What do you think about crying, the Buddhist view about crying?
Sometimes I think about death of myself and my loved ones and I get terrified.
Is the Buddhist teaching to watch such hard experiences in life without judging?
Seems hard to apply.
Well, the Buddha's teaching in general is hard to apply.
For most of us, it's not an easy thing.
So that's a red herring.
Don't write anything off as being hard to apply.
Because impossible to apply or inapplicable would be something else.
But hard to apply doesn't apply.
Thinking about death, that's a good thing, helps us to overcome the state of being terrified.
So you say it makes you terrified, well that's a sign for you that you have clinging, you have attachment to those things that you're terrified of losing.
Because death isn't terrifying, it's something that comes to all beings, it arises, it ceases, it's inevitable.
But the fact that you're terrified about something
is that you, you, is an aversion to that thing happening, in this case losing loved ones.
So you have, you have the Buddhist teaching, piya to jaya te soko, that which is dear, from that which is dear comes sadness, or in this case crying.
The Buddhist view on crying is twofold.
In some cases it can be rapture based, so people who practice meditation can get so enthralled with the practice that they start to cry without any reason.
But in this case it sounds like crying with a reason.
which is a product of sadness and unwholesomeness.
Either way, the physical manifestation of tears is, I'm pretty sure, and I keep telling people this, so I'm hoping the science is correct, is accompanied by endorphins, which are some kind of happy drug.
They actually make you happy and they're soothing.
And so it's evolutionary, something we've evolved
to allow us to keep us from becoming paralyzed when pain or suffering comes to us.
As a result, it's quite addictive and it becomes a response to unpleasant situations.
And in a way that
is actually addictive in a way that we actually use to feel happy, to feel pleasure.
And so it's quite negative.
It can be quite negative.
Crying itself is neutral, but the cultivation of crying, where it becomes a habit, is quite negative because we become addicted to the
actually pleasant states that come from crying.
People say crying is a sad, is an unpleasant thing.
Crying is actually quite a pleasant thing for whatever reason arises because of the physical pleasure that comes from the drugs that you're feeding yourself.
So important to watch that.
When you cry, you should remind yourself crying, crying.
When you feel the pleasure of the chemicals, the endorphins or whatever they are that come from crying, you should say feeling, feeling, or happy, happy, and so on.
If you like it, you should say liking, liking, and that's all.
It's something that comes and goes.
Crying itself is not a big deal.
Sadness is a problem, and of course attachment to the crying is a problem.
These are things that should be
seen as they are and discarded as unessential.