Transcription
Okay, so I chose a theme to explore for today, a Dharma theme, and that is Working with Anger and Aversion. So I want to speak a little bit about that now, go into just a bit of an introduction, and then later, after lunch, a bit more widely and in detail.
If we look, as human beings, we look at this world that we find ourselves in, this extraordinary world, and we look honestly, and we look inside ourselves, and we look at each other and humanity, one of the facts, one of the forces that we encounter is just this, is anger and aversion. We run into that within ourselves and within each other, and we see what havoc it can cause, it can wreak in the world. It's such a powerful, potent force in our collective humanity. It's there out there. It's there in here. And this is something, as human beings, we have to reckon with, and particularly as Dharma practitioners, we have to reckon with. So it's not necessarily easy, but it's part of our humanity, and it's part of our practice.
Sometimes, this force of anger and aversion, we as human beings can legitimize it in some way, either through some kind of political ideology or religious ideology, through a government or some other political group. And we idealize the force of anger, and then that gives us free licence to act it out. Or we might do that psychologically. So there's a lot here, and it's actually quite complex. One of the things I want to highlight today is, this is very complex. This is not as simple an area as it might first seem. If you're familiar at all with Dharma teachings, you know that anger is one of the -- anger or hatred is one of the prime -- called defilements or kilesas that the Buddha said, "This we want to uproot. This we want to cut down like a tree stump." The Buddha's very, very clear. It's like, this leads to suffering. It's a real problem. We need to uproot it. And there's no awakening without uprooting it.
And yet, it's not quite so simple. Part of the problem is in vocabulary, perhaps. So we have this word, 'anger.' But one word has a lot of different aspects to it, a lot of different components to it. One word, 'anger.' Sometimes, within that one word, 'anger,' or that one emotion, that one inner current of anger, there is a desire to hurt, a desire to make someone else suffer, whether physically or emotionally, or to put them down and make them feel little, make them feel small, make them feel less than, to somehow hurt, cause suffering to another person. That can be, often is, a part of what's wrapped up in anger. And one thing in all the complexity of the question of anger, one thing we need to be absolutely clear about, is that that desire to hurt another, whether it's human or a non-human, a desire to hurt another is never helpful. It's never helpful. It never leads to anything helpful. It only brings suffering and causes suffering.
We can call that, if we're playing with words now, within anger, we can call that 'ill-will.' I'm just playing with words. It's not important, so much. But that ill-will, that desire to hurt another, to make them suffer -- the Buddha has a very famous analogy. He said, if I'm feeling anger and this ill-will, it's a bit like picking up a burning coal in my hand to hurl, in anger, at the other person, in order to hurt them. But guess what? As I'm doing that, I'm burning my hand on the way with this burning coal. It will end up hurting me, and maybe hurting the other person. But it definitely hurts me.[1]
So there's complexity here. This is important. We have to see that anger is suffering. The Buddha's very, very clear about this. Anger is suffering. It's like the roots, one of the three roots of suffering. And yet it's complex. So we are not saying, I hope we are not saying, as practitioners, and we're not saying in Buddhism, we're not saying that we then say, I will then -- we're not condoning all harmful acts in the world. And again, we look on in the planet, and the state of the planet, and wars, etc., and personal abuse that goes on, and we're not saying, "I won't speak up about that, because I don't want to be angry." We're not saying we condone harmful acts. Absolutely not saying that. We're not saying we don't say no, we don't learn to set boundaries, clear delineations of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable for other people to do towards us, and towards others.
There's something about strength and power and anger. And somehow our task is, to mature as human beings, and to grow as practitioners, somehow to tease out in there what's helpful, what we need, and what's unhelpful. And I don't think that's that simple at all, actually. I think that's quite a job for us. As human beings, and again, as practitioners, one of the beautiful things that I hope that we're growing towards in our life, or is growing within us, is our capacity to speak up, our capacity to stand strong and firm in the truth of what we really believe, of what our heart's truth is. And that, just that much, is not easy. How much fear and hesitation and unwillingness to speak out or despair or whatever it is gets in the way of that? Very, very common.
Found this beautiful passage the other day about this. It's by someone I've never heard of, called Audre Lorde. She's a poet, and she has a book called Sister Outsider. And she's talking about this. She was diagnosed with cancer, and that sent her into a sort of process of intense introspection. She was reflecting and keeping a journal, and she said, "I have come to believe ... that what is most important to me must be spoken." So we're talking about speaking up for what we need to defend in ourselves -- not ego -- what we need to defend and sustain within ourselves, what we're not willing to be trodden over, in ourselves, in our loved ones, but also in the wider community of the earth, that there are people, humans and non-humans, who don't have a voice, who are voiceless. Do I have it in me? Am I growing towards this capacity to stand firm, stand strong, give voice to what needs a voice?
So:
I have come to believe [this is what she says] ... that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
So also talking about our deep truths as human beings, what we want to share, what's most cherished by us in our hearts. She continues:
In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences....
I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you....
[She continues:] We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition [and expression], and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.[2]
I found that very, very powerful.
Recently at Gaia House, I had a person on a long-term retreat, and there was a series of interviews with him. He came in for an interview, and he had been working a lot with body, and body awareness, and sort of connecting with his body, letting go in the body, breathing into the earth, etc., other practices. He came in, and he said he felt an energy in his body that was very unfamiliar to him. It felt like there was an enormous amount of energy and power in his body. And he was opening up, and he was afraid of it. He said, "It feels amoral," which means not moral and not immoral. "It feels amoral." And he was scared which direction it would move in: "Here's this energy. I'm not used to all this energy moving in the body."
We were exploring it a little bit in the interviews. And it was basically raw power, raw power. I said, "Can I align that with goodness, with the wish to do good and to be good, with bodhicitta, we say, with this wish to serve others through our practice, through our being? Can I align that? And then this raw force becomes a force for good, for myself and for others." [10:41] There was fear with this, but he began working in this way. In our culture -- I don't know, I don't feel like we have too many role models for what it is to feel our power as human beings, our energy, our strength, in a healthy way, and to direct it in a healthy way. I don't know, maybe a few, but not that many. So it's difficult, and I think it's especially difficult for men.
Next interview, or a couple of interviews later, came in, and similar, although he said, "But now it actually feels like it's angry, this energy, and it was quite powerful." But again, we were exploring it. It wasn't actually anger. It was, as we went into it and said, "What is it, what gives you the clue that that's anger? What tells you what's going on?" He said, "Oh, there's nothing there." He goes and he feels what's in the body, and it's in the belly, and it's in the legs, and it's in the arms. And actually it turned not to be anger, not to be this -- we think, "It's destructive." He said, "I don't suffer fools lightly." Actually, what it turned out to be was a readiness, a sort of potential energy, ready to stand up, ready to defend what needs defending, ready to kind of cut through what wasn't authentic. And again, there was fear with this. And there's a getting used to that energy being in the body, and allowing it to go via the body into the being, and be absorbed by the mind, and begin using it in healthy ways, in constructive ways.
I'm not sure, but sometimes I feel that for the kind of people who come to these kind of events, meaning all of us [laughter], spiritual types or whatever you want to call it -- this is not an easy area to investigate. And sometimes, dependent on our childhood. So I know for myself, my father had an enormous amount of rage. And given his history, and extremely difficult history, extremely difficult growing up, it was understandable, and he never managed to sort of really arrive at a very, I don't know, healthy and understood place with that.
So there can be difficulties because of our background, because of our upbringing. But there are also difficulties because it's often the case that in spiritual circles, it's like all anger is bad. And we're left with a kind of, I don't know, repression or disconnection or something -- can be. Sometimes you get the opposite, and some teachings or psychotherapies or whatever saying, "No, you have to always express your anger" -- just gone to the other extreme. It's a delicate, complex area. I think, for me, I feel it needs ongoing investigation. It's not that I feel like I arrive at a point and it's done now: "I've done that. I've finished with it. Nothing more to understand." Ongoing investigation, ongoing willingness to investigate. So that needs interest in the whole process. I need to be passionately interested in all of this. What's going on? What's helpful here? What's not so helpful? What motivations? The whole way the whole cycle, the whole process feeds itself -- I need to be really interested in that.
When we use this word, 'anger,' and there are many words in the English language, what I'm really wanting to address today, and it's a little bit silly for one talk, but what I really want to address is the whole spectrum, because what we see here is actually quite a wide spectrum of the sort of intensities of the manifestation of anger. On one extreme, we have murderous rage. You actually feel like killing someone, and people do. That happens. Out of rage, overcome with rage, people commit murder and they kill other human beings, on one end, down [to], you know, 'normal' anger, if there's such a thing, to irritability. Irritability is an expression of anger. It's just more subtle. But I'm interested in that whole range. And I'm also interested in the sort of breadth of the way it expresses. So it expresses, certainly, in my actions. But it also might express in my speech. Certainly, I'll find it expressing in my thoughts, and also my intentions. So I'm interested in all of that.
And if we talk about this spectrum, this range of how anger can manifest in terms of subtlety or intensity, there's the phenomenon, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with, of passive aggression. I know many of you know what this is. In case you don't know, it's when we actually deny that either we're being aggressive, or that there's anger going on: "No, no!" [laughter] You can tell, because the voice goes up about three octaves. [laughter] But we act it out in subtle ways. It finds its way out. It seeps out. It leaks out. It's usually, interestingly, expressed -- this passive aggression is usually expressed as a kind of non-doing, a kind of obstruction. Usual anger will come out as a doing. This comes out as a non-doing -- interesting -- a kind of withdrawal.
And sometimes you meet someone, or there's a room full of people, and you go in, and the person who's being passive-aggressive in that mode just ignores. It's a way of blanking people. It can be developed to an art, so refined, such that you're not quite sure whether the person actually ignores you. [laughter] Sometimes, the person who's engaging in this is only partly conscious that it's going on, only partly conscious. But yet, still, despite its subtlety, despite its only being partly conscious sometimes, it still has a lot of power. It wields a lot of power. It wields a lot of ability to stall a process, to grind things to a halt if you're trying to discuss something in a group, or a committee, or whatever it is. Sometimes it just manifests as a kind of sullenness -- a person's just kind of energetically withdrawn.
Okay, so there's all that. But let's get even more subtle. Boredom has aversion in it. You can't be bored without some degree of aversion. Fear has aversion in it. Depression, a state of feeling depressed, has aversion in it. Sometimes, even sadness -- it can feel like a very pure feeling. I'm not saying all the time, but sometimes, sadness also has aversion in it. This is very, very interesting. Even states of mind like feeling disconnected also has aversion in it. Impatience -- so we're really talking about the subtle end of a human being's emotional life. And yet, aversion is woven like strands through all of those -- boredom, fear, depression, sometimes sadness, etc., impatience, disconnection.
At an even more subtle level, we can talk about, what does this word 'aversion' mean? Some of you will have heard it a lot in Dharma circles. But what it really means is the movement in consciousness to try to get rid of something, to try and reject something, the movement to reject something. It could be anything. It could another person. It could be a state of mind. It could be something happening in the body. It could be something happening in the environment. But the movement to reject it, to get rid of it, to turn away from it -- I don't want to deal with it -- maybe to destroy it: that all is aversion, and can be very, very subtle. So it's a reactive movement of getting rid of, turning away, etc., rejecting. But it's not wise. It's not considered. In other words, sometimes it's quite appropriate to turn away from something. Sometimes it's quite appropriate, healthy, wise to try and get rid of something. No problem. It's actually a very skilful part of Dharma practice. But when it's a knee-jerk reaction, not wise, not considered, it's just reactive, then we call it aversion. [19:42] It's probably not coming out of wisdom. And it can be to anything, as I said.
So given that whole spectrum, one of the things I want to say is, we all deal with this. We all, all deal with this until we're completely awakened. So it's in our life until we're what's called an arahant, completely awakened. Sometimes I've heard long-term practitioners say, "No, no. I don't do aversion any more." [laughter] I just feel like, "Hmm." [laughter] So it's suffering, yes, but it's also human. One of the things I want to communicate very much: it's part of our humanity, and part of what we work with, and we need to work with it as part of our humanity. There's no shame around it. It's just part of our humanity. And it's suffering.
It's so much wrapped up with our suffering, in fact, that any time there's a bad mood, any time -- actually, I'll say this: any time there's any unhappiness, it involves aversion. I'm not sure whether that's obvious or not, but any time there's any unhappiness, it actually involves aversion. I read a lovely little analogy from a Tibetan teacher a while ago, and he said: imagine that you moved to a new city, and you're wanting to rent an apartment. So you find an ad, and you go along. You go to this new apartment, you like the apartment, and you meet your prospective roommates, and you move in. But it turns out that there are three roommates you have. One of them, turns out, his character is very hard and menacing. You're actually quite scared of him. The second one is all smiles, nicey-nicey, but behind your back, he's sticking daggers in, and completely disloyal. So he looks one way, but he says something very different. The third one just kind of eggs the other two on. [laughter] In such an apartment, it's going to be very hard to relax. And maybe some of you have one. [laughs] I hope not! Very hard to relax -- you can't trust them. You can't find any peace.
In Dharma teaching, we talk about three defilements, three what's called kilesas: (1) anger and aversion, hatred, (2) greed, and (3) delusion. These are like these three roommates. Anger and aversion is the first one. It looks ugly. The second one looks pretty nice -- greed -- but actually it's a cheat. It's a complete liar. It'll lead you up the garden path and sink you in the garden well. [laughter] And the third one is delusion. That's actually what we call the root kilesa. Because of delusion, the other two come, and all the suffering that we have as human beings comes out of delusion, in a way.
But as I said before, the possibility exists for us, as human beings, to be fully awakened, what's called an arahant. And arahant -- one of the translations means 'foe-destroyer,' 'foe' as in 'enemy,' a person who's destroyed their enemies. And what are the enemies? Those three kilesas. Those are our real enemies as human beings. They're inner enemies. And an arahant is a foe-destroyer, has destroyed them. So actually, to be really clear: this force of anger doesn't lead to awakening. And you get a lot of different teachings around that. And it's actually very helpful. As I said, going back to the beginning, there's quite a lot of complexity here. But to be clear that the root of anger, the root of wanting to -- ill-will does not lead to awakening. It simply cannot. It actually leads in the opposite direction. To be really clear about that. There can be a lot of talk, and even in the Dharma, it's like, "If I don't express my anger, I'll repress it, and then I'll get cancer," or whatever it is. Careful. And sometimes people work in traditions where they're liberating their anger, and can feel very powerful and alive when that comes up, but there can also be a seductive quality to it. It's tricky, tricky, not easy. [24:20]
In a way, you could say, as human beings, until we reach this level of arahant, which is, you know, the most fulfilled level of awakening, you could say that -- and this is just a metaphor -- one of the ways consciousness works is, it's sort of like a fountain of seeds, throwing up these seeds all the time: seeds, seeds, seeds, like an endless fountain of seeds. Almost endless, almost without interruption. And those seeds are greed, anger or aversion, and delusion. That's coming up, maybe not all the time, but a lot, a lot, a lot. Question for us, again, as human beings, but certainly as practitioners is: what am I doing with those seeds that are arising? The being, before complete awakening, you know, throws up these seeds all the time. Am I catching one, tenderly planting it in the ground, watering it? Because I'll end up with big oak trees and forests. Or can I find a way of actually seeing this process go on, and not somehow building it?
This is a little bit what I want to go into this afternoon, some of the ways that we can really work skilfully with this energy, and begin to look clearly and see, with clarity and with compassion, what's going on, and kind of dismantle something that isn't helpful, and keep what is helpful there. Always in the Dharma, the most important question is: what leads to suffering? What leads to freedom from suffering? We can come with so many different theories about this, and psychological theories, and spiritual theories, and theories of consciousness, and this and that. And the overarching question that we need to keep there -- this is the Buddha's golden question. It was his beacon: what leads to suffering? What leads to freedom from suffering? And I let my theories go, and I can just hold on to that question, and follow that question. What needs to become clear will come clear.
That question, though, to tie in with something I said before, is not just about my suffering. Yes, what leads to my suffering and my freedom? But also what leads to your suffering? What leads to humanity's suffering, or the suffering of other? So self and other. I'm interested in what leads to collective suffering on this planet. And what leads to the easing, the freeing from that collective suffering? I feel that that's our responsibility as Dharma practitioners -- more today than ever before. So that's a question that guides this inquiry into anger, into aversion.
Buddhaghosa compared getting angry to picking up a burning ember or excrement in one's hand; see Bhadantācariya Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification: Visuddhimagga, tr. Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (Onalaska, WA: Pariyatti, 1999), 294. The Buddha compared the danger of sensuality to taking a blazing grass torch and moving against the wind; see MN 54. ↩︎
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (rev. edn, Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007), 40--1, 44. ↩︎
