SICK IN BERLIN ~ ANGER MANAGEMENT

The photo is from former East Berlin, Karl Marx Strasse with Dunkin Donuts taken yesterday by me. Dig Dirk from Sprockets dancing on the Don't Walk sign!

I have over-extended myself and it has bit me on the ass. I am sick in Berlin. It's 2:30 and I have yet to leave the apartment of the wonderful Jan & Angela who are kindly hosting me.

One perk of traveling and staying at people's places is that I almost always end up staying somewhere much nicer than my own apartment. This one is definitely one of those. So that's nice.

But I got a fever of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm usually below 97, often 96.8 just to make things dyslexically confusing. So 98.6 is a low grade fever for me. I rose all the way up to 101.6 last night, which must be like 103.6 for a normal person. I'm sure that what did me in was just too much of everything.

When you're in a foreign nation, even normal stuff can be a bit stressful. Like buying a train ticket! Hey people who've lived in Japan! European train station ticket machines do not take paper money! They look pretty high tech, but alas they are not. I'm pretty sure even the Los Angeles subway system ticket machines accept paper money. Get it together, France and Germany!

This caused me a lot more frustration than it should have a few days ago in Paris. It was like I was thrown back into the Angry Brad I was about fifteen years ago when I'd just yell and scream about every damned thing. I took that as a signal something was askew. And now this fever has confirmed it for me.

I've noticed that lots of people who comment very eruditely upon the Zen Precepts don't really understand what anger is and why we should avoid it. Anger is not merely being unhappy with a situation and making direct efforts to change it. That's not really anger at all. Though some folks who comment on Zen seem to believe it is.

Anger is when you allow your natural dissatisfaction with a given situation to become emotional. That's where you always have trouble. If you can deal with dissatisfaction without becoming emotional, you're good to go.

You need to avoid it for various reasons, the main one being that it's not good for you. A kind of conscious selfishness can be your friend. It appears that now that I've done a lot of Zen practice the rebound from bouts of anger comes very quickly. I'm running a temperature for a lot of reasons, mostly exhaustion. But if I had been more willing to manage my anger at those French ticket machines, I'm sure I'd be feeling better today.

I say willing because it's hard to do this. I was right! Those machines were wrong! I already told you why! They should have accepted what was perfectly legal tender! I've put paper money in train ticket machines a 100,000 times in my life! I know what they're supposed to do, dammit!

You see how this works?

Then I got sick. I'm pretty sure it always worked like this. I just failed to notice. So many, many, many things I failed to notice.

The best effect of decades of zazen? I notice things a little tiny wee bit more quickly.

Oh my God it sounds like there's an oompah-oompah brass band with a tuba out on the street! I'd better go.

I will NOT cancel my appearance tonight at 8 pm (20:00) at Dharma Buchladen no matter what! Info is athttp://www.dharma-buchladen.de/?Veranstaltungsprogramm_2011:Oktober_2011. Be there!