Anger

Don’t put it on your altar

Hatred never ends through hatred.

By non-hate alone does it end.

- the Dhammapada

Dear Dharma friends,

Last Friday, my hometown Bangkok was hit with an earthquake. Up to this moment, as far as I knew, Bangkok was not susceptible to earthquakes. I grew up in a huge city. It is crammed with high rises. Amidst a rising death toll and the fear and turbulence the earthquake unleashed, it’s a wonder that most of the buildings swayed and didn’t collapse, because we weren’t building with earthquakes in mind.

People evacuated the high rises, running down many flights of stairs. Hospitals were emptied. Patients in wheelchairs and on gurneys were carried down. I texted my family and friends. (Everyone is okay). Someone told me how people were handing out free bottles of water to everyone gathered on the street. It was a beautiful picture of coming together in disaster. That can happen sometimes.

I had to wonder: would we hand each other water right now in the US?

The anger train

There’s a lot of anger in the US right now. Some days, it seems like everyone is getting on the anger train. A lot of us are functioning as anger circuits. Someone cuts us off in the morning and we storm into our workplace, ready to do war with that one person taking credit for our ideas. We see another devastating news headline and we condemn the people in our hearts. One person’s anger catches another person on fire. It passes from one to another, and where does that leave us? Burnt.

Recently a representative of the US government was posing in El Salvador in front of cages full of men with shaved heads and tattoos. To do such a thing you’d have to not see the men in cages as human. It is a heart-rending series of photos.

Perhaps some of us saw the photos and thought: I’d never do that.

How many of us have made assumptions of toxic masculinity? Perhaps we’ve seen a male person, even a white male person, and thought: oppressor.

That’s a label that strips someone of their humanity. Until we are ready to drop the judgement and recognize everyone’s Buddha nature, we are part of a system of oppression.

We don’t have to like everyone. We don’t have to agree with them. We can condemn people’s actions. But condemning them, as a person, isn’t justice: it’s hatred. It’s on the spectrum of standing in front of a cage of humans and not seeing the people inside.

We practice on ourselves

Anger is sneaky. It can be insidious. We might be deceiving ourselves by saying, they’re angry, but I’m not angry. They hate, but not me.

This reminds me of striving for enlightenment and giving ourselves an out. We’ll work on our enlightenment when our neighbor stops being so loud, or when our son’s best friend’s mother stops being so annoying. Enlightenment is exalted, and so it is for perfect circumstances, not for right now.

In the same way, we can give ourselves the out that we will stop being angry when everyone else stops being angry. Of course, you could go many lifetimes waiting for everyone else’s anger to simmer down. Or you could decide not to get on the anger train.

The Buddha told a story about samsara, where he said that you could cover the whole world in leather so your feet don’t get burned, or you can wear shoes. When we decide to work with our anger, we are slipping on shoes.

To be on the spiritual path is to tend to our own work. Samsara will keep on rolling without us to mind everyone else’s spiritual journey. What we can tend to is ourselves.

In Buddhism, anger is one of the poisons. Anger isn’t bad. This is not a system of dualism. It’s a natural part of samsara. Everyone is angry at some time or another. Some people, like me, are hot tempered. We get to dance with anger a lot.

The thing is to try and allow the anger to move. You don’t want to spend your life in a vat of anger. You could get pickled in anger. We probably all know people who have done this. It’s a very contracted state. I’m not sure that it can be called living. That’s why anger is a poison. Your ability to be loving, joyful, equanimous and compassionate can be taken over by the wave of anger.

Just as everything arises, it will also naturally dissolve. We want to let anger move out of our body.

The first step to helping anger move is to acknowledge when it happens in your body. There can be shame about being angry, but that’s not useful. Again, without dualism, there is no shame to anger. Everyone gets angry. We want to go slowly and carefully in our own body. We want to notice when anger arises.

It might come as a bolt of hatred directed at someone on TV. It might be unexpected aggression toward a stranger. It might be righteous indignation projected at a whole swath of the country.

Anger is a shield

Righteous indignation is a form of anger. It’s a bit sneaky. It can make us feel strong. Some of us might be putting righteous indignation on our altars, thinking we are warriors for justice.

Actually, righteous indignation is often a mask for fear that whatever you’re seeing will happen to you. It can also mask sadness. Anger is often a shield. Part of living as an awake person, and going towards that, is to take our shields down.

We want to be brave enough to let the expression underneath anger come out. Try and let anger fall open. Let fear fall open. Sadness isn’t a poison. You can put sadness on your altar and sing an ode to it. That might be quite healing right now.

Boys, boys, boys

I don’t say this lightly or easily. I am a small, Asian-presenting woman in America. I have experienced my share of oppressions in this country we have built.

I notice people make assumptions about my sons, two boys under 7. I have been offered condolences by multiple people who assume that it’s devastating to have boys. This is an assumption of toxic masculinity taken so far as to be delusional.

One: it assumes all boys grow into toxic men. Two, it projects toxicity onto a child. Both things are misguided. They’re a sign of the confusion of the times.

Every human born must have the chance to grow into their wise and loving self. We can’t kneecap anyone because of their identity, whatever that may be. We are doing it though, and living the repercussions.

I don’t need to defend my kids. In case you’re wondering: it’s an honor to have boys.

The Wisdom of Anger

Some of us have been using anger to find courage. We may be using anger to draw boundaries. Anger might be a crutch to tap into our own power. The thing is, we are born in power. No one can take it away. We don’t need to use anger to channel it.

Anger does have wisdom. In the Vajrayana, anger has mirror-like wisdom. It is the piercing clarity of a winter day. When you’re really angry, sometimes you’re able to see things accurately, without fear and neurotic overlays.

That mirror-like wisdom is important. We don’t need to use anger to access it. You might want to meditate on your anger. You might hold it, and breathe. That can be uncomfortable for sure. Eventually, there is spaciousness in the anger. Eventually, for all of us, the anger dissipates.

Depending on your temperament, you might want to bow to your anger and ask it to leave.

If you are a fiery person, you might draw an imaginary sword to your anger and cut it. It can be that simple. In ceremony, you cut the anger. And then it’s gone.

This is not the same as drawing an imaginary sword on the subject of your anger. We aren’t condemning other people. We aren’t even condemning anger! We’re using our awakened intention to cut through anger.

Another type of person wants to dance with anger. You want to dance in grief and ecstasy, in wild witnessing of the turbulence of this moment. How did we end up here? Where will we go? What needs to fall apart so that we can come together? We dance to these questions.

These are the methods of transforming a potent poison into the wisdom to see what needs to be done now.

Righteous indignation is setting fire to our hearts. It is ushering us further into tribalism. This is not wisdom. It is putting anger on the altar, because it makes us feel less scared.

We are not more safe when we are angry. We are further from wise intention and wise action. We are further from manifesting the culture that will hand out water to everyone: rich / poor / pregnant/ hungry/ as they run down the stairs of a high rise in an earthquake.

With love,

Sunisa