Article Details
Title: Emotions
Format: PDF
Price: $3
Word Count: 2454
Emotions: Excerpts
"Running as deep as the soul, emotions are an inalienable property of your being. They form the colours of life. And emotions can lift you up or bring you down. What are these curious things we call 'emotions'? Can we control them? Are emotions the key to a happy life? These and other aspects of the things we call 'emotions' will be discussed in this article."
"What exactly is emotion? Emotion is a unique power of the soul by which we are able to experience such things as love, fear, hatred, pleasure, pain, hope, joy, sadness, sorrow, anger, and so on. Emotion cannot be represented in terms of any other power; that is, it is irreducibly one and the same as itself; and it is real and present in the soul..."
"Why do we have emotions at all? ....[this] is almost like asking 'Why should we exist at all?' Emotions are as mysterious as life and existence itself. But that does not mean that we can't penetrate the mystery even if we can't explain it..."
"As we grow and develop and mature we discover new needs, new desires, and new capacities. The prerequisites for happiness seem to be transformed, and the search for happiness seems ultimately bound up with a true knowledge of yourself—of what it is that will truly make you happy..."
"Pleasure is a huge contender in this search for the road to happiness. But the ensuing debate usually pits physical and spiritual pleasures against one another. What is the relationship between physical and spiritual pleasures? Are they in conflict or do they go together? Must you abandon the one in order to find the other?"
"We could think about the relationships that hold between the emotions in this context. For example, joy displaces sorrow. Or if it does not entirely displace sorrow, then at least the presence of joy alleviates the burden of sorrow, so that joy and sorrow dwell in the same heart, each conditioning the other..."
Other questions discussed in this article:
Are emotions the deepest part of you?
What is the relationship between nature and nurture?
Is passion a form of emotion?
What causes an emotion to arise?
What is happiness? Is happiness an emotion?
Can you choose your emotions?
Are there emotions which transcend the limit of your experiences?
What is your highest capacity?