Is Buddhism about being less "sensitive"? I'm just curious, since before I began practicing the Buddhist way of life, I was a very emotionally sensitive person. I constantly had my "feelings hurt" or got into petty arguments over small things in life with people who were once my friends. Sometimes this broke apart many friendships. However, a lot of Buddhist teachings seem to deal with detatchment from the ego, therefore as to loosen or weaken one's sense of self. I found that sometimes I no longer clung to my opinion about reality as if it was absolutely right. But what about emotions? Is Buddhism about taming one's emotions (I grew up as an often very emotional individual on many ends of the spectrum)? Or does one approach emotions by letting them manifest opnely? In short, in my practice, how can I go about dealing with my innate sensitivity? Thank you.
The effect that the emotion has on you to evoke an immediate reaction has reduced. But you will still feel emotions normally. You start to see emotions as a part of the whole play of things. They come to pass, when earlier you just reacted to everything. This is a sort of calmed reaction to any emotion. Having said that, Buddhism is sensitive in that it has compassion in it which is something like how Jesus said, "they know not what they are doing, forgive them", when he was being nailed to the cross. He was able to forgive them even as they were doing that horrific thing to him. That is compassion.