#mindedness

The Wisdom of Anger

by Melvin McLeod

Is anger an empowering and appropriate response to suffering and injustice, or does it only cause more conflict? Is it skillful or unskillful? Does it help or hurt?

With so many bad things happening in the world these days, there’s a lot of debate about the proper role of anger. The answer may lie in the fundamental distinction Buddhism makes between anger and aggression.

According to Buddhism, aggression is one of the “three poisons” that drive our suffering. Even a brief moment of reflection on our own lives, our society, and human history will confirm that aggression is the greatest cause of destruction and suffering.

As with the other two poisons — ignorance and passion — what defines aggression is ego. Aggression is the energy of anger in the service of all we define as “self,” ready to attack anyone and anything we deem a threat. But when anger is released from its service to ego, it ceases to be aggression and simply becomes energy. The pure energy of anger has wisdom and power. It can even be enlightened.

THE BUDDHAS ARE ANGRY

The buddhas are not just the love-and-light people we like to think they are. Of course, their enlightened mind is grounded in total peace, but in that open space compassion spontaneously arises. It has many manifestations. One is the pure energy of anger.

Anger is the power to say no. This is our natural reaction whenever we see someone suffer — we want to stop it. The buddhas say no to the three poisons that drive injustice. They are angry about our suffering and they will happily destroy its causes. They aren’t angry at us. They’re angry for us.

Traditionally, it is said that the buddhas’ compassion expresses itself through four types of energy. These are called skillful means, the different ways wisdom and compassion go into action to relieve suffering.

First, the buddhas can pacify, helping suffering beings quench the flames of aggression, passion, and ignorance. The calm and pacifying buddha is the one we’re most familiar with, whose image brings a feeling of peace to millions around the world.

But sometimes more is needed. So the buddhas can enrich us, pointing out the wealth of resources we possess as human beings and healing our inner sense of impoverishment. Then, if need be, they can magnetise us, seducing us away from the suffering of ego to the joy of our inherent enlightened nature.

Finally, there are times when the compassionate thing is to destroy. To say “Stop!” to suffering. To say “Wake up!” to the ways people deceive themselves. To use the energy of anger to say “No!” to all that is selfish, exploitive, and unjust.

In its pure, awakened form, when it is not driven by ego, anger brings good to the world. In our personal lives, it helps us be honest about our own foibles and have the courage to help others see how they are damaging themselves. On a bigger scale, anger is the energy that inspires great movements for freedom and social justice, which we need so badly now. It is a vital part of every spiritual path, for before we can say yes to enlightenment, we must say no to the three poisons.

The energy of anger is an inherent part of our nature — we can no more have yes without no than light without dark. So we need a way to work with the energy of anger so it doesn’t manifest as aggression, as well as methods to tap its inherent wisdom. We need a profound understanding of where aggression comes from, how it differs from anger, and a practical path to work with it. That path begins where all healing begins.

FIRST, DO NOT HARM

Most of us aren’t physically violent, but almost all of us hurt other people with aggressive words and harsh emotions. The sad part is that it’s usually the people we love most whom we hurt. We can also acquiesce in or implicitly support social evils and injustice through our silence, investments, or consumption habits.

Buddhism, like all religions, offers guidelines to help us restrain ourselves. We may not like rules and limitations, but the morals, ethics, and decorum taught directly by the Buddha are guides to doing no harm.

The principle of right conduct applies to acts of body, speech, and mind. Guided by the inner attitudes of gentleness and awareness, we monitor what arises in the mind moment by moment and choose the wholesome, like peace, over the unwholesome, like aggression.

Buddhism teaches helpful meditation techniques so we are not swept away by the force of conflicting emotions like aggression. These techniques allow us to take advantage of the brief gap in the mind between impulse and action. Through the practice of mindfulness, we become aware of impulses arising and allow a space in which we can consider whether and how we want to act. We, not our emotions, are in control.

I’M IN PAIN, YOU’RE IN PAIN

Without excusing or ignoring anything, it’s helpful to recognise that aggression is usually someone’s maladapted response to their own suffering. That includes us and our aggression. So caring for ourselves and cultivating compassion for others are two of the best ways to short-circuit aggression.

We are suffering beings, and we don’t handle it well. We try to ease our pain and only make it worse. The practices of mindfulness and self-care give us the strength and space to experience our suffering without losing our stability and lashing out. And when we are targets of aggression ourselves, knowing it may come out of the other person’s pain helps us respond skillfully.

WITHOUT SUPPRESSING OR ACTING OUT

Fear and shame distort the basic energy of anger and create suffering. We fear that intense emotions like anger will overwhelm us and make us lose control. We’re ashamed that such “negative” emotions are part of our makeup at all. So we protect ourselves against the energy of anger by either suppressing it or acting it out. Both are ways to avoid experiencing the full intensity of emotion. Both are harmful to ourselves and others.

What we need is the courage to rest in the full intensity of the energy inside us without suppressing or releasing it. This the key to the Buddhist approach to working with anger. When we have the courage to remain present with our anger, we can look directly at it. We can feel its texture and understand its qualities. We can investigate and understand it.

What we discover is that we are not actually threatened by this energy. We can separate the anger from our ego and storyline. We realise that anger’s basic energy is useful, even enlightened. For in its essence, our anger is the same as the buddhas’.

DISCOVERING THE WISDOM OF ANGER

We have the same power to say no that the buddhas do. Traditionally, it is said that the enlightened energy of anger is the wisdom of clarity. It is sharp, accurate, and penetrating insight. It sees what is wholesome and unwholesome, what is just and unjust, what is enlightenment and what is ignorance. Seeing clearly, we lay the ground for action.

We all experience the wisdom of anger when we see how society mistreats people. When we have an honest insight into our own neuroses and vow to change. When we are inspired to say no to injustice and fight for something better. This wisdom is a source of strength, fearlessness, and solidarity. It can drive positive change.

If Buddhism offers us one piece of good news it is this: in our basic nature, we are enlightened and our anger is really wisdom. The confused and misdirected aggression that causes such suffering is just temporary and insubstantial.

Buddhist Traditions

by Kalu Rinpoche

The Buddha said that many hundreds of Dharma traditions would come into this world. All traditions would arise from the perfect action of awakened buddhas and would be their means of helping sentient beings. What would these means be like? Entrusting ourselves to some religious traditions would enable us to take birth in the elevated planes of those religions: as human beings or as desire realm celestial beings. Through entrusting ourselves to others, we could be born into the seventeen planes of the form realm or in the four states of the formless realm. Moreover, they reveal ways of blocking the access to ill-gone states (as animals, etc.) and gaining elevated planes of existence. All give us strength and transforming powers.

Some practices are meant to give us the capability of attaining Lesser Vehicle levels of the Enemy Conqueror and the Solitary Realiser (Hinayana arhat and pratyekabuddha) and others give the ability to reach the Greater Vehicle (bodhisattva and Buddha). They do this, and so I believe in all religious traditions. All derive from the perfect actions of the Buddha and give sentient beings release from cyclic existence in both temporary and ultimate senses. Accordingly, these are the subjects I teach my disciples.

While I was in Tibet there were eight major Buddhist traditions, but nowadays in India, the Land of Superiors, only four have been able to flourish. These are Sakya, Gelug, Nyingma and Kagyü. Again, each conveys the stainless word of the Buddha above all and has produced successions of expert scholars and realised saints (pandit and siddhalabdha) to further it.

Thus each is like pure gold, authentic Dharma untainted by anything vile, a thing most people don’t find even when they search, something that can lead to liberation from cyclic existence and to omniscience. This is Dharma in all its profundity and vastness.

If they are all the Dharma of the Buddha, why are there all these different systems? Generally speaking, the variety is produced according to the inclinations of different people. Each particular system is distinctly for the aptitudes of particular people whose minds are ready to be cultivated by such a system.

All four major traditions have in common the four ways of converting frames of thought, going for refuge, generating the two precious gems of relative and absolute enlightenment mentalities, and evolution and perfection phases. It is not for anyone to call one good and others bad. All are only good.

Nonetheless, each individual tradition has its own records of profound gracious advice from the personal experience (gDams ngag) of particular gurus and from the oral tradition techniques for efficiency (man-ngag) transferred from one vessel (i.e. disciple) to another. It is while someone is involved in the practice of his religious system that he is given detailed essential pith instructions by the noblest lamas.

It seems to me that each tradition must benefit someone who has the inclination and prior associations and so I have no partiality to any of the Dharma traditions. Call them systems of gracious advice or Dharma; all are what I teach.

In addition, all traditions stress good practice of the principle of cause and effect and in this every one of them maintains above all the four ways of converting of thought — the turning about in our patterns of thought regarding this cyclic existence — as the means of a basis for being able to aim for liberation and buddhahood.

As for a general account of my lamas: in Tibet the lord of all doctrine is His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Everyone knows that. As such, out of his great compassion he puts into operation the means for all presentations of doctrine without distinction enabling them to flourish more and more and for helping particular sentient beings and migrating beings in general. Consequently, he is also an exceptional lord of exposition in each doctrine.

At present the lord of Kagyü doctrine is His Holiness Karmapa, whose name is well renowned, the lord of Nyingma doctrine is Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche, and the lord of Sakya doctrine is Sakya Dagchen Rinpoche. While acting as the heads of doctrine, these four provide (spiritual needs) with great kindness and, due to this, in places like India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim, the Buddha’s teachings are flourishing and radiating like a shining sun.

As far as I’m concerned, I have been fortunate enough to gain many empowerments, transmissions and discourses from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his two tutors, Kyabje Ling Rinpoche and Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche. I have also received many from my root guru, His Holiness Karmapa and from both Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche and Sakya Trizin Rinpoche. By entrusting myself to many lamas of all four traditions I am creating good associations and a great sense of belief. Furthermore, within my group of disciples, there are many monks and lamas of the four traditions and I feel that I serve their doctrine without discrimination in tenets.

However, I must be really fortunate to have Sakyapas, Nyingmapas, Kagyüpas, and Gelugpas all in my monastery. Subsequently, through bearing all tenets of the religious traditions as my crown, and revering them, I hope to be a practitioner of them all and similarly intend the recipients of my teaching to have great belief in all doctrine.

When someone has an association with some system of Dharma and a lama, it is permissible that he mainly practices that particular doctrine. Such tendencies are the result of the force of his individual activities in prior lifetimes. Apart from this, I feel that to be a believer without distinction in all tenets is authentic evidence of a noble being. It is an outcome of having accomplishments of expertise, sincerity and goodness, that the lamas, abbots, masters and tulkus can explain, debate and compose, bringing about the welfare of sentient beings; and all have great belief without distinction.

So it is that the teachings of Buddha are spreading through the West for the first time. In this pioneering context you might think yourself a practitioner merely through having heard some scanty pieces of Dharma.

On the other hand, not remaining content with a limited understanding of the Dharma, you might make a proper study of it and from the outset with the motivation of benefiting sentient beings, you could put into practice all of the teachings about the opportunities so hard to achieve (precious human body), death and impermanence, cause and result and the faults of cyclic existence, followed by the ten grounds and five paths up to the ultimate: buddhahood.

Thus, to whichever lama you might entrust yourself — Sakyapa, Gelugpa or Nyingmapa — if with belief you combine your mind with the aim for perfection of the practices by every means, then doing them will be worthwhile.