The Second Arrow
The Second Arrow
A teaching for those living with chronic illness and pain
A Moment We All Know
Imagine: morning comes, you are waking up, and your body already hurts. You haven’t even gotten out of bed yet and you already feel tired. You are thinking, “How am I going to get through another day feeling like this?”
This is almost universal among people living with chronic conditions. Most of us have been here — maybe this morning.
The Second Arrow Teaching
Some aspects of suffering are inevitable, others are not. Meaning, a great deal of our suffering are merely thoughts created by our minds. Suffering is actually quite complex, existing as layers of experience. The Buddha pointed out two significant aspects — the first being initial pain and suffering, that arises from physical, mental, or emotional injury; and a secondary suffering, that arises as a reaction to that injury, which compounds it and makes it worse. However, this secondary suffering is unique, arising purely from the mind in the form of our reaction to the initial suffering, and includes clinging to past suffering and fear of future suffering. This secondary suffering often exists as a story we create about our injury. It’s said that when we’re injured, we suffer twice: once from the actual injury, and secondly through our mental projection of the event. Meaning, that through imagining, worrying, grasping at, anticipating, and reliving the injury, we compound it, thereby deepening, prolonging, and exaggerating our suffering.
The Buddha compared these two types of suffering to being shot by two arrows. The first arrow symbolizes the unavoidable pain and suffering that arises from physical, mental, or emotional injury — which is suffering we can’t control. The second arrow symbolizes the additional suffering we create ourselves through our reaction to the pain of the first arrow — our resistance, rumination, mental anguish, worry, and catastrophizing. By training our minds, we can recognize and avoid the unnecessary secondary suffering caused by our reactions, and with training, learn how to significantly limit the suffering of the initial injury.
— Venerable Tarpa, from his class on Skillful Living
Why the Second Arrow Hurts
Most of us know this in our bodies, even if we’ve never had words for it.
Think about a bad pain day. The pain itself is hard, yes. But often what makes it unbearable isn’t the sensation — it’s everything wrapped around it. The fear that it will never end. The frustration that we’re missing another day. The grief for the life we thought we’d be living. The exhaustion of fighting our own body.
That’s the second arrow. And it lands in the same wound.
There’s something almost cruel about how this works. The mind, trying to protect us — trying to solve the pain, trying to prepare for what’s next — actually deepens the suffering it’s trying to escape. We rehearse the pain. We argue with it. We brace against it. And the bracing itself hurts.
What pain researchers and contemplatives both keep finding is the same thing: the physical sensation is one layer. What we do with it — mentally, emotionally — is another. And that second layer is often where most of the suffering lives.
This isn’t a failure on our part. It’s just how minds work. But it does mean there’s something here we can work with.
What the Second Arrow Is Not
This teaching can be misheard. And people living with chronic illness have often been misheard their whole lives — told their pain is exaggerated, or psychological, or something they could fix if they just tried harder. So it’s worth saying clearly what this teaching is not.
This is not saying your pain is in your head. The first arrow is real. The disease is real. The symptoms are real.
This is not saying you’re causing your own suffering through weakness, or wrong thinking, or not being spiritual enough. None of us chose the second arrow. We learned it — usually young, usually for good reasons. Most of us have been shooting it for decades before we ever noticed we were holding the bow.
This is not “just think positive.” It’s not spiritual bypassing. It’s not pretending the pain isn’t there, or putting a smile over it, or finding the silver lining. Real practice goes the other direction — toward the pain, with kindness, not around it.
And this is not something to master alone, or to feel ashamed of when you can’t.
The first arrow is real. The second arrow is human — every one of us shoots it. Noticing it isn’t a moral failing. It’s the beginning of freedom.
A Brief Practice
Take a deep breath. Turn your mind inward.
Without judgment, can you notice a second arrow you’ve shot recently? Just notice it. We’re not trying to fix anything yet.
Sit with that for a moment.
The Invitation
There is a way to meet pain without adding to it. The Buddha pointed to it. Twenty-five centuries of practitioners have walked it. And modern science is catching up — confirming what contemplatives have long known about how the mind shapes suffering.
There’s no single technique that will do this work for you. Each of us has to find our own relationship with our own arrows. What a practice community offers is companionship in that work — a place to notice together, to share what we’re learning, to be reminded we’re not alone with the bow in our hands.
Learning to meet pain without adding to it. That is the work.