How To Handle Anger

When others are mean and nasty to you, it is difficult to stay compassionate. Anger needs to be controlled, but not hidden from yourself. Recognize your reactions; do not deny them. If you do, your compassion will be superficial.

There are two classes of emotions. One class needs to be expressed, talked about. Take depression, for example. Perhaps someone close to you has died, and you are grieving privately. If instead of hiding your feelings, you express them openly, the overwhelming power of that sadness will be weakened. The other class of emotions includes anger, strong attachment, and strong desire; there is no natural end to these.

For instance, if anger is expressed, tomorrow there may be more; whereas if you try to minimize your anger, it will weaken. We can see this in our own experience. Giving your anger the instrument of words and actions is like giving a child a pile of straw and a box of matches. Once lit, anger feeds off the air of exposure and can rage out of control. The only alternative is to control anger, and the way to do this is to think, What is the value of anger? What is the value of tolerance and compassion?

When those who do not consider afflictive emotions such as anger to be disadvantageous are distressed over an incident and get riled up, they feel they are perfectly right, even if they have a tiny bit of concern about how people might view them. Since they consider getting riled up to be normal, they make no effort to reduce anger. On the other hand, those who consider afflictive emotions to be negative and harmful do not voluntarily accept anger.

Sometimes anger might win out and control them, but deep inside they do not happily receive it - there is some reluctance. Even if they do not take sufficient countermeasures, their inner reluctance about getting angry makes a great difference in the long run. Thus, it is important to reflect on the drawbacks of anger.

Use your good common sense. Is anger useful? If you get angry at someone, the result is good neither for you nor for the other person. Nothing helpful comes of it. In the end, anger does not harm others; it hurts yourself. When you are angry, good food is not tasty.

When you are angry, even the faces of your spouse, children, or friends are irritating, not because their faces have changed but because something is wrong with your own attitude. When an unfortunate event happens, you can face and handle it more effectively without anger. Anger is almost useless. Perhaps a harsh word is needed sometimes to keep someone from a stupid deed, in the course of which anger may arise, but such anger should not be the primary motive; love and compassion should be. Actions stemming solely from anger are of no use at all; realizing this can serve to strengthen your determination to resist them.

It is not easy to have an intense bond of commiseration with each and every being, so do not be discouraged if a biased attitude interrupts your meditation. You will need the courage of unwavering effort throughout your life and for many lifetimes to come.

Such a profound transformation cannot take place overnight, or in a week, or a month, or even a year. However, you will gradually notice changes in your reactions to individuals and the world. When old reactions creep back in, do not think this indicates the failure of meditation; rather, take such incidents as prods to meditate more.

- How to Expand Love by His Holiness the Dalai Lama



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Valuing The Present Situation

By being born a human, you have taken on a physical support system through which you can easily achieve both your temporary and your larger aims.

Now that you have attained this auspicious life form so unique among the myriad forms born into this world, it is important that you do not waste it.

If in this situation you practice merely to attain a good life in future rebirths for yourself, you would not be using your potential fully. Or, if you merely aim to liberate yourself from the tangles or suffering, this would also fall short of your inherent potential. With your humanity you should do whatever you can to attain perfect, complete spiritual development.

Meditation

1. Reflect on the potential of your current situation for spiritual growth: you have a human body; spiritual teachings are available in your environment; you have the mental capacity to internalize spiritual teachings - you have pure diamond mind.

2. Value the current opportunity for spiritual practice.

3. Set as your motivation a wish to help not only yourself but all beings.

4. Aim to help others.

- How to Expand Love by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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Types Of Giving

In these ways "giving" refers to an attitude of generosity as well as those physical and verbal acts motivated by generosity. Altruistic giving requires forsaking all miserliness, being solely concerned with relieving another's poverty, and not being concerned about getting anything out of it for yourself.

If you sought profit for yourself from an act of charity in the future, it would be like giving a loan with interest. Rather, dedicate it only to others, instead of looking forward to the favorable karmic results that will indeed accrue to you. Practicing generosity calls for developing a willingness to give away all possessions.

Giving is of three types:

1. Donating material things such as money, clothing and food; making gifts to the poor and the sick, and donations for education and the provision of medical care;

2. Providing clear teachings about spiritual practices as well as about proper types of worldly livelihood, such as in becoming a medical practitioner, and giving encouragement to undertake moral behavior;

3. Giving relief from fearful situations by protecting beings from robbers, unjust governments, ferocious animals, flood, fire, and so forth. This includes protecting animals; even help a bug out of a puddle.

Though difficult, it is important to imagine giving away your own good karmas, which are like roots giving rise to favorable circumstances in the future. By having a strong sense of dedicating your roots of virtue to others, you will no longer seek for any reward for yourself. The reward, thereby, will be greater than you could imagine.

- How to Expand Love by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

How Troublesome Emotions Arise

Lust and hatred are generated within a conception of ourselves as being very solid. Once there is a solidly existent, palpable, overly concrete "I," there is discrimination from the other - once there is "I," there also is "you."

Discrimination is followed by attachment to your solid self and anger toward the other side. As the seventh-century Indian scholar - yogi Chandrakirti says,

Beings are powerless like a bucket traveling up and down a well. Through initially exaggerating oneself, "I," And then generating attachment for things, "This is mine."

Beings who first conceive of a solidly existent "I" also conceive of solidly existent things that can be owned. Through the force of this process - discrimination of self and other and attachment to objects - we wander through better and worse states of cyclic existence, like a bucket traveling powerlessly up and down a well.

It is crucial to identify in your own experience that persons and things appears as if they exist in and of themselves, but they do not. If the person or object appears pleasant, two powerful streams of attraction are produced - attachment to yourself and attachment to the pleasurable person or object.

Your attachment to the feeling of pleasure itself draws you into distressing actions and thereby into cyclic problems. As long as you deny the true nature of people and things, you will believe that both inherently exist. It will not be long before desire and hatred enter the picture.

- How To Expand Love by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Transform Into Happiness

We all seek happiness and shun suffering, but as human beings we are distinguished from others by our intelligence. If we allow it to be controlled by negative emotions like hatred, the consequences are disastrous, but if we use it positively, we can not only recognize our predicament but also train our minds and ways of thinking, which enables us to transform ourselves into better, happier people.

- Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama on Compassion

"I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed."

- Dalai Lama