In my last blog, I explained that in order to overcome anger, we must change our views. Buddha taught that we must regard the objects of our views as dreams. Buddha also taught that to overcome all suffering and attain true and lasting happiness, we must cultivate right views and eliminate wrong views. I also explained in my last blog that right views are those that enable us to make progress on the spiritual path.
Buddha taught that developing the perfection of patience is a necessary step on the spiritual path. In order to develop the perfection of patience, we need to begin the process by viewing anger as a dysfunctional emotion that must be eliminated. When we view anger as a dysfunctional emotion, we will want to work on developing views that do not cause us to become angry. When we overcome our anger by changing our views, we attain the perfection of patience.
In order to be able to view anger as a dysfunctional emotion, we must develop in our lojong meditation practice the conviction that anger is a dysfunctional emotion. We can do this by meditating on the negative consequences of becoming angry and acting angrily. After we have become convinced that anger is a dysfunctional emotion, we must employ our mindfulness and alertness to watch for the presence of anger and to view it as dysfunctional when it has arisen. When it has arisen we must think something like, "I am experiencing the dysfunctional emotion, anger." When we can do this, we have prepared the proper foundation for being able to change the view of the object of our anger.
I present many important negative consequences of anger that we can contemplate in my book, Ocean of Compassion. The first of 10 verses that state negative consequences of anger goes like this:
Anger functions in only one way--
It causes us spiritual harm.
When we injure others in anger,
Our own future wounds are farmed.
This verse states that harming others causes us to be harmed in turn. Some of the future harms we may suffer are the result of causal processes that seem obvious to us. For example, we understand how vengeance works, because most of us have experienced the desire to retaliate and have observed others retaliating. We also are aware of how the legal system punishes those who have injured others in anger. In addition to these obvious causal effects, there are also harms we suffer as a result of acting angrily that are a function of the laws of karma. Most of us do not understand the causal processes that result in specific karmic effects. Buddha taught these karmic consequences, and we can progress on the spiritual path to a stage of development at which we understand the causal processes at work. Anger can cause us to engage in non-virtuous actions, such as lying, killing and stealing. Buddha taught that each of 10 types of non-virtuous actions has specific negative karmic effects. For example, non-virtuous actions can cause us to be reborn in one of the lower realms, or to be reborn as a human but in circumstances that make our lives difficult. If you are interested in learning the specific negative karmic effects of each of the 10 types of non-virtuous actions, you can listen to the August 27, 2012 episode of my radio program here.
Another verse of my book goes like this:
Anger can only cloud the mind;
It always leads to deluded view.
Its object appears repulsive;
Equanimity, rather, is true.
This verse reminds us that, not only is anger caused by a wrong view of something, anger causes wrong views. When we are grumpy, we are prone to misinterpreting the actions and intentions of others. Our partners may notice our grumpiness and out of concern for us ask what is wrong. Instead of viewing them as concerned for us, our grumpiness can cause us to view our partners as hateful and having maliciously harmed us with their words. In fact, grumpiness can cause us to view just about everything in a negative light -- our favorite food may seem disgusting, our clothing ugly, and our children a disappointment. Everything can appear repulsive to us, intensify our anger and causing us to act non-virtuously.
The next two verses go like this:
As a mind of anger cannot judge truly,
Ev'ry form of Wisdom eludes our view.
Anger always distorts our actions;
Because of this we have feelings of rue.
When overcome with anger
We act in regrettable ways.
We separate ourselves from others
To whom, then, we cannot give aid.
When we are angry we cannot think clearly, which results in making decisions without carefully considering the wisdom of a particular course of action. We also cannot carefully investigate our beliefs and dispassionately assess what we think we are observing. We cannot possibly develop the perfection of wisdom and end for all time our suffering, unless we calmly and carefully investigate the true nature of things with a mind of concentration, and we cannot attain the perfection of concentration unless we have eliminated the agitations of mind that are caused by anger. So we can neither develop mundane practical wisdom nor the ultimate wisdom that results in enlightenment as long as we experience anger. Regret is an example of a form of agitation that anger causes and which impedes our spiritual progress toward the attainment of the wisdom found in concentration. More importantly from the Bodhisattva point of view, when we act from anger those who are affected by or observe our angry behavior do not want to associate with us, and this frustrates our goal of leading everyone to true and lasting happiness.
The next two verses are these:
What has caused all wars
And their numberless fatalities?
Angry minds are the root of this scourge
Which ravishes our commonality.
Anger can make us reject or insult
The belov'd who are our parents.
It can drive us to kill all those we love
And make us take our own presence.
Anger and greed are the two main causes of warfare and murder. Many people think of religious intolerance as the main cause of contemporary warfare, but anger is an important part of religious intolerance. As the second of the two verses states, anger can cause us to say hurtful things to those we love, and intentionally or unintentionally kill our spouses and children. Angrily killing a partner who has or intends to break up a relationship and angrily shaking a baby who is crying are, sadly, all-too-common events reported in the news. We are often surprised to learn of someone who has angrily killed parents, partners or children, because we find it hard to believe this person could have been capable of doing such a thing. But anger can make normally kind and friendly people do things they never would have considered had they not been under the influence of anger.
The last two verses I will discuss state two of the important karmic consequences of anger.
Anger is a blazing fire.
It consumes our virtuous seeds.
As soon as the fire is kindled,
Douse the flames it is a noble deed.
There is no external enemy
Who harms like this internal bandit.
Others can hurt us in just this one life.
Anger scathes us in all our orbits.
Buddha taught that in order to progress on the path to Buddhahood, we must create and ripen positive potentials in our minds. The collection of these positive potentials is called the accumulation of merit. We accumulate merit by engaging in virtuous actions and training our mind to think virtuous thoughts. Buddha also taught that anger erases the positive potentials that we have placed in our minds by our virtuous actions -- just like pulling a roll of film out of a camera erases the images that were stored on it. These karmic consequences follow us from life to life.
In order to do effective lojong meditation that develops the conviction that anger is a dysfunctional emotion, you must determine which of the negative consequences of anger seem most salient to you. Meditate frequently on these negative consequences until you view anger as dysfunctional and are determined to eliminate it. When you have this determination, it is time to work on changing the views you have of persons and situations that cause anger and replacing them with views that do not. In my next blog, I will discuss strategies for developing right views that do not cause anger.
For more by Tenzin Norbu, click here.
For more on spiritual development, click here.