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Compassion in the face of anger
I have a severe food intolerance, and just got whammied at a local restaurant that has always been top-notch before. Definitely not good! I'm trying very hard to find compassion for the chefs, the waitress, whomever it was who messed up. Compassion can be so difficult sometimes!
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My understanding is that the Buddha taught the antidote to anger is Metta. So maybe a little Metta practice will help you let go of the anger.
Being angry doesn't change anything. It won't go back and change what happened. All it will do is ruin your thoughts. Who knows, you may take you anger out on someone else who then becomes mad at you and takes their anger out on someone else....and so on. From the sound of things, it was a total accident. There was no evil intent. I'm assuming and hoping that you are doing OK.
If I was you I would bring it to the manager's attention and just explain the severity of the situation. Ask him/her to talk to the staff about it so it won't happen again.
"Now, lets see how ANGER could play out using this process.
1. Without knowledge of this process here is what happens.
A person yells at you. You hear the sound and a painful feeling arises and YOU don't like it! YOU immediately think about how much you dislike hearing this and how this person always acts like this and you reach into your habitual tendency library and pull out the card that says, I hate this, and it feels like it must be my fault and i should YELL BACK. What we see here is a WAR!
2. With knowledge of this impersonal process links however, things can change.
A person walks in and yells at you. You consider that hearing this is not personal and the feeling that comes up is only a painful feeling, not personal. So you don't think so much about it and instead decide to let it go. You see the person is in pain and with compassion, you listen but now you are not in the movie so to speak, but watching the frames go by! Interesting.
The entire perspective of the situation has changed from being personal, to impersonal and this leaves open a space for you to be compassionate and maybe offer some ice cream or coffee? Offer a comment of bad day, eh? or something like that.
so now we have moved to a new option. By understanding how things work, we can see how there could be a peaceful solution maybe....
So D.O, becomes VERY, VERY practical now in daily life.
Please comment on this. I am building a teaching module to help people by using this and it seems to work very well.
Metta and smiles.
Sister Khema
Affect the world around you; give your smile away....."
From the above link.
Using the Dependent Origination 12 link chain system one can wise up and start to deconstruct the process of experience and potentially move from reactive to respond.
Hope this helps.
@ajnast4r I have celiac too - I got glutened by rogue crouton crumbs. My celiac is *very* sensitive, which is why I'm super-choosy about where I eat. This is a place I eat frequently (the only place that local mall that I generally feel safe won't try to murder me) so when this happened, I was so angry! And sad! It was mostly a "Great, now there's nowhere I can eat at this stupid mall now" kind of pity-party. You are right about the Metta practice and the email - the manager handled the situation very well, and I could see that he genuinely felt concerned and felt bad about what had happened.
@txbuddhist You're right - intent is important. I'm very sure that no one in the restaurant said, "Ha! Let's get her with some croutons!" Human beings make human errors. I needed that reminder, so thank you. Mistakes do happen.
@taiyaki Thanks for the two perspectives. You're right - we do have a choice about how we respond to feelings of anger.
As an update, the mall has a Teopia (yay!) so I was able to get some wellness tea to help the bubbletummy and help me calm down a little. I'm feeling mostly better now; because I just got a little bit, the reaction wasn't as bad as it could have been, and I'm very grateful for that.
Thank you all for your concern and your ideas. I heart this place! (and all of you!)
In a way, there's no need for compassion, because there's no need for anger. It could be that there's someone new in the kitchen, who hasn't been trained or alerted to this problem. In any case, customer feedback of this nature is valuable, and I'm sure they wouldn't want to lose a steady customer, not to mention anyone else who may have been similarly affected.
My anger was directed at the server and the kitchen staff - I don't even know whose fault it was, so I was crusty overall. The whole situation made me mad, and then I got mad at myself for getting mad. I was then unable to completely get rid of the anger, and was unfortunately crabby to people unrelated to the incident.
Sigh.
Buddhism fail.
And btw, the body's reaction to foods or lack thereof (you should see someone who's feeling a hypoglycemic episode coming on!) can overtake the mind and the will. When there's a chemical reaction happening in the body, we are not able to stay in control, depending on the nature of the issue. So again, you shouldn't feel bad, actually, you handled the situation well, it sounds like. It's just the post-incident anger that nailed you. We learn from our experiences.
Just curious-do you eat gluten-free bread?
Yep, I eat gluten-free bread. I have a bread machine, so I make (weird-looking) gluten-free bread, or sometimes my awesome Mom will make some for me. I have been 100% gluten-free (minus accidents like today) for nearly 2 years.
Getting hit with gluten is so very stressful, because the possibility for severe, severe illness is terrifying. I was fortunate today, and I'm now trying to focus on that instead of the negative. You're so right when you talk about our bodies and wills being overtaken. Normally I'm very slow to anger, but the feeling of being in danger is a huge adrenaline rush. I literally went from relaxing at lunch to being nearly in tears immediately, and it made me a bit of a loon.
I think tomorrow I'll call the restaurant and thank the manager for his kind response to the situation and for his genuine concern. I'd also like to hear how he followed-up with the situation (impromtu meeting? notation in the daily log?) so that I can feel more secure next time.
As for the other people I was crusty to as a result, I can only hope they didn't take too much offence. I hate the idea of ruining anyone else's day.
Have you ever heard of BioSet, or NAET? They're alternative allergy treatments. They program your body to not be allergic any more. It works with the energetic body, so often it's acupuncturists who learn and practice it. I had a gluten sensitivity (not celiac, or at least, not severe celiac), but I'm fine now. In fact, BioSet helped with my thyroid disease (it can treat autoimmune disorders), and I have the blood tests to prove it. Doctors just stare at the numbers and scratch their heads, or the more close-minded ones say there must have been a testing error. I'll get you the website for the BioSet people, so you can see if there's a practitioner in your area.
www.drellencutler.com/pages/practitionerdirectory
Gluten sensitivity is so tricky, and I think really they don't always know what causes it. For me, for example, we use the label "celiac disease" because of the severity of my reactions, but in truth, my doctor does not think I truly have it. (Celiac is an autoimmune disease, for which I tested negative.) She thinks it's related to my endometriosis, in that it has caused a lot of damage to my intestines, immune system, etc, and has (likely) caused my body to stop being able to digest it properly. I just get so tired of saying "severe gluten intolerance caused by a chronic medical condition," because in a lot of cases, restaurants and/or people hosting take that less seriously. (Is that wrong speech?) It's frustrating. :banghead: