The destructive emotions are often the most frequent cause of failure of the athletes. At this regard I want to report a talk between one of the greatest scholars of emotions, Paul Ekman and the Dalai Lama. Everyone can draw their own teaching.
The Dalai Lama asked for clarification: “I think there are two things here. One is the process of the emergence of emotion, the other the feeling of emotion. You are suggesting that we become aware of both only in retrospect?”
“No,” said Paul, “we become aware when the excitement has already appeared. It focuses and directs attention once it has begun, but not during the process that generates it. For better or for worse our lives would be very different if in fact we judge knowingly, becoming responsible for the onset of emotion. But it seems that the excitement happen to us. I do not choose to have an emotion, to become frightened or angry. Suddenly I’m angry. I’m usually able to understand what someone has done to create that emotion in me, but I’m not aware of the process that assesses, for example, the action of Dan that made me angry. It’s a key issue for the Western understanding of emotions: the starting point, a crucial process, it is something we can only speculate because we do not know. We become aware only when we’re in the excitement. at the beginning it’s not us that we command. ”
“I wonder,” said the Dalai Lama “if there is perhaps a similar situation in meditation practice, where it’s grown the introspective ability to monitor our own mental states … In developing this capacity for introspection, there is an initial phase in which it does not particularly refined, so we can grasp the presence of excitement or weakness only after it’s arisen. However, penetrating deeper into this practice and cultivating with more and more attention, even when we can understand the excitement or weakness are going to occur. ”
Basically these are the useful to take home for us:
- The emotions suddenly appear and direct attention.
- Meditation develops self-awareness and allows us to react to the emotion as soon as it’s harmful to manifest.
- The focus is thus kept on the important aspects of the performance.
