Working with emotions

[SeekerNo1000003]

In Buddhism, is there a practice where a practitioner deliberately creates negative emotions (e.g., to work on them/understand how they arise)?

[Jesse]

In Buddhism, is there a practice where a practitioner deliberately creates negative emotions (e.g., to work on them/understand how they arise)?

If you need to deliberately generate negative emotions.. lucky you. I don't know if there is a practice for doing that, but I have done it. Just when I got tired of certain emotions arising. Anger mainly.. I would intentionally make myself angry, then sort through all the subtle things making it up. It does work but there's a Buddhist practice that's even more effective, that is seeing the transient, illusory nature of emotions, because if you can see that you don't need to work on them or understand them, they completely lose there power over you.

I'm not entirely sure if this is true of emotions besides anger, but with anger it is like a fire, it grows by feeding it, intentionally or unintentionally. So if we can focus on that simple fact and detach ourselves from the reasoning of it all(our justifications for feeling these strong emotions), we can just stop feeding the emotions, and they fade away.

[Saoshun]

The best way to clear all negative emotions to see other people things as a dream, if you are conscious how you can get mad about non existent dream characters?

[SeekerNo1000003]

Thank you for replies

[philji]

Go to your local town or city centre on a Saturday night and sit outside a bar or club... Watch what arises.

[passel]

In Mind at Ease, Traleg R. gives instruction in this, as a Vipasyana practice. The idea is that by 'artificially' generating an emotion in a controlled setting you get to gain some familiarity with working with it so that when it comes up off the cushion you will be better prepared (like training in a dojo on a soft mat before street fighting), but also so that you can get some insight into how contingent emotions are.