The second arrow

A monk asked the Buddha why, if the teaching ends suffering, everyone following it still gets old and sick. The answer was about archery.

By Sovandarapor (James) Kong · 2026-08-21 · Nondual

Chapter 07 of 18 in Ninety minutes with a swami

Swami Sarvapriyananda says he tells this story at every opportunity, and he is careful to add that it is not an internet parable. It is in the Pali sources.

One of the Buddha's monks comes to him with a complaint that is really a question. You taught us that there is suffering and a way out of it. You said suffering is old age, sickness and death. We are following your teaching and we are getting older. We get sick. Some of us have died and presumably the rest of us will. Worse, you are getting older, you are sometimes ill, and you will die too. So what exactly has been overcome.

The Buddha's answer is that suffering is like being hit by two arrows. The first is whatever life throws at you. Illness, loss, ageing, the big and small things that go wrong. The second arrow is your reaction to the first, and most of the pain, he says, lives there. The swami makes the observation concrete. Two patients. One with a serious illness, calm. One with a minor problem, coming apart. Which one is suffering more. The Buddha's claim is that what he teaches removes the second arrow and that he has nothing to offer against the first, short of the full release, which is another matter.

The swami then generalises, and I think fairly. This is what spiritual teaching does, all of it, including the non-dual kind. It works on the second arrow. The body and the economy and the weather will keep firing the first one, and for that you want medicine, a better economy, a roof.

I notice how much of my working week is second arrow. A supplier is late. The delay is the first arrow and it costs something real. The hours I then spend being aggrieved about the supplier, building the case against them in my head, replaying the phone call, are the second arrow and they cost more. The first one I mostly cannot prevent. The second one I keep firing at myself, and then blaming the supplier for the wound.

I do not want to make this sound easy. The monk who asked the question was not stupid and the Buddha did not tell him the first arrow was imaginary. He said there was a second one. That is a smaller claim than it first sounds, and it is the one I can actually test.