Anger as a Catalyst to Compassion

Question: Please talk about anger. Is our anger ever useful? If not, how do we get rid of it? It seems that without righteous anger, we'd let many more social problems go unsolved.

Aaron: Your anger is not good or bad, it's just anger. Let's start with that. Anger does contain energy which can be transformed into skillful and loving action. But first you must understand your dislike of experiencing anger, or any heavy emotion.

You ask, "Isn't anger bad in itself? When I'm angry, I give off negative energy, and that can hurt people." That is true; when you're angry, you do give off negative energy. Are you going to stop the arising of negative energy in yourself by saying, "I'm bad to be angry"? Can you stop a river from flowing? Can you stop a cloud's movement across the sky? Think about that a moment.

You can control your reaction toward another, but can you shut off the feeling of anger in yourself, really get rid of it? Or do you merely suppress it? In terms of energy flow, if you suppress it, it's just as present, it's simply hidden beneath the surface. Yes, it would be well to transform it into positive energy, but such transformation will never happen through judgment and suppression. As long as you are getting rid of your anger, you are still controlled by that anger.

It is not helpful to attempt to eradicate all anger, greed, jealousy or pride, because, as long as you are in a human body, occasionally there's going to be a catalyst that arouses those emotions. I'm not suggesting that you simply allow anger or greed in and act upon it. Can you develop a different relationship to them? There are more than two choices. You need neither to act upon them nor to suppress them, just bring gentle awareness to them.

When someone speaks or acts in such a way that anger arises in you, can you stop and look? What is this anger? Ask, "Does it relate only to the catalyst or does it also relate to my dislike of this emotional turmoil in myself?" It is so inconvenient and uncomfortable to experience anger! In your slang, it pushes all your buttons. You fear you'll be driven to act on that emotion, and with that fear, you judge yourself as if you had already acted. Do you see that judgment?

The problem is easier to see with greed. Take a situation where you're feeling very hungry; you missed several meals that day. You walk into a room, and there's a child with an ice cream cone. There's a great sense of longing, "I want that, I'm hungry!" You know there's no danger of you reaching out and grabbing that ice cream cone from a small child. None of you is going to do that.

It's not hard for you to say "I'm feeling hunger. I'm so hungry, I feel I could reach out and grab that ice cream cone and eat it. I really want that." You don't hate yourself for that feeling. Just, "Feeling hunger, feeling greed, wanting the ice cream." And you walk on, perhaps deciding that you'll stop and get something to eat. That's the emotion of wanting transformed into skillful action.

Why is anger so different, then? You feel anger arising in you, feel that you want to lash out at somebody. Most of you are not going to lash out and hit them any more than you were going to reach out and take the ice cream cone. That doesn't lessen the intensity of wanting to retaliate. But there, you come to judgment, "I SHOULDN'T feel this way, I'm BAD to feel this way."

Were you BAD to want the ice cream cone? You were feeling hunger. Now you're feeling anger. Are you BAD to want to reach out and hit somebody? You don't have to act on that, and you don't have to suppress it or hate yourself for it.

You have not been conditioned to judge yourself for hunger, but anger is another story. Can you see that they are both uncomfortable feelings but your response to them is vastly different? What is this conditioned mind? How are you a slave to it? Which way is freedom?

As you notice the intensity of the angry feeling, you might begin to be able to see what lies behind it. Anger is a mask. Behind it, often, is fear. Fear that your needs won't be met leads to grasping and clinging, to jealousy and selfishness. Fear that you are going to be hurt arouses a need to protect the self. In that need to protect, anger arises with its rush of adrenaline.

Thousands of years ago, your ancestors may have felt fear, perhaps of an attacking wild animal, and a sense, "I could be hurt, or my child or friend could be hurt." With that rush of adrenaline came a rising of a spear and a desire to kill, followed by a throwing of whatever missile was at hand to kill that wild creature before it killed you. You have had much practice with that process.

Now you've evolved to a different level, but the same instincts come to bear. When fear is experienced, the body reverberates with so many situations of past danger. There is the constant question: "Could I be hurt?" When you feel threatened, fear arises and, then, often, anger.

As you come deeper into watching that process, the solidity of the emotions changes. It's no longer a solid mass that you have to fight with. Instead, it becomes just anger. When you notice it early, just noticing the first tightness in your stomach, then you have a sense, "This is anger arising in me," and you can simply be present with it, without reactivity.

Many mind states pass through you every minute. Some of them are painful, and you may react to that pain. To free yourselves from reactivity it's useful to see the arising of such mind states as part of a process.

Central to the teachings of the Buddha is a natural law called Dependent Origination. Put in simple terms, for something to arise, the conditions for its arising must be present. When conditions are no longer present, that which has arisen dissolves. Understanding the process of how things arise and dissolve isn't mere intellectualization but is vital to your lives. Even more, it's a keystone upon which you may begin to act more skillfully and to free yourselves and others from suffering.

Let's look at the process by which you move to any emotion, painful or joyful. What really happens when you feel anger, desire or even bliss? How do you move into the experience of emotion?

To experience anything, first there must be contact of sense to the sense object. Let's call this step consciousness. For example, your eyes touch on the object of sight; you're not separate from that object but participants with it in the act of seeing. In this way we become aware of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. You may experience a tightening in the belly that's the first physical signal of fear, or a sense of expansion of the heart that may be the physical sign of joy or bliss. You also become aware of mind touching mind object, thinking.

You may label the experience-hearing a cough, seeing an angry face, or if mind was the sense that made contact, perhaps knowing or understanding. We can call this stage perception, perceiving what the senses have contacted.

Notice that there's still no attachment or aversion. You're in neutral. Just hearing, seeing, feeling. Then comes the instant we call the active moment. At this moment of sensation you may stay in neutral or move from neutral to positive or negative, feeling aversion to the angry face perhaps, or tasting that sweet desert and liking it.

If you stay in neutral you experience equanimity. If not, you move to the mental formations such as "fear," "anger," or "craving." This movement from contact to mental formation happens in a flash so you may not see the steps. It doesn't just happen independently, but is the result of all your past conditioning.

What's the significance of coming to see this? When there's strong emotion and you can see how it arose with some clarity you have much more choice. You don't have to react to emotion or suppress it; you can just be compassionately, nonjudgmentally present with it and watch.

It seems important to understand that it's not the emotion that causes the intensity of your discomfort, but your relationship with the emotion. To have inner peace doesn't mean you never feel, only that you are at peace with whatever arises. It is quite possible to simultaneously experience anger and compassion. Your compassion is not only for another but for yourselves. It is the judgment about your anger that separates you from the deepening of compassion and from your true natures. Can you be present with anger without hating that anger? When you hate your own anger, that's just more hatred.

You ask about righteous anger. Perhaps you've been with a being who is prejudiced, who spoke out in a very negative way about those of another race or religion, and it infuriated you. There was a sense of, "I've got to teach this person. How dare they speak that way?" If he says, "That's bad," and you say, "No. It's good," he can't hear you. You crash into each other. There's no room for communication, which can never come from a place of hatred.

What might happen when you hear that person who speaks with prejudice, and, as rage rises in you, you meet that fear, and touch it with a bit of compassion? Then you know you are BOTH feeling fear, and see his prejudice in a new light-not "He SHOULDN'T feel prejudiced!" but "WHY does he feel prejudiced? What are his fears?"

Can you accept that if his prejudice arouses rage in you, you also have fears, different from his in specifics, perhaps, but still, fear? Can you meet fear, not with rage, but with the openhearted question, "What are MY fears? Why does his speech arouse so much anger in me?"

As compassion leads you to hear his fear, then communication becomes possible; change becomes possible. This is the basis of compassion and unconditional love- learning to watch fear and anger responses arise in yourself, and ask without judgment, "What is this anger?" Until you can be compassionate to yourself, you can not be compassionate toward another. Such compassion is the only REAL basis for world peace.

So this is a vital lesson that all of you are learning, to relate differently to yourselves and to each other than you have in the past, to begin to notice how anger arises, to begin to let go a bit of the judgment of yourself for being angry.

I said, earlier, there are two different issues-the emotion itself, be it anger, greed, pride, jealousy or whatever, and your relationship to that. Part of what you're learning is to change your relationship to those emotions, to feel a sense of peace with whatever is coming through. You can't control your experiences in large part. Your lives interweave with each other, unless you're going to go off and live in a cave, completely alone. And, even there, loneliness may arise, or other very strong emotions. Wanting. Wanting companionship. So, you can't control any of that, but you can control what happens inside when you're experiencing such emotion.

Something wonderful begins to happen as you move from feeling anger, and self-hatred about that anger, to feeling anger, and feeling a calm acceptance. "Here's anger. It will come, and then it will have passed." We call this equanimity toward emotions.

With that compassion for yourself, you begin to see another's anger or greed in a different light. That being is feeling anger. Suddenly, you no longer need to control your angry response towards them and say, "I'm not going to let myself get angry." There's a shift within you.

When you see another feeling anger, a great sense of compassion arises in you when you see the depth of their pain! You genuinely don't feel angry. You may think about it later and say "How did I do that, I really wasn't angry?!" You are breaking loose from conditioned mind and creating a new pattern for yourself, a new way of being with heavy emotions, a new way of being at peace within yourself. You're learning that your inner peace doesn't depend on external circumstances, but comes from within. And that is a wonderful piece of learning.

This earth is your school room. You have moved into this physical body and into this schoolroom to learn. To learn what? Compassion. Nonjudgment. Unconditional love. Grand terms, to be sure, but what do they mean? What does it really mean to have compassion for another? What does it mean to be non-judgmental?

Think about the last hour; just review it in your minds for a moment. Was there any judgment? "That driver ahead of me is slow. I don't like that house. Why did somebody paint it that color? This road is too bumpy, doesn't anybody in this town take care of the roads?" Little bits. I'm not talking about hatred, just little bits of judgment.

Some of you may say "But, Aaron, if we never judge anything as deficient, then there's no force within us to try to change that which we see lacking." Barbara is training a puppy. He's very deficient in many learning areas. His attention span is rather short. He has learned to sit and stay remarkably well for a three month old puppy, but ten seconds is about it. Does Barbara hate that puppy or rage at him when he gets up from sitting? Or does she simply walk back to him and say "Sit. Stay"?

One does not need to feel hatred or even mild irritation to see what is wrong in the world and attempt to change it. In fact, one can create change far more readily and more skillfully, when there is no rage. Here is where anger offers the most energy, when it is transformed to compassion and to recognition of your non-separation with this earth and all life upon it.

So, what is the path to truly moving beyond anger? In human form, can you ever reach a point where you don't feel anger? It is what I just described; we've come full circle. You can only begin to move beyond anger by accepting anger. You cannot transcend what you don't accept. When you find compassion for all the heavy emotions in yourself, THAT ACCEPTANCE is what leads you to compassion for another. Then you find that the same catalyst that led to rage or greed or jealousy simply leads you to an open hearted look at the situations that confront you, without judgment.

It is a wonderful process, and one in which you're all involved. It's not something you choose to be a part of. You've already made that choice by moving into incarnation. You are in this schoolroom, and offered the curriculum. It's your choice whether you practice the lessons that are offered. Life 101: How to live your lives more wisely. How to love more fully. And yes, my dear ones, you'll still be perfecting those lessons when you've moved on to college and graduate school!