Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
New problem with anger... advise?
I know I only post here from time to time, but I am racking my brain and need to talk to Buddhists about this. I'm so far away from the sangha it's making me crazy. lol
I'll try to be short. Before I started my current practice I dealt with life's frustrations by eating too much, avoiding participating in life, and thinking that all of my problems were because I was "depressed". When I found buddhism much of my depression lifted because I found that I wasn't crazy, I just had a Buddhist world-view and didn't know it.
Lately I've been having issues with being angry. I consider myself to be patient, and anger is just not a way that I have ever reacted to things before in my life and I don't know where it's coming from. Has this hapened to anyone else as they move along in their practice? I used to be able to just go to Baptist church with my parents and not say anything, even though I considered myself non-Christian for years before Buddhism. Now I just get pissed off like a teenager, stomping feet and huffing. I can't pretend like I used to... and it's disturbing to me. It's not so much that I don't know how to deal with being angry (everything is impermanent, etc.) it's just that it's so strange that this has become my default reaction, when before I would just hide and sleep.
Thank you so much, you guys are always great!
I'll try to be short. Before I started my current practice I dealt with life's frustrations by eating too much, avoiding participating in life, and thinking that all of my problems were because I was "depressed". When I found buddhism much of my depression lifted because I found that I wasn't crazy, I just had a Buddhist world-view and didn't know it.
Lately I've been having issues with being angry. I consider myself to be patient, and anger is just not a way that I have ever reacted to things before in my life and I don't know where it's coming from. Has this hapened to anyone else as they move along in their practice? I used to be able to just go to Baptist church with my parents and not say anything, even though I considered myself non-Christian for years before Buddhism. Now I just get pissed off like a teenager, stomping feet and huffing. I can't pretend like I used to... and it's disturbing to me. It's not so much that I don't know how to deal with being angry (everything is impermanent, etc.) it's just that it's so strange that this has become my default reaction, when before I would just hide and sleep.
Thank you so much, you guys are always great!
0
Comments
always remember that all conditioned phenomenon arise, peak, and pass away.. if you have anger, observe it, when you get angry about your anger.. observe that too.. and when you start to feel guilty about it "because im a buddhist and i'm not supposed to be angry".. then observe that as well. try to find the root cause...
I have a saying " if it exists.. you can observe it".. try to be as mindful as you can during these situations.
and finally metta, loving-friendliness, is what the Buddha prescribed for anger -
Metta Song - Imee Ooi ( Lyrics: Pali & Eng) -bigger subtitles
watch this chant of metta.. it has both the pali and the english words.. and give metta
P.S anyone know how to embed a video? I've seen it done here before.
We all feel anger, the important thing to realize is that we create this anger naturally, that it is not something forced upon us by the outside world. Prior to starting to understand the workings of my own mind, I recall anything that annoyed me or made me angry would almost consume me, I would decide "oh this has made me angry so I must be angry now!" And would cling to the emotions and not let them go. These things take time to truly understand, but the important part for me at least was to understand that I had created the anger, and that if I was simply an observer of the anger, and didn't jump on board to ride it like a bull in a rodeo, it would rear its head and then go away, without causing the same distress it had before.
To reduce the likelyhood of anger to arise in the first place, my best suggestion is to study Buddha in general, he gave many practical methods for understanding the world around us, and more importantly, the world inside us.
Also If you would like some suggestions on reading, I would be more then happy to make some.
Hope this helps!
@ecdrewello1 -- Good for you. It sounds as if you may have the makings of a Buddhist.
The beginning of practice is sometimes such a relief ... so yum-yum-yummy. After a long period of floundering, at last, here is something (Buddhism, perhaps) that makes sense and to which it is easy to devote yourself. What a relief!
And then the depths of practice make themselves felt: "I can't pretend like I used to." Yum-yum-yummy is not the point ... "awake" is the point and being awake is not always an unalloyed rose garden. Buddhism may be as true as true can be, but what is true is not always nice. In fact, if it is always nice, that's a pretty good warning sign that pretending is going on.
So, yes, there is anger and impatience and sorrow that come hand-in-hand with love and patience and joy. No...more...pretending. No more halos. No more woo-hoo.
Just practice ... day after day, week after week, year after year. When bliss comes calling, enjoy it. When the shit hits the fan, enjoy that too.
Just practice.
Hmmm Cole.. doesn't seem to work
Edit: it looks like YouTube got rid of their old embedded code set, at least on the mobile version. They streamlined it for specific social networks
At least I'm not feeling like a totally out of controll loon at the moment.
@ecdrewello1-- When my daughter was little -- maybe 8 or 10 -- her best friend came from a Roman Catholic family. Since my daughter's friend was taking confirmation classes, my daughter wanted to do that too. So she did ... and in the course of those classes, she needed to go to church services.
At the time, I was in what I thought was a very mellow space -- very ecumenical, very accepting, very it's-all-good in my mind. All religions had something to offer, so why not, I thought. "I'll go to any church any time," I would say to myself.
I attended three Catholic church services before I hit the roof. I didn't do anything overt like throwing rotten tomatoes, but I had had it. The setting was pleasant, the music was OK, the stained glass was lovely and I was young enough to do all the get-up-and-then-kneel down ritual. But ....
But I could not sit there and listen to what I considered inhumane lectures to the audience. I'm not criticizing here, just stating a personal persuasion. What I, like you, found "so wrong" was this: People have difficulties ... or perhaps, as Christians phrase it, commit sins. They make mistakes that are painful, both to themselves and others. Those mistakes deserve attention. So far, so good.
The point at which I drew an unequivocal line was the corrupt notion that the only way to smooth the way, to find peace in this life, to straighten things out, was to get right with God ... and the only way to get right with God was ... you guessed it ... through the church and its expositors. This, to my mind, was not only "so wrong," it was also unkind in the deepest possible way ... unkindness from an institution founded on "caritas." A religion or spiritual practice that does not offer (or perhaps demand-of is a better phrase) its participants an exit strategy ... well, that is a false teaching and "so wrong" in my book. Belief is OK as a starting point. But as a guarantor of peace, it is a world of fools. Experience trumps belief, so ... train for experience, not for belief.
OK ... sorry for the too-many words.
I never told my daughter not to attend confirmation classes, but after a while, the fad wore off and she stopped going. And even if the fad hadn't worn off, I would not have stood in her way. Belief is OK for a while. But eventually, there has to be some recognition that the door marked "entrance" on one side, is marked "exit" on the other, and at some point, it is important to use the exit ... not because of a divergence of beliefs, but because of a divergence of experience. It's like the old Christian joke: "Imagining that you are a Christian because you go to church is like imagining you are a car because you stand in a garage."
Anyway, I never went back and "ecumenism" was never again something I thought very highly of. A Zen student and author, Christmas Humphreys, once wrote approximately, "All roads may lead to Rome, but you take your road and I'll take mine and when we arrive, we can both laugh."
As I say, no criticism intended. Just my take. I see no reason why you cannot have your take as well. If peace depended on the agreement of others, how peaceful could it be?
anger is just an emotion, arising and falling on its own - where there is anger, there is something to contemplate about - what is it that causes this anger to arise - why is there aversion there - when there is anatta (not-self), so how come the external thing is affecting your mind - is there any entity out there or in here, which does something or is getting affected by something. anger is like a burning coal, which you take in your hand, with the intention of throwing it at someone else, you are the person who gets burnt. if the other person has done something bad, law of karma will take care of it, so nothing to be angry about. if the other person has done something good and you have some defilements in you, then also nothing to be angry about, rather take the others' criticism as feedback and work on removing your defilements.