Anger

by Thich Nhat Hanh

To be happy, to me, is to suffer less.

the most basic condition for happiness is freedom.

freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and

delusion. These mental formations are described by the Buddha as poisons. As long as these poisons are still in our he...

Together you can make decisions about what to eat, what to drink, what television programs to watch, what to read, and what kind of conversations to have. This strategy is for your own protection.

We cannot speak about anger, and how to handle our anger, without paying attention to all the things that we consume, because anger is not separate from these things.

When someone says or does something that makes us angry, we suffer. We tend to say or do something back to make the other suffer, with the hope that we will suffer less.

The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides. Both of you need compassion and help. Neither of you needs punishment.

Do not say or do anything. Whatever you say or do in a state of anger may cause more damage in your relationship.

Embrace your anger with a lot of tenderness. Your anger is not your enemy, your anger is your baby. It’s like your stomach or your lungs. Every time you have some trouble in your lungs or your stomach, you don’t think of throwing them away. The same is true with your anger.

So the practice has two phases. The first phase is embracing and recognizing: “My dear anger, I know you are there, I am taking good care of you.” The second phase is to look deeply into the nature of your anger to see how it has come about.

tend to believe that your misery has been created by another person. You blame him or her for all your suffering. But by looking deeply, you may realize that the seed of anger in you is the main cause of your suffering.

Many other people, confronted with the same situation, would not get angry like you. They hear the same words, they see the same situation, and yet they are able to stay calm and not be carried away. Why do you get angry so easily? You may get angry very easily because your seed of anger is too strong.

All of us have a seed of anger in the depth of our consciousness. But in some of us, that seed of anger is bigger than our other seeds—like love or compassion.

Self-love is the foundation for your capacity to love the other person. If you don’t take good care of yourself, if you are not happy, if you are not peaceful, you cannot make the other person happy. You cannot help the other person; you cannot love. Your capacity for loving another person depends entirely on your capacity for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself.

If you are still bound and haunted by the past, if you are still afraid of the future, if you are carried away by your projects, your fear, your anxiety, and your anger, you are not a free person. You are not fully present in the here and the now, so life is not really available to you.

What is happening in the present moment is life. You are still alive and the person you love is still there, alive, in front of you.

You look at her or him lovingly and you say, “Darling, it is wonderful that you are here, alive. It makes me very happy.”

“Darling, in the past we have made each other suffer so much. Both of us were victims of our anger. We made a hell for each other. Now, I want to change. I want us to become allies, so that we can protect each other, practice together, and transform our anger together. Let us build a better life from now on, based on the practice of mindfulness. Darling, I need your help.

No matter how much the other person can do, you have to do all that you are capable of doing yourself. You must give one hundred percent of yourself. Whatever you can do for yourself, you do for him, or for her. Don’t wait. Don’t put forth conditions, saying, “If you don’t make an effort to reconcile, then I won’t either.” This will not work. Peace, reconciliation, and happiness begin with you.

It is wrong to think that if the other person does not change or improve, then nothing can be improved. There are always ways to create more joy, peace, and harmony, and you have access to them. The way you walk, the way you breathe, the way you smile, the way you react, all of this is very important. You must begin with this.

When you begin with yourself, you will be able to restore communication, and the other person will change naturally.

Whenever the energy of anger comes up, we often want to express it to punish the person whom we believe to be the source of our suffering. This is the habit energy in us. When we suffer, we always blame the other person for having made us suffer. We do not realize that anger is, first of all, our business. We are primarily responsible for our anger, but we believe very naively that if we can say something or do something to punish the other person, we will suffer less.

whatever you do or say in a state of anger will only cause more damage in the relationship. Instead, we should try not to do anything or say anything when we are angry.

When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation, your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or do something back to get relief from his suffering.

Punishing the other person is self-punishment. That is true in every circumstance.

So promise each other that every time you get angry, you will not say or do anything out of anger. Instead, you will take care of your anger by going back to yourselves—practicing mindful breathing and mindful walking.

This does not mean that you have to hide your anger. You have to let the other person know that you are angry and that you suffer. This is very important. When you get angry with someone, please don’t pretend that you are not angry. Don’t pretend that you don’t suffer. If the other person is dear to you, then you have to confess that you are angry, and that you suffer. Tell him or her in a calm way.

In true love, there is no pride. You cannot pretend that you don’t suffer. You cannot pretend that you are not angry. This kind of denial is based on pride.

Happiness is not an individual matter. If one of you is not happy, it will be impossible for the other person to be happy.

You have to express what you feel. You have the right. This is true love. “Darling, I am angry at you. I suffer.” Try your best to say it peacefully. There may be some sadness in your voice, that’s fine.

You should not keep your anger, your suffering to yourself for more than twenty-four hours. Otherwise, it becomes too much. It can poison you. This would prove that your love, your trust for him or her is very weak. So you have to tell him or her about your suffering, your anger as soon as you can. Twenty-four hours is the deadline.

But if the deadline comes close, and you are not yet calm, then you have to write it down. Write a Peace Note, a peace message. Deliver the letter to her and make sure she gets it before twenty-four hours have passed.

You remember that you should not be so sure that you are the victim of the other person’s wrongdoing, the victim of the other person’s words. You yourself may have created the hell inside you.

Not only when you’re happy do you share your happiness, but when you suffer, you also share your suffering.

I did not mean to make you suffer. So I apologize and I promise that next time, I’ll be more skillful, more mindful.”

respect is the foundation of true love.

If respect for the other person is no longer there, true love cannot continue for long.

Love can handle anything.

To say something, to do something while you are angry is not wise.

Mindfulness means to be present, to be aware of what is going on.

This is not an act of suppressing our anger. Mindfulness is you and anger is also you, so you shouldn’t transform yourself into a battlefield, one side fighting the other. You should not believe that mindfulness is good and correct, while anger is evil and wrong.

You may think that you have to combat evil and chase it out of your heart and mind. But this is wrong. The practice is to transform yourself.

Doing violence to others is doing violence to yourself. If you do not have the insight of non-duality, you will still be violent. You will still want to punish, to suppress, and to destroy.

treat our body with tenderness.

We must treat our anger and our despair with tenderness.

We reduce the strength of our negative seeds so that they won’t overwhelm us.

When anger manifests in us, we must recognize and accept that anger is there and that it needs to be tended to. At this moment we are advised not to say anything, not to do anything out of anger.

But we are advised to tell the other person that we are angry, that we suffer. “Darling, I suffer, I’m angry, and I want you to know it.”

Expressing your anger in this way is extremely wise. It is very truthful, very faithful because in the beginning of your relationship, you made a vow with your partner that you would share everything, positive or negative.