.
Emotions have a lot of bodily sensations.
There are a lot of things,
like temperature,
pleasant feelings, unpleasant feelings,
or a tight sensation.
Sometimes there are headaches,
sometimes relief,
sometimes it is pleasant, or unpleasant —
there are so many different sensations.
As soon as you see something you like,
there's a pleasant sensation in your body.
If you don't like it,
there's an unpleasant sensation in your body.
When I was young,
I'd these panic attacks.
With the panic came
a lot of unpleasant sensations.
My heart was beating faster,
and I felt tight around the throat,
things like that.
Then my father taught me emotion meditation.
Emotion meditation has been really beneficial for me.
How do we practice this emotion meditation?
Actually, it's very easy.
Just be aware of the emotion.
That becomes emotion meditation.
You don't have to do anything particular.
There's no need to control,
nor to create a good emotion,
or to stop a bad emotion.
You're just watching.
Awareness is more than an emotion,
more than a thought.
Awareness is like the sky;
it accommodates clouds,
different weathers, etc., right?
It lets them come,
lets them be,
lets them dissolved.
You can do the same thing.
All these sensations and feelings
are just like clouds.
Sometimes, there's a beautiful cloud,
sometimes an ugly cloud,
sometimes...
a storm with lightning,
or a tornado, or a hurricane.
It's okay.
The sky is still free.
They cannot change the nature of the sky, right?
When the sky becomes completely blue
with the sun shining,
the nature of the sky doesn't change.
Even though the sky becomes completely dark —
there is no sun, no moon,
it's completely covered by clouds —
the essence of the sky
cannot be changed by...
these clouds, this darkness.
The sky is always free.
It's always there.
It's pure and genuine.
Your awareness is just like that.
But normally, we don't recognize awareness,
and we're lost in thoughts,
feelings, emotions,
and sensations
like we're lost in the clouds.
So, what we do is this:
When we watch sensations,
when we watch emotions,
then automatically...
our awareness becomes bigger than emotions,
bigger than sensations.
There is space.
When you see the river, you're out of the river.
But you don't have to create space.
Space comes automatically if you watch emotions —
as a byproduct of watching.
This is important.
People say, “Oh, I've to create some distance.
I've to make space. Where's it? I can't see it.”
There is no need to do this. Just watch.
If you can't see the emotion, if, when you look at it,
the emotion disappears — great!
There's a gap.
This is open awareness.
Be with the gap.
Either case is ok.
Therefore,
now you've already made friends with emotions.
This is very good!
But, of course,
you cannot make friends
with strong or big emotions,
in the beginning, you can't.
You've to start with a small emotion first.
When I was young,
my major emotion was panic.
I couldn't watch my panic in the beginning.
I felt it was too much. It overwhelmed me.
So, I created anger.
Anger is different from panic.
I created and watched anger instead,
and I felt, “Mmm, I can do this.”
Then slowly, slowly, I'd watch the panic.