Fire Your Ninja Assassin

Despite all of the teachings to the contrary, it still seems like most of us, even those of us with committed Dharma practices, still fall into the trap of trying to avoid, dissolve or destroy difficult emotions. It's not so much that we want to go to war with our own thoughts and emotions, it's more like we want to hire a ninja assassin to take our difficult thoughts in the middle of the night, to quietly slit the throat of our feelings when no one is watching.Keeping the impossibility of destroying any thoughts or emotions well in mind, I'm really looking forward to discussing Buddhist approaches to working with major emotions: Fear and Anxiety, Desire, Anger, Grief and Sadness, Pride and Arrogance over the next six weeks in the Dealing with Emotions course.I hope you can join, it's always a great group whether we meet online or in person tonight 7pm in the East Village.Either way, my thought for this week is that if you sit down to meditate, Try to notice the stealth ways that you attempt to destroy your thoughts and emotions or make them go away. When you notice it, I encourage you to fire your ninja assassin, or at least give him the morning off.