ABSTRACT
For many of us emotions are what defines the richness of our lived experience. When it comes to meditation and emotions, one of the misconceptions is that meditation practice may flatten the vividness of our emotional experience. On one occasion I had a discussion about meditation and emotional balance with a doctoral student in psychology who was very interested in meditation, but found the idea of letting go of some emotions difficult. He thought that it would be good to cultivate more emotional balance, but at the same time it was hard for him to imagine that he would no longer experience the ups and downs of emotional life, the extremes of excitement, disappointment, pleasure and frustration. For him, the oscillation between pleasure and pain was what life is about, what makes our life interesting. He thought that meditation meant not experiencing these extremes any more, or at least not with such intensity, and this would lead to an impoverished experience of the world. His understanding was that meditation meant sinking into a flat neutral emotional state.
