Working with Anger (and other Strong Emotions)

On the American Buddhists group on the Insight Timer app, a question came up about dealing with strong emotions.  In particular, this colleague asked,  "How do I apply the peace of mind I feel while meditating when I finish my session?  I have anger issues."

There's obviously not one single answer nor is there a simple answer (well, there is - it's practice and time, but that's not a very satisfactory answer at the moment you're feeling the anger). 

In the Buddhist view, emotions have two properties that are co-emergent - wisdom and confusion. That is, when you are feeling an emotion, there is an aspect of wisdom behind it. With anger, it's usually the recognition that something isn't right. The problem is that co-emerging with the wisdom is also ignorance/confusion/clinging - we feel the anger and then (1) believe we have to DO something because of it, (2) believe that our story about it is somehow "real," and (3) our clarity of thinking often gets impaired, so we act unskillfully. So when you are seized by anger, can you separate the wisdom part out from the ignorance part? Can you allow yourself to feel it but not feel the need to act, at least until you've considered what would be a skillful action?

Another way of thinking about using what you find in meditation in the moment may be to focus on the gaps. This is kind of hard to explain in words, especially if you haven't really noticed it in your practice yet, but one thing many people notice in their mindfulness meditation is that there are actually spaces between thoughts, feelings, and impulses to act. In our normal lives we usually just let them run together so that they not only feel continuous, but they feel causal - you said that which caused me to feel this which caused me to say that. But in truth, there can be a gap between all of these parts. Can you find it in the moment? Focusing on that gap can greatly lessen the intensity with which you feel the anger, or can lessen the intensity with which you feel you must react to the feeling or the other person.

These are not the only approaches one could take (e.g., you could try to find compassion for the person annoying you, but I think that's really not realistic for someone struggling with anger issues). You also might want to stop trying to achieve peacefulness in your meditations, and instead begin to do mindfulness of feelings, seeing where anger comes from and where it goes. If you're only using meditation to try to achieve a special state (i.e., peace of mind), then you're not getting everything out of it that you could.  In a sense, meditation doesn't really get "rid" of anything we feel, but it can help us to not be so caught by the feelings that we feel trapped into a habitual pattern.

There's a Lojong slogan that is sometimes translated as "Don't be so trustworthy."  I like this because it encapsulates very simply how we are such creatures of habit.  Something triggers our anger, and we already know how we're going to feel, how we're going to react, and what will come of that - it has a feeling of destiny like a rushing freight train.  This is especially true in our relationships, where we've often spent many years practicing the patterns.  That may be where the real fight is with your anger issues -- there is a habitual trigger and a habitual response.  These conditioned states are the hardest to break, and yet they're so central to our peace (or lack of it).  So the slogan is meant to help us realize that there is a gap between trigger and response, and we don't have to be so trustworthy - don't do what you and everyone else expects you to do.  Do something different.  Maybe it will turn out badly, but maybe it will just be surprising enough to derail the rushing train of habitual events, or at least push it onto a new track to see where that goes.

Ultimately, this isn't the path just for anger issues, but for all of our habitual emotional reactions that keep us stuck in bad patterns (the kleshas).