Life, in its fullness, brings each of us periods of profound grief, loss, and growth. In the face of such intensity, the cultural impulse to “power through” or “move swiftly on” can be enticing, prompting us to bypass our most painful experiences. Yet for many on a contemplative path, there is a quieter, persistent call to do the opposite: to slow down and become a witness. Not to fix the pain, but to meet it with openness and curiosity.
This call often arrives in a felt, bodily signal: a tightening in the chest, a wave of fatigue, or a knot of unease in the stomach. It’s a sensation we may recognize as an old, recurring companion, yet one we’ve often been taught to treat as a stranger. Our habitual reaction is to turn away, to numb, or to distract ourselves the moment it appears. This very resistance, the Buddha taught, is the second arrow. The first arrow is the inevitable pain of life—loss, sickness, grief. The second arrow is the extra suffering we add by clenching against the reality of that first wound, by fighting what’s already here.
The Buddha’s legendary encounter with Mara, the personification of delusion and temptation, offers another way of relating to our pain. The story, as beautifully told by Thich Nhat Hanh, goes like this: the Buddha’s attendant, Ananda, is horrified to find Mara at the door. He fully expects the Buddha to refuse the visit. Instead, the Buddha smiles and says, “Mara, wonderful! Ask him to come in.” The Buddha then greets Mara with a hug, invites him to sit on the best seat and instructs Ananda, “Please make tea for us.”
This story reframes our relationship with inner turmoil. The Buddha does not fight Mara, nor does he pretend he isn’t there. He acknowledges him with openness and hospitality. He invites him to tea. This is the essence of meeting our pain without the second arrow. As contemporary teacher Tara Brach echoes in her RAIN practice, we can look at our suffering and say, compassionately, “I see you, Mara.”
This act of hospitality can become our practice. Instead of resisting the knot of anxiety or the ache of grief, we can begin to invite it in. We might sit quietly, place a hand where the sensation gathers, and breathe into it. The goal is not to fix it or force it to leave, but to make space for it to exist, offering it the simple courtesy of our attention.
Buddhist traditions and modern psychology offer various ways to cultivate compassionate attention. Practices rooted in Theravada Buddhism, such as Vipassana meditation and its modern interpretations like the RAIN technique (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), train us to observe thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations without judgment. This provides a foundational way to engage with suffering. Beyond silent practice, sharing our pain aloud in supportive communities—be it a sangha, grief group, or recovery meeting—brings it into the light of compassionate connection, dissolving the isolation that magnifies suffering. Artistic expression, through writing, painting, or movement, offers another way to “make tea” for our experience, giving it form outside of our spiraling minds.
The core teaching in all these paths is the same: we must bring our suffering into the light of awareness with kindness. This truth echoes vividly through the poetry of Andrea Gibson, who died last summer after a public journey with cancer. Their work, a raw testament to meeting mortality with open eyes, left a deep mark. One poem, in particular, became a perfect metaphor for learning to meet my own grief:
All of my pain is a spider
I’ve learned not to crush
with the heel of my shoe
but to guide with a page
of my journal
into an empty glass
asking questions about its life,
its purpose, as I walk
careful out the garden
And rest it down on the earth.
My pain, how happy it is
To leave me whenever
I treat it kind.(Andrea Gibson)
The metaphor reminded me of my own small, habitual gesture: although afraid of certain spiders (the bigger, hairier ones), I’ve never been able to harm them. Instead, I carefully guide them into a cup and carry them outside, speaking soft reassurances along the way. This gentle, deliberate act of “guiding,” of creating a safe passage for something feared, is itself a profound practice. You likely have a similar instinct—a compassionate way you handle a fear or a fragile thing that can serve as a model for meeting your own inner life.
The “spiders”—our fears, griefs, and anxieties—are always there, scurrying in the shadows of our awareness. In learning to meet them with kindness, we’re doing the same as the Buddha: we’re inviting Mara to tea. The goal is no longer to eliminate pain, but to cultivate deep curiosity around what new, small gestures of courage it may kindle.
What might it look like for you to invite your own “Mara” for tea this year? Perhaps it’s the courage to sit for five minutes with an anxiety you usually numb with scrolling. Maybe it’s giving form to an old sorrow through a letter you never send, or simply saying to a tightening in your chest, “I see you.” These are not grand acts of heroism, but small, powerful acts of acceptance towards the wholeness of your being. In treating our pain kindly, as Andrea Gibson wrote, we often find it’s happy to leave us—or at the very least, to sit quietly beside us, no longer a threat, but an invaluable teacher.
Nina Müller is a Mindfulness Teacher who offers online mindfulness coaching sessions. If you would like to find out more, please visit The Mindful Practice to book a complimentary consultation.
See more
Sallatha Sutta: The Arrow
Mara and the Buddha
Andrea Gibson (Instagram)
Related features from BDG
Fiercely Compassionate: Finding Our Role in Buddhist Immigration Justice
The Good Human Life: Remembering Our Capacity to Wake Up
The Leaning Buddha and the Crooked Cactus: Finding Freedom in Imperfection
