My friend asked me why I haven’t written something about mastering our anger. Last week my son made me a ring for Valentine’s Day. It has a Chinese word - 忍 (endurance/toleration). In 2004 he also gave me a Happy Buddha statue for Christmas. Happy Buddha’s big fat tummy represents equanimity (大肚能容 容天下难容之事 慈颜常笑 笑世间可笑之人).
What are these two words (toleration and equanimity) mean to me? As a person who has a hot temper, it isn’t easy to practice on these two words. When something or someone that make us upset or angry; when the condition does not fall into our will; when someone says something hurtful to us, we become aggravated. There are few things we will do:
- We will say something bad to the person who upsets us
- We hold onto the grunge and will take revenge in the near future. There is a phrase in Chinese – It’s not too late for a gentleman to take revenge in 10 years’ time.
- We torture ourselves because we will repeat the event again and again in our mind
I told my son these are the habits that we like to hold onto and react to things. To break this habit we need to understand why we become angry. Who aggregates us? Why we are angry? We need to analyse our emotion. To be angry or not to be angry, it’s all up to us. Most of the time, we choose to be angry. In most cases we become angry because someone has shattered our ego. If we see things in a different angle then we might not be upset nor feel angry. Here are some ways to cool down our anger:
- Take some deep breathes
- Don’t say anything because words from an angry person are hurtful and that will make you regret later on
- Ask yourself why you are angry? Try to analyse it.
- Have something to remind us to calm down. In Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘Pebble in a pocket’, he used pebbles as an object to remind him not to become angry.
- Feel sympathy for the person who has made you angry. Anger takes up lot of energy and creates harmful toxin in our human body.
- Keep oneself in equanimity like the Happy Buddha
- See thing as it is, not as what you want it to be - Yathabhuata
A way to prevent one from getting angry before we explode is by observing ourselves closely. We can practise this daily. We just need to spend 15 to 30 minutes to listen to our mind daily. During this time, we can observe our emotions and feelings, and not react to them. We can acknowledge them but not react to them. The more we practise there will be more chances that we can catch our anger before we let it out. My son and I have a lot to learn on these two very important words – equanimity and toleration.
Note: Anger/upset from defame/bad repute, loss/devastation, blame/ridicule and pain/suffering is the negative emotions and feelings; gain/benefit, fame/acclaim, praise/approval and pleasure/happiness are the rest worldly conditions. A true equanimity is we can deal with all these worldly conditions with ease.
