Afflictive Emotions: Anger 2

In the early Buddhist teachings emotions are generally talked about in terms of feelings or feeling tones. So an emotion that evokes repulsion or pushing away is associated with unpleasant feeling tones and emotions that evoke attraction or pulling towards are associated with pleasant feeling tones. So we have been looking at anger. To see our anger, to understand its history and to ultimately reclaim anger for the purpose of understanding ourselves, is our journey.

Transcript

So last week I introduced the topic discussion of emotions and in the early Buddhist teachings emotions are generally talked about in terms of feelings or feeling tones.

So an emotion that evokes a kind of repulsion or pushing away is associated with unpleasant feeling tones and emotions that evoke a pulling towards or an attraction are associated with pleasant feeling tones.

So you know the association of repulsion unpleasant,

The association of attraction pleasant.

So the pleasant and the unpleasant feeling tones show up in the body as sensations to be known.

So happiness or pleasant feelings show up in a particular way there's a flavor to them there's a feeling of them and sadness also has a flavor and a feeling tone in our body.

And the Buddhist path is to see and understand like this is a pleasant feeling tone and this is an unpleasant feeling tone and there are also states of mind that come into play that inform our feelings our emotions and these states of mind are known and understood as wholesome.

There are wholesome states of mind and there are unwholesome states of mind meaning that some mind some mind states lead to more suffering and some mind states lead to freedom from suffering.

So the mind states that we looked at last month were the four sublime states of loving kindness of compassion of sympathetic joy joy for others and equanimity.

These are wholesome and can be cultivated and we talked about that and that the particular feeling tone of these mind states is often spacious and easeful and calm and balanced and happy and the emotions and mind states that have been coined as afflictive emotions such as fear and anger and guilt and resentment even grief is considered an unwholesome mind state meaning that it leads to suffering for ourselves and for other people in our life.

So the study of emotions in this Buddhist psychology in this way has its limits you know the discourses on emotions preserved in the Pali Canon the ancient teachings are kind of dispersed and colored by this understanding of feeling tones and mind states whereas in neuroscience and psychology there's they've kind of done a deeper dive into the areas of emotions and habit patterns of the mind.

So I say all this because coupled together the Buddhist psychology and the the western teachings of neuroscience and psychology there's a much more broader understanding and integrative understanding that I find helpful as we explore and learn about our emotional life.

And so last week we began our our journey our exploration into anger looking at anger and at the end of practice I asked you to look at and speak about your history with anger the conditioning of anger in your family growing up and many of you shared about it growing up and many of you shared about that history and maybe those of you who didn't share thought about it or wrote about it and brought it into awareness for yourself and if you'd like you'll have an opportunity at the end of this teaching to bring voice to it if that feels appropriate.

So I'd like to continue this exploration by offering you an excerpt from a poem called Anger by David White.

Anger is the purest form of care.

The internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to,

What we wish to protect,

And what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.

What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness.

A powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice or way to live.

What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing.

Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling that there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability.

But anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here.

It is a quality to be followed to its source,

To be prized,

To be tended,

And an invitation to find a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous,

The heart more compassionate,

And the body larger and strong enough to hold it.

What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete and absolute mirror opposite to its true internal essence.

So this is an excerpt from his book,

Consolations,

Consolations.

And what really struck me about this poem was that David White elevates anger to really the opposite of what we assume,

Which is that anger is intrinsically negative.

It's an intrinsically negative mind state that needs to be removed.

What he shows us is that it is a clear indication of caring about something,

However misguided that may be.

So to see our anger,

To understand its history,

And ultimately reclaim anger for the purpose of understanding ourselves is our journey.

Last week I shared that anger is a very important messenger.

Sometimes it's useful to see anger as a messenger and we don't want to kill the messenger.

Its message is always that something needs our attention,

Something needs our care.

I like what Desmond Tutu said,

Tutu said,

In our own way we are all broken and out of the brokenness we hurt others.

And he goes on to say that forgiveness is the journey we take towards healing the broken parts.

It's how we become whole again.

So the idea here is to really see and integrate the brokenness,

To heal and become whole.

So as we delve into this topic of anger and all the afflictive emotions that we're going to kind of go into in these next weeks,

I think we should approach them with great care and respect,

The way that David White describes it.

The source of many of our difficult emotions come from this very deep place.

So we want to touch it and we want to touch it lightly and kindly.

It's pretty obvious when we turn on the news or the television and read the newspaper or listen to the radio that the power and the force of anger and hatred in our world,

The hostility that's in our world is pretty clear.

It's pretty palpable.

And I think just to say that there's something seductive about anger.

It keeps pulling us in,

You know,

And we as a culture keep feeding it.

The Buddha described it well.

He said,

Anger with its poisoned root and honeyed tip,

Its poisoned root and honeyed tip.

So we can feel empowered and energetic when we're angry,

Often self-righteous,

Right?

When we're lost in angry feelings,

Its honeyed tip is like sweet revenge and its poisoned root.

It indicates that it's really not that helpful.

So what we're doing in practice is learning to understand this energy,

This force,

And to really recognize that it's very human.

All of us have anger.

Some level of it moves in us.

And right now at this very moment,

All over the world in different situations,

There are many people with anger,

People in a bad mood right now,

Closed off,

Shut down,

Shutting others out,

Like that's going on all around us.

And one of the principles of insight meditation is that the stronger the inner reactivity,

The stronger the emotional reaction to the world and what's going on,

The more likely it represents something deep inside of us that's been touched and that's been activated.

And if we remain focused on the externals,

And what we're upset about,

We're missing the opportunity to go in and connect deeply with what's inside,

To kind of go down.

What's this really about?

What's this anger really about?

What's unresolved in my life?

There's an opportunity always to have insight,

To ask the question,

When we have the spaciousness of mindfulness,

What is this?

What's the attachment,

The wound,

The pain,

Often the belief,

Or there's a value that I'm operating under that's all kind of at the source of the anger that I have.

So the idea of the anger is a very important messenger,

An important investigation.

So in the next couple of weeks,

We're really going to look at these other afflictive emotions that are sometimes covered over by anger.

So fear and depression and resentment,

Sometimes anger is the first response to what's really this fractured sense of belonging and these other emotions that are just under the surface.

So that's where we'll go.

That's where we'll go.

So for those of you that are joining on Insight Timer,

This is an opportunity to sort of write down or working with a spiritual friend,

Connect on this.

What were the things that you felt that were really important to you?

What were the things that you felt that were really important to you?

So if you haven't had an opportunity to share your history with anger,

I invite you to give voice to it in this safe,

Open space.

So if you're in a place where you're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

You're feeling a little bit of anger,

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