emotional dharma

I think may of us are brought up to believe that there is a clear distinction between the intellect and the emotions. To be intellectual, and to lead with the intellect in some circles is seen as superior to a life lead by the emotions. Intellect is some how seen as solid, safe, secure, whereas emotions are shaky, transient ans unreliable indicators of truth. You don’t understand things through the emotions. This is our cultural inheritance (for most of us). There are deep roots in out Western traditions which upholds these notions. Yes, admittedly and happily this is changing.

In Buddhism, there is no such distinction between the intellectual and the emotional life. Without going into laborious detail, Buddhism divides the world into very discreet categories of mind and matter (nama and rupa) aligned with the six sense consciousnesses. In the mind category there are 51 mental factors which color whichever of sense consciousness is prevalent in any given moment. I won’t go on with this analysis, which does get very abstruse . The point is that there is no such distinction as intellect vs emotion in Buddhism. There isn’t even a word for emotions, there is only term citta,which is used for both mind and heart. Now we begin to see why an exploration of emotions from a Buddhist perspective is such a rich undertaking–we have to start from scrath and define our terms!