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Rage, the Ancients say, is a devil that dwells within the heart.
In an instant, it leaps upon its target, biting and
gnawing like a mad and hungry dog.
She was an energetic woman. She moved quickly and purposefully,
and as she and her daughter sat down to join me for
lunch, I could tell that she was clearly distressed. "It
seems I'm always angry," she said, "and what's worse, my
daughter is picking up my anger-habits. This morning her
pre-school teacher told me that she's turning into a
class b-u-l-l-y." I was glad she spelled the word.
Watching the little girl innocently start to color with
the paper and crayons the waitress had brought, I didn't
want her to think I saw her as any kind of bully. I
asked her to tell me more about her problems.
"Everything that happens around me seems to make me
angry. Yesterday I got a nuisance telephone call just as
I had gotten into the bathtub... I stood there literally
as 'mad as a wet hen' and slammed down the receiver.
People can be so inconsiderate! Then, I tried to iron a
silk blouse, and I had the setting up too high and I
scorched the fabric. I yanked the blouse off the ironing
board and threw it in the garbage. I was beside myself
with anger. Last night, my husband made a crack about my
mother, and I slapped his face. I just reached out and
slapped him! He was stunned - not by the slap but by
the insult. Afterward, I apologized. I felt so ashamed.
But my daughter hasn't reached the point of
self-analysis and repentence. She's copying me."
"Do you
ever hit her?" I asked. "Yes," she confessed. "I do, but
only as a spanking on her behind. I never hit her face."
"Is this spanking as 'a last resort'?" I asked. "Yes,"
she said, "but often, instead of being patient and
tolerant, I get angry at her when she doesn't respond to
verbal orders... when she ignores me or makes the same
mistake repeatedly. Now, apparently, she's doing the
same thing with her classmates. What can I do to get
over my anger."
"Anger is
not a bad thing" I started out. "Anger is a natural
response. Especially when we have certain
responsibilites and we need to delegate authority to
others or when we rely on some guarantee that a piece of
machinery is going to work in a certain way and it
doesn't, we have a legitimate reason to become angry.
Anger is supposed to indicate our dissatisfaction with
the performance of people or things which have not
performed satisfactorily. There is a limit to patience;
and frankly, there are careless mistakes that people
make that are injurious to others. We need to impress
the person who carelessly makes those mistakes with the
seriousness of his errors. Anger punctuates the message
... as long as we are conscious of what we're doing and
are able to act reasonably.
"But other
times anger is just a response to something going on
within us. It's not another person who makes us angry --
that's just an excuse to make ourselves angry -- it's
our ego's response to a perceived lessening of status,
of threat, or to a conflict which we suspect we can't
win. The conflict may be known and conscious or
unrecognized and unconscious: if it's conscious, we can
learn to understand our anger and then can maintain an
inner calm: this is the only way we can command the
power to avoid harming ourselves or others. This is the
only way we can act, teach or protect in any
constructive way.
"But if
the conflict is unconscious, actions arising from that
anger are unconscious as well and we, necessarily, lose
command of them. Then our behavior becomes a pure
response of the ego that is struggling to maintain
superiority over the Self. In this case, the reason for
our anger remains beyond our reach; and when we struggle
for an explanation, we look outward and blame the person
or thing nearest us: the telemarketer, the husband, the
child, the blouse. This is what the ego thinks it has to
do to protect itself from the injustices of fate that it
can't understand."
"What can
I do to make her understand that hitting another child
is wrong," she asked.
"Well, you
can't teach her theology or philosophy. She won't
understand that. But the wisdom of the East is not
necessarily beyond her appreciation." I turned to the
child. "I wonder," I said pretending doubt, "that if I
tell you a special story you are old enough to
understand it?"
"I can
understand," she assured me. "Tell me."
"Well, a
famous teacher named Saraswati likes to tell this story:
I'll repeat it for you:
"Once upon
a time there was a holy man who encountered a big snake
while he was walking through the forest. The holy man
immediately recognized the snake as the reincarnation of
a man who, in his previous life, had been very angry
with many people. Oh, he caused his mother and his
family and his friends so much trouble because of his
anger and his meanness. That's why he was reborn as a
snake . When the snake saw that the holy man recognized
this, he spoke to him. 'I'm so miserable as a snake,' he
said. 'I have no friends, and all the people who come
here hate me. They say nasty things to me and want to
hurt me. But I don't let them. If they come near me I
bite them. Tell me, how can I escape from this
predicament?'
"The holy
man said, 'Why that's simple! Stop biting people and
eventually you will be liberated and can become a human
being again!'
"So, in
his desperation, the snake stopped biting people when
they came into the forest to collect berries and fruit
and firewood. But soon, the people realized that the
snake did not react to their presence and so they
started throwing stones at him. The poor snake wanted
desperately to become a human being again so he did
nothing at all; and, in time, he grew weak from the all
the injuries he received.
"Many
months later the holy man returned and saw the terrible
condition of the snake. He asked him what was wrong and
the snake explained what had happened. "The holy man saw
the problem and the solution. He said to the snake: 'You
were forbidden to bite. You were not forbidden to hiss!
So hiss! But then, mind you, hiss only when they throw
stones.'
"The snake
understood, and from that time on when people came near,
if they were pleasant, the snake did nothing; but if
they started to throw stones at him, he hissed. Oh, did
he hiss! And so the people learned that if they
respected the snake, he would respect them. They learned
that even a patient snake can remind them that he is not
exactly powerless against them. Now," I asked, "what did
you learn from this story?"
Even at
the age of five, she could understand. "The people
stopped trying to hurt the snake."
"Right," I
said. "So hiss if you must hiss... but don't bite. And
if people are nice to you, you should be nice to them."
As to the
young mother's problem, the solution was not nearly so
easy to determine. What was needed here was for her to
learn to be conscious of what was making her angry and,
through that inquisitive investigation, to gain
possession of the anger instead of letting it possess
her. She needed to take the ego out of the equation.
When we
practice Zen, we practice engaging our Buddha Nature,
that inner, separate-less, Self. When we experience a
sudden outburst of emotion such as anger or fear, we
need to pause and, through an act of will, engage our
Inner Self. It requires that we activate our heart as
well as our mind before we respond to a situation.
Someone slaps us on the face and our immediate response
is anger "How dare he!" But what really happened? A
hand has struck skin causing nerve impulses to travel to
the spinal column and then to the brain … the brain
responds by stimulating another part of the brain that
generates the sensation of pain on the face. This is the
reality of a slap to the face, but are we aware of it?
Such a simple inquiry into the nature of an event that
stimulates the anger reflex is often enough to break us
free of it. Once we're out of the anger-loop, we can
reasonably investigate the cause of the slap to our
face. Did we say something that offended someone? Is the
other person trying to teach us a lesson? Was it an
accident because the person happened to turn around
quickly without knowing we were standing there? The only
way we can understand is first to diffuse the anger and
then to analyze the event. If we don't do this, we're a
hungry devil's meat.
We chatted
through the meal about anger and ego and Self and
selflessness. What seemed to be an overwhelming problem
to her at the beginning of the conversation - that she
was helpless before the disease of anger and had passed
the disease to her child - now seemed within reach of a
solution. She wanted to practice this new technique, she
said, to see how well it worked.
I told her
it's really not that hard and that it all begins with
awareness of the
possibility that we are more than the sum of
our parts. We can also think. She had already achieved
that insight.
"I will stop biting," she said, "and learn how to hiss.
Hissing will give me time to think things through."
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