Transcription
Welcome, everybody. And thank you again to Jackie and John, Liz, and [?], and the whole team for inviting me back. It's lovely to be here and lovely to see such a full turnout. Who feels very, very new to this kind of meditation? Okay. So I'll tell you what, in the group, in the period before lunch -- we'll probably have to go next door. I'll have a little group for anyone who wants to talk, certainly if you feel new, but anyone who wants to talk about the nuts and bolts of meditation, I just make myself available for that. And we can, you know, and you can hear others' questions, etc. So please, yeah, do take advantage of that, if there are questions about meditation. And I will be giving some meditation instructions in the day.
But the theme, you've probably -- did you come for the theme about anger? Is that what you ...? [laughter] Because I'm happy to change it at this point. [laughter] But is that what you want? [laughter] That's what you want. All right. I'd like to, if it feels okay, actually, just jump in with some teaching now, and then mostly in the afternoon, the teaching, but just to introduce the topic and offer a little bit. You know, as human beings, we look inside ourselves, and we look around us at the world, at society, at the global kind of family of humanity, and we see a lot of beauty, a lot of goodwill, a lot of creativity. And of course, we see a lot of greed, on the one hand, with all the devastation of its effects, and a lot of anger, on the other hand. We know for ourselves how poisonous it can be and what havoc it can cause. And we see that within, interpersonally, socially, and globally. It's a huge, huge force. And it's not just a human force, because you see it in animals as well. But somehow humans -- we seem to have developed the capacity to act out on our anger in ways that cause enormous devastation. And sometimes these ways are legitimized, given government backing, etc.
So as a human being, we have this propensity, this capacity, this capability to feel anger, and to act on it, and to become blind through it, etc. And somehow, there's the possibility that the Dharma teaches, the Buddhist teachings and other traditions -- is it possible to actually learn how to work with these difficult energies, difficult forces within us, learn to work well with them, to have some skill, to have a range of options, that I'm not just dragged along by this force, and then, I don't know, I'm no longer responsible for what happens? So there really is this capacity to learn, to develop our skill and our artfulness, even, in working with anger, so that there is less suffering that comes out of it.
But it's such a huge, huge topic. It's way too big for a day of teaching. And if we think about it, actually, it's quite complex. It's quite complex, and I can only touch a little bit on some of the complexity of what's involved today. Let's start -- because when we say 'anger,' it means something quite complex. What actually does 'anger' mean? The Buddha said something. It's quite a famous saying of the Buddha. If we differentiate anger and ill-will -- it's not a word we use much in English, 'ill-will.' It means literally to want to harm another person, to want that they suffer -- ill-will. And the Buddha said ill-will is completely useless, completely and utterly useless. Not only is it useless, it's harmful to everybody. So the analogy he gives is, if you are hurling your ill-will at someone, it's basically like picking up a burning coal in your hand and throwing that at the other person. Well, you may hit them, you may miss them, but basically, you're going to burn your hand in the process.[1]
So this desire that an other, another person suffers, that piece of anger -- completely, utterly worthless and detrimental to oneself, apart from anything else. So very, very clear about that. Ill-will -- not helpful. And yet how easily that comes into our experience of anger as something sometimes quite central. So, very complex, very complex. That piece we can be really, really clear about. And if we're talking, as Buddhist teachings, always, fundamentally, it's about suffering and the end of suffering. And we can see that the state of anger is a state of suffering, actually, interestingly. I have to see, "Oh, this force, this energy, is a state of suffering. It's unpleasant, it's difficult, it's agitated," etc.
But as I said, it's quite complex. Saying that anger is suffering, saying that we should leave it or get over it or something -- we have to be careful here, because we're not saying that we never say "no." We're not saying that you don't draw lines and set firm boundaries. It's not saying that. That may be a shadow side of certain kinds of spiritual teachings like Buddhism. It may be that we are not so skilled at being strong and firm, because we're fearing that we might be angry, maybe. It's not, also, that we're condoning harmful acts in the world, and one just doesn't speak up and step in and say something and be firm. It's not that at all.
So this is, again, it's quite complex. How are we going to learn to navigate this? As Buddhist practitioners, if you're new to this, you'll find out pretty soon: this day is in silence. Apart from me, yak yak yak, this day is a lot in silence. We spend a lot of time in silence. What we're not sometimes so skilful at is speaking up, speaking out. And sometimes there's a kind of withdrawing or atrophying of that capacity. There's a lovely quote I found a little time ago about this, about the need to speak up in life, and sometimes speak up when it's strong and when it's challenging, and when the voice has a little bit of fire to it. So it's from -- some of you will know her -- Audre Lorde. She's a poet and activist. Actually not sure if she's still alive at the moment. But she's talking about this. She was diagnosed with cancer, and this is kind of in her autobiography. And she was reflecting -- that was a pivotal moment. She didn't know if she was going to live or die. She just had this diagnosis. "Am I going to survive, or am I not? I don't know." And it brought a lot of things in her life into question. And one of them was the question of expression and strong expression. And this is what she said:
I have come to believe ... that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood....
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....
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 while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.[2]
Beautiful and powerful words.
Where am I in this balance? Where am I? Is it fear that keeps me silent and not speaking up? Or do I always speak up and push out, throw my anger around, or have I learnt skill there? And related to all this, again, I see this a lot, teaching: very related with (I don't have time to go into this; I'm just mentioning it now, if you like, but you can bring it up later if you want to) the whole question of power. I don't mean power over another person. I mean empowerment, feeling empowered in oneself. The anger and power are actually quite closely related psychologically. I find, in teaching and working with people, especially one on one, I encounter, a lot of the times, people afraid to inhabit their own power, afraid to feel empowered, and feel that physically and energetically and psychologically. And that, to me, is quite interesting.
So I remember, a while ago, working with one man, and he was beginning to feel this very strongly in the body, this power and energy. And he noticed, actually, in his words, "It was amoral." In other words, it wasn't good or bad in itself. It was just energy, just power. But he was afraid of it. He was afraid, lest it get dark. But then he felt, "Actually, it in itself is just energy, and I can channel it into a good direction." Another time, actually, the same gentleman, feeling this power, and already the mind was colouring it as kind of dark and demonic. And just say, "Whoa, hold on. Are you projecting that on it? Is your fear colouring it that way?" And then working and realizing, "Oh, it wasn't really dark and demonic. It's just strong energy."
In the culture as a whole, we don't have anyone teaching us how to feel empowered, how to hold that energy, how to accommodate it, how to own it, how to express it, how to stand in it. And again, sometimes, in these kind of circles, it's quite challenging. And I look back for myself, and this whole question of anger and working with anger has been a very, very tricky one over the years. I see lots of periods and difficulty with it. And I wonder whether the kinds of people, like me, or the kinds of people that come to these kinds of events ... [laughter] Actually, it's not an easy topic at all. And then, sometimes, the very attraction to these kinds of teachings sometimes goes with a kind of, "I don't quite ... I just want to kind of ... I wish I could just chop it off, the whole question of anger." I feel, I wonder if it can just be an ongoing investigation. So we don't arrive at this or that answer. It's more like just an ongoing exploration. There's something, for me, very beautiful in that, rather than coming down here or here with an answer. So there's something we need to understand here. We need to investigate it and be interested in the whole, the whole thing of it, the whole way it moves, how it works, what happens.
[12:52] So again, this is way too big for a day, but what are we talking about here? We're talking about, actually, everything. There's a whole spectrum to it. So on one end, you think, murderous rage. You're so consumed in anger and rage that you feel like you could actually kill someone. And obviously, people do that. That's very obviously anger. But then, something like irritability -- that's also anger. It's just a little bit further down the sort of more subtle end of the spectrum. It's all part of the same package. It comes out in our speech, in our actions, certainly. It comes out in our thought. So all of this is part of the whole deal. It comes out in our intentions. Quite subtle.
What about -- I'm sure this term didn't even exist fifty years ago -- but 'passive-aggression' as a manifestation of anger and aversion? Do you know what passive-aggression is? It's when you pretend that you're not being aggressive, but actually, you're finding subtle ways to kind of communicate your anger. Do you know what this is? Yeah? So oftentimes it's a kind of withdrawing your participation in something in a silent way. You're just not doing something. Or ignoring someone subtly, blanking them out, being sullen in a way that's kind of sending a message out there, being a bit of a sour-plum person. [laughs] Sometimes this kind of thing goes on, and we're not even conscious that it's going on, that there are these mind games going on. It's not overt anger, but it's a manifestation of something quite subtly. And it carries a lot of power. If you've been in a meeting or a committee or something, or family, where this kind of thing is going, you see how much power it wields. And the person is not expressing anger overtly, but it can stagnate, it can draw a whole process to a halt. And if this is going on, it's hard to actually point to what's happening, where if someone's really angry, it's obvious to see. But this is hard to actually say, "Well, what is it that's going on here?" Can be hard to see.
If we get even more subtle, boredom, the state of boredom has aversion in it. The state of fear also has aversion in it. The state of depression -- depression also has this negative energy of pushing away, of getting rid of, not liking. That's also a necessary ingredient of boredom, fear, depression -- sometimes of sadness. In other words, it's interesting, sadness, we sometimes think it's a very pure emotion. Sometimes it's actually got a lot of this in it. It's very interesting when we get into the subtleties of it. Disconnection, impatience -- all these not-so-marked emotions, they also have this ingredient of a degree of aversion in them, as part of what makes them what they are. All the way down to the most subtle, just wanting to get rid of something: "I don't like this pain in my knee, this pain in my back. I don't like ... It's too noisy," or whatever it is. "I don't like this situation." And we call that 'aversion' in the Dharma language, 'aversion,' wanting to get rid of or reject something, turning away from something. But that turning away is reactive. It's not got wisdom in it. It's a kind of knee-jerk reaction -- "Just don't like it, just going to turn away from it" -- rather than a turning away or a putting aside of something that's got wisdom and consideration in it. It could be to anything.
[17:14] So all that, that whole spectrum, all the way from murderous rage, all the way through these more subtle mind states, to this subtle, what we would call 'aversion' -- all that is what we're talking about today. It's too big. But you see that there's no way that we're not going to have this experience as a human being. It's part of what it is to have a mind and a heart. It's part of what it is to have consciousness, if you like, to not be awakened.
Interestingly, I would actually say that any bad mood has aversion in it. Any time there's any mind state that's a little difficult, it has this quality of rejection in it, of pushing something away. It involves aversion. You can't be unhappy, you can't have a moment of unhappiness without aversion. And aversion is one of what the Buddha called the three kilesas or the three defilements: greed, hatred or aversion, and delusion. And this is what we have to deal with as human beings. This is what we are born with, these forces within ourselves: greed, aversion, and delusion.
When they're active -- I can't remember where I heard this; I think it was a Tibetan teacher saying it; can't remember who -- trying to be at peace when these three forces are active is a bit like moving into an apartment with three roommates. And you don't know these roommates, but then you quickly find out, one is very hard and menacing and really kind of intimidates you. That's aversion. One is very, very friendly and has a lot of sweet talk, but behind your back, it's completely disloyal. That's greed. And one, the other one, spurs the others on, kind of eggs them on to more troublemaking. That's the delusion. [laughter] In an apartment like that, how could I possibly feel comfortable? So this is an analogy for the human existential situation. We've got these forces in us, and unless we find ways of working with them skilfully, we're not going to be at peace in life.
But having said that, it is human, so it's not something to judge. It's very, very human. It's part of what we have as human beings until we're awakened. And actually, the Buddha's definition of awakening is the letting go of these forces, the destruction, really, of these forces. So it's like these three kilesas, these three defilements, are like seeds. It's like there's a fountain of seeds constantly arising in us -- constantly, actually, moment to moment. Greed, aversion, delusion, greed, aversion, delusion -- like that. Very, very subtle. The question is, what are we doing with those seeds? It's not whether they come up, it's what am I doing with the seeds? Because I can take these seeds, and I can nurture and plant them and take good care of watering anger, and then I've got a whole jungle of anger trees. Or not -- I can find other ways of relating to them.
So like I said, this is a huge topic, and I'm also aware, very aware, that there are different ways of seeing the whole thing, especially when we talk about power and speaking up and things, like I mentioned earlier. But from a Buddhist point of view, really what I want to say today is really quite traditional, and it's about what leads to suffering and what leads to freedom. So I know there are a lot of ideologies around anger and all that, but basically we're looking at -- the most important question is, what's bringing freedom from suffering? That's the overarching question in everything in life. And so we're looking today at anger and aversion from that point of view. Just what eases the dis-ease, the unhappiness, the suffering, the lack of peace that we have in life? What eases that and brings more freedom, more peace? And not just mine, but in the world, too, those of others? So that's really the overarching question.
And what I want to do (and I'll go into this more this afternoon) is really look at ways that we -- you and I -- can actually work skilfully with anger. So I really want to be quite practical about it. But let's just spend maybe five more minutes and just throw out one, to begin with, of a few different approaches. Yeah, why don't we do that?
(1) Start with, if you like, in some ways, the most basic one, which is bringing mindfulness to the experience of anger. Now, I don't know -- if you're very, very new, you might only have had (I'm not sure) teachings where your meditation is about sort of paying attention to the breath or something like that. But there's the possibility to actually bring mindfulness to everything, absolutely everything, any experience whatsoever. And anger or aversion is one of those things that we can bring mindfulness to, and start investigating and exploring, in a way that can bring some relief, can bring some ease, can bring some understanding, which is what we need.
So what would that look like? Here I am, my friend, my partner, my someone at work, someone has said something or done something, and now I'm fuming. I'm really angry, okay? It might be good, if I really feel like something boiling up, to actually remove myself from the situation, if that's possible, to have a little time to contemplate it, a little time to look inwards and work more skilfully with what's going on. And if I can, then I say, "Okay, maybe I can sit down and the bring the mindfulness to the experience." And what am I going to find? So not the breath, not this, not that. Actually, what am I going to find when I look at the experience of anger? Well, usually, when there's anger, the mind is almost like a magnet. It gets pulled into the whirling of a story about "She did this, she did that." Maybe we're dragging up something from the past about what happened. And the story-making at that time is very, very strong. You notice this with anger?
Okay, now this is a complex issue, because I actually think there's really -- there is a place in the Dharma for really going into the story and working skilfully with the story, seeing it from different angles, taking it apart, etc. But just in terms of mindfulness, we're actually saying, let the story be. Just let it whirl around, okay? And our job is to try and not get so involved in the story. The mind will keep getting pulled -- it's like a vortex. It gets pulled into this vortex, and it goes round and round with the story. And every time you notice that, you just bring the mind back, just like you're bringing it back to the breath. You bring it back to the bodily feeling of the anger, okay? To the physical sensations that are going on with anger. What's happening, then, is we're not saying the story is bad or anything like that, but we're just not feeding that vortex so much. We're not injecting more energy into that vortex. And coming back to body. And you might have to do this over and over and over. You come back to the body. In the body will be basically unpleasant physical experience. Anger is unpleasant. It doesn't feel good in the body. It feels icky, yucky, or very, very unpleasant. So can I come back to that, and bring mindfulness to that?
But I would also add another piece, which is, how much can I allow this experience of unpleasantness in the body? It's almost like, if I make this [cupping] gesture with my hands, if you can see that, opening up, if this is the mindfulness, if this is the awareness, instead of doing this always, I can do this. And it's almost like you're holding that unpleasantness, and just allowing it to be unpleasant, because it will be unpleasant. If there's that kind of allowing and intimacy in the attention, in the mindfulness, what happens is, almost, that begins healing the process. It's the first step in healing something. And it's almost like that kind of attention allows the whole vortex to just open out a little bit and relax, lose some of its energy.
At first, it's like it is a whirlpool in the sea or something like that, a really vicious, bubbling sort of thing. There's a lot of froth. There's a lot of bubble on the surface, with anger. It's really like it's got all this story, it's got all this heat and this intensity to it. And it's not that we're trying to get rid of that either. But what happens if I just sustain the attention on that, in this allowing way, but also a close way? So there's a kind of sensitivity, intimacy, closeness, and allowing. It's a very beautiful state of mind, or orientation to bring to the state of mind -- let's put it that way.
What will happen is, the froth will keep frothing. After a while, maybe not every time, but after while, something can begin to happen. It's as if that mode of attention (I don't know how to say this) allows the attention to sort of sink deeper in this whirlpool, and begins to reveal quieter feelings, feelings that are not so frothy and agitated -- maybe still painful feelings, but not quite so difficult. Oftentimes, anger is sitting on these quieter feelings, more vulnerable feelings, like hurt. Whatever they said to me, I actually, deep down, feel hurt about it. Or like frustration. Or like powerlessness, often, is underneath the anger. Sadness, these kinds of feelings. And sometimes all this froth and all this story -- getting too caught up in that is keeping us from contacting the quieter, more subtle, more gentle feelings that actually, when we do give them attention, that's when the real healing and the real dissolution and the real clarity can come.
And they're very interesting. Powerlessness, for example: maybe my boss or someone has said something, and I actually feel powerless. And all this rage is actually a reaction to my feeling of powerlessness. But it could be I feel powerless and frustrated at life. Maybe I've been given a terminal diagnosis, or someone that I love has died, and or they have a terminal [diagnosis]. I feel completely powerless existentially. And then we can feel this rage at God or life or the universe, that comes out of that. All these kind of feelings, they're sometimes not immediately obvious, when the anger is there, is frothing away. But I might contact fear. It might be the mindfulness traces down in the anger, and what's actually revealed is fear. Or I feel like I'm actually propping up this anger because I don't want to be seen as weak. Could see all kinds of things. It gets quite interesting and much more subtle.
Those quieter feelings, whatever they are, if I can then be with them in the same way, hold them, give them, sustain a kind of allowing mindfulness on them, then there's a kind of softening. Then it's like the real issue is being touched and addressed and healed. Sometimes that's all that needs to happen. That's all that needs to happen. This kind of caring of mindfulness opens, heals, soothes, addresses, meets what needs to be met. And the anger just subsides, there's clarity that comes, etc., sometimes. Sometimes it's not so simple. Sometimes I trace it back, and now I have this hurt or this sadness, but my being mindful of it does not solve it. And the question is, what now? Especially with mindfulness teachings, sometimes we can get the impression that if I'm just mindful of everything, I should be able to let go of anything, and all the work should happen right here. And that's it. I should be able to do it all on my own. But maybe, here I am with this feeling of hurt, and what needs to happen is, I need to talk to other person. My mindfulness is not going to do it. It's not going to heal it by itself.
And then -- again, I don't have time to go into this, but just, I might be left with a question rather than an ending. I might be left with a question: is it necessary to communicate now? What do I need to say? Who do I need to speak to? And then, when am I ready to say what I need to say? What do I need to say? These are huge. This is a whole other day, you know, Right Speech. And if I think, "Yes, I need to communicate. I need to tell them. I need to set a boundary. I need to ..." whatever it is, can I be sure that, when I go to speak, my speaking is drained of the desire to hurt and retaliate? Sometimes that's a big part of anger, isn't it? Revenge, retaliation, getting them back, being the one who's right. Maybe I need to take time, work more with these hurt feelings and these vulnerable feelings until I can pretty much be sure that most of the desire to hurt, this ill-will that I was talking about at the beginning, that that has kind of drained out of the whole need to communicate. And then the communication is coming from a different set of intentions. And that might take time. And then how to communicate, you know, how to go about voicing that which is difficult, not easy to say, all that -- big, big subject. That's a whole other thing. But that, too, is an art and a skill, something we can really learn and develop. It's something that takes time.
Okay, I'm going to stop there. But if I describe the mindful process, working with anger just in terms of just its basics, does that make sense enough? Okay. And then, like I said, I want to just offer a lot of different possible approaches beyond simple mindfulness this afternoon. But that's enough talking for now. Let's do a sitting. But if you want to really take thirty seconds ...
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. ↩︎
