DEALING WITH ANGER

DEALING WITH ANGER

I wrote this piece last year and it received a lot of comments - I noticed a short quote online by the great Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dilgo Khyenste Rinpoche who said:

When you feel hatred toward someone, your hatred and anger are not in any way something inherent either to that person as a whole or to any aspect of him or her. Your anger only exists in your own mind. As soon as you glimpse him or her, your thoughts dwell on all the times he or she brought harm to you in the past, how they might harm you in the future, or what they are doing to harm you now; even hearing his or her name upsets you. 

As you become fixated on these thoughts, full - blown hatred develops, and at that point you feel an irresistible urge to pick up a stone to throw at them, or grab something with which to strike them

Anger can seem extremely strong, but where does it get the power to overwhelm you so easily? Is it some external force, something with arms and legs, weapons and armor? If not, then is it somewhere inside you? If so, where is it? Can you find it in your brain, in your heart, in your bones, or in any other part of you? Impossible though it is to locate, anger does seem to be present in a very concrete way, as a strong clinging that freezes your mind into a state of solidity and brings a great deal of suffering both to yourself and to others. 

Just as clouds, which are insubstantial and cannot support weight or be worn as clothing, can nevertheless darken the whole sky and cover the sun, in the same way thoughts can obscure the pristine radiance of awareness. By recognizing the void, transparent nature of mind, let it return to its natural state of freedom. If you recognize the nature of anger as void, it loses all its power to harm.

- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche - On The Path to Enlightenment by Matthieu Ricard - Shambhala Publications

Last year I wrote as follows:

A very good friend of mine brought up the subject of how to keep feeling compassion and following the path of kindness and so forth, when feeling pissed off or very ANGRY at someone. 

Well the answer is the same for all of us - on a day to day basis we all at times, get fed up with people or situations - its inevitable, but its how we react to these situations that is the key. Its not easy to stay calm and centered when someone is saying something completely idiotic or hurtful - you want to slap them let alone feeling compassion! But, how do you control your anger when someone has hurt you very badly? This is never easy to answer, but the longer you hold onto your anger the longer it will hurt YOU. Even if the pain is so bad you feel totally helpless and out of control with your hurt and anger at the person who has hurt you - you have to (no matter how difficult) learn to calm your mind and bring your heart and soul to a level of peace - Meditation undoubtedly helps enormously. Ultimately, the anger will leave you as you bring your mind to a level of peace, but if you hold onto it - it will hurt you much more than the person you are anger at. 

I think the important thing is to look at life at two levels if you can and eventually the compassion will come through. It takes practice and time but it does work. By this I mean that every morning if you wake up and say to yourself "I am going to do everything I can to feel compassion about everything I do and what I say" - think of this vow to yourself throughout the day, when you are dressing, walking, washing up, cooking or going to meetings everything you do - it isn't easy, but the more you do this the more it becomes a natural thing to do.

Therefore, when you come across someone who is a real jerk or a situation that drives you to anger you - you deal with it maybe in a different way than yelling back or getting frantic and pissed off. I have found that I have changed over the years - it does work - that doesn't mean that you don't still get annoyed but you don't immediately lash out and hit back.

One of my main teachers wrote as follows:

Two things to be done, at the start and at the finish of each day:

"In the morning, on awakening, we should make the following pledge:

'Throughout the whole of today, I will remember my Compassion.

When eating, dressing, walking, cooking, meeting people, meditating, wherever I go, I will practice it constantly.

Should it slip my mind, I will remind myself. Mindful of it, I will not allow myself to wander into states of anger, desire or ignorance.'

We should make a concerted effort to keep this vow and at night before going to sleep, we should examine ourselves as to how much we have been able to generate Compassion, how much we have been able to help others and whether all our actions have been in accordance with the teachings."

I personally think it helps to have a mantra to say to yourself wherever you are - I use the wonderful Buddhist mantra: OM MANI PADME HUM , which I think of as sending compassion, love and healing to all living people and creatures.

However, you can use a mantra (if you are Christian or Muslim you can pray to God to help all people in the world to be free from their suffering) or in whatever language you are comfortable in like "I pray that all people be free from suffering" or “I pray that I will be compassionate with all people today”. It may seem odd to you, but it really works - I have been doing this for years and it begins to seep into your consciousness and makes you feel really good after a while.

Meditation helps enormously – I have written a number of blogs on mindfull meditation, but why do we meditate? 

There are many reasons but from a strictly practical perspective here are some of the reasons:

(1) To help stop your mind from thinking thousands of thoughts every minute of the day

(2) To bring peace and calmness to our mind - give it a rest

(3) To begin the most important process of getting rid of the 6 things that cause us suffering in our day to day lives: HATRED, JEALOUSY, GREED, DESIRE (I want more and more), IGNORANCE, PRIDE and these can create ANGER - All of these will cause you and everyone unhappiness that leads to suffering.

(4) Meditating brings HAPPINESS – why? Because you begin the process of developing your COMPASSION and LOVE into your day to day life – by this I don't mean just the natural love of your children and family, but the deep compassion that you build for all people and living creatures.

Think about it – we are all the same – we all hurt, we all bleed, we all feel pain, we all suffer the loss of loved ones, we will all at the end of our lives die – it doesn't matter whether you are white, black, blue, yellow, green or whatever – we are all the same – we all need the earth to live on and rely entirely on it to feed ourselves and breathe.

There isn’t one of you that would exist without the millions of elements that make up our lives and the way we live. Take the trees and forests away and we very quickly stop breathing!!!

Therefore, next time you get really angry – stop and think before you react – think of why the person is acting badly or saying words that are so annoying or hurtful – is it their ignorance (possibly indoctrination)? Is it because he or she is suffering pain or loss? Is it because the are jealous or greedy – whatever the reason, you certainly don't have to accept bad behavior, but try to begin to feel compassion even though you are angry and develop the practice of thinking like this before reacting.

Develop your COMPASSION – it will bring you great HAPPINESS in your life as well as those around you

Thank you for reading (some wonderful quotes below)