Adventures Of Sariputta & Mogallana 7: Working With Anger

Sensei Morris Doshin Sullivan talks about a time when Sariputta's own mother openly disrespected him, and what the Buddha said about his response. Then, in a dharma talk given at White Sands Buddhist Center, he lays out a five-point process for working with anger when it arises -- a topic many people struggle with, especially when someone close to them behaves harshly toward them.

Transcript

You are listening to The Adventures of Saraputa and Mogulana. I'm your host, Morris Sullivan. Today, I'll talk about a step-by-step process for working with anger, Which most of us experience at least now and then, But first I'll tell you about an insult Saraputa received from his own mother. In the Buddha's time, The main religious views came from the scriptures and practices that provided the foundation for present-day Hinduism. Society was structured according to what would evolve eventually into the contemporary caste system. People were classed according to their birth. Saraputa's family were Brahmins, The priestly caste, Considered the highest rank. Friends were in positions of privilege and high social status. Saraputa's mother was a staunch adherent to these views. The Buddha accepted everyone equally, However, Regardless of their rank in society. So she was not pleased at all with Saraputa's decision to become a simple Buddhist monk. In fact, She was quite hostile to the Buddha's teaching and to his followers. From time to time, The Buddha would stay at a monastery near the town where Saraputa and Mogulana grew up. On one of those occasions, Saraputa and a number of monks went into the town for alms, And they ended up at the door of the house where Saraputa's mother lived. She invited them into her home, But as she brought out food for them, She said to Saraputa, Quite spitefully, Ha! You eater of others' rubbish! You go from stranger's house to stranger's house, Looking for leftovers. For that you gave up your wealth and your place in society. You have ruined us. Well go on, Eat. She served the other monks, Openly showing her disgust. So you are the men who have made my son a servant, She said. Well go ahead, Enjoy your food. Saraputa didn't respond. He quietly ate what she had given him and returned to the monastery with the other monks. One of those monks later told the Buddha about how the venerable Saraputa had patiently endured his mother's harsh treatment, And the Buddha praised him for his equanimity and compassion. He said, One that is free from anger and performs his duties faithfully, Who guards his actions, Is free from craving, And who has transcended the rounds of birth and death, That one I call a Brahmin. We all have to deal with unpleasant behavior from others, Perhaps even our loved ones, At least once in a while. I talked about this on a recent Sunday morning. So I want to tell you a story. Many generations before the Buddha was born, There was a king whose wife could not produce an heir. And after some years of marriage, The king took a second wife, Younger one, And pretty soon she was carrying his child. Well, In her jealousy, The first queen gave the young woman poison, And she died. And this sparked a fiery feud that continued through centuries and centuries. So the two women persecuted one another, First as a hen and a cat, And then as a doe and a leopard, And on and on through many lifetimes. And finally, One of the women was born the daughter of a nobleman, And the other was born an ogress. And this is when they met the Buddha. The nobleman's daughter, With her newborn infant, Ran away from the ogre and happened upon the monastery where the Buddha was staying, And so she ran inside for protection. The ogre tried to follow, But was stopped at the door to the monastery by a yaka. That's these big heavenly beings who guard temples. And the Buddha came out to speak to both of them, And he told them about their past lives and about this process they'd gone through of carrying their anger forward from one life to the next. And he helped them to realize that their anger could never be satisfied as long as they continued to hold on to it. And he said, Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. Hatred is only appeased by non-hatred. This is eternal law. The Buddha didn't say very many things were eternal law. So I think we can safely say that he considered hatred, Animosity, Ill will in all of its forms to be a major contributor to stress and suffering. And that's not only true in terms of our long-term spiritual well-being from one life to the next, But in our daily lives too, From one day to the next. So I talked a few weeks ago about working with strong emotions, And I was thinking at the time that maybe I'd dive a little deeper into the subject of animosity later on. And it has come up several times since then in emails and other meetings and things like that. So I thought today would be a good day to talk about this. So I use the word hatred in the story that I told you about, And I've used the word anger also. These are both aspects of animosity, Of wishing harm to another. Animosity is one of the three mental states that the Buddha called poisons. They're poisonous because they inevitably lead to suffering. So the first step in working with our anger is to recognize that it's harmful. One of the problems with anger is that people really like to hang onto it. We may recognize it as negative, As an unpleasant emotion and things like that, And yet we still want to cling to it. It occurred to me one time when I was talking to somebody that people are pretty willing to take antidepressants, And they're pretty willing to take anti-anxiety medications. But have you ever heard of an anti-anger pill? People probably wouldn't take it. We don't usually want to change our anger. We want to change somebody else. We want to change whoever we're mad at or whatever circumstance we don't like. And so maybe if we take an anti-anger pill, If it made the other person feel bad. But the big problem with anger is that it tends to breed more anger and thus more pain. The more you feed it, The more it grows. And so that's why the Buddha said that the solution to anger, To hatred, Is non-anger, Non-hatred. So the second step of working with anger is to accept that it has arisen in your mind. If you deny that animosity is there, You're not likely to do anything constructive with it. It's okay to have emotions. Even to have emotions that may be unhelpful over the long term. We really don't need to fix how we feel before we can act in alignment with our values. And that's the thing about anger is it causes us to act not in alignment with our higher purpose. We come here today and we say, May all beings be happy and well. And then if we go out of here wishing harm to some other being, Even the person who gets our way as we're trying to get on I-95 or whatever, Then we're not really practicing that in our life. And so we want to bring our actions into alignment with our values. So we all know what it's like to do things that we don't really feel like doing. Even if you generally like your job, For example, There are probably days that you really don't feel like getting out of bed or days that you really feel like going to the beach. But you have something important to do. And so you do what you don't feel like doing. And usually if we lead with the body that way, The mind is going to catch up to us eventually. If you get out of bed and go to work anyway, By the end of the day, Maybe you've had a good day. So we can feel animosity and still act from a place of compassion and kindness. And when we lead with the body in that way, If we do things and we say things that are kind and compassionate, The mind will come along with us pretty soon. So the third step then is to accept yourself with your feelings. Work on compassion for yourself. Accept yourself despite having feelings that you may not want or that you might think that you've dealt with and all of that kind of stuff. A lot of the time people start a spiritual practice and then they go away thinking, Oh, I've got this all worked out now. And then these old things come up. And your reaction then is to get angry at yourself. Don't do that. You're human beings. The Buddha had a cousin named Tissa and he was an older man. He ordained in his old age. And so sometimes other monks that hadn't known him very long would assume, Because he was an old guy like me, That he was an advanced monk. And so he would let them refer to him as Tara, Which means elder, Which usually refers to it, A senior monk. Even though he really hadn't been ordained for all that long. Well Tissa didn't go along very well with the other monks. He tended to neglect his duties. And when somebody would criticize him, He'd get upset and he'd go to complain to the Buddha. Well eventually the other monks got so mad at him for this that they went to the Buddha to complain about Tissa. And the Buddha's response was this. He abused me. He robbed me. Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred. He abused me. He robbed me. Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred. So Tissa had complained to the Buddha about other monks abusing him. Other monks had complained to the Buddha about Tissa misbehaving. And I'm sure that both groups felt justified somehow or another in their positions. And assumed that the Buddha was going to fix the other party. The Buddha, However, Went to the source of the anger, Which is not the actions of the other person. It's the workings of your own mind. Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred. He didn't take sides, Try to fix any condition. He simply said, If you hang on to these thoughts about wrongdoing, You're going to stay angry. So there's another interesting thing here, Too. He didn't tell anyone that they shouldn't have gotten angry or that they shouldn't have these thoughts. He simply said not to nurture them. And this is an important point. Anger is a very human emotion. It causes a lot of trouble, But it probably evolved for a reason. It probably, You know, In some circumstances, It probably does us some good over the short term. We don't have much control over its arising. If you walk out of here today convinced that you're never going to get angry again, Then as long as you walk out of here today still a human being, Anger is going to arise. There's a part of our brain that is highly reactive, And it's a lot quicker than the part of our brain that does the thinking. And so a lot of the time we perceive something, And we have a mostly physical reaction to it even before we're consciously aware of it. And then the part of the mind that does the thinking experiences this reaction and interprets that. And so we hear someone say something disrespectful, Or maybe even a thought or memory arises in our consciousness without us meaning for it to. It just comes up. And as a response, We have an unpleasant feeling, And then we think about it, And we start creating a storyline around it, And pretty soon there's anger. So the perception and the immediate reaction to it, And even the arising of a memory or thought is not something that we can control. But what we can do is affect how long and how much we're going to add angry thoughts to whatever has arisen. Even the Buddha himself didn't say, I never get angry. What he would say is, Anger finds no foothold here. I don't give it a place to stand, And so it comes up. It has to go somewhere else. So the next step then is to stop nurturing those thoughts. Observe what you're doing to generate more animosity, And then stop doing those things. Anger happens when we give someone else responsibility for how we feel. You make me angry when you do this. Anger has less of a grip on us when we take responsibility for our own feelings. So if you're dwelling in animosity, You're not in this moment. Your mind is on something in the past, Or maybe some possible future that you're imagining, But it's almost never right here, Right now. So if you find that you're angry, First, A really productive thing to do is to come back to right now, Come back to the present. You can bring your attention to your breath, For example, And pay attention one breath at a time, Because that's what's happening right now. I think there's another reason that we have trouble letting go of anger. We want to win. Think about arguments with your spouse or your coworkers. You want your anger to go away, But mostly you want to win the argument. The Buddha once told some monks about a king who had been defeated in battle by his own nephew, And he was very upset by this. And the Buddha said, Both winning and losing cause suffering. The conqueror becomes more filled with animosity for his enemy, And the one who is defeated suffers pain and distress. But the peaceful live happily, Discarding both victory and defeat. I love that. The peaceful live happily by discarding both victory and defeat. So to have a peaceful marriage or a peaceful work life, A lot of the time it's better just to give up the idea of winning and losing. If we can let go of the ego's need to be seen as right or to feel like we've won or whatever, Then we can focus on problem solving. So when we accept responsibility for our feelings, We can still hold others accountable for their actions. And when we can do that, Our desire to be an agent of change or something like that can come out of compassion for those that suffer rather than out of anger. And then you can set your mind on antidotes to anger, Like loving kindness. It's hard to have two thoughts in your mind at once, Maybe impossible. And so it's very difficult to harbor ill will for someone if you're harboring goodwill for them. If you're wishing them well, It's hard to wish them harm at the same time. And the same is true for compassion. If you can develop understanding, If you can see the suffering behind the actions of others, Then it becomes a lot easier to let go of your hardness toward them, Your anger toward them. So we can accept people as they are, Even if we don't accept everything that they do. Like ourselves, Our adversary, Whoever they are, Is a product of causes and conditions. I'm here today because of things that have happened in the past, Some of them even before I was born, And choices that I've made, And choices other people have made around me, And a lot of things that led me to this moment. And I really couldn't be anywhere else right now because of that, Because of those things that have happened before. And so the person that you're angry at, Whatever they did, Given the person that they are and the causes and conditions that led them to that moment, That's where they were. That's where they were. So maybe they'll change, But we can't force that. We can't control that. So we can be glad for our own opportunity to cultivate wisdom and gratitude, And for our own opportunity to live a more enlightened life. So I have this connection through one of my teachers, Reverend Koyo Kobose, To the Buddhist Temple of Chicago, Which is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in the US. And it was founded by Reverend Koyo's father, Reverend Gome Kobose. So in 1941, Japanese aircraft from Pearl Harbor, US Navy base in Hawaii, Most of you probably know that. And a few months later, Japanese Americans were all ordered to leave their homes and put into internment camps. And the Koboses were ordered to leave their home in Southern California and were sent to a camp in Wyoming. Well, If the government came along and said to me, Look, Everybody with an Irish last name like Sullivan has to leave and go to Wyoming and live in a camp, I'd probably be really upset about that. But the Koboses, Gome Kobose, Really focused on taking care of the spiritual needs of the people in the camp. And so he organized a temple there. And when the war came to an end, A lot of Japanese Americans moved to Chicago. And so that's where they went. And he went there in 1945 and founded this temple. And at the time, The newspaper reported that heathens had organized a temple in Chicago. Heathens. But despite that kind of stuff, Kobose was by all accounts friendly and peaceable. And he, Friendly and peaceable, But fearless because he let himself be guided by his highest purpose, Which was to provide a place of worship for Buddhists. So if you want to do something with your anger, Just don't let it rule you. Hopefully your life has purpose and meaning and let that be your guide. So thank you for your attention. Thank you for joining me for Episode 7 of the Adventures of Saraputa and Mogulana. And thank you to all the people who helped make this podcast possible. I just want to remind you that if you have a question for me or a comment, You can go to the anchor. Fm profile page and you can leave me a voice message. I'd love to hear from you. In the next episode, I'll talk to another Dharma superhero, Yujiro Seki, The creator of a profoundly beautiful documentary film, Carving the Divine. In the meantime, I hope you found something in this episode that inspired your practice. Now go save the world.

Reviews

This simple and clear teaching touched my heart. Thank you.