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.
Taming the anger.
Is it possible, and if so, how does one handle things from misplacing your car keys to someone side-swiping your car and running off before you can catch their name?
thanks!
thanks!
0
Comments
Before any of these things happen, imagine that they've already happened.
If you have a shiney new car, imagine that it has already gotten dented or scratched or smashed...then enjoy it while it's whole, after having imagined the worse. IFFFFF, the bad happens, you've already accepted it.
Imagine you already broke your arm, then enjoy it while you have it whole. IFF it happens, you've already accepted it.
Imagine you already lost your keys, then enjoy them while you have them. IF you lose them, you've already accepted that possibility, and it won't bother you so much, if at all.
Learn to accept the bad the same as the good. Shrug your shoulders and KNOW that the bad can possibly turn out good. There is some good in the bad. There is some bad in the good.
i can't cover all possibilities, but maybe losing your keys kept you from catching that flight on time, then that flight crashed. Maybe the keys delayed you from an intersection that you would have been killed in, but because you lost them, you are safe.
There are always good possibilities in bad, and always bad in life. If you can get to the point where you laugh at bad or make a joke about it and then shrug it off, you have reached an enlightened state and are much blessed.
Bless the thief or bad guy in your thoughts, and hope that he has a better day, or that what he stole helps him...then make a joke about it. This is better than cursing him, which also curses you. Those coals of fire that you mentally heap on your enemy, also gets heaped on you.
i know it's difficult, no one said the higher way is easy, but try it, see if it works or helps.
Thanks! I read something about that similiarly 'The Mani Man,' I believe. He could never say if a situation was good or bad.
Absolutely.
Breathe....relax. Notice the anger as it arises, breathe, and relax with the breath.
As I have become more familiar with the defects of Samsara and the endless cycle of suffereing that we are part of, It is becomeing more and more easy to forgive those who commit uninteded or active acts that might hurt me, including the acts that I might comit myself.
In a sense, we are like a person forced to stumble around in a dark room, constantly banging into things and hurting ourselves and others. Not only are we in pain, we have forgotten the there is even a light switch in the room that would give a guiding light to our current situation.
Once yo know that there is a way to shed some light on our path it becomes more simple to forgive ourselves and others as we see what a tangled mess that we are mired in, and the path out.
I do try to remember though that the light switch is really a dimmer switch so that the room is not instantly flooded with light. It is a slow realisation, or we would be overwelmed. So we must forgive our own mis stepes as well as the mis steps of others.
Best wishes.
What about if you feel like you debate yourself? Like, one you is proud of how cool you were, like an 'ego', but then you feel another 'you' is saying, don't do that!
frustration is a wind.
are you so weak , that you would be tossed aside by a gentle breeze??
we will die someday, we gotta train for that violent storm.
What do you mean to be disturbed?
And I have, I realized that I inwardly fight sometimes, one is the habitual, and the other realizes this and thinks rationally.
Anger taints your view on the world and life, there was a great analogy that I read some days ago, in fact I have 2 for you
Firstly, anger is like a a hot coal, the longer you cling onto it the longer it will burn.
Secondly, if you imagine a saucepan of water on top of a stove getting hotter and hotter, it will soon begin to bubble. When it is at boiling point walk up to it and try to see a clear and correct reflection across the surface of the bubbling water. You will not be able to obviously, this is the same as when you are enraged, you look at the world and yourself through a distorted view that will cause you to act unskillfully.
On the one hand there is the intellectual understanding with anger that "this too shall pass".
When your three year old throws the xbox controller through the screen of the brand new 52" plasma you had delivered yesterday, the intellectual understanding has little use or virtue. If it is all you have, you will likely be enraged.
As one "minds the gap" - in meditation - one "increases the gap" - between arisings and reactions - thus allowing one not to identify with (become) the anger and allowing a considered response. This is not intellectual in nature - it's experiential.
One by one you find yourself in situations that once would have triggered extreme anger or rage but no longer do. There may be qualities of anger, frustration and other reactions but one does not become taken over by them. They are now part of the landscape you are in - whereas before they became the landscape you were in.
This takes calm and insight to mature and the more time you spend practicing mindfulness both on and off the cushion the quicker you will learn not to become the wave of anger, nor surf it, nor let it wash over you but be aware of it and all the other aspects of the landscape that one's previous habit of identification blocked out of sight.
Including the fact that, if your three year old threw the xbox controller through the plasma screen, you - the adult - were not acting with full responsibility.
One has to learn experientially all these things and it does not always come quickly or all at once. Next time you find yourself falling into anger or rage, afterwards, without guilt, sit down and reflect on the totality of the situation and learn from it: spot the moments where you lose it and learn.
Eventually with insight and diligence the root of anger itself will be cut.
Originally posted ..... edit sorry you can't see the link ....
Warmly,
Matthew
If that description doesn't fit, feel free to substitute another one.
Well, this is all true in certain situations, but what if it was something truly terrible, say, you are kidnapped by some rapist or your family was killed, purposely.
These are all things that cannot be easily dealt with, I'd assume....
I'm not sure why this has been the case for me, but at some point, I decided anger was a choice - at least acting on it, or showing it - and I wasn't going to participate any longer. That resolved the debate. Sure, I was proud of myself in the beginning, and I might still be periodically smug about it. I'm imperfect.
In general though, when I took it off the table as a "go to" response to situations, it eventually stopped being a default reaction to certain situations. Down the road, it stopped materializing on its own. (That's not to say I couldn't find it in a pinch!)
Self-righteous anger and anger on behalf of others are still slippery places, but the kind of anger that grows from impatience or the insta-rage I used to get about a variety of things has pretty much evaporated. My motivation was that I had a destructive temper, and it cost me.
I can agree with the smug thing, it happens, as well the impatience.
I've gotten a lot better compared to a couple of months ago. I got agitated often, not so much anymore.
If you ARE dealing with this level of trauma you need meditation and psychotherapy.
If you ARE NOT dealing with this kind of trauma you have an over active imagination.
Either way the advice holds true. Sit and make the space around your emotions large enough for you to handle them.
Over active indeed. Thanks.
I agree with this. Compassion for self begets compassion for others. This opens our mind and we see the object of our anger as much the same as us.
Like losing your temper in traffic when you have been cut off. Anger is much easier to deal with when you think about the times you have cut people off or made some other mistake while driving. We get angry when we believe a transgressor is nothing like us.
You may find some beneficial hints in this document. Although it is about Trauma, recall and meditation it also includes practical tips and techniques that apply to all strong emotional arisings.
http://www.amitaschmidt.com/PDFs/HealingTrauma.pdf
Warmly,
Matthew
So,you meditate to forgive yourself so you can others?
I understand the rest, but what do you mean by this?
@ matthew- thank you!
megahuman,
You are welcome.
In the Dhamma,
Matthew
Yes, it is possible, though quite difficult in practice.
Meditation can lead to a healthy detachment from our emotions. By healthy detachment I mean it's not like we become unfeeling zombies, but rather we experience the entire range of human emotions while not getting caught up in them. In Japanese warrior culture there was a training that young warriors went through that I consider very compatible with Buddhism. When a young warrior experienced fear he was reprimanded to never say 'I am afraid', but instead to say 'there is one who is afraid', what should that one do about it?
In this way the warrior acknowledged (did not repress) the emotion, but detached from it in order to get a more balanced perspective on the situation.
When we experience anger what we are really experiencing is frustration over our powerlessness. If we were all powerful we would not have to experience what we did that we are now angry about. It is enormously difficult to just sit by and watch suffering occur (our own or that of others)
and be completely helpless to do a darn thing to alleviate the suffering. Yet, that is our life. We are powerless to control much of anything including what our next thought will be. Realizing this at an experiential level takes time, but it leads away from anger as anger is simply an expression of frustration at our lack of control which is just reality.
That was nicely put.
I get what you mean. I do that with pain, I don't express it or let it become a hindering factor to how I think or feel.
Yes, meditating to forgive yourself. First, allow yourself to feel all of the anger (make space for it), then think about the kind of behavior that makes you who you are (think about noble things you have done because that is who you are) and let yourself love who you are, then think about someone who has made you angry. What is underneath their behavior? The surprising thing is that you start thinking about how this person is like you rather than different from you. From there, the anger dissipates quickly.
It is easier to hold resentment when we are self-righteous. Our anger can grow exponentially when we convince ourselves that the people who anger us are nothing like us. Not so easy to feed it when we are thinking about how this other person is just like us.
The approach is called HEALs and it is anchored in compassion for self and others.