Emotional Diversity and Buddhist Practice

Sensei John Pulleyn explores how, contrary to our culture’s “many ways of telling us to banish negative emotions from our lives,” being open to a variety of emotions, including negative ones, leads to better health and decision-making. And this is a feature of Buddhist practice — moving in the direction of being okay with things as they are, being connected to this moment, out of our manipulative mind. Sensei’s primary source is an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast: Emotions 2.0: What’s Better than Being Happy? with psychologist Jordi Quoidbach and host Shankar Vedantam.  He concludes with insights from Pema Chödrön on self-compassion and mindfulness.