Page 35 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

until our emotions are engaged, — there is no spiritual life,

properly speaking.

Now what is Perfect Emotion? Before entering into this question

I want to clear up two possible misunderstandings. I have spoken
of involving the emotions in the spiritual life, but this is not to be

understood in a purely negative and psychological sense. It does
not mean the involvement of crude untransformed emotions
with irrational, pseudo-religious concepts and attitudes. For

example, suppose somebody hears that church halls are being
used for dances on Sunday evenings. He gets very hot under the

collar, gets very upset that the Sabbath is being desecrated, that
the church hall is being used for such immoral purposes. In his
indignation and excitement he writes a letter to The Times

denouncing the immorality of the younger generation and
predicting the downfall of — I was going to say the British

Empire, but you know the sort of thing I have in mind. Now you
may think that he is really worked up, and that his emotions are
really involved in a religious issue of sorts, but there is no Perfect

Emotion because there is no Perfect Vision. There is only a
bundle of prejudices and rationalizations in the name of religion.

We see other examples of this kind of behavior in those famous
institutions the Inquisition and the Crusades. A great deal of
emotion was involved in these and some people think of it as

religious emotion, but again it was not Perfect Emotion in the
Buddhist sense. Although ostensibly connected with religion,

there was no element of Perfect Vision present. This is the first
kind of misunderstanding to be guarded against. Secondly, it is
not possible to transform one's emotional nature by strength of

35