So,
For our meditation today,
I thought to look at some of the antidotes for anger.
This last time we did meditation,
We looked at just sort of general antidotes for disturbing emotions that could be used for any kind of disturbing emotion.
But then there are also specific antidotes for specific disturbing emotions.
And anger is one that's particularly disturbing,
It's probably the most disturbing one when it comes up in our mind.
But fortunately there are many antidotes or methods we can use when it does come up.
So I thought we could reflect on some of these.
So let's start by getting into a comfortable position for meditation.
Try to sit with a straight back,
But at the same time be as relaxed as possible.
Let your shoulders relax.
Let your arms and legs relax.
Let your back relax.
And take a few moments to let your mind settle down in your body,
To bring your awareness into your body.
That probably means having to put aside thoughts in the mind.
You might still have thoughts about what you were doing just before sitting down to meditate,
Or any other thoughts of the past.
So put those aside for now.
Do the best you can to keep your mind in the present moment and present place,
Right here,
Right now.
And allow your breathing to flow in and out in a natural way.
And for a few moments,
Beware of your breathing flowing in and out.
And see if you can let your body and mind become more calm,
More peaceful.
And generate a positive,
Altruistic motivation for doing this meditation.
So bring into your mind,
Into your heart,
Feelings of love and concern and compassion,
Wanting to help others,
Wanting to help the world as much as you can.
And then have the aspiration to learn something from this meditation that will help you to be more helpful to others and to the world.
And now bring into your mind an instance of getting angry.
It's good if you can remember one that happened recently,
So it's still fresh in your mind.
So it could have been anger towards someone in your family or a neighbor or someone you work with.
It could also be anger towards someone you don't really know but you hear about them,
For example politicians or other people we read about,
Hear about in the media.
Do the things that we don't like and get angry about.
So first of all,
Just look at how this experience of anger,
This feeling of anger affects you.
What kind of effects,
What kind of results does it have on your body?
You can start by just looking at how you feel in your body when you're angry.
How did it get you where you are?
And then look at how it affects your mind example is your mind calm and peaceful and clear or is it turbulent,
Agitated,
Feeling unhappy,
Having unpleasant feelings how does it affect your mind when you're trying to focus on some work that you are doing?
Are you able to work efficiently with good concentration or is it difficult to concentrate?
Your mind keeps getting distracted by angry thoughts with the result that you might make mistakes in your work,
It might take longer than usual getting the work done and so on and see if you can notice effects of anger on other activities you may do for example eating,
Sleeping,
Going for a walk or a drive,
Being with friends with family so when you're in those other situations are you able to relax and enjoy yourself or do you find your mind is disturbed and tense and unhappy maybe it's difficult to sleep,
Difficult to enjoy being in the company of others and so on and related to that might notice how anger affects your way of behaving with other people not necessarily the person you're angry at but other people.
If you're angry at one person it may put you in a bad mood so that when you're with other people you may snap at them being rude and friendly towards them even though they are not the ones you're really angry at so does that ever happen to you?
And how do you think other people feel being around you when you're in an angry state of mind?
So hopefully we can recognize that when there's anger in our mind not only does it disturb our own mind,
It disturbs our activities,
Our work and our relationships,
Our interactions with others so then others can be disturbed as well so we do have a choice when anger comes up in our mind.
We don't have to go with it and get caught up in it,
Let ourselves become angry.
We can remind ourselves that it's just a state of mind.
It's not permanent,
It's not who we are,
It's just a passing mental state that will just come and go like a cloud in the sky.
So if we have a strong understanding of that,
That alone may be enough to let go of the anger but that may not always work.
We may need other antidotes.
So one thing that's very helpful is to try to have more understanding of the person we're angry at.
We can imagine being in the position of that person,
Putting ourselves in their shoes,
Trying to understand how they think,
How they feel,
What's going on with them because it could be that they are suffering,
They're going through problems and difficulties and so they're not really in complete control of their mind and their behavior and instead,
As we say in Buddhism,
They may be under the control of their afflictions,
Ignorance,
Attachment,
Anger and so on.
These mental afflictions which we have as well,
Everybody has them,
Everyone is in samsara,
So most probably this person has them in their mind as well.
They probably don't know how to manage them and so they come up in the mind and the person just gets totally caught up in them,
Carried away by them and acting them out in ways in ways that are unwise and unskillful,
Creating problems for themselves and for others and probably creating that karma as well.
So that's one way of thinking about the other person that might help us to not be angry and hateful towards them but instead have a feeling of compassion towards them and the wish to help them.
So just contemplate that and see if that way of thinking could be helpful for you.
You you you you you you you you you you you you also when we have anger at someone we tend to see them as a hundred percent bad negative and if they have no good qualities at all they never do anything good anything right so it's good to check if that is realistic or not that way of seeing the other person is realistic or if they do have some good qualities but we're just ignoring them denying them you even if we have difficulty seeing good qualities in the person we could try to imagine how they appear to the Buddha because a Buddha is able to see that everyone has potential Buddha nature the potential to change themselves become free of all the afflictions all the suffering and its causes and eventually become fully enlightened on Buddha the Buddha can see the potential in beings and knows that how they are at the present isn't something permanent they're not going to be like that forever and ever but they will change they will transform and one day they will become a wonderful compassionate wise enlightened being it may be hard for us to see that but just try to imagine that this is how a Buddha sees that person you however thinking about how the person has good qualities and they have the potential to transform themselves and become a Buddha doesn't mean that we allow them to do harmful things and negative things just remain passive and do nothing while they carry out harmful behavior so if someone is doing harmful things and there is something we can do to prevent that to stop that we should as long as we're not doing anything harmful to them but while doing those actions trying to stop the person's harmful behavior ideally we try to do it not with anger and hatred and wish to harm them but instead with compassion genuine wish to help them so we'll end the meditation here there's been a lot of ideas introduced and you probably would like to think about them more but this is just planting some seeds some things for you to think about in your future dealings with people who might trigger your anger so let's conclude with the mental dedication of the positive energy the merit we've created may this bring benefit to all living beings in particular may it help all living beings to tame their minds their anger and their hatred and eventually become completely free from this very painful state of mind
