The rubber meets the road – Buddhist meditation and anger, a reality check on our ongoing practice of the four immesurables

Some lines from Torei Enji's Bodhisattva's Vow:

            Then in each moment's flash of thought

            There will grow a lotus flower

            And each lotus flower will reveal a Buddha

One of the greatest challenges facing us as we look at applying the teachings of the Buddha in our real everyday life is how to reach out to those with whom we may be angry or who may be angry with us. This is a big, big topic, and unfortunately we are very much on our own, as there aren’t too many nitty gritty teachings on this in classical literature. And this might be a good thing—we need to make the Dharma our own, and working with anger seems like a great place to start.

In classical Buddhist discussions anger is viewed negatively, and the implication is that we shouldn’t be angry, and if we are, with practice we need to overcome it.  While it is nice to be reminded by Buddhist teachings to be nice, kind and loving, when anger arises, it seems, at least for me, that all those teachings about how we should be are useless.

It seems we can’t get a handle of this without doing some basic work. There are no quick fixes here. What happens externally will work to the extent we have engaged the basics of internal work. We don’t have to wait until we have perfected inner work—that’s just another maneuver to avoid doing this work in the first place. First we need to practice with being with painful states as they arise in the moment and learn to open to them without wanting them to change.

When dealing with anger in relationships we just need to have patience and get some space to allow ourselves to calm down. One big challenge is to try to communicate when we are still angry: but we need to try to show our vulnerability, how we may have been hurt, and to speak without jumping to conclusions.

We also need to consider that we communicate because its part of caring. If we communicate with an agenda of trying to convince the other of our point of view, we can probably just forget it. We also need to be realistic that working things out just may not be in the cards. It can take enormous energy and time, and we need to ask ourselves if it is worth it.

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings, he often gives three basic ideas to keep in mind when communicating with others in these situations: loving kindness toward the other person, the humility of recognizing that our experience may not be 100% accurate or complete, and a reflection that the root of all difficult emotions is one’s own suffering.

It is clear that anger is a problem because it influences us to act stupidly and destructively. It can also be very addictive. People who are very self involved can become addicted to anger as a way to get what they want. Have you noticed that the political spin machines often favor those who are the most intimidating (and who are often the angriest)? The Democrats have been coached, I’ve read, that turning the other cheek just won’t get you elected.

This is how the meditations on the four immeasurable we are now doing helps immensely—immeasurably: if you are a bit less self involved you see that having reasonably satisfying human relationships is as important, and maybe even more  important, than getting what you want all the time.

So how de we become less self-involved? You practice the four immeasurables, that’s how!

As you practice sending thoughts of well wishing to friends, neutral folks and the difficult people in your life, your self-referential thoughts take a back seat—if only for a few minutes.

The Dalai Lama wrote an excellent book on this -- "Healing Anger" --which is a discussion of Santideva's chapter on Patience in Bodhisattvacharyavattara (a guide to the bodhisattva's way of life). The bodhisattva path is all about developing compassion for others, through hands-on practice. The practice of the bodhisattva path is to develop the six powers of giving, morality, energy, patience, meditation, and wisdom, and the most important aspect to working with these six powers is the wish to benefit all sentient beings. One main idea behind these practices is to see that “all sentient beings” are greater in number to myself, and as such are more important.

The Dalai Lama discuses patience as an antidote to anger. The idea is that as we become familiar on deeper levels of our psyche with the shortcomings of anger and as we work to develop patience, this has trickle down effect – we are able to bring more and more mindfulness to bear when anger begins to arise.

Let’s reflect on the three lines at the beginning of this email:

“Then in each moment's flash of thought

            There will grow a lotus flower

            And each lotus flower will reveal a Buddha”

Can you allow the radical possibility that every thought and emotion you ever had, even the “bad ones” could grow a lotus flower?

Let’s not stop there, can you allow the possibility that it is and was already a lotus flower -- if you could simply sail past the habitual energies of desire and aversion and feel these are pure energy?

Let your mind get a handle around this simple notion: what if every thought and every offspring of though (emotions) had a Buddha on it, blooming?

This allows us to break the vicious cycle of liking / disliking and see that every thought and emotion is something we can actually be grateful for! Those thoughts and emotions are moonbeams of realization waiting to be taken in. This is even true of our anger. We simply need some initial trust in out own Buddha nature to let itself be revealed in the midst of intense suffering.

With this understanding in the heart/ mind we have a spontaneous and natural trust in the mysterious unfolding of our life just as it is.