How does one find motivation while dealing with depression/rumination?

[Viveka]

@Moloch

Feeling happens almost immediately after our senses come into contact with the event. Based on our fabrications (belief that someone calling us fat is bad), we feel undesirable emotions arise in our bodies.

Craving/Clinging is our response to this undesirable (or desirable in some cases) event. We either want more or less of it based on the previous chain of events.

@ekay

This has been a helpful reminder that emotions are not mine, not my self, and they don’t need to be controlled or changed, simply observed.

@Moloch

In this case I wouldn’t be looking for a solution to stop a 3-day long depression after it happened, I would be looking for a solution to stop it before it even got started.

The question that comes to my mind is - what is the source of your ‘suffering’? Is it the first dart of pain, or is it the second dart of mental fabrications? … I shouldn’t be having this depression. I don’t want this depression it feels yuk - make it stop! I should be able to stop it from arising!

Craving includes aversion as it’s twin. Wanting this over that… It may be worthwhile, to examine what percentage of the ‘painful feeling’ is due to wishing it were gone, or not arisen.

@Viveka

Snp 3.12 Dvayatanupassanasutta - Observation of dualities

The unattached one wavers not,
But the one attached, clinging on,
Does not get beyond Samsara,
Which is an alteration between a this-ness and an otherwise-ness.

Knowing this peril,
The great danger, in attachments or supports;
Let the Monk fare along mindfully,
Resting on nothing, clinging to nothing.

Translation by Bhikkhu K Nanananda