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Accepting Anger
TBRulh
New
I've been trying to accept whatever manifests in my life while in the world.
I've consciously stepped deeper into samsara. I attend school full time, have a pregnant girl friend, work, and for my final trick, I'm two days into quitting smoking. The net effect is frustration, stress, and anxiety about the future. In short I'm grasping. It is easy for all this to manifest as anger towards others and myself. However, this seems to be a function of aversion more than anything. I'm trying to figure out how I can keep greeting this anger as an old friend without letting myself get angry at others. It's tough to keep up.
I'm wondering if other people have any insight into anger, sadness, and anxiety and how have the emotion without attaching to it.
I've got no choice but to engage in samsara. I'm afraid that that engagement threatens to turn me into either a basket case or your typical rude/mean city dweller. This is where the growing edge of my practice has led me.
Any thoughts?
I've consciously stepped deeper into samsara. I attend school full time, have a pregnant girl friend, work, and for my final trick, I'm two days into quitting smoking. The net effect is frustration, stress, and anxiety about the future. In short I'm grasping. It is easy for all this to manifest as anger towards others and myself. However, this seems to be a function of aversion more than anything. I'm trying to figure out how I can keep greeting this anger as an old friend without letting myself get angry at others. It's tough to keep up.
I'm wondering if other people have any insight into anger, sadness, and anxiety and how have the emotion without attaching to it.
I've got no choice but to engage in samsara. I'm afraid that that engagement threatens to turn me into either a basket case or your typical rude/mean city dweller. This is where the growing edge of my practice has led me.
Any thoughts?
0
Comments
Then dropping all stories and letting the emotion sit in the body as living energy.
All the best,
Todd
Do you do sitting meditation? I bet if you meditate 45 minutes (can be broken by walking to preserve legs), by the end of the 45 minutes the anger will be hugely reduced.
Then emotions are seen to be the display of your nature.
Emotions in their purity prior to our interpretation is the clarity of our true nature.
When they are repressed, we essentially repress our clarity, thus any life we have is dried up and stagnant.
The trick is to be as the body. Be the emotion in its totally. And allow the emotion to express itself physically in the body as energy. This is done without push or pull. Without repression or acting out the emotion.
We are not intellectualizing. We are not interpreting. We are not thinking about where the emotion came from or why it is here or even what emotion it is. Then we can finally realize what emotions are without boxing emotions into little ideas.
But this takes tremendous patience and discipline. And one needs a higher perception to operate from because the emotions are too strong for most.
The trick is to work on our ethics and to have a daily practice.
Then we will find how we operate when we actually work on ourselves in a direction towards letting go and peace.
We must all find our natural goodness, open our heart and have the wisdom to stay and express our innate treasure.
How to have the emotion? It's automatic.
How not to attach? Learn from trusted sources, practice, have confidence and consistency.
For me, I mostly learnt from doing it, seeing the result, evaluating the result, considering what it was that I wanted, redoing it, seeing the result etc until the expected result is the result I'm experiencing... also seeing others do it, then hearing the thoughts of others on doing it and pondering it...
That said, with the benefit of hindsight, on balance I have mostly learnt from my f***ups and even then, painfully slowly over a needlessly protracted period.
Anger for me at this point is my teacher saying "wake up", and see the expectation that is now being threatened. We are really little more than chaos, hanging on to the delusion of control. To practise with "Anger" is to practise with letting go of that illusory" we".
I'm not surprised that stress comes calling when you've beckoned all at once to so many teachers.
What you now have before you is a hard ass retreat in the midst of daily life. Good on yah.
In Western society, it's often the case that people strive to bear life's burdens on their own. It's the "suck it up and deal" mentality of rugged individualism, and it often manifests itself in spiritual practice. While inner work with our own private climate of mind is invaluable, sometimes what's needed is more obvious. In Asian societies, a greater emphasis is placed on community support - the Sangha. The traditional antidote to aversion in Buddhism is metta, what is often translated as loving-kindess. Metta more literally means "friendliness" or "goodwill." It is a relative of mitta, the Pali word for "friend." The practice of monks is supported by monastic fellowship and also the support of the surrounding community. As laypeople, our own practice is fostered and supported by kind community. When we are isolated from interaction with people, we can maybe go without such community. But in the midst of the storm of worldly beings, wise friendship can be a lifesaver.
The inner work may be as simple as formally practicing metta meditation. The outer work may be as simple as finding a few friends to blow off steam with. I know you are busy, but try to make time to foster and maintain connections with people who embody metta for you: people who wish to see you happy, who offer help when they can give it and when you need it, and who help lighten the weight of worldly life a bit. If no one is around, you might consider seeing a counselor who can help you deal with some of the stress. In a monastic setting, this is the role a good spiritual teacher and community conducive to progress in your path would naturally foster. Eventually, you will internalize their goodwill, and be better able to extend it to your own frustration and stress.