How To Fight

by Thich Nhat Hanh

When we feel anger, irritation, or indignation arising in us, we pause. We stop and come back to our breathing straight away. We do not say or do anything when we are inhabited by this kind of energy, so we don’t escalate the conflict. We wait until we’re calm again. Being able to pause is the greatest gift.

If we can take care of our own anger instead of focusing on the other person, we will get immediate relief.

Mindfulness is the capacity to be aware of what is going on in the present moment. It is like warm air coming into a cold room. Mindfulness does not fight anger; it recognizes it and says hello. “Breathing in, I know that anger has manifested in me; breathing out, I smile to my anger.” This is not an act of suppression or of fighting. It is an act of awareness. Once we recognize our anger, we can embrace it with tenderness.

We “kill” our anger by smiling to it, holding it gently, looking deeply to understand its roots and transforming it with understanding and compassion. The Buddha’s response so impressed the man, he became a monk. When his cousin learned of this, he cursed the Buddha to his face. The Buddha only smiled. The cousin became even more incensed and asked, “Why don’t you respond?” The Buddha replied, “If someone refuses a gift, it must be taken back by the one who offered it.” Angry words and actions hurt oneself first and hurt oneself most of all.

When you practice compassionate listening, it’s important to remember that you listen with only one aim, and that is to help the other person to suffer less. You give the other person a chance to say what is in their heart.

To use loving speech means to speak in such a way that inspires joy, hope, and confidence in the other person.

Loving speech is an act of generosity. When we are motivated by loving kindness, we can bring happiness to many others through our kind words and actions. When we have a lot of pain, it is difficult to speak lovingly, so it is important to look deeply to see the roots of our anger, despair, and suffering, so we can understand and free ourselves from them. If we use words that inspire self-confidence, hope, and trust, especially with our children, they will flower.

If you get angry every day, your seed of anger will grow bigger and bigger, and it will be much more difficult for compassion to grow. Without compassion, it will be difficult to use loving speech.

When we find ourselves thinking negatively about another person, rather than focusing on our negative thoughts and judgments, we can become interested in why they are the way they are. We can give our attention to the difficulties and hardships that person has had to face. We can bring to mind their positive qualities, good intentions, and kindness toward others, in order to give rise to our compassion and let go of our anger.

The real enemy is our ignorance, our attachment to views, and our wrong perceptions.

Loving speech requires telling the truth in such a way that it benefits others, the world, and ourselves. When we tell the truth, we do so with compassion; we speak in such a way that the hearer can accept what we’re saying.

We don’t need to justify or explain what we said or did, we just apologize.

Stillness is the foundation of understanding and insight. Stillness is strength.

When you feel upset or angry, it’s important not to do or say anything. We need to calm down first. Don’t speak or act with the energy of anger in you. Just come back to your body and your breathing. Breathe in and out mindfully, releasing the tension in your body and mind, or go for a walk until you are calm enough.

So it is important to get in touch with the five-year-old child within, and begin to heal the wounds still inside. We can learn to listen to the suffering of our five-year-old, to embrace it tenderly. Holding our pain and suffering with the energy of mindfulness and compassion, it begins to transform.

The process of going home and making peace inside is critical to being able to offer love to another person.

Everyone knows that peace must begin with oneself, but not everyone knows how to do it. With the practice of mindful breathing, calming the mind and relaxing the body, you can start making peace inside you, and you’ll feel much better right away. Before you do the work of reconciliation with another, you need to restore communication with yourself.

We need to reconcile within ourselves before we can reconcile with someone else. We recognize and embrace all our feelings and emotions. We see that the cause of our suffering lies within us and not in the other person—they have only touched the seed of suffering already inside us. Understanding this, we can see our own part in the difficulty that has arisen, and compassion can be born.

How can we enlarge our heart? Increasing our understanding and compassion makes our heart grow greater. Each of us has to ask the question: is there anything that we can do to help us open the door of our heart and accept the other person? How large is our heart?

When we’re angry with someone, and we’ve tried many ways but have still not been able to resolve the difficulty, we can try offering the other person a gift. We prepare the gift in advance, when we’re happy, calm, and solid, and we hide it, ready for the time when we may need it. We don’t wait until we’re already angry because then we won’t feel like doing it. Then, when we’re angry, we can get it out of hiding and give it to the other person. This brings immediate relief. Usually, when we fight, we just want to punish the other person. But by doing the opposite, by giving them something they like, our anger dies down, and very quickly we arrive at the shore of love and understanding.

When we suffer, we have the tendency to blame other people and to see them as the source of our suffering.

A person needs to act compassionately within her own frontiers first, before one can think of helping others. Acting with compassion and wisdom within our own frontiers is the first step to helping the world.

UNILATERAL DISARMAMENT When you have reconciled internally, peace and love become possible. When you embody peace and love, you can change a difficult situation more easily. Disarmament can be done unilaterally. If you disarm yourself, it means you’ve decided not to attack or inflict injury; you have become peaceful. Even if the other person is not aware of it yet, the moment you disarm yourself, give up the fight, and practice beginning anew in yourself, healing begins and you undergo a transformation that very soon will have an effect on the other person. They may then also decide to disarm and succeed in transforming their wrong perceptions, anger, and violence, too. We can do this as individuals and also as a nation.

When you take good care of yourself, you are taking care of the other person. Looking after ourselves means looking after others.

How do we look after ourselves? By practicing mindfulness. By knowing what is going on in our body and mind. We bring our mind home to our body and establish ourselves firmly in the present moment. We bring our awareness to our breathing and relax our body. Taking care of our strong emotions and learning to recognize our wrong perceptions, we discover the roots of our suffering.

You will find that by taking care of yourself, by healing the wounds in yourself, you begin to heal the wounds in the other person. The other person will be able to see your transformation.