The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 - Melvin McLeod [26]
How can we deal with anger?
Sometimes we’re angry, but we don’t accept that we’re angry. In that case we need a friend who’s honest enough to say, “Dear friend, you’re angry.” But if you’re a good practitioner you don’t need a friend to tell you, because you practice mindfulness and you’re aware of what’s happening inside you. When anger comes up, you know it’s there. So you practice mindful breathing and say,
Breathing in, I know anger is in me.
Breathing out, I take good care of my anger.
Don’t say or do anything else, because saying or doing something in anger can be very destructive. Just go home to yourself and continue to practice mindful breathing and mindful walking to embrace, recognize, and bring relief to your anger. After that, look deeply into your anger and ask yourself what has caused it.
We may be the main cause of our own suffering and anger because often the seed of anger in us is already too big. As soon as we hear or see something unpleasant, that seed in us is watered and we become angry. So, our suffering comes mostly from us, and not from another person. The other person is just a secondary cause. Look deeply into your anger, and you might see that your anger has been created by your wrong perceptions, wrong views, and misunderstanding; and when you realize that, your anger is transformed.
I worry so much that it’s hard for me to do whatever I need to do. How can I stop worrying?
The practice is to learn to take care of the present moment. Don’t allow yourself to be lost in the past or the future. Taking good care of the present moment, we may be able to change the negative things in the past and prepare for a good future. We tend to worry about what will happen in the future. The practice helps us to come home to the present moment, to our body, our feelings, to the environment around us. When we breathe in and breathe out mindfully, our mind is brought back to our body and we are truly there in order to take care of the present moment. If there’s some stress, some tension in our body, we practice mindful breathing in order to release the tension, and that brings us relief. If there’s a painful feeling in us, we use mindfulness to embrace our feeling so that we can get relief.
The key point is that you are fully there in the present moment, in the here and the now, to take care of yourself and what’s happening around you. You don’t think too much about the future or project too much about how it might be; and you’re not trapped too much in the past. You have to train yourself, to learn how to go home to the present moment, to the here and the now, and to take care of that moment, to take care of your body and your feelings in this moment. That is the most effective way to deal with anxiety or worries.
As you learn how to handle the present moment, you’ll gain faith and trust in your ability to handle the situation. You learn how to take care of your feelings and what’s happening around you. That makes you confident, and as your confidence grows, you’re no longer the victim of your worries.
Seth and Willie
Daniel Asa Rose
The first truth of Buddhism is impermanence, which is really just another word for death. Buddhism doesn’t focus on the reality of death to make us morbid or depressed. As this story by Daniel Asa Rose so poignantly illustrates, when we contemplate the reality of death it opens our hearts and connects us to all sentient beings, past, present, and future, who must share this universal experience.
Why are you in such a sucky mood?” I asked.
My fourteen-year-old came up to my face, the machinery of