Mindful Eating

Recently, I have seen advertisements for a variety of classes in mindful eating. Some with yoga. Some meditation. Some on their own. But when I look closely at the descriptions I notice that rather than mindfulness, in the Buddhist sense of being wholeheartedly present in the moment with whatever is happening then letting go and moving to the next moment, these classes are actually teaching sensory desire and attachment. It is a common mistake.

People often mistakenly think that because our experiences are impermanent and fleeting we should focus our attention on enjoying each experience “to the fullest.” That makes us more attached and more desirous, not less. That’s makes us more greedy, not less.

Like brushing our teeth mindfully, showering mindfully, urinating mindfully, eating mindfully is a meditative practice we should all do with the intention of mastering it. The liberated mind, after all, is the mindful mind.

Mindful Eating, Just Do It

If you really want to do an exercise in mindful eating, this is what I suggest:

Pick a restaurant that you like. Make a reservation there as early as possible for dinner, just when the restaurant opens and when there are the fewest patrons in the restaurant–maybe a Monday night at 6:00 PM. The quieter the restaurant, the fewer distractions to pull you away from your mindfulness. Make the reservation for one. This is an “eat alone” meal.

Arrive a few minutes early. If you are asked where you would like to be seated, say, “Anywhere is alright.” When the server arrives and asks if you want a drink, ask for a glass of water without ice. When it’s time to order dinner, ask the server to pick an appetizer and an entrée for you. Mention that you know the restaurant and just want to be surprised. Do mention if you have any allergies.

Mindful eating is about being present with the eating, not about picking and choosing. So far in this exercise, you really haven’t picked or chosen much, other than the restaurant.

While you wait for the food, just sit there, still and calm, hands in your lap and mind on your breath. Don’t look around to visual stimulation. Don’t concern yourself with what others in the restaurant might be doing or what food might be coming for you.

When the food arrives, nod thankfully. Eat slowly. Put your knife and fork down between bites. Fully address your attention to the experience of eating–to what it feels like to press the fork into the food, what it feels like to lift the food to your mouth, how the food feels and tastes in your mouth as you eat it and swallow it. Then let it go and take the next bite. Immediately let go of any judgements about the food. The point here is to experience the moment, the eating, not to savor or attach to it. Let each moment go so you can greet the next. Mindful eating is about being present with the eating, not about judging, not about liking and disliking. It should be no different from mindfully urinating.

When you have finished the entrée, order a dessert if you want. Do it with a minimum of words or mental commentary.

When you leave, just leave, mindfully. Be mindful of each movement and step. Then let go of this entire experience. Get into your car and drive home. Drive mindfully. No music, no radio, no cell phone, no thinking about the meal. Just drive when you are driving.

When you walk into the house, walk into your house. Don’t think about your driving experience, and don’t think about your dinner. Just do what is next.

That’s mindfulness. That the source of peace and well-being.

Five Ways To Abandon Negative Mindstates

Another View of Right Effort

Right Effort, number six on the noble eightfold path, is generally described in terms of the four right efforts: abandon and refrain from the unwholesome, develop and maintain the wholesome. This is the classic formula in Buddhism for letting go of negative mindstates and replacing them with wholesome mindstates. But there is another way understanding of Right View.

In this less well known understanding, five techniques are offering for ridding ourselves of our defilements:

1. For every defilement there is an antidote (patience for anger; sympathetic joy for jealousy, etc). The first of these right efforts is to replace the defilement with a wholesome thought that is its exact opposite.

While our list of defilements is long, the list of antidotes is quite short:

Generosity

Compassion

Lovingkindness

Patience

Humility & Modesty

Moral discipline

Sympathetic joy

Equanimity

Right Speech

Trustworthiness

Dependability

2. The second of the five right efforts is to activate these positive mindstates: shame & embarrassment, regret & distaste. Ordinarily in the West these are considered negative mindstates, but in Buddhism these are positive mental qualities that we can used to abandon an unwanted thought or action.

Here’s how: Reflect quietly and gently on an unwholesome action, seeing it as a little embarrassing or somewhat shameful. Then consider its undesirable consequences until a distaste for it sets in. Finally, as regret arises in us we use that regret to calmly push the thought away, shelving it until and similar situation arises again. Next time, though, when we look at what happened last time we were in this type of situation, the regret leads us to change strategies. No guilt, no wallowing, no ruminating.

3. In this third method, we confront the defilement directly, scrutinize and investigate its source and the source of each of its components. When this is done, the defilement quiets down and disappears on its own. This contemplative destructuring, which requires patience to learn, is a very powerful tools for evaporating everything from physical pain to depression. Email if you would like more information about this technqiue.

These first three are very effective ways to reset our behavior, to help establish new and lasting habitual patterns, leading to ever-increasing wholesomeness in our thoughts and actions.

4. The fourth technique is to strongly divert our attention away from the defilement. When a powerful, unwholesome thought arises and demands to be noticed, instead of indulging it we forcefully redirect our attention to a mindful presence somewhere elsewhere. This has a limited value, though, as it is weak at resetting our habitual behavior.

5. The fifth right effort, to be used only as a last resort, is suppression–to vigorously wrestle the defilement to the ground and keep it pinned there until it can safely get up and redirect our attention to something better for us.

Using these five techniques skillfully, we slowly take back control of our mind. The wholesome thoughts and mindstates we want become the thoughts and mindstates we have. And when an unwholesome thought does arise, we have the tools to eradicate it.

Being Mindful, Always

Ten Simple Mindfulness Exercises

There’s a limit to how successful we can be with our practice if mindfulness only occurs on the cushion once a day or once a week.

If we go for piano lessons once a week but never practice, it will take a long time to become proficient at the keyboard. Similarly with practices aimed at ending our dukkha, like mindfulness.

If you think of mindfulness as Right Habit, then obviously we need to practice more than just 2% of the time if we want mindfulness––if we want being peaceful––to become a habit and our way of life. That’s why we have to take our practice off the cushion, into our daily lives. We need to reinforce and support our formal practice of meditation with all sorts of Right Actions aimed at making us quieter and more peaceful.

Here are some exercises we can do to keep us aware of our less than equanimous mind-states and remind us to keep in a state of mindfulness:

1.       Cover up caller ID [We answer the phone because someone is calling, when answering the phone is appropriate, not because of a story about the person on the other end. No more running dripping wet from the shower across 3 rooms to grab the cell phone, only to look at caller ID and to decide it’s someone we don’t want to talk to!]

2.       Do only one big thing at a time. [Be present with the chores. Brush your teeth when you brush your teeth; drive the car––yes, no radio––when you drive the car; eat when you eat.]

3.       Never speak about anyone who isn’t in the room. [Gossip and small talks are always harmful; they never occur in the present.]

4.       Stop thinking about outcomes. [Abide in present conditions, doing the best you can in each moment, and don’t worry about outcomes; outcomes will soon enough be the present moment, and then we will deal with them.]

5.       No more fabricating stories about what’s happening. [Stories are the deluded ideas and concepts, labels, views, and unproductive habits that guide our lives and keep us from being in the present.]

6.       Assume that other person is always right; let go of your opinions and experience what is being said, what is happening. [Our opinions are just stories behind which we hide from the present.]

7.       Have no expectations. [Be in the present with whatever arises; no expectations.]

8.       Forget the idea that things should be fair or just. [More stories: just be in the present moment and feel the peace and joy of being here. instead of judging and wanting.]

9.       Stop saying these four words: "I"  "me"  "my"  "mine" for one full day. This is very hard. [This shows how peaceful things become when you lessen your attachment to your idea of your Self.]

10.    Wear a mala. Let it be a constant reminder to be mindful. Whenever reasonable, roll the beads between your fingers to match your breath mindfully.

Mindfulness is the cornerstone of our practice. The more we embrace mindfulness as an everyday, every moment practice, the more we will progress in our spiritual goal to peace and tranquility.

Acting Appropriately

How Should We Behave?

While many Buddhists are hesitant, some even loathe, to tell others how they should behave, or even to setup standards for themselves, Buddhism does give us some very strong guidelines. These are ways of behaving that skillfully use whatever is happening in our lives, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, to facilitate the ending of our dukkha.

These suggested ways of behaving are activities that weaken our bonds of attachment and that produce the clarity of mind needed for progress along the path. They are The Path, which in essence is just a list of skills worth mastering. They're our basic set of tools, so we will want to keep them handy and in good shape.

These guidelines aren’t speculative (which would be wrong view). Nor are they absolutes (again, wrong view). They are simply ways of behaving that minimize our dukkha and lead us to a life of peace and happiness.

The Six Paramitas (Generosity, Morality, Patience, Diligent Effort, Meditation and Wisdom), the Five Precepts (No Killing, No Stealing, No Sexual Misconduct, No Lying, No Intoxicants), and the eight aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path (Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration) are obvious examples of Buddhist behavioral guidelines.

But here is another skillful means way of looking at the criteria for daily decision-making:

Act Appropriately

These can be used to guide our every decision:

1.     Do no harm, then if possible

2.     Be of benefit

3.     If you can’t be of benefit, do nothing

4.     Be morally disciplined and follow the rules

5.     Meditate

6.     Be wisdom-oriented

Always Use Right Speech

Only speak when it will improve the silence.

1.     Only speak when conditions suggest you should speak

2.     Only speak when you have something to say that will be of benefit

3.     Always speak in ways that can be heard

4.     Only say it once

5.     Never go on the battlefield; being of benefit isn’t about winning

Avoid Wrong speech:

            Harsh, mean-spirited or angry words

            Falsehoods

            Gossip and small talk

            Belittling others to raise your own status

As Much As Possible, Maintain One of these Mind-States

Whenever a negative mind-state arises, use Right Effort to replace it with one of these positive mind-states:

Generosity

Compassion and Lovingkindness

Patience

Humility and Modesty

Moral Restraint

Equanimity

Right Speech

Trustworthiness

Dependability

Regret (When we act appropriately but the outcome is not beneficial, then we use regret, very gently, to remind us to try another tactic next time.)

Distaste (Develop a gentle aversion to all that is unwholesome in body, speech and mind.)

Overcoming Ignorance

Ignorance, the Buddha said, is the ultimate cause of stress and suffering. By “ignorance” he meant not a general ignorance of the way things are—what we usually call delusion, or moha—but something more specific: ignorance of the four noble truths. And the Pali word he chose for ignorance—avijja—is the opposite of vijja, which means not only “knowledge” but also “skill,” as in the skills of a doctor or animal-trainer. So in stating that people suffer from not knowing the four noble truths, he wasn’t just saying that they lack information or direct knowledge of those truths. He was also saying that they lack skill in handling them. They suffer because they don’t know what they’re doing. The four truths are (1) stress—which covers everything from the slightest tension to out-and-out agony; (2) the cause of stress; (3) the cessation of stress; and (4) the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress. When the Buddha first taught these truths, he also taught that his full Awakening came from knowing them on three levels: identifying them, knowing the skill appropriate to each, and knowing finally that he had fully mastered the skills.

The Buddha identified these truths in precise, fairly technical terms. When identifying stress he started with examples like birth, aging, illness, death, sorrow, distress, and despair. Then he summarized all varieties of stress under five categories, which he called five clinging-aggregates: clinging to physical form; to feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain; to perceptions or mental labels; to thought-constructs; and to sensory consciousness. The cause of stress he identified as three kinds of craving: craving for sensuality, craving to take on an identity in a world of experience, and craving for one’s identity and world of experience to be destroyed. The cessation of stress he identified as renunciation of and release from those three kinds of craving. And the path to the cessation of stress he identified as right concentration together with its supporting factors in the noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness.

These four truths are not simply facts about stress. They are categories for framing your experience so that you can diagnose and cure the problem of stress. Instead of looking at experience in terms of self or other, for instance, or in terms of what you like and dislike, you look at it in terms of where there’s stress, what’s causing it, and how to put an end to the cause. Once you can divide the territory of experience in this way, you realize that each of these categories is an activity. The word “stress” may be a noun, but the experience of stress is shaped by your intentions. It’s something you do. The same holds true with the other truths, too. Seeing this, you can work on perfecting the skill appropriate for each activity. The skill with regard to stress is to comprehend it to the point where you have no more passion, aversion, or delusion toward doing it. To perfect this skill, you also have to abandon the cause of stress, to realize its cessation, and to develop the path to its cessation.

Each of these skills assists the others. For example, when states of concentration arise in the mind, you don’t just watch them arise and pass away. Concentration is part of the path, so the appropriate skill is to try to develop it: to understand what will make it grow steadier, subtler, more solid. In doing this, you develop the other factors of the path as well, until the doing of your concentration is more like simply being: being a luminous awareness, being present, being nothing, being one with emptiness.

From that perspective, you begin to comprehend levels of stress you never noticed before. As you abandon the cravings causing the grosser levels, you become sensitive to subtler ones, so you can abandon them, too. In doing this, your ignorance gets peeled away, layer by layer. You see more and more clearly why you’ve suffered from stress: You didn’t grasp the connection between the cravings you enjoyed and the stress that burdened you, and didn’t detect the stress in the activities you enjoyed. Ultimately, when you’ve abandoned the causes for other forms of stress, you begin to see that the being of your concentration contains many subtler layers of doing as well—more layers of stress. That’s when you can abandon any craving for these activities, and full Awakening occurs.

The path to this Awakening is necessarily gradual, both because the sensitivity it requires takes time to develop, and because it involves developing skills that you abandon only when they’ve done their job. If you abandoned craving for concentration before developing it, you’d never get the mind into a position where it could genuinely and fully let go of the subtlest forms of doing. But as your skills converge, the Awakening they foster is sudden. The Buddha’s image is of the continental shelf off the coast of India: a gradual slope, followed by a sudden drop-off. After the drop-off, no trace of mental stress remains. That’s when you know you’ve mastered your skills. And that’s when you really know the four noble truths.

Craving, for instance, is something you experience every day, but until you totally abandon it, you don’t really know it. You can experience stress for years on end, but you don’t really know stress until you’ve comprehended it to the point where passion, aversion, and delusion are gone. And even though all four skills, as you’re developing them, bring a greater sense of awareness and ease, you don’t really know why they’re so important until you’ve tasted where their full mastery can lead.

For even full knowledge of the four noble truths is not an end in and of itself. It’s a means to something much greater: Nirvana is found at the end of stress, but it’s much more than that. It’s total liberation from all constraints of time or place, existence or non-existence—beyond all activity, even the activity of the cessation of stress. As the Buddha once said, the knowledge he gained in Awakening was like all the leaves in the forest; the knowledge he imparted about the four noble truths was like a handful of leaves. He restricted himself to teaching the handful because that’s all he needed to lead his students to their own knowledge of the whole forest. If he were to discuss other aspects of his Awakening, it would have served no purpose and actually gotten in the way.

So even though full knowledge of the four noble truths—to use another analogy—is just the raft across the river, you need to focus full attention on the raft while you’re making your way across. Not only does this knowledge get you to full Awakening, but it also helps you judge any realizations along the way. It does this in two ways. First, it provides a standard for judging those realizations: Is there any stress remaining in the mind? At all? If there is, then they’re not genuine Awakening. Second, the skills you’ve developed have sensitized you to all the doings in “simply being,” which ensures that the subtlest levels of ignorance and stress won’t escape your gaze. Without this sensitivity, you could easily mistake an infinitely luminous state of concentration for something more. The luminosity would blind you. But when you really know what you’re doing, you’ll recognize freedom from doing when you finally encounter it. And when you know that freedom, you’ll know something further: that the greatest gift you can give to others is to teach them the skills to encounter it for themselves.

                         —Thanissaro Bhikkhu

To Be or Not To Be

E Prime - The Ultimate Right Speech

According to Robert Anton Wilson, "In 1933, Alfred Korzybski proposed that we should abolish the ‘is of identity’ from the English language.The ‘is of identity’ takes the form X is a Y, or ‘Joe is a Communist,’ ‘Mary is a dumb file-clerk.’ In 1949, D. David Bourland Jr. proposed the abolition of all forms of the words ‘is’ or ‘to be’ and this new English without ‘is-ness’ he called English Prime, or E-Prime.

The case for using E-Prime rests on the simple proposition that ‘is-ness’ sets the brain into a medieval Aristotelian framework (which posits a permanence to our world view by suggesting that an event is naturally characterized by giving its position in space together with the time of its occurrence) and makes it impossible to understand modern problems and opportunities. Removing ‘is-ness’ and writing and thinking only and always in operational/existential language sets us, conversely, in a modern universe where we can successfully deal with modern issues."

From a Buddhist perpective, E Prime weakens and lessens our concept of the Self. It loosens our idea of Self at the third and fifth skandhas. At the third skandha, perception, it lessens our ability to attach a label to people and things, falsely making them appear as permenent, solid and substantive. At the fifth skandha, consciousness, where we normally appropriate and identify with our perceptions (I’m the kind of person who does this when he sees that”, E Prime shatters our clinging by stopping us from so easily identifying with our sense contacts.

For instance:

Standard English: The photon is a wave.

E-Prime: The photon behaves as a wave when constrained by certain instruments.

Standard English: The photon is a particle.

E-Prime: The photon appears as a particle when constrained by other instruments.

The description of a photon as either a wave or a particle is both inaccurate (a photon is both, depending) and polarizing (probably fighting words at the local quantum bar). We could make up a word like "wavicle" - but why? E-Prime seems an efficient and effective way to express all sorts of uncertainties, paradoxes, ambiguities, ambivalences and mysteries. In other words, E-Prime encompasses all the richness that the "is of identity" is too narrow to contain. For Buddhist, this makes E Prime ideal for expressing phenomena in a conditioned world.

E-Prime is not an easy language to learn. To say "You are wrong" in E-Prime, you would have to say, "Based on what I understood of the circumstances in the moment, I don’t understand your reason for doing what you did." To say "I am right," you would have to say "I behaved in accordance with my understanding of the situation."

Getting unstuck from the "is of identity" would make life both at the quantum bar and at home more peaceful. Give it a try.

If you don’t feel ready for a day of E Prime, try this simple linguistic exercise to loosen your clinging to Self: spend a day without using the pronouns "I, me, my or mine."

Cure Your Anger

Patience is The Antidote


This is the third and final blog in the series on Anger

Patience, the practice of patient acceptance, is the antidote for faulty frustrated desires (greed, the I-wants and shoulda-hads) and unwanted occurrences (negative greed: the I-shouldn’ta gottens, shouldn’t bes). We need to make the perfection of patience an omnipresent practice; not just a fallback position to use in desperation.

Patience is a mind that is able to accept fully whatever occurs. It is much more than just gritting our teeth and putting up with things, that’s the tolerance/intolerance thing. Being patient means to welcome wholeheartedly whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are.

When patience is present in our mind it is impossible for anger to gain a foothold. As we know from the cushion, since we can only have one thought at a time, if there is patience there cannot be anger.

It is always possible to be patient; there is no situation so bad that it cannot be accepted patiently, with an open, accommodating, and peaceful heart.

We start training ourselves to be patient on the cushion when we teach ourselves how to be patient with our thoughts and feelings as they arise. Then we take it off the cushion and practice patience by learning to accept the small everyday difficulties and hardships that arise. Gradually our patient mindstate increases and we remain peaceful in the face of our imagined adversities. There are many examples of people who have managed to practice patience even in the most extreme circumstances––Empty Cloud, for example, when he was being tortured. or those in the final stages of cancer, who, although their bodies are ravaged, maintain peaceful minds.

·       If we practice the patience of voluntarily accepting suffering (which is all imagined and unreal), we can maintain a peaceful mind even when experiencing suffering and pain.

·       If we maintain this peaceful and positive state of mind through the force of mindfulness, angry minds will have no opportunity to arise. (You’re always breathing, so you can always return to your breath, even when someone is screaming at you). On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to dwell in aversive thoughts there will be no way for us to prevent anger from arising.

·       By training our mind to look at frustrating situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from anger and a lot of other unnecessary mental suffering: If there is a way to remedy an unpleasant situation, what point is there in being angry? On the other hand, if it is completely impossible to remedy the situation there is also no reason to get upset either. This line of reasoning is very useful, for we can apply it when we feel ourselves becoming angry.

Being patient doesn’t necessarily mean that we shouldn’t do something to improve the situation. If it is possible to remedy the situation, then of course we should; but to do this we do not need to become angry. Simple awareness will do. For example, when we have a headache take a pain reliever, but until the tablet takes effect just accept whatever discomfort there is with a calm and patient mind.

As long as we are in samsara we cannot avoid unpleasant, difficult situations and a certain amount of physical discomfort, but by training our mind to look at frustrating, anger-producing situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Instead of reacting blindly through the force of emotional habit (anger), we should examine the situation. We should not become angry just because things do not go our way. We must break that old habit of ours if we are to progress past anger and move meaningfully forward on the Path.

In reality most of our problems are nothing more than a failure to accept things as they are – in which case it is patient acceptance, rather than attempting to change externals, that is the solution.

Lessening and managing the anger is not the point on which we practice. The point is to patiently accept things are they are and to let go of all our fabrications about how they oughta be/shoulda be.

Problems do not exist outside our mind, so when we stop seeing other people and things as problems they stop being problems. No anger.

The Three Patiences

There are three kinds of situation in which we need to learn to be patient:

·       When we are experiencing suffering, hardship, or disappointment

·       When we are practicing Dharma

·       When we are harmed or criticized by others

Correspondingly, there are three types of patience:

·       The patience to deal with our perceived suffering in each moment – we do this when we realize that we are the source (it’s our past actions) of all our suffering and that if we are patient with the suffering it will cease

·       The patience not to retaliate – we learn not to retaliate when we combine patience with compassion (and further when we realize we are the real source of the suffering, so why retaliate against someone or something else

·       The patience required to practice the Dharma – this is using our understanding of emptiness and dependent arising to lessen attachment and increase patience, which may be the only way we have of eradicating our delusions and suffering

These three types of patience can liberate our mind from anger, one of our strongest and most obsessive delusions.

Right Speech Helps Allay Anger

The main root of harsh speech is aversion, assuming the form of anger. Harsh speech is speech uttered in anger, intended to cause the hearer pain. Such speech can assume different forms, of which we might mention three. One is abusive speech: scolding, reviling, or reproving another angrily with bitter words. A second is insult: hurting another by ascribing to him some offensive quality that detracts from his dignity. A third is sarcasm: speaking to someone in a way that ostensibly lauds him, but with such a tone or twist of phrasing that the ironic intent becomes clear and causes pain.

Harsh speech is an unwholesome action with disagreeable results for oneself and others, both now and in the future, so it has to be restrained. The ideal antidote is patience — learning to tolerate blame and criticism from others, to sympathize with their shortcomings, to respect differences in viewpoint, to endure abuse without feeling compelled to retaliate. The Buddha calls for patience even under the most trying conditions:

Even if, monks, robbers and murderers saw through your limbs and joints, whosoever should give way to anger thereat would not be following my advice. For thus ought you to train yourselves: "Undisturbed shall our mind remain, with heart full of love, and free from any hidden malice; and that person shall we penetrate with loving thoughts, wide, deep, boundless, freed from anger and hatred."

But while the main practice for eliminating anger is patience, holding wisdom in mind and speaking calmly and with lovingkindness and compassion in your heart can play a big part in holding you stable and in allaying anger.

Anger In Personal and Business Relationships

Anger is particularly destructive in relationships. When we live in close personal or business contact with someone, it is easy for us to become critical and short-tempered with our partner and to blame them for our faulty sense of discomfort. Unless we make a continuous effort to deal with this anger as it arises, our relationships will suffer. In relationships where there is continuous fighting, the anger eventually trumps the love––being stronger and more karmically active. Eventually there will come a point when before they have recovered from one row the next has already begun.

To prevent the build-up of bad feelings we need to deal with anger as soon as it begins to arise in our mind.

We clean our houses, so why not our minds? We clear away the dishes after every meal rather than waiting until the end of the month, because we do not want to live in a dirty house nor be faced with a huge, unpleasant job. In the same way, we need to make the effort to clear away the mess in our mind as soon as it appears, for if we allow it to accumulate it will become more and more difficult to deal with, and will endanger our lives and our relationship.

We should remember that every opportunity to develop anger is also an opportunity to develop patience. It is opportunity to erode away our self-cherishing and self-grasping, which are the real sources of all our problems. We do this by practicing with patience.

It is through our anger and hatred that we transform people into enemies. We generally assume that anger arises when we encounter a disagreeable person, but actually it is the anger already within us that transforms the person we meet into our imagined foe. Someone controlled by their anger lives within a paranoid view of the world, surrounded by enemies of his or her own creation. This false belief feeds the anger and makes us the victim of our own delusions and fantasies.