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Even though it’s a weekend, I felt like I needed to read Buddhism this morning because I was so angry about the political news yesterday. And it just so happens that the passages on perception from today actually mentioned anger, so that was timely.
“To sit is not enough. We have to be at the same time. To be what? To be is to be as something, you cannot be in nothing… When you are sitting you sit and you are. You are what? You are the breathing. Not only the one who breathes-you are the breathing and the smiling. It is like a television set of 1 million channels. When you turn the breathing on, you are the breathing. When you turn the irritation on, you are the irritation. You are one with it. Irritation and breathing are not things outside of you. You contemplate them in them, because you are one with them.
If I have a feeling of anger, how would I meditate on that? How would I deal with it, as a Buddhist, or as an intelligent person? I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight, to have surgery in order to remove it. I know that anger is me, and I am anger. Non-duality, not two. I have to deal with my anger with care, with Love, with tenderness, with non-violence. Because anger is me, I have to tend my anger as I would tend a younger brother or sister, with Love, with care, because I myself and anger, I am in it, I am it. In Buddhism, we do not consider anger, hatred, greed, as enemies. We have to fight, to destroy, to annihilate. If we annihilate anger, we annihilate ourselves. Dealing with anger in that way would be like transforming yourself into a battlefield, tearing yourself into parts, one parts, taking the side of Buddha, and one part taking the side of Mara. If you struggle in that way, you do violence to yourself. If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others. When we get angry, we have to produce awareness: “I am angry. Anger is in me. I am anger. “This is the first thing to do…. irritation as a destructive energy. We cannot destroy the energy; we can only convert it to a more constructive energy. Forgiveness is a constructive energy. Understanding as a constructive energy. Suppose you were in the desert, and you only have one glass of muddy water. You have to transform the muddy water into Clearwater to drink, you cannot just throw it away. So you let it settle for a while, and Clearwater will appear. In the same way, we have to convert anger into some kind of energy that is more constructive, because anger is you. Without anger you have nothing left. That is the work of meditation.”
This is helpful, because I was just remarking to someone who asked me about what I’ve been reading that I felt like the Tibetan Buddhists had more specific techniques for meditating through anger than the Zen Buddhists, but here we have a Zen response. I’m not sure meditation is quite enough; I wish he had also talked about other strategies for converting the energy of anger into something more positive, but meditation is at least a start.
“To sit is not enough. We have to be at the same time. To be what? To be is to be as something, you cannot be in nothing… When you are sitting you sit and you are. You are what? You are the breathing. Not only the one who breathes-you are the breathing and the smiling. It is like a television set of 1 million channels. When you turn the breathing on, you are the breathing. When you turn the irritation on, you are the irritation. You are one with it. Irritation and breathing are not things outside of you. You contemplate them in them, because you are one with them.
If I have a feeling of anger, how would I meditate on that? How would I deal with it, as a Buddhist, or as an intelligent person? I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight, to have surgery in order to remove it. I know that anger is me, and I am anger. Non-duality, not two. I have to deal with my anger with care, with Love, with tenderness, with non-violence. Because anger is me, I have to tend my anger as I would tend a younger brother or sister, with Love, with care, because I myself and anger, I am in it, I am it. In Buddhism, we do not consider anger, hatred, greed, as enemies. We have to fight, to destroy, to annihilate. If we annihilate anger, we annihilate ourselves. Dealing with anger in that way would be like transforming yourself into a battlefield, tearing yourself into parts, one parts, taking the side of Buddha, and one part taking the side of Mara. If you struggle in that way, you do violence to yourself. If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, you will not be able to be compassionate to others. When we get angry, we have to produce awareness: “I am angry. Anger is in me. I am anger. “This is the first thing to do…. irritation as a destructive energy. We cannot destroy the energy; we can only convert it to a more constructive energy. Forgiveness is a constructive energy. Understanding as a constructive energy. Suppose you were in the desert, and you only have one glass of muddy water. You have to transform the muddy water into Clearwater to drink, you cannot just throw it away. So you let it settle for a while, and Clearwater will appear. In the same way, we have to convert anger into some kind of energy that is more constructive, because anger is you. Without anger you have nothing left. That is the work of meditation.”
This is helpful, because I was just remarking to someone who asked me about what I’ve been reading that I felt like the Tibetan Buddhists had more specific techniques for meditating through anger than the Zen Buddhists, but here we have a Zen response. I’m not sure meditation is quite enough; I wish he had also talked about other strategies for converting the energy of anger into something more positive, but meditation is at least a start.
