Guided, with one memory to work with. Music underneath
Life fires the first arrow. We fire the next thirty. And unlike life, we never miss.
About 10 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.
You bring up something recent that hurt, find where it sits, and watch how fast it climbs into your head and turns into a story. That is arrow two. By the time you have told four people, the body has lived it four more times. The point is not getting rid of them. It is catching yourself drawing the bow, and having a laugh about it.
Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
Somebody said something to you. It landed days ago, and you are still carrying it. You have told two friends. You have rehearsed the reply you never gave. And every time you go over it, your body lives it again.
That is not the original hurt any more. The Buddha called the first one an arrow, the kind life fires that you cannot dodge. Everything after it, you are firing yourself.
This meditation is about the firing. It will not talk you out of the hurt. The hurt gets to stay.
What happens in this meditation
We settle the body, then you bring up something recent that felt unfair and find where it sits. That is the first arrow.
Then you watch it climb into your head and turn itself into a story. Why me. How long will this go on. That is arrow two, and the rest are yours as well.
It ends on something small. When you catch yourself drawing the bow, smile at it. Then I count you back from five.
How to get the most from it
Ten minutes, sitting or lying, whichever your body prefers. Alert matters more than comfortable here, because you are being asked to notice something rather than drift off.
Do not come in with the biggest wound you own. Pick something ordinary. Somebody cut you up on the road, an email read the wrong way. The machinery is easier to see when the stakes are low, and it is the machinery you are learning.
This works better after a bad day than before one. Treat it as a repair, not a shield.
Questions people ask
Do I need to know anything about Buddhism?
No. There is one idea in it, the two arrows, and I explain it as we go rather than as doctrine.
Will this get rid of the pain?
No, and it is not trying to. Pain will keep arriving, that is the deal. What can shrink is the twenty or thirty arrows you add afterwards.
What if the thing that hurt me really was somebody else's fault?
It probably was. That changes nothing about who is doing the repeating at eleven at night. An arrow can be unfair and still be yours to put down.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
buddhism · pain · acceptance · self-compassion
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Steven Webb and welcome to a meditation that just softens some of our suffering.
So just as we settle in, it doesn't really matter how you're sitting or how you're doing this meditation.
It's just important to stay alert and aware.
And we allow our body to settle in just by giving it permission to relax.
Allow the face to relax. Allow
your shoulders to relax.
And just become aware of your breath.
Allow your breath to be natural.
You don't have to do anything with your body. Your body knows how to breathe and your body knows how
to relax. Most
of the time the body's staying on alert so it's just ready.
We don't have to be ready for anything.
Everything is fine just as it is for this moment.
And just invite your whole body to relax.
And I like what the Buddha says about suffering and pain and how he distinguishes the differences.
So
pain is like arrows that are shot at us. Whether it's life or whether we do them to ourselves or
whatever it is, one things for certain, life will cause pain.
I think it's quite unavoidable.
But the second arrow is different. Life
doesn't very often follow up with the second arrow. That's what we do when we We go, why me? And
This
should not be happening to me. How long is this going to continue?
And when we start debating it in our heads, whether we deserve it or
whether life should have done it to us or whether we've already had enough suffering, that's when we start
doing it to ourselves.
And then eventually we're just beating ourselves up over it.
So what we're going to do is just bring to mind a moment that life felt a bit unfair when
we were hurt recently and
just observe it fully.
Where is it to in the body?
How did it feel?
Was it attention? Was it a heaviness
And just rest your awareness there
with just a bit of curiosity. And
recognise that this pain is the first arrow.
And recognise that when
you bring your attention to it, how much it wants to move to your head and become a story.
It wants to make sense of it. That's what the mind does. It wants to make sense of it. How
did it happen? Why did it happen? Can I not let it happen again?
And what we might notice that when we add this story to it,
we're not in control of the first arrow is very often. But we're very much in control of the second
arrow and the third. And
we're definitely in control of the fifth and sixth. It's
if someone says something to you in the street that isn't very nice will
cut you up in the car.
And later that day you're phoning everybody and telling everybody, well your body is reliving that pain.
Sometimes we have to for, to
do a report or something to make sense of it. But when we continue to do that, we continue to
suffer.
The body reacts every time.
It's okay for the body to react.
Especially to the first, maybe even the second arrow.
It's not okay to keep doing it week in and week out.
Because we become the heroes of our own story. No matter how many arrows are thrown at us, we're battling
through and we're doing okay. Not
realising we're the ones causing them.
So if we settle back into our breath now.
Breathing in calm. Breathing out relax
And just recognise a time when
someone says something not very nice to you.
And you took it away and you kept repeating it.
And recognise that...
Every time you repeated it, it just made things worse. We
build up on it We make it a story.
And very often those stories are not even true.
And this meditation is not to fix all the arrows, not to get rid of them is to recognise in
future when
We do get hurt and it is painful
that we step in and recognise that we may be doing the next 10, 20, 30 arrows to ourselves.
Ah,
I did that one. And you smile and just move on.
It's a wonderful bit of wisdom and courage just to be able to smile and laugh
because that's what we need sometimes in our suffering. We need a bit of humour.
We need a bit of self-reflection and recognise that
We sometimes do it to ourselves as well.
In a moment, I'm going to come back from five and we're going to bring our awareness back to the
room but I want you to take something back with you.
We cannot do this in one simple go.
Life will keep throwing arrows.
Some will land and some will be more painful than others. But
we don't have to keep adding to them.
So yeah,
It's a nice little wisdom to have in our back pocket when we're suffering. To
soften that suffering just a little bit.
So bring your awareness to your breath.
Five. Just bring your awareness to the room.
Four. Just gently move your arms and move your fingers and toes. Wiggle them maybe. Three.
Gently open your eyes. Two. Take a deeper breath. And one. Just smile that
How many times that we've thrown our own arrows? And
we're a pretty good shot. That's one thing we can say about our own arrows. They tend to land every
single time. And life's arrows don't always land, but ours do.
Thank you for sitting with me today and thank you for reducing your suffering a little. Remember all these
meditations are brought to you completely free with no adverts whatsoever either on Apple or Spotify
or any platform you prefer to listen to them. I
also have another podcast Stillness in the Storms where I do a little more talking and less meditation but it
helps you through difficult times. There's a link in the show notes or just head over to
StevenWebb.uk. It's got all my links there and a way that you can support this podcast to keep it
free. Take care and here's to a little less suffering in your life.
