The most harmful emotions according to Buddhism are fear, anger, guilt and dissatisfaction. All powerful emotions, which tend to be invasive and that undermine our inner balance. How to fight them? Learning to recognize them, accepting them and letting them go.
Last update: May 05, 2021
For Buddhism there are only two main emotions: love and fear. All other subjective experiences revolve around these two axes. Furthermore, the most harmful emotions are those that arise from fear.
When Buddhism speaks of the most harmful emotions, it refers to those that radically destroy the inner balance. Those that become invasive and that last more or less long.
The worst part is that for this very reason they tend to easily turn into habits. They change our way of being and have important consequences for health and social relationships.
For Buddhists, the human being is fundamentally good and serene. However, the world we live in gives rise to strong tensions which, if not managed correctly, cause harmful psychological states, dominated by fear, anger, guilt and dissatisfaction. Let's take a closer look at each of them.
Any positive action, love and compassion carries with it the seeds of happiness and true satisfaction. Any negative, aggressive and selfish action carries with it the seeds of suffering and pain.
-Buda-
According to Buddhists, fear is the root of all evil
Buddhists claim that fear leads the list of the most harmful emotions; moreover, it is an emotion that is particularly attached to the ego. The bigger the ego, the more vulnerable we are to fear. When the ego imposes itself, it is easy to end up living reality only according to our desires and needs.
Fear, in general, is a sign of the fear of failing at something or losing something that is thought of as one's own. In both cases the point of reference is the same me and her possessions.
This feeling tends to fade when we understand that the universe has its own logic and that we are not in the center. That not everything depends on our will and that we never have total control of the context and how it could evolve.
Anger, one of the most harmful emotions
Fear often gives rise to anger. When we fear something, the first instinct is to put ourselves in a position of attack or defense with respect to what we perceive as a risk or a danger.
Any animal, when it feels threatened, activates mechanisms of aggression. Buddhism says that humans are not born to be truly aggressive and for this very reason it has no fangs or claws.
Anger, in general, is an expression of frustration because what our desires do not find correspondence in what reality has to offer us. Here comes the ego again.
Without realizing it, we expect it to conform to our wishes and needs, forgetting that we are not the only ones in the world and that we are only a small part of the cosmos.
Guilt, bad company
Guilt or remorse by itself does not bring any good. They are expressions of reproach that derive from actions we have done against our principles or against our beliefs.
It is not exactly the awareness of having done harm, but the frustration for not having lived up to what we think of ourselves.
The advice is not to condemn ourselves for what has been done; rather let us try to give meaning to those actions and words that we have repented of.
To understand this mechanism it is necessary to go back to the causes that led us to act that way and consider the consequences for both ourselves and others. Therefore, we must accept that we are in a phase of evolution and that any event has something to teach us.
Dissatisfaction, one of the most harmful and useless emotions
Dissatisfaction is another way of calling suffering: we suffer because we don't accept reality. We would like to be, do, have or achieve something that we are not, that we cannot do or that we cannot achieve.
Behind any form of unhappiness - which seems to be reflected in dissatisfaction and suffering - there are desires and attachment. Learning that nothing is forever and becoming aware that the universe works as it should make us more resistant to frustration. Everything is born and everything vanishes at the right time.
Nothing lasts forever: the watchword is change. So, rarely opposing change is a success, if by success we mean permanence.
For Buddhism, the most harmful emotions are manageable in three steps. The first consists in knowing how to identify them, because only in this way will we be able to intervene. The second is acceptance; that is, do not punish ourselves for these emotions and admit that we are experiencing them.
The third is to let them go. Finally, in this one brisk walk towards growth it becomes useful to regain control over breathing.
