The Hindrances - Anger

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on one of the hindrances to meditation; anger and aversion. In the Buddhist tradition, the five hindrances are identified as mental factors that hinder progress in meditation and in our daily lives.

Transcript

Okay,

Well,

We are making our way through this series of talks and discussions that I put together having to do with difficulties that arise in meditation and how insight into them can help kind of guide us in terms of how to deal with those same difficulties when they arise in daily life.

So this set of teachings,

It all starts off from the same root,

You know,

Where the Buddha was teaching about,

You know,

Really the only thing that's on my mind that I want to share with you in terms of spiritual teaching is why suffering arises and how it can be brought to an end.

And he was talking about a particular kind of suffering,

Not the kind that comes along with just having a body or living in a social network,

You know,

With family and friends that bad things happen to,

You know,

The suffering that can arise from that,

But rather the suffering that's self-generated by the activities of the mind itself.

And everything he taught was based on his own observation of what was going on in his own mind.

And he said if your goals are similar to mine in terms of spiritual inquiry,

Then you might want to reflect on some of these things that I discovered when I was doing this inquiry.

And if you find them parallel to your own experience and you find them useful,

Then by all means,

You know,

Go ahead and experiment with doing these teachings and experiment with this way of kind of looking at what's going on in the mind.

There are a lot of systems out there,

A lot of namanclatures,

Even the different Buddha Dharma traditions all have their own language and their own frameworks of reference and their own psychology and their own means of spiritual scorekeeping.

If you're upset about it,

How far along the path you think you may be.

But basically what he said was there are these patterns of mind-body behavior that are simply who we are by our own nature.

You know,

Simply to survive as beings in the world,

We have this capacity,

We have to have this capacity to seek out the satisfaction of basic needs and that involves responding positively to pleasurable stimuli,

To avoid harm,

To keep ourselves from being physically or mentally hurt or damaged in some way.

And then because there are literally millions of sensory stimuli coming at us at any given moment in time,

Being able to sort through everything that's coming our way and setting everything else aside.

Problem the Buddha said is that we have this innate capacity,

This tendency,

This sorting capacity,

We have this tremendous intelligence,

This tremendous mental capability,

Mental capacities.

And then when you put the two together,

It's as if these powers of seeking out the pleasurable and avoiding the unpleasant and ignoring everything else somehow get sort of supercharged.

When the mind comes to the conclusion that's really all there is to life.

And that's pretty much then what gives birth to the ego,

Sort of command central that its job is to follow the prime directive,

Seek pleasure,

Avoid pain and live forever.

And so that's kind of the prime directive that emanates from the self that gets constructed to do these things.

The problem with that said the Buddha is that that if that is all your mental capacity is ever focused on seeking pleasure,

Avoiding pain and ignoring everything else,

That's not coming close to living a life of freedom.

That's really living a life enslaved to your own tendencies.

And in order to free yourself from that,

You have to be able to develop the capacity to observe yourself,

Observe your mind,

Body,

Process,

Observe your mental functions from a point of view or perspective or position that's outside of that snow globe,

That's outside of that self-constructed reality.

And that is exactly what mindfulness meditation is about.

It's about establishing that point of view,

That perspective.

You know the animal behavioralists and landscape architects like Yi Fu Tuan,

A Chinese geographer,

Talk about this innate tendency in all,

Pretty much throughout the animal kingdom.

It's what's called refuge and prospect.

And what it says is that just about every animal species seeks out two things in terms of where they want to locate themselves on the earth,

Especially where they want to locate their homes or where they're going to hang out.

And those two things are what are called refuge and prospect.

Refuge means place of safety,

Where you need not fear for your well-being.

Prospect means view,

The ability to see,

To see great distances,

To see what's around you.

And in many ways it's possible to think about mindfulness meditation as doing that internally,

Which is to say creating a place of refuge from which it is possible to view what's going on in the mind.

So when we start doing insight meditation practice and we start off with that same formula that the Buddha did in the greater discourse on the establishing of mindfulness.

So you begin with mindfulness of breathing in the body.

And then you become mindful of bodily sensations and sounds and tastes,

And you become mindful of thoughts and you become mindful of emotions.

Being mindful of them means being able to observe them from this place of refuge.

So we create the place of refuge in the mind that makes it possible to see what's going on in the mind.

So whenever we're experiencing a moment of mindfulness,

We're not caught up in the soap opera of the angers or the resentments or the memories of a bad experience you had with somebody,

Or thoughts and reflections,

Memories pleasant or unpleasant,

Planning mind,

Thinking about the future.

Rather than being absorbed in the content of those mental activities,

All that we're doing is observing them from this point of view,

From this place of refuge,

Refuge and prospect,

What feels like a place of safety,

Whether you're in your own meditation,

Your own realm of awareness,

And then what we see arising,

Changing,

Passing away within that realm as we do.

So as we were sitting this evening,

What was your experience of watching the arising and passing of all phenomena?

Were there some kinds of things that rose up for you more than others?

Or did you basically just nod off or reflect pleasantly on the Broncos game or whatever?

What happened when you were sitting here for this last 45 minutes yourself?

I was wandering,

Lloyd,

But I find myself not as irritated with myself as I sometimes am when I do wander.

Okay.

Wow.

Congratulations.

And really,

When I realized that's occurred for me,

I feel grateful actually,

Because it means that mindfulness is pretty strong.

We can look at it.

Good.

Thank you.

Other stuff?

Anyone?

Please.

So there's no instant when there's a song or something out of shape for the mind.

Yes.

That's your experience.

Yes.

There's always something there.

This thing of knowing,

So tonight was just a little more granular than I had some other nights.

I had some other meditation lines.

I mean,

Just sort of knowing,

Moving on to the next note,

Just trying to assign some sort of description to each day.

Yeah.

Okay.

But there's always,

I guess that kind of always wouldn't.

When would the consciousness be still?

Have you had sittings in which that didn't occur,

Where it just felt like there was kind of a blank calmness with nothing much going on in the way of stuff floating by?

I don't think I could say that.

I think that sometimes it's just the breath.

There's not a thought there.

Yes.

And that's about as close to the comes to there being nothing else going on.

Yeah.

Well,

It's,

In my experience,

Kind of like sitting and watching the flow of a river,

You know,

And just phenomena endlessly coming by.

And that,

You know,

During flood season,

It's just ripping along.

You know,

It's just one thing after another.

And then at other seasons of the year when there's not so much water in this stream,

It might slow down a little bit and it's easier to see what's going on.

And then at other times it might basically come close to stopping for a while.

So in doing mindfulness meditation,

We're not really trying to control the rate of flow or the content of whatever it is that's floating by,

You know,

Whether,

You know,

Dead cows or tree trunks or,

You know,

Lily pads or whatever.

It's just,

You know,

It's whatever's coming by is coming by and simply noting it,

Noting the content without getting absorbed in it,

Noting things like rate of flow,

You know.

And the other thing that I find it comfortable,

I find it worthwhile to note is,

As you are,

I think,

Kind of estimating a little bit,

Judging the noting,

You know,

Which is to say there shouldn't be so much going on here.

The mind should be quieter,

You know.

In other words,

Things should be different than they are,

Which of course is the Buddha's working definition of dukkha.

And then the fun part after that is when you can say,

Oh,

Here's the mind wishing things were different than they were,

You know.

It's just another thought,

But it's kind of a useful one because it's a little bit of an insight into what it is that you're watching go on.

Other?

Yeah,

Please.

Well,

I find myself,

As usual,

I was planning.

Yeah.

And for the first time I asked myself,

Well,

Is this unpleasant,

Pleasant or neutral?

And I was surprised to learn that it's very pleasant.

Yes.

And no wonder I do so much of it.

I was stunned.

I had never asked that question.

And so I sat with that a while.

Yes.

And when I check into what's going on in my thoughts,

Unless I'm really in a huff about something or feeling really down or something,

I'm just watching the mind what it normally does.

About 80% of the content of my thoughts have to do with planning.

And so I've had occasion to really kind of try to dig a little deeper as to what's going on with that.

And I want to come back to that,

But first I want to provide sort of a little more context.

So there's this teaching of these powerful tendencies that tend to arise in the mind of attachment,

Aversion,

Delusion,

Or greed,

Hate,

And delusion,

And they're kind of strong forms and whatnot.

Who do I refer to those as the three poisons or the three torments of the mind?

They're basically the base constituents of self-induced suffering.

The other teaching in this constellation of teachings that I put together that we're focusing on right now is the one called the hindrances or obstacles to concentration,

The things that normally arise when the mind achieves a certain state of calmness in meditation.

They're called hindrances because our tendency,

Generally speaking,

When they first start arising in meditation practice is to have aversion for them.

They're saying,

Well,

If this wasn't happening,

I'd be ever so much more concentrated.

I'd be ever so much calmer.

I'd be on my way to glory land.

But instead,

Here I am wrestling with this unsettled mind.

We're going through a methodical step-by-step careful look at what each of these hindrances is.

Okay.

Because in so doing,

As you note them over time,

If some seem to regularly arise more frequently than others,

Then you begin to notice patterns of mental behavior that are going on.

What that in turn begins to provide insight into is to another set of teachings that I bundle together here that in some translations are called personality types.

In Buddhist psychology,

I don't particularly care for that because it has a kind of a rigidity or prominence associated with it that I don't find helpful.

An alternative translation is sort of temperamental tendencies,

Ways that the mind tends to be.

What you can notice,

And this is one of the reasons that the hindrances are so useful as a teaching tool,

Is because if you can use that framework to examine the contents of mind,

Then you begin to get some insight into whether overall your initial response to most situations tends to be somewhat aversive or uneasy,

Or whether it tends to be more grasping,

More wanting to reach out and get something,

Or whether it's basically to wish the whole thing would go away.

You begin to notice then if one or another of these tendencies seems to be your default option,

Tends to be the way the mind usually tends to function.

That in turn is really helpful insofar as the Buddha's path to freedom,

Because if you have that insight into how the mind,

What the mind's default option is,

How it tends to respond to stimuli that come that way.

When you have the awareness that this is the lens through which the mind is looking at reality right now,

It helps you to not look at the world that way,

To realize that it's just a lens.

It's a gray smokey lens,

It's kind of a magenta colored lens,

It's a light blue lens,

It's a cracked lens,

Whatever it is that's going on.

You're aware that that's how the mind's processing reality,

And with that awareness comes a certain amount of freedom.

Your awareness of what's going on in the mind just expands that much more,

And you find yourself beginning to become a little more free.

Capiche?

Make sense?

Questions?

Comments?

Please.

If you had a virtual,

Would you say avoidance is not the same thing?

Yeah,

Sure.

Using certain strategies to avoid suffering?

Sure.

Move toward,

Move away from.

That's the basic physics of it.

These hindrances or obstacles to concentration the Buddha talked about are five.

Anger.

Greed.

Dullness,

Sometimes also called sloth and twerker.

Restlessness and anxiety.

And skeptical doubt.

And we're going to spend time together for the next few weeks looking at each one of these individually.

We're going to focus mostly on anger this evening.

But first,

As a kind of an overview,

We can see that anger is outwardly focused aversion.

You're angry at something.

Greed,

Of course,

Is reaching out to acquire something rather than to try to thrust something away.

Dullness is a desire to not know.

A delusion.

Restlessness and worry,

The fourth of the hindrances,

Is aversion turned inward.

Fear,

Anxiety,

Self-aversion.

Anger usually is one that's broadcast outward.

It can also be turned in on yourself.

And in so doing,

It has a tendency to also trigger self-doubt.

Has a tendency to trigger mistrust of your motives.

And just generally a certain amount of ill will in yourself.

Basically it's another one of these situations of wishing that you were different than you are.

Sceptical doubt actually is a form of aversion as well.

Because it's doubt mixed with suspicion.

It's having some edge,

Some thought that there is something amiss,

That you're getting hosed.

Or that you're incapable of dealing with these teachings as they come along.

Again,

As I said,

We'll look at each of these.

We can see that each of those hindrances is rooted in one or another of the collices.

One of the attachment aversion or delusion.

So looking specifically at anger,

Or outward focused aversion.

Sitting with it in meditation,

Essentially the skillful ways to work with each one of these hindrances involves in one way or another deconstructing them.

Pull them apart.

What are they made up of?

And there are a few practices or techniques that you can use for doing this.

And in beginning to investigate these with you,

I also want to reiterate something I said last time we were together.

And that has to do with the nature of what's sometimes called mindfulness meditation,

What's sometimes called insight meditation.

And those words tend to be used interchangeably,

But actually what they kind of do to some extent is to represent a two stage process.

If you are going on a meditation retreat,

And it's maybe one of the earlier ones that you've been on is learning to do insight meditation practice,

Or in the early days of any insight meditation retreat,

Now I've been in the city.

What the instructions usually are after you've finished getting settled with becoming aware of the body and breathing and whatnot,

In terms of the teaching of contents of mind,

What's usually taught first is to say,

Okay,

When these thoughts and emotions come up,

You can simply note them for what they are,

But don't get involved in the story.

If anger arises,

You just note anger,

Right?

But you don't sit there and ponder about what or who you're mad at,

And how mad at them you are,

And why,

And what you want to do about it,

Because then you just get sucked back into this whole process.

So you don't want to do that,

You just want to label it anger.

Same has to do with things that you might want or might be lusting after.

Simply noting greed or wanting or longing or craving,

Without getting too involved in what the object is or what the strength of it is.

That's super important as a way of laying this foundation,

The steadiness of mind,

The clarity of mind,

To be able to notice each of these phenomena as they arise and change and pass away without getting sucked into the emotional energy that may come along with them.

However,

Once you have learned to do that somewhat,

Then in fact it becomes possible when your prospect,

When your vantage place,

From which you're observing what's going on in the mind,

Is sufficiently well established.

Then when one of these emotions comes up,

Like anger,

For instance,

The one we're talking about tonight,

Instead of just noting anger and anger and anger,

It's possible to do what the Buddha called thinking and pondering.

It's kind of confusing if you're reading in his various discourses about how to do these practices.

He talks about the meditator establishing calmness of mind and getting grounded and whatnot.

Then he talks about the meditator thinking and pondering.

Basically what he's saying there is that once the mind is calm and clear and relatively still and grounded and something like anger comes up,

Especially if it's coming up pretty regularly or strongly,

Then basically you can turn your power of awareness toward doing mindful inquiry.

Sometimes called contemplative inquiry,

But just to investigate,

Take the power of the mind,

Focus it on anger as the object of meditation,

And then inquire a little more deeply,

Well,

What's going on here?

Again,

The mind is sufficiently calm that it's not likely you're going to get sucked up in the story,

But you can instead more dispassionately investigate,

Look at what's the nature of this anger?

There are some,

And then we're talking about the process of deconstructing the phenomenon of anger as the object of meditation.

There are different ways you can go about doing this.

The first is to get more precise with your labeling.

So if you had just been using the label anger and you find it coming around again,

Then you can see if there is some nuance that you can discover within it,

Is the anger,

Could it also be called frustration?

Irksomeness.

Basically,

You're looking for labels that will describe to you the intensity of the feeling.

Are you feeling mildly displeased?

Are you feeling a bit put out?

Are you feeling really not just angry,

But somewhat enraged?

Is there rage that is,

Or anger that is mixed with despair?

So what is the very nature of this emotion?

Going a little deeper.

And not only the emotion itself,

Is it sufficiently strong,

Do you notice that the emotion might be coupled to or linked to a thought,

Maybe of wishing harm to the person you're mad at,

If the object of your anger is a person?

So first off,

It is what's the real nature or the depth or the strength of the feeling that we broadly call anger?

How intense is it?

How strong is it?

Or how fleeting is it?

Is it constant?

Does it stay there?

So that's just investigating the actual experience of the emotion in terms of describing it.

Second aspect of it is what is the object of your anger?

Anger is aggressively,

Outwardly directed aversion.

What is it that you're mad at?

What is it you're mad about?

Who is it that you're mad at?

What is the object that has aroused your anger?

Really important,

Really important.

If it's outward directed,

It's your anger running into something.

It's engaged something or someone.

All forms of aversion,

Whether it's the outward directed in the form of anger or the more inner directed in terms of self condemnation or anxiety or worry or fear.

The very nature of aversion is a perceived threat.

You get angry because you perceive that someone or something is in a position to harm you.

And you want to do something outward focused to thwart the possibility of that harm coming to you.

So for instance,

Among the things I get angry at these days,

Okay,

Well first one,

I'm perpetually angry at the weather in the wintertime.

Somebody was following me in here late this evening,

As I was coming in late this evening.

I slipped and almost really busted my can on the ice out there.

And I'm sure she overheard me say,

I hate this time of year,

Because I'm pretty convinced that the weather's out to kill me.

And so I tend to respond with a lot of aggression and anger toward the weather.

Doesn't do me much good,

Doesn't seem to change the nature of the weather.

It's just what the mind does.

Something else that I get really angry at is the quality of political discourse right now.

And for me,

It's become really actually pretty obscene,

You know,

What passes for political discourse,

Especially among people competing for leadership positions right now.

And when I look at why it makes me angry,

It's because I fear for our country.

I really have very deep concern for my well-being,

For the well-being of others,

If someone who speaks in this way,

Especially people who really play up,

You know,

For instance,

Racial and religious bigotry,

You know,

And are really trying to bring out the worst in people and get us to hate and fear each other,

You know.

I get profoundly concerned for the well-being of our country,

You know,

And our communities when that kind of,

Not only that kind of discourse is coming forth,

But it's being encouraged,

You know,

And others are being encouraged to think that way and speak that way at the same time.

You know,

It's just bringing out the absolute worst that,

You know,

The society has to offer.

And so I find that quite concerning.

I find it anxiety-provoking on the one hand.

It also makes me mad as well,

You know,

And I just don't think it's the way we ought to be conducting ourselves as a policy,

Right?

There are others who are equally angry,

But they're angry at the things that I'm not angry at.

You know,

There are people who hate the government and hate everything it's doing and they feel,

You know,

Equally threatened,

But for entirely different reasons because they have a different political orientation.

But that's,

And then when I get angry,

You know,

Really mad after a meeting at work or something like that,

When I can walk it back and say,

Okay,

Why am I really mad at that person is because in some way or another I feel that they pose some kind of potential threat to my reputation,

To my standing in the school or something like that,

Right?

But it's really helpful if you find yourself getting angry,

You discover what the object of the anger is,

Okay,

Is to say to yourself,

What kind of threat does the object of my anger pose to me that causes me to respond in the way that I do?

And then you can inquire,

You can ask yourself,

Well,

Is that a real threat,

You know,

Or is it something that's kind of simply a reactive behavior on the part of my mind?

Okay,

So please.

I think it's also interesting to try to isolate the trigger that got you going and then how is that trigger different from the last time you got angry at the same thing?

Yes.

And how are you shifting and growing?

Yep.

When you really get,

You know,

Experienced in doing this,

Something that can begin to happen,

Which is of course what we call insight meditation,

Is when you discover those triggers and what's going on there,

Oftentimes they've got a pretty ancient history.

Oh yeah,

I'm attracted to this.

That they go way,

Way back in time.

And there's something about,

I could say it's for me that visually it's almost like suddenly being able to see down a long tunnel,

You know,

To some very much earlier time when there was some kind of event that occurred,

Some kind of imprint,

You know,

That hardwired me all the way up into the present time so that the stimulus in this moment,

I can see the cause-effect relationship immediately.

And then feeling,

Feeling when you're down that tunnel and feeling it,

As opposed to thinking about it,

You know,

That body feeling,

Then you can join up again.

You know,

You know where it's like.

Yes.

You know where you're at when you're there.

And that is a great segue into the third thing to do in terms of the deconstruction of anger,

Which is to note where am I feeling it in the body.

Because if the feeling of anger is strong,

You'll always find some body,

Some place in the body where it's being held,

Where it feels like it's being generated.

For those of you who may have experimented with this,

What places in the body have you discovered where anger might be found to reside?

Yeah?

Yeah,

I've got two.

Right,

Right.

And us,

And both are quite common.

You know,

The neck and the jaw is one,

And part of it is because,

Well,

I think part of it goes back to,

You know,

Very,

Very ancient times down in the medulla obligata somewhere.

It's just one of the,

When any mammal gets angry,

You know,

They're primed for taking some kind of destructive action.

In our case,

Sometimes when I feel,

And we say,

You know,

Getting tight jaws,

Sometimes I feel it arise because I know I'm probably about to say something really unskillful.

And so part of it is just the effort that goes into not saying something unskillful,

Right?

So jaw,

Neck,

Shoulders,

That's,

You know,

Partly it's getting tense for,

Tense up for combat.

Other,

The heart chakra oftentimes,

There's this feeling of tension,

Sometimes a feeling of heat or something of that nature.

Okay.

So it's like,

It's like you're primed,

Primed to do something,

You know,

To express outwardly protective actions,

You know,

To keep yourself from being harmed.

That's really,

Really useful.

And sometimes you can,

The place you'll find your body is a place where you may ever experience trauma,

Especially if it was trauma,

You know,

Which you were like physically attacked or something of that nature.

Because the body remembers,

Body remembers everything.

And so when there's a powerful emotion,

You're almost always going to be able to find a physical correlate to it.

So,

In terms of the deconstruction or careful,

Deep inquiry into the nature of the anger when it arises,

Those are three ways that,

That you can sort of experiment with,

Especially if you're finding not only in meditation practice,

But also in daily life,

If you find anger or outwardly focused,

Aversive feelings happening a fair amount,

Very useful ways,

You know.

Please.

Yeah,

I was going to say too that what helps me is kind of like what we've already been talking about is having insight about,

You know,

My childhood and where did I learn this because,

You know,

Everything I do in life I learn somewhere.

Yes.

And what I've learned through the insight that I've gained is that a lot of my reactions are not really my reactions,

For example,

They were my parents' reactions.

They were my parents' reactions that I took on at a formative age because that's,

You know,

That's all I knew to do.

But if I really look at it with insight,

It's not really me.

Yep,

Some part of the mind is phoning it in.

From back where some place,

Right,

And being able to recognize that when it does happen is really going to be.

What to do with it,

You know,

What to do with whatever it is you're feeling.

There are,

There have been times in my own practice,

My own life when the anger has arisen,

Maybe it's arisen a lot,

You know,

If I really had to categorize,

You know,

To talk about my own temperamental tendencies,

It tends to be,

And hangs out more in the aversive realm than elsewhere.

But if the anger would come up a lot and it would start to really feel like kind of an old tape,

You know,

And I would of course become aversive to the anger and then begin to engage in negative self judgment,

If I were a better yogi,

I wouldn't be feeling so angry.

And so the really,

The really cool way to deal with this,

The really enlightened way to deal with this is to pretend that I'm not angry.

Right?

Because that comports more with my image of what it means to be a good yogi,

What it means to be a true follower of the Buddhist path,

You know,

As to not be angry or if I get angry to pretend that I'm not.

Right?

Which category would you say that falls into?

My guess is delusion.

Because it's all based on the ego's notion of what it means to be,

You know,

Progressing toward enlightenment,

Rather than it being the reality of your experience in the moment.

Sometimes there can be tremendous value in just acknowledging the existence of the anger or the rage or whatever word best fits it,

Okay,

And recognizing its reasons,

Okay,

But not judging yourself negatively for feeling the anger.

Because the anger is being felt for,

You know,

To the best of our knowledge,

Good reasons,

It's because you're feeling threatened.

Then comes,

Of course,

If you continue the inquiry,

Is the threat an actual one?

And sometimes it is.

You know,

People out there now doing terrible things to our environment that totally threatens our well-being in the future,

But more importantly,

That of our children and their children,

You know.

They're in some ways kind of robbing humanity of its environmental future.

You know,

A whole city full of poor people just got poisoned,

You know,

By virtue of governmental fecklessness,

You know,

Of a desire to save money,

Right,

In ways that wound up doing,

You know,

What we don't know,

The full extent of the environmental harm that's been caused,

You know,

Because lead poisoning,

You know,

Cruelly attacks children much more pervasively than anybody else.

And so we've got probably hundreds or thousands of children in Flint,

Michigan,

Who are going to suffer behavioral problems and diminished cognitive capacity by virtue of the fact that somebody was trying to save money at the state level,

And so they started feeding what turned out to be poisoned water to this community,

You know.

There's really no good excuse for that kind of thing to happen.

And so there are,

You know,

I'm just over here blowing smoke on the other end of the country,

And imagine the people who are living there,

You know,

And that they trusted folks to take care of them.

We didn't,

Right.

Imagine the cause for righteous rage,

You know.

And these,

You know,

These things aren't all that uncommon.

You know,

People,

You know,

We have a common concern in our country about trying to protect each other from harm,

But we have radically different ideas about how to do it.

You know,

One is to basically think about maybe not having military weapons in everyone's hands,

And the other one is making it possible for everyone to immediately kill each other in large numbers.

Different strategies,

For sure,

With the common goal of trying to be safe.

Yes,

Please.

Yeah,

If you mind,

Tom Nelson,

He's an Ascension priest,

But he does this Ignatian practice around prayer and contemplation,

And he talks about it's okay to have righteous anger,

But you have to sit in contemplation and contemplative prayer first,

And then figure out what good or right just action you're going to take about the source of your righteous anger,

One of which would be Flemish.

Being a conscientious yogi does not mean being a doormat,

You know.

It means being able to really recognize,

You know,

We're,

You know,

The Bodhisattva path is about care for all sentient beings,

Right?

It includes us.

If indeed you're feeling your anger is aroused by what generally does feel like a credible threat,

You know,

Whether it's behavior of another individual or institutions or whatnot,

You know,

That's for real.

I mean,

There's,

There are important reasons why you're feeling anger.

And so then the task becomes how to convert that energy into some form of skillful and compassionate action rather than simply,

You know,

Acting out of reactivity.

Yes,

Please.

What about when it's kind of overwhelming the number of different things you perceive as,

You know,

Real threats,

Maybe directly or indirectly,

Threats to the community or what it's so many you can't do?

Right.

The,

You know,

The Buddha actually did offer some discourses on social behavior and social responsibility.

And when he talked about that,

What all he would say was that,

You know,

Although most of my teachings have to do with kind of reflecting on what's going on within you as an individual.

So that collectively the same things occur.

When you have whole institutions or whole societies or groups or communities that seem to be in the thrall of hate or greed or delusion.

Okay,

Then it can have really powerful negative effects for whole communities.

Right.

And so one approach there is if as you see these things being played out around you socially or institutionally,

Then the better in touch we are with the attachments,

Aversions and delusions within our own heart minds.

The better it becomes possible to understand what's going on out there.

Pema Chodron,

The Tibetan Buddhist teacher,

You know,

When someone in a Dharma after Dharma talk criticized Buddha Dharma for being said it just seems like a cop out,

You know,

Instead of dealing with all these problems you just sit and meditate.

She said no,

It's not really.

Basically she said no,

Your understanding is incorrect.

She said no,

It's really if you're going to follow the Bodhisattva path,

You know,

You really do need to reflect on all the enormous difficulties that are in the world now.

And then reflect on the degree to which you want to devote some measure of your energy toward making things better.

And again,

It's that way of trying to seek,

Find ways to convert kind of despair,

You know,

And whether it's fear or anxiety that's inward turned aversion or whether it's outward turned aversion in the form of anger.

To recognize it for what it is,

To recognize its roots,

Which are no different than the ones that lie within us,

To remember the compassion that arises within you for yourself,

When you're able to look deeply at what's going on within you.

And if you can bring that same understanding and compassion to bear on social action.

So she said yes,

Please,

By all means,

If you feel so called,

You must act,

And you must act wholeheartedly,

And you must act without attachment to outcome.

Because that's where the burning comes.

And if you feel like some kind of,

Well yes,

If I throw myself into this cause,

Then something good ought to come out of it.

And if it doesn't,

It means that I will have failed.

Keyword in that phrase,

Of course,

Being I.

We don't know what,

You know,

But the effect of our efforts are going to be down the road.

It took us 200 years to get into this climate change mess,

It's probably going to take at least 200 to get out of it.

So it's not going to happen tomorrow,

No matter what kind of car we drive.

Thanks though,

Good question.

Please,

Here's.

Is there any danger,

Do you think,

In coming to labeling too quickly?

Say more of what you mean.

Well,

You know,

Your initial reaction to my own action or somebody else's action might be so impulsive and so powerful that you really don't give yourself a chance to create the nuances.

And to be very careful before you come to the conclusion.

Once the conclusion is made,

You close the door.

So,

I mean,

It's a bit abstract.

No,

No.

There's this 3000 year old book that's still read a lot by a brilliant military strategist named Sun Tzu called The Art of War.

And he's among the observations that he made in his writings was,

You know,

If you can get your opponent angry enough,

It disempowers them.

You know,

You,

Because they lose the capacity for discernment and rational decision making.

And so the same is true of us.

You know,

If we get angry enough or enraged enough,

We kind of defeat ourselves.

And so being able to know the power of the emotion when it arises is really useful because then it's,

It's like watching the tsunami from a mountaintop instead of from the beach.

You can,

You can see,

You know,

The force of it,

You know,

Coming in,

But it doesn't wind up bowling you over.

And usually if we can watch,

Simply watch the arising and the changing and the passing and the arising and whatnot,

Then eventually the connections between the arising of the anger and their cause begin to just sort of come into focus a little bit.

So labeling the actual emotions as they arise is very beneficial because in so doing,

It makes you less likely to do something unskilled.

Is that responsive?

Yeah.

Anything else on this subject?

Please.

This talk and discussion is very appropriate and beautiful.

When I say a bad person,

When you examine people,

Bad people,

It sort of breaks apart often.

But the mindful inquiry led me to ask the question,

Is this anger is?

Of course it's not.

And I found it was in this sitting that I was sort of liberated from that anger.

And then the next question that rises,

Is this anger me?

Of course.

You can't,

Unless you're so delusional,

You can't say yes to that.

Unless it's a little tiny little step away from anything.

Thank you.

Interpersonal anger is really a challenge.

In some ways it's the hardest of all if the emotions are strong.

And some of the most loaded kinds of interactions are the interactions you might have,

For instance,

With someone you're also happy to be very fond of.

Like a significant other or something.

You can have pretty powerful negative emotions arise in the context of an intimate relationship.

When my wife and I did our first Insight Meditation Retreat together,

Our marriage was in quite a strange place actually.

We were both kind of gravitating toward the conclusion that the other person was the author of all of our sorrows.

And then we did this 14 day silent meditation retreat back in 1975 with Jack and Joseph and Sharon.

They were newly admitted teachers and it was really pretty hard for them.

We're sitting and walking 14 hours a day.

It was really intense.

But it was also extraordinarily powerful.

And by the time the retreat is over,

We realize that what we have been doing all that time is projecting difficulties onto the other person.

And in fact,

Having shared that silent experience together really formed a much more durable and long lasting basis for a relationship.

The other form of really difficult interaction is with a person that,

In fact,

When you're doing Metta meditation practice,

It's called a difficult person.

The person in your life that you routinely have the most trouble with.

That you have this innate tendency just to push each other's buttons.

And it may be somebody that you've known and it may be a relative that you don't really much care for.

It may be somebody on the job that you've got to work with whether you want to or not.

And it's just someone who,

For whatever reason,

Tends to almost always kind of bring out the worst in you.

And Jack Cornfield,

When he was describing such a person,

He said,

You know,

You just got to think of them as the Buddha in drag.

He said the very reason they're there is to draw forth all the stuff in yourself you don't want to look at.

I mean,

It can be difficult because it really does force you to say,

Why is it that this relationship,

You know,

It's just always dragging me through the mud in terms of how I want to be versus how I am.

So it's not necessarily something to be grateful for,

But it is,

You know,

Number one,

Seeking to not say and do things that you know are going to exacerbate the relationship,

You know,

Or basically generate more,

You sort of unhold some karma for yourself.

But then secondly,

To see if it's possible to gain some insight into the nature of this strained relationship that can help you free yourself a little from the self-induced suffering,

Whatever happens in the relationship.

And usually it winds up improving.

We've come to the end of our time this evening,

So why don't we take just a moment to get back to our sitting posture if we can.

As we go forth,

May we live with ease,

Safe from all inner and outer harm,

Free of suffering and the roots of suffering,

Resting in generosity and kindness of heart.

May we be happy,

May we be peaceful,

And may we be free.

Reviews

Incredibly helpful. 🙏🏻

Very interesting talk, thank you 🙏🏻

Very helpful talk on the causes and conditions of anger. Really insightful. Includes Q & A from the audience. Thank you so much. It helped me to understand anger as outward facing aversion and also to recognise that anger is often a response to feeling threatened.

So helpful to helping me deconstruct my anger. Thank you!

So wonderful! I look forward to the rest of the teachings.

This was very useful to me. I used the talk to look at a few specific instances of anger and reconstruct the reasons and also thank myself for trying to protect myself instead of judging myself harshly.

Ah, indeed a good subject, excellent presentation and presenter. Thank you. May we all continue to be free and live in peace.

Ran out of time - will listen again - very informative

Will return to this talk. A lot of interesting insights. Thank you 🙏🏼

I found this talk very useful, it helped me to understand and consider different ways of looking at daily problems and how to deal with them. Thank you so much. 🙏🌸🌺🦋