitying, or that our struggle means there is something wrong with us.

The first arrow comes uninvited. The second arrow is the one we make ourselves, and it is often the one that wounds us most deeply.

Softening the resistance

We cannot always change the pain. A sore body may stay sore, and a difficult situation may remain difficult. What we can do is soften our resistance to it, letting go a little of the arguing, the judging and the bracing against what is already here. As that resistance softens, our suffering often begins to ease, even if the pain itself remains.

There is one more gentle truth here. If you notice that you have already fired a second arrow today, or even a hundred of them, please don't add another by criticising yourself for it. We are not trying to become perfect. We are simply learning to meet ourselves with a little more kindness.

Soften, Soothe, Allow

In this week's Circles of Practice, we explored this teaching through Soften, Soothe, Allow, a Mindful Self-Compassion practice for being with difficult feelings in the body.

First, we soften. We gently locate where the difficulty lives in the body and allow the muscles around it to soften, like warm water softening hard ground. We are not trying to make the feeling disappear, only to stop bracing against it.

Then, we soothe. We place a hand over the place that hurts and offer ourselves the kind of words we would offer a dear friend, such as "Oh sweetheart, this is hard." When a harsh story arrives, we simply notice it as a second arrow, and return to the warmth of our hand and our breath.

Finally, we allow. We let the feeling be here, just as it is, coming and going like a visitor. We don't have to fix it. We only have to stay with it, kindly.

Practise with me

If you have been carrying pain, overwhelm or a harsh inner voice recently, I warmly invite you to join me for this practice. You don't need to get it right. Simply come as you are, rest a hand wherever feels comforting, and give yourself permission to put down the bow for a while.

[Watch the Second Arrow guided self-compassion meditation here – VA: insert YouTube link]

May you be gentle with yourself today.

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