Are You Sure?

Working with anger and other strong emotions

Earlier this year, I offered a pair of Dharma talks on working with strong emotions. You can listen to them here and here. I focused in particular on the emotion of anger. I find that it presents a special challenge for Buddhists and the Buddha-curious, though not because we tend to become angry more than non-Buddhists. Rather, there is a long-standing and widespread impression of Buddhists and Buddha-curious people that we do not get angry, that anger does not fit into our way of being within and moving through the world. We are supposed to be “all Zen about things, man.” Cue the Peace hand gesture.

I shall not say that this impression is unfortunate; I shall not say that this impression is fortunate. It does not matter what it is, only that it is—that it is here to be worked with if we so choose. And so is anger, that frequently destructive and sometimes ferocious emotion.

The first thing to say is that it is just fine to feel anger. You can practice Buddhism, you can practice Zen, you can visit Buddhist temples and Dharma centers to practice with a sangha and you can become angry from time to time. It is important to say this right at the beginning, otherwise there may be no place for anything else.

Sometimes Buddhism is characterized in a rather mystical way. Sometimes it is held up as a set of teachings, a practice, or a way of moving within and through the world, that is extra-human, more than human, beyond being human. This is not the case, however. The teachings and our practice of them allow us to be fully who we are—fully human, we might say—because we are not asked or expected to exclude anything from our lives. And anger, that psychophysiological process, is part of who we are. When causes and conditions are appropriate, the emotion arises; when causes and conditions change, the emotion fades.

When I am angry and I sit with my anger, when I set an intention to “take good care of my anger,” as Thich Nhat Hanh used to say, I often find that beneath it is fear in some form. I am afraid, I feel unsafe, I feel threatened and so, almost automatically, reflexively, I become defensive, suspicious. Then, in an attempt to feel more powerful, I become angry. When I see that really I am afraid and feel unsafe, however, then it becomes clear that defensiveness and hostility are not appropriate responses. This insight does not result in my posture changing immediately. Time needs pass—seeing a bit beyond the surface is but one change in the present conditions.

The ninth Clear Mind Precept reads:

No harboring anger or ill will / Dwelling in equanimity

Here the word “harboring” deserves our attention. Anger arises; we cannot stop that. We do not, however, need to continually “feed the flame of anger.” All too often anger lives long beyond the inciting incident because we continue to revisit that situation in our minds. We rewind the tape and press play, time and again, nursing that feeling and helping it grow stronger.

Actually, to say that we “rewind the tape” suggests that we play the exact same scenario in exactly the same way every time. Do we in fact do this, though? I doubt it. What we tend to do is adjust little details of the situation just enough so that we feel more in the (supposed) right, putting the other party more in the (supposed) wrong, with the result that we feel justified in our anger. At this point, though, we are far beyond where we started and, at best, are fighting with a mental construction that resembles the original thing about which we were angry in ... something—maybe the same colors are present. If you ever catch yourself doing this, I suggest that you stop for a moment and laugh, laugh at the whole scene. Look! A marvelous comedy, and you are the star!

Yet it is difficult to laugh at ourselves sometimes.¹ So, you might consider a more inquisitive approach. Thich Nhat Hanh would often encourage asking the simple question: Are You Sure?

Are you sure that you are right in your assessment of the situation? Are you sure that you in fact understand what happened, what the other person’s or party’s intentions or motivations were? Are you sure that when you replay the situation in your mind, you have been truthful to the situation, that you did not adjust what someone said or how they said it, their tone of voice, the speed of their delivery? Are you sure—this is especially the case for text-based communication—that you are not reading something into someone’s letter, e-mail, or text message? Are you sure that you are not in fact getting in your own way, projecting your own emotional or general psychological state onto something else because it is uncomfortable, unpleasant, or otherwise painful and you wish to be rid of it? Are you sure that you have not externalized it, and then become angry at someone who may have nothing to do with why you are angry in the first place? Are you sure?

The answer to this question should always be No. We should not be sure of any perception, judgment, or other mental formation that we have. We act on the basis of mistaken perceptions and incorrect judgments all the time. If you look back through your life, you will find (if you are honest with yourself) that you have a great track-record of doing this. And that is all right! It is not, though, because we are flawed or we are imperfect—far from it. Rather, we live in a continually and constantly changing world, an utterly empty world, where as soon as we feel that we have a handle on something—there it is, got it!—you open your hand and realize that nothing is there. How could you not sometimes act from a perception or judgment that does not in fact correspond to the way things are, when the way things are is slipping away, over and over?

Practice affords us an opportunity to stop, if only for a moment. Then we can choose to investigate the situation—What is this? What is happening right now?—to smile and laugh, or consider the grounds for that feeling of certainty. While we cannot help but be angry sometimes, we need not be carried away by our anger all of the time.

1. Image credit to Mary Harrsch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93241443