The Second Arrow

“There is a revealing story that tells how the Buddha taught one of his followers a technique for fighting the inevitable dukkha that appears in our lives.
“If a person is walking through the forest and is shot by an arrow, is it painful?” asked the master.
“Of course,” answered his follower.
“And if he is then shot by a second arrow, is it even more painful?” the Buddha continued.
“Of course, much more than the first.”
“The first arrow represents the bad things that happen to us, which we cannot avoid,” the Buddha concluded. “Those things over which we have no control. But we are the ones who shoot the second arrow, inflicting unnecessary damage on ourselves.”
The second arrow is what, in modern times, has been termed meta-emotion: what we feel about what we have felt.”

Excerpt From: Héctor García. “The Book of Ichigo Ichie.”