The feelings we’d rather not have

There are three main categories of human response that keep us from fully realizing our potential, and there are three counter-balancing categories that lead us towards liberation. Lobha, dosa, and moha or greed, hatred and delusion, are the three unwholesome roots, and their opposites are the three wholesome roots, which could be called generosity, mettā, and wisdom. The more we can free ourselves from the unwholesome roots, the more quickly we will move in the direction of freedom from suffering. 

The category we call hatred incorporates a wide range of reactions or responses to life’s tribulations, from mild annoyance or aversion to full-blown rage. Some teachers have said that dosa not only encompasses anger and hatred, but is also closely related to fear and sadness. 

The thing these feelings have in common is that they are based on a negative response to our experience; whatever it is, we don’t want it. There’s a quality of resistance to things as they are, a denial of unpleasant reality. We compare our experience to an ideal and we feel “It shouldn’t be this way!” This movement of the mind is the source of an unimaginably large amount of suffering. 

The website https://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/abhidhamma-in-daily-life/d/doc2711.html also nominates regret or worry, envy, and stinginess as states arising from dosa. However, there are ways we can respond productively to these feelings that come up for all of us. From the article:

We have not eradicated dosa, but when dosa appears, we can be mindful of its characteristic in order to know it as a type of [mental experience], arising because of conditions. When there is no mindfulness of dosa when it appears, dosa seems to last and we take it for self; neither do we notice other [mental and physical experiences] presenting themselves. Through mindfulness of [mental and physical experiences] which present themselves one at a time, we will learn that there are different characteristics of [mental] and [physical] experiences, none of which stays; and we will also know the characteristic of dosa as only a type of [mental experience], not self.

So, we can direct our mindfulness to dosa itself, to our own experience of negativity. Instead of pushing it away, we can apply a spirit of acceptance and investigation. If our attention is directed to this experience happening in real time, we can come to know its characteristics and its boundaries. What are the predominant sensations in our body? What is the rhythm of our breathing? Are the energies in our body moving or changing?  What words are appearing in our mind? What we invariably find is that there is a solid, maybe exaggerated, feeling of ME at the base of the changing physical and mental experience. If we see these processes clearly enough, we may taste a new kind of freedom.