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When should we counteract our difficult emotions, and when should we go with their energy? How we are advised to deal with our emotions varies according to which vehicle of Buddhism is in focus. Ringu Tulku gives an overview of the Vajrayana approach in this adaptation from Daring Steps: Traversing the Path of the Buddha.

When dealing with strong emotions, a Vajrayana practitioner does not have to use deliberate means to stop them. Unlike in other systems, the Vajrayana provides very skillful methods so that the negative emotions are used in order to transmute themselves. This is a very characteristic feature of the Vajrayana approach to practice.

In the Shravakayana context, effort is directed at counteracting our emotions. When, for example, strong anger or attachment arises, deliberate effort is made to generate its opposite, like loving kindness or nonattachment. Once this is successfully achieved, the negative emotions have no opportunity to surface, since opposite emotions, like anger and loving kindness, cannot be present together at the same time. In this way, the negative emotions are reversed through giving rise to the corresponding positive ones.

Within the context of the Mahayana, the practitioner takes a further step and seeks to understand his or her emotions and see their nature. When anger comes up, we try to look at ourselves and our anger in order to see the egolessness of our mind and the emptiness of that anger. There are different methods that lead us to see the ultimate nature of ourselves and our emotions. Using these methods, we will understand that the nature of everything is subjective. Anger, as everything else, is not something solid, something truly and independently existing. Through this understanding, the negative emotions are counterbalanced and positive emotions gradually arise.

Following the Vajrayana teachings, we do not give up or reject anything; rather we make use of whatever is there. We look at our negative emotions and accept them for what they are. Then we relax in this state of acceptance. Using the emotion itself, it is transformed or transmuted into the positive, into its true face.

When, for instance, strong anger or desire arises, a Vajrayana practitioner is not afraid of it. Instead he or she would follow advice along the following lines: Have the courage to expose yourself to your emotions. Do not reject or suppress them, but do not follow them either. Just look your emotion directly in the eye and then try to relax within the very emotion itself. There is no confrontation involved. You don't do anything. Remaining detached, you are neither carried away by emotion nor do you reject it as something negative. Then, you can look at your emotions almost casually and be rather amused.