Confronting and Ending Our Biggest Dukkha

When something big and awful happens to us, what do we do?

When we don’t get, or are about to not get, something we think is very important, what do we do?

The Buddhadharma suggests, and today’s neuroscience agrees, that if we want to end our dukkha, we must liberate ourselves from our addiction to preferences.  Currently, we look at new situations and pick and choose what to do based on the habits we inherited from our hunter-gather, agrarian, and industrial ancestors. Instead of synthesizing new information, we just confirm what we already know.

Here’s what I mean: Say you want to know the best way to live. You go to an imam, a rabbi, a pastor, and a Buddhist monk. You ask each to tell you the how to live the best life, and each does. All four tell you something quite different. You go home, think about it, and decide which to follow. Question is, which do you follow?

Our ancestral mind, our living-in-distinction mind, our picking-and-choosing mind, in other words–our karmic habit energy, leads us to pick the way that is right, the way that confirms what we already know. The bigger question is, why did we even bother to ask if all we were going to do with the information was to pick the way we already knew was right, if all we were going to do was confirm what we already knew?

Confirming what we already know rather than synthesizing new knowledge may have been a useful “habit” 25,000 years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, or even 2500 years ago in the time of the Buddha and the upheavals of the axial age, or even 250 years ago at the start of the industrial age, but in our lives today, it is binding us more tightly than ever before to lives of unending dukkha. Lives where we can’t even see how to end our suffering…even when we are told the way.

To unbind our self so that we can deal effectively with big dukkha, with the loss of something we greatly value, we must shift our paradigm. We must change our karmic heading. We must respond to the dukkha without dual-mind. We must stop defining the situation as awful or terrible or unfair. We must let go of that false and faulty evaluating, let go of our picking and choosing and labeling energy. And then we must learn to consider every situation in the same way, with an open heart and faith in mind. We must learn that no situation is more weighty than any other.

[I say this from personal experience, not abstractly and in no way meaning to be insensitive to anyone else’s suffering. The big dukkha that led me directly to the Great Way was being told by my oncologist–in 1984–that I had less than a year to live.]

To realize that no situation is weightier than any other, that there are no situations, that there are no problem, we must stop confirming what we already know and learn to synthesize new knowledge. We must learn to see that there are only conditions. Understanding these is a big step in the right direction. It is, after all, what right view is teachings us.

We learn how to do this with grace and profundity in the third patriarch’s enlightenment poem, the Xinxinming.

Cutting to the chase, the answer is: we must train our minds to look at each new situation in life as simply a new set of conditions to which we must respond with a peaceful heart. As the Buddhadharma has been telling us for 2500 years, we simply need to abide in conditions instead of labeling things based on past information. There are only conditions, after all, not problems or difficulties or terrible things. Those are labels. And in any situation, regardless of the conditions, what do we do? We look clearly at what we are facing and we do what is most beneficial to making us and our families and our friends and the universe a more peaceful place.

The Buddha tells us to do this and this alone so that our big and small dukkha will dissolve. So that we can live lives of peace and happiness. So that we can to move from moment to moment toward liberation instead of toward more suffering.

So why don’t we listen, why don’t we train ourselves to live in conditions? The most important reason is that we think we think we already know the right way. That’s why we can’t see the Great Way.

Today is a good day to stomp our feet, become a knowledge synthesizer and commit to the Great Way. And what better place to learn it than from the Xinxinming.

Here’s an online version of the Xinxinming and a commentary.

Set a Place at Your Holiday Table for Mudita

Make Mudita

The Centerpiece of Your Holiday Table

And Your Life

Even though mudita, which is generally translated as sympathetic joy, is one of the four heavenly abodes, relatively little seems to have been written about it and it is rarely the topic of talks. When it is discussed, it is usually presented as "sympathetic joy at the good fortune or success of others," the most minor of the four abodes, and not much more.

But consider it from this wider dharmic point of view. Consider mudita as a prerequisite of lovingkindness (metta) and of compassion (karuna). Meaning that appreciation of others is one of the chief aspects of mudita.

Because we cannot appreciate another person without seeing the good in them, then how can we expect ourselves to experience joy at an incident of good fortune or success in their lives when we feel nothing for the other person, or even worse, dislike them? Mudita is the answer: it is the source for finding the good in others and learning to recognize and admire the wholesomeness that is always there, even and perhaps most importantly when those others seem to be making our lives difficult.

Unless one has the faith and confidence in mankind that the Buddha had, practicing lovingkindness and compassion is, I suspect, difficult if not impossible without the appreciation that arises from mudita, and from a solid practice of mudita. What the dharma is suggesting is that an appreciation for the goodness of others should flow within each of us, all the time. That’s what underlies a solid practice of mudita.

This would lead us to faith in mankind’s potential for good and to acceptance of our inherent worthwhileness.

What better practice could there be for the holiday season?

Follow the Rules

“Just follow the rules.” It’s that simple.

So perfect freedom is in—is under some rules. If there are no rules, there is no freedom. As long as you have rules you have freedom. Without being aware of the rules to try to obtain freedom means nothing. –Suzuki Roshi


There is no freedom without the law.
–Ancient Greek teaching Cecile B. DeMille put into the mouth of Moses on Mount Sinai

The first rule of Buddhism is follow the rules. The more profoundly we understand that rule, the less of anything else there is to know. The more stringently we follow that rule, the more clearly we see. The more we realize that rule, the more liberated we become.

There are implicit and explicit rules. Following them reduces our anxiety and clears the path for us. Implicit rules arise from conditions, are specific to the moment and ideally should be followed without thinking. Explicit rules are formally or informally codified. The challenge of explicit rules is that they are speculative rather than experiential, rigid rather than arising from current conditions. Nonetheless, they are rules and our obligation is to follow them.

Implicit rules look like this: When the alarm rings, the rule is to get up. When I take off my jacket, the rule is to hang it in the closet. If I use a credit card, the rule is that I be able to pay the balance when the bill arrives. If we want to rid ourselves of the constant anxiety we feel, we get up when it is time to get up–no snooze alarm and angst over arising, we need to put things away after we have used them–the way we taught our children to do, and we need to be financially responsible–we don’t need to spend more than we have.]

Explicit rules look like this: I don’t kill, steal, lie, abuse others or do drugs. I drive within the speed limit; I don’t fudge on my taxes; and I follow the company policies at work. [I follow the precepts and the laws and the policies and procedures.]

Our obligation as practitioners, an obligation that we see arising from meditation, is to learn ways to live in peace and harmony–with ourselves, our families, our friends, with all sentient beings, the planet and universe. Rules are what allows us to meet that obligation.

Rules restrain our minds, they give us order. They reduce our suffering and allow us to walk the path more stably and effectively. When that happens, our defilements and attachments lessen and we become more content, more confident and more peaceful, especially in the face of difficulties. Following the rules restrains our desires for sense stimulation and sense objects. As that craving and clinging for the things we see, hear, taste, touch, feel and think diminishes, we become calmer and more patient. Without rules, we would live in the constant dukkha of chaos.

Meditation helps us to see the rules clearly, contemplation and study help us to clarify the rules, and observing that we are calmer and happier when we follow the rules gives us faith to continue, especially when we disagree with a rule.

There can be no freedom without rules. Question is, why don’t we just follow the rules?

Journaling

Taking A Page from Jewish Journaling

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav was a tzaddik, a Jewish saint, and thinker of profound importance to the beliefs and practices of his sect and faith. He was the great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, the early nineteenth century mystical philosopher who founded the Hasidic tradition. A group of Nachman’s followers, known as the Guardians of Justice, developed a journaling practice to keep them solidly on their spiritual path. Each night, they would write the answers to six questions.

The first question was “Did you say the shema today?” The shema is the affirmation of the Jewish faith and the assertion that there is only one God. In Buddhism it would be like reciting the Three Pure Vows. The second question was “Did you study the Torah today? In Buddhism, this is equivalent to asking if you taken some time to consider the meaning of the Buddha’s words. The third question was “Did you practice tzedakah today?” Tsedakah is dana. The fourth question was “Did you dance today?” For the Hasidim, dancing and singing with one’s fellow practitioners was a celebration of the joy of spiritual practice. In Buddhism it is equivalent to practicing sympathetic joy. The fifth question: “Did you practice sichat chaverim today? That’s right speech. The final question was “Did you practice hitbodedut today?” Hitbodedut is time in solitude: meditation.

Reading about this reminded me emphatically of how all mystical traditions are fundamentally the same. What we commonly think are differences are the result of garb, emphasis and language, not content and realization.

For those who journal or who like to journal, consider establishing a journal that follows this Hasidic model. Each day, write answers to these six key questions. Tracking these will give you a good idea of how solidly you are walking your Path.

1.     Have I recited and practiced the Three Pure Vows today?

2.     Have I taken time to consider the implications of the words of the Buddha in my life today?

3.     Have I practiced dana today?

4.     Have I practiced sympathetic joy today?

5.     Have I practiced right speech today?

6.     Have I meditated today?

 (I have added a seventh question that I think strikes at the core Buddhist practice.)

7.     What have I done today to end my greed today?

Here’s a quick review of the five doctrinal practices in the questions:

The Pure Vows

These vows list the ideal, the intention and the commitment of a bodhisattva, a person following the path. Buddhists practicing in Mahayana institutions around the world recite these vows every day. They are the guiding principles of a practitioner’s life. These short vows tell us what we need to do in any situation–not to do harm and to be of benefit in the largest way. They are the criteria we look to when we need to make any decision–big or small.

I vow to do no harm.

I vow to do only good.

I vow to save all sentient beings.

Dana

What are we supposed to do to attain freedom from suffering, to reach the emptiness of emptiness, to walk stably on the middle path? Be generous says the Diamond Sutra. Generosity (dana) involves the gift, the giver and the receiver. Ideally, the giver should give simply because there is a need, with no expectation of personal gain, reward, or benefit; and the gift should be given without consideration of the receiver, with complete disregard for the recipient’s character or qualities. Finally, the gift can be material: it can be money or things, or it can be spiritual, meaning the gift of the dharma. Spiritual giving, giving the gift of the teachings, is considered the higher form of giving. Higher even, according to the Diamond Sutra, than giving one’s life for another. The final form of giving is the gift of no-fear, meaning what we say and do and think generates only peace of mind in others and the world.

Sympathetic Joy

Sympathetic joy is unconditional joy for the welfare of others. It is a pure feeling of happiness that arises in us as we see someone else who is happy, who is successful in moving forward with their lives and their chosen path. By rejoicing in others' progress, we are supporting them and at the same time establishing a wholesome mindstate in ourselves that is of benefit to us and to others as well. Sympathetic joy is a helper for us on our Path; from sympathetic joy arises contentment and wisdom.

Right Speech

Only speak when it will improve the silence

Here are the five elements of right speech:

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 understood

4.     Only say it once

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

While wrong speech could be accurately and broadly described as anything we say that isn’t right speech, however there are four traditional elements to wrong speech we should be vigilant not to practice:

1.     Harsh, mean-spirited or angry words

2.     Falsehoods and slander

3.     Gossip and small talk,

4.     Belittling others to raise your own status

Greed

Pursuing what we define as desirable and avoiding what we define as undesirable leaves us in a perpetual state of needing more, forever unsatisfied and unhappy. With every attainment there arises a new affinity or new aversion–more we have to get or get rid of, more greed. Greed is fundamental to how our mind works; it is the model we use for evaluating ourselves and everything else. And it is very hard to see that it is a poison. Or to see that there is an alternative.

Save the Planet–I just don’t get it.

I never understood what it meant to Save the Planet. When I was in college, Save the Planet was on everyone’s lips. Save the Planet sounds good, and makes good bumper stickers and nice little buttons for backpacks and denim jackets, but fifty years after I first heard the phrase, it still doesn’t make any sense to me. I didn’t get it when I was shouting it at street rallies in the sixties. And I still don’t get it.

What exactly am I supposed to be saving? I thought the point of the dharma was that everything was impermanent. If that’s true, then Save the Planet is an oxymoron. What am I supposed to be making permanent, fixing and fixating on? The whole planet? And isn’t my wanting to fix it back to what it was, freeze it at some point in the past and make it unchanging, isn’t that just greed guised as good? And isn’t greed our nastiest and worst habit?

I live very near the lake in Chicago. It’s only a few minute walk to the edge of twenty percent of the world’s fresh water. Am I really doing anything to save the planet by not running the water when I shave, or by taking 90-second showers? I just don’t get it. I read that there’s a new ocean forming in Ethiopia. Am I supposed to do something to nurture it, or to fill in the rift and stop it?

While I don't get Save the Planet, I do get the Three Pure Vows, which I am committed to live by and which guide my life: Do no harm, Be of benefit, Save all sentient beings. That I get. That I do. And that is all I can do. That’s where my responsibility ends. For me Save the Planet doesn’t make any sense. It’s a greed-laden idea. It comes from speculative-mind. It’s wrong view. The Three Pure Vows, that’s right view.

Every time I hear myself utter the third vow, every time I set my intention to save all sentient beings, I remind myself that “all sentient beings” aren’t just living things. All sentient beings are everyone and everything–both animate and inanimate. All sentient beings are not only living beings, but also the trees and the forests, the rock and the mountains. In the wording of the Diamond Sutra, it’s everyone and everything …whether born from eggs, from the womb, from moisture, or spontaneously; whether they have form or do not have form; whether they have perceptions or do not have perceptions; or whether it cannot be said of them that they have perceptions or that they do not have perceptions.

While Save the Planet doesn’t tell me anything, the Three Pure Vows tell me everything. Those vows are telling me to do no harm to the people and things around me. Because our nature is to do, if I choose to do no harm and then do something, it will be of benefit. Where do I begin that practice? As one Zen teacher told me, “You start by taking care of the things on our doorstep.” The stuff on my doorstep, that I understand. That makes sense. That I can do.

Howso? By showing respect for everything I encounter. For living and sleeping and walking and driving and cleaning and everything else in ways that are respectful of those around me and of the environment. How do I approach that? By trying to do everything with awareness of the weight I am levying on those around me and on the things I am surrounded by; by being humble and modest in front of plants in my garden, my neighbors, friends, and family. When I conserve resources, I am doing no harm and being of benefit.

That’s what I do, that’s all I can do. That makes sense to me: Conserve Resources.

If Greed Worked, We'd All Be Happy By Now

The list of Hollywood movies in which greed is the central theme is virtually endless…from classics such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958), to the coming soon Return of Gordon Gekko.

In The Simple Men we are told that there are only two things in life “desire and trouble; whenever there’s desire there’s trouble.” The Simple Men is a movie about just how far a simple man will go for four million dollars. Would you kill your brother? Similarly, in Goodfellas, Jimmy Conway is a bank robber who methodically kills off everyone who helped him with a five million dollar heist rather than giving them their share of the stolen money.

In Brian de Palma’s epic crime film, Scarface, we see greed run rampant on the sun-washed streets of Miami. In the Coen brothers Fargo, we see that embezzlement is never enough. In Wall Street, Oliver Stone’s classic about conspicuous consumption, the ruthless Gordon Gekko assures us that "Greed…is good. Greed is right. Greed works."

Superman’s Lex Luther may rank as the greediest of all. After buying up most of the land bordering California, Luther plans to blow California off the map, making his dessert real estate into luxury coastal property. And let’s not forget Ocean’s 11, the casino heist movie which made it to the screen twice–once with the rat pack in 1960 and then again in 2001 with Clooney heading the cast. And Ocean’s 12, and 13, and perhaps even a 14, but I’m becoming greedy.*

None of these movies, much as we watch them, much as we celebrate in them, gets to the heart of the matter–that we are all greedy, that each of us is fundamentally greedy from the get-go, greedy beyond anything Hollywood could imagine. Raising moral questions about greed, which a few of the sited movies do, can make amusing conversation as we leave the cinema, but it too misses the point. Why? Because our greed is so to-the-core that we don’t even realize we are greedy, greedy, greedy.

In the dharma, greed is the first of the three poisons. It is first and foremost the reason we do anything. The way our mind works, we always want more. It is our karma as a species. And what we notice during meditation is that everything we do stems from our greed. We only do things, after all, to get more of what we want, more of what we like, think we should have or should be, or inversely, to get less of the things we don’t want, and so forth.

This is greed, the driving passion of our lives. It is fundamental to how our mind works. It is the model we use for evaluating ourselves; it is the model we use for making decisions. In the movies, it is easy to se how greed poisons everything, not so in real life. In the movies it is easy to see that there are alternatives. Not so in real life.

For me in my practice, the questions isn’t “What would I do for four million dollars?” but rather “What will I do today to end my greed?”

Here’s a simple exercise for practicing with greed: Whenever you are in conflict, whenever you need to make a choice, tell yourself emphatically: It is not about me getting what I want.

*It should be noted that I was looking at movies chiefly characterized by material greed, but in fact, all movies, like literature, are based on conflict, and all conflict arises from greed. 

Perfecting Patience is Our Path

Anger–The Problem

To end anger, one of the three poisons, and perfect patience, the third of the six paramitas, we must first recognize that anger is always destructive for us, for those around us, and for the world, and that its antidote is the diligent practice of patience.

Anger and Meditation

What we learn from meditating, from sitting still and seeing our minds, is that all anger is a defilement–an emotion that hinders us from seeing clearly and making appropriate decisions. Anger is, without a doubt to a meditator, the one of the strongest and most destructive emotions. We also learn from simple observation that defiled behavior can only lead to more defiled behavior; being angry cannot make us peaceful, acting angrily does cannot make this a better world.

For Buddhists or anyone who practices mindfulness meditation, anger is anger, anger is always a defilement, an afflicted emotion, and there is no such thing as righteous anger. And, “anger management” is an oxymoron. It is not about “managing” our anger, meaning making better use of our anger, it is about eliminating anger.

Anger is one of the most common and destructive defilements, it afflicts our minds almost all the time, whether it is in its least weighty forms, as uneasiness or irritability, or in its full-blown forms, as rage/fury and combat.

Ending Anger

To reduce and ultimately eliminate anger, we need to understand it and to develop wisdom, patience, and discipline

·       We need to recognize anger and how and when it arises in our mind.

·       We need to understand that for anger to arise, we must concoct a story about some perceived injustice;

·       We must acknowledge how anger is always harmful, never beneficial, to both us and others and the world.

·       We need to see that patience is the antidote for anger, and

·       We need to understand the benefits of being patient in the face of difficulties.

·       We then need to apply practical methods in our daily life to reduce our anger and even to prevent it from arising at all.

This is called leading a disciplined life.

Patience–The Alternative

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 when screaming fails to accomplish our goal.

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 meditation, then we take it off the cushion and practice patience by learning to accept the small everyday difficulties and hardships that arise without complaint. Gradually our patient mindstate increases and we remain peaceful in the face of our imagined adversities.

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

·       If we maintain this peaceful and positive state of mind through 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 just becoming angry and thereby move to patience.

Being patient doesn’t 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 alive, 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 in our quest for peace and happiness.

In reality all 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.

Pluralism Misses The Point

Ideally speaking, religious pluralism would be a sense of intereligious harmony based on mutual understanding of other faiths. The problem with pluralism, however, is that it assumes we’re all on different spiritual paths. As long that is the basic assumption, there can never be harmony. As long as we see our path as different from theirs, we are saying that our path is right. And saying that our path is right makes theirs wrong. Because we process information dualistically, for ours to be right, theirs must be wrong.

If we can’t be right without them being wrong, religions pluralism is an oxymoron, like tolerance (which is really intolerance its nice-guy cloths).

I’m not suggesting that we hire Richard the Lion-Hearted to capture Jerusalem, again, or that we invade Constantinople. But it does seem to me that pluralism is the mildest form of distaste we can have for other religions–in order of intensity next would be tolerance; then intolerance; then amping up to the next level: hostility, and demonizing, and finally, yes, time to get King Richard back. Damn the infidels.

Pluralism is such a pc term right now that we miss the point when we use it. We miss the point because pluralism misses the point. We are already in harmony, because we are really the same.

The point, then, is not to see other religions as separate and different from ours, but rather to notice and understand that there is only one path and we are all on it together. When we realize this, the aversion is gone. And that’s the point. Not to have an aversion for beliefs that appear different from ours.

Here’s how I understand that there is only one path and that we are all walking it together.

My practice, both on and off the cushion, tells me that everything I do, and in fact everything that everyone does, is simply an attempt to end or prevent my suffering. Why do I scratch an itch? To end my suffering. Why do I always look down when I am walking on stairs? To prevent my suffering (I fear if I don’t look down that I will fall.). Why do I always clasp by hands together with the left fingers over the right. To prevent my suffering (reversing my clasp would make me uncomfortable). Taking this to its extreme: Why do people abuse children? To end their suffering. Perverse as it is, child abuse is an attempt to relieve the abuser’s suffering. And genocides, as horrific as they are, are an attempt to end the perpetrator’s suffering. Our choices aren’t always wise, but they are always for the same reason.

Since everything I do is to prevent or end my suffering, and everything everyone else does is to prevent or end their suffering as well, then compassion is my factory setting, my default position. Which explains that fundamentally, at our core, we are all compassionate beings.

I believe all religions answer four questions in an attempt to end our suffering: Where did I come from? How did I get here? What should I do while I am here? And, where am I going next? What differentiates one religion from another is simply which of these questions it emphasizes? Christianity, for example, arising from a Messianic tradition, largely addresses the Where-am-I-going-next question. Buddhism, on the other had, is almost exclusively concerned with the What-should-I-do-while-I’m-here question.

So what separates one religion from another is not differences, but simply emphasis. What differences do appear are in the languages and cultures and customs and costumes, which are purely cosmetic.

Why any one person is attracted to one religion and not another is simply the result of their karma. Our individual histories lead us to seek the benefit of one practice now, perhaps another later. So in fact, having a variety of different practices available to choose from makes it easier for us to walk the path together.

So we are all on the same path, the path to end our suffering. And we all share the same original nature, compassion. When I teach in a church or a mosque, I don't’ see it as different and needing to be reconciled, I see it as just another expression of our path.

I watched my Teacher, Master Ji Ru, enter the sanctuary in a Protestant church. He stopped at the doorway, gently stepped in and bowed to the altar. Just as he does every time he enters the meditation hall in our Monastery. And that’s the point. Not pluralism.

Shifting to Right Paradigms

It’s Time for a Paradigm Shift

We make decisions based on certain underlying assumptions we have about ourselves and our world. These notions, which are called paradigms, guide and in fact determine our every action. These are our paradigms, our habitual responses to the world. They are “the box” in the phrase “thinking outside of the box.”

We don’t start thinking outside of the box until we realize that the box isn’t working. When things don’t feel right, when they just don’t seem to make sense, when we can’t find the answer we’re looking for, we might search outside another box, search for another paradigm that works better. When we make a change in our modus operandi, it’s called a paradigm shift.

It is important to realize that we don’t make changes until something significantly wrong seems to demand it, and even then, we are often slow to make paradigm shifts, even when our paradigm is debilitating. We tend to keep fighting to make the current paradigm work. Perhaps in the case of minor paradigms because we are stubborn or strong-willed.

In the case of major paradigms, like the five listed below, our attachment to the paradigm is often so deeply rooted that it is built into our biology, our genes. Our instinct for survival, for example, is such a strong attachment that we don’t even sense that it can be changed, even though it obviously hinders us when we are attempting to save our lives. When our fight-flight paradigm is activated, we become tense and anxious. An anxious and stressed mind hinders us from seeing clearly and making the best choice under prevailing conditions.

Regardless of their magnitude, paradigms are all habits, and what we learn in meditation is that all habits can be changed.

Here are five of our major paradigms, all of which meditation suggests need to be shifted:

If I get more of what I want and what I think I need or ought to have, then everything will be alright.

This is the biggest and baddest of all the paradigms, for it leaves us always wanting and never satisfied. It says that we should base our lives on greed. It tells us to always be striving, never to be content.

I am not responsible for my state of mind.

This paradigm blames others for how we feel. This allows us to blame the people and stuff around us for our states of mind, absolving us of responsibility for our anger and other unwholesome responses. It is, after all, the neighbor that makes us angry; the “lousy” weather that ruined our vacation.

I am always right.

Regardless of what we do or think, we know that we are always right. Which makes anyone who disagrees wrong. Consider that even when you did something you thought was wrong, you believe that “under the circumstances” it was the right thing to do.

The best way to live is to find fault in everything.

This is hard for us to recognize, but we are always looking to make things better, to find the fault in what is happening and correct it. Tis paradigm makes us perpetual fault-finders, never able to comfortable in our own skin.

I can multitask.

One of the early observations from meditation is that we can only have a single thought at a time. We can’t think two things simultaneously. Which means that when we are multitasking, we are actually jumping back and forth between tasks. That raises our anxiety level and prevents us from performing any of the tasks optimally. This paradigm tells us it’s ok to listen to music and drink coffee and drive at the same time. And that’s not a good thing.

Until we understand our false and faulty paradigms, and that they are a source of stress and anxiety rather than of peace, we won’t search for new paradigms. And until we not only search for new paradigms but actually make a paradigm shift, we will remain unable to address our most serious suffering, our Big Dukkha.

Right Paradigms

Here are two right paradigm shifts suggested by meditation:

Our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our friends, and the world, is to use each moment to be of benefit to ourselves, our families, our friends, and our world.

Whether we are having lunch or deciding on a chemo-therapy treatment for cancer, the paradigm is the same: do what is least harmful and most benefit to oneself, others and the world. This is a giant paradigm shift. And perhaps the most important realization that comes from meditation. Because when we do what is most beneficial, we become peaceful and confident.

Our responsibility to ourselves, our families, our friends, and the world, is to use each moment to lessen our dependence on paradigms that create suffering and to act in ways that lead to longterm peace, happiness and well-being.

This means to walk the path. Regardless of your spiritual tradition, walking the path is being morally disciplined and doing what is needed to develop and act from wisdom.

For Buddhists, this means taking the road not taken, which is the Middle Path.

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.