Summary

Many people believe that emotions have inherent meaning in leading one’s life. Buddhists, however, believe that the rising and ebbing of emotions are part of a natural cycle in life and should be seen as such. Wright wonders that though this belief may be helpful in dealing with negative emotions, would it actually be true?

Imagine that all organisms, not just humans, definitively have feelings. According to behavioral science, feelings come in two types— positive and negative. The positive ones are meant to encourage a behavior to approach, while the negative ones guide organisms to avoid a behavior. Simply put, these are evolved, automatic judgments.

Though these judgments were evolved to help an organism, the present environment is not identical to the ones in the past. Thus, some positive urges to approach and some negative urges to avoid could be...