The Second Arrow.

Life after Rape: Stay away from the Second Arrow.  

In Buddhism we are told that the mind is the forerunner of all conditioned things. A lot of pain is caused by our minds- which is indeed strange considering how many millennia we homo erectus spent trying to evolve a bigger and more intelligent brain. Have you seen a dog with TVT? It's a disease where the animals private parts become cancerous and end up becoming a bleeding, jellied, skinless, formless mass, you can google TVT dogs, if you want the visuals.  I sometimes think that if we are to believe in reincarnation TVT may be the punishment meted out to reborn rapists. And I think of them with definite compassion.

But have another look and you will realize that many of these animals don't seem affected by this horror, not even as badly as we are as onlookers. This probably isn't because they don't feel pain. But it could be because animals, way lower though they are in terms of intelligence, have not reached the stage where they are able to mull on the reasons for pain or to dwell on the effect pain has on their ego. Animals generally are good at living in the present moment. You give them something to eat, or they see a potential mate and everything else is forgotten.

If you have ever been raped, there is a theory that an alternative thought process might help you. It tries to help with the emotional pain. The physical pain will probably end in a few days or weeks, our human bodies are quite resilient that way. Have you experienced a protracted childbirth or a chronic UTI or yeast infection? Those hurt like hell itself. After difficult childbirth there are sometimes perineal tears or fistulas which take months to heal- or maybe never do.  If you talk to someone with a UTI or yeast infection, or kidney stones, the pain is real, maddening, and continuous. I've personally spent hours contorted into fetal position, on the bathroom floor writhing at the pain of a full-blown UTI, simply crying helplessly and I imagine other people have too.

This doesn't mean for one minute that a violent gang rape is any the less horrifying. But there are two aspects to rape or in fact to any kind of pain and it can be said that the second aspect or the assault on a person's integrity, to her emotional autonomy is much more prolonged and horrifying than the physical aspect. It involves the affront to one's ego, the perceptions of stigma attached the whole "how can I face society again?" (Which is well fueled by Eastern society's attitudes in particular) and the inevitable resultant hatred of the attacker(s) "how dare this person do this to me?" as well as incredible amounts of self-loathing. "I should have/could have done something different to avoid this attack, It's my fault."

This is what the Buddha meant by referring to the Second Arrow. This pain is actually in the mind and so will hurt much more than the actual physical pain of the assault did. This pain is a memory of pain that is not in the present moment. And this secondary pain is preventable. It requires two things, a change in attitude, and continuous mindfulness. The mindfulness part is needed to catch yourself going down those well-worn mental pathways that you always travel.  It isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. But this is a good example of a situation where loved ones, society and above all your own mind can become your worst enemy.  The metaphorical second arrow is preventable pain, the pain that arises in the mind following physical pain. Often the physical pain is long gone and only a faint and uneasy memory, but the nightmares, the perception of that pain and the ego affronting circumstances of that pain are what torture us into the future. That is the second arrow which we refuse to take out. Needlessly. How can we begin to change that?

Consider a woman who has had a protracted messy childbirth involving about 20 hours of intense pain, and blood and tearing. Human society finds a way to make this noble, heroic and the woman will come out of this rosy-cheeked, talking about how anything is worth it for her beautiful baby. The human mind, in the interests of successful procreation even numbs the memory of it and soon the same woman is ready for her next experience of childbirth which although it involves her body being torn in half and her private parts bleeding and being mangled, society has forcefully labeled as "joyous".  There are women who cannot conceive spending years trying to get to this stage even if the expensive attempts end in bleeding miscarriages (not to mention years of savings being spent on it). But because it's a part of what we women are supposed to be doing all of this is acceptable. The complex human brain too colludes in this trickery: have you ever heard of a woman reliving a nightmare of a protracted childbirth? Never because apparently, there are chemicals that work to completely erase that memory.

We are not so blessed when it comes to sexual assault, and even a relatively minor incident of unwarranted groping we receive on public transport can keep us traumatized, depressed and hollow for days.  

I can say to let it go because it is a metaphorical arrow not a real one, and I realize that may not be as easy as it sounds.  

But you need to take control of your mind and prevent it from working against you. 

It can be done.