There is the pain that life delivers, and there is the suffering we add to it. An ancient teaching on the two arrows, and what the wisdom traditions and the Stoics say about each.
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HAWAEditorial·June 2026 · 6 min read
Philosophy & Wisdom
There is the pain life delivers, and there is the suffering we add on top of it. An old teaching shows us which one we can put down.
There is an old Buddhist teaching about two arrows, and it is one of those ideas that, once understood, you cannot unsee. When we experience pain, the teaching goes, we are struck by a first arrow: the unavoidable pain itself, the loss, the illness, the disappointment, the hurt that life delivers and that no wisdom can entirely prevent. But then, the teaching observes, most of us are struck by a second arrow, and this one we fire into ourselves: the suffering we add through our reactions, our resistance, our resentment, our spinning stories about the pain, our anguish over the fact that we are in pain at all. The first arrow is the pain. The second arrow is our suffering about the pain, and it is often far sharper and longer-lasting than the first. The radical and liberating claim is that while we cannot always avoid the first arrow, we have real freedom regarding the second.
See how this works in ordinary life. Something painful happens, a rejection, a setback, a loss. That is the first arrow, and it genuinely hurts. But then the mind goes to work, and the second arrows fly: This always happens to me. I should have prevented it. It is not fair. What is wrong with me. Why can I not cope. The original pain becomes wrapped in layers of resistance, self-blame, catastrophising, and resentment, each of which adds its own distinct suffering on top of the simple, original hurt. Much of what makes our difficult experiences unbearable is not the experiences themselves but this accumulation of second arrows, the suffering we manufacture in our reaction to the pain. And here is the hopeful part: this added layer, unlike the original pain, is something we can learn to release.
The key that unlocks the second arrow is acceptance, but acceptance is so easily misunderstood that it needs to be carefully distinguished from its counterfeit, resignation. Resignation is passive and despairing: nothing can be done, so I give up, defeated. Acceptance is something else entirely, clear-eyed and even strong: this is what is actually happening right now, and I will stop fighting the reality of it. Acceptance does not mean you approve of the pain, or that you will not act to change what can be changed. It means you stop adding the suffering of denial and resistance to the pain that is already here. The teacher Tara Brach, in Radical Acceptance, describes this as meeting our experience, even painful experience, with a quality of allowing rather than war, and shows how this acceptance, paradoxically, reduces suffering and opens the possibility of genuine healing. We so often believe that resisting our pain is how we deal with it, when the resistance is itself a second arrow, and dropping it is the beginning of relief.
The Stoics, in the West, arrived at a strikingly similar insight by a different road, and it strengthens the point to see it converge. The philosopher Epictetus taught that we are disturbed not so much by things themselves as by our judgements and opinions about them, locating much of our suffering in our reactions rather than in events. The Stoic discipline centres on a clear distinction between what is within our control, chiefly our own responses and judgements, and what is not, the external events that befall us, and on placing our energy in the first while accepting the second. This is the second arrow teaching in another idiom: meet the unavoidable with acceptance, and govern wisely the one thing you can govern, your own response. That two such different traditions, ancient India and ancient Greece, independently located the heart of suffering in our reactions rather than our circumstances suggests they were pointing at something real.
There is one more layer, and it may be the deepest: the role of meaning. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps and wrote Man's Search for Meaning, observed something profound about suffering. He could not control the horror that befell him and those around him, the first arrow at its most extreme. But he found that even in the worst circumstances imaginable, a person retains one last freedom: the freedom to choose their attitude, their response, the meaning they make of what they cannot change. Frankl argued that suffering with meaning is bearable in a way that meaningless suffering is not, and that the search for meaning, even in the midst of pain, is one of the deepest human capacities. This does not glorify suffering or pretend it is good. It points to the human ability to meet even the unavoidable first arrow with a response that preserves dignity and finds meaning, which is perhaps the highest expression of the freedom the second arrow teaching describes.
So the next time pain strikes, you might try to notice the two arrows separately. There is the pain itself, the first arrow, which you may simply have to feel. And there is everything your mind is adding, the resistance, the blame, the spinning, the second arrows you are firing into your own wound. You cannot always avoid being struck. But you can, with practice, learn to stop shooting yourself, and to meet what life delivers with acceptance, wisdom, and even meaning. That is not the end of pain. It is the end of the suffering we add to it, which is more than enough to change a life.
This article touches on pain and suffering. These teachings can offer real help and are not a substitute for professional support when suffering is severe. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional, and in crisis, to your local emergency services or a crisis line.
To learn to put down the second arrow, find your guide.
