Anger

by Thich Nhat Hanh

To understand and transform anger, we must learn the practice of compassionate listening and using loving speech.

When a farmer uses a kind of fertilizer that does not have any effect, he has to change the fertilizer. The same is true for us. If, after several months, the practice we are doing has not brought about any transformation and healing, we have to reconsider the situation.

When you get angry, go back to yourself, and take very good care of your anger. And when someone makes you suffer, go back and take care of your suffering, your anger. Do not say or do anything. Whatever you say or do in a state of anger may cause more damage in your relationship.

If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has burned your house, your house will burn down while you are chasing him or her. That is not wise. You must go back and put out the fire. So when you are angry, if you continue to interact with or argue with the other person, if you try to punish her, you are acting exactly like someone who runs after the arsonist while everything goes up in flames.

Anger is a mental, psychological phenomenon, yet it is closely linked to biological and biochemical elements. Anger makes you tense your muscles, but when you know how to smile, you begin to relax and your anger will decrease. Smiling allows the energy of mindfulness to be born in you, helping you to embrace your anger.

The secret is to continue the practice of mindful breathing, the practice of mindful walking, generating the energy of mindfulness in order to embrace your anger.

At the moment you become angry, you 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.

He saw that his reaction, his anger, was a kind of habit energy that had been transmitted to him by his father. He had become exactly like his father, the continuation of his father. He did not want to treat his sister like that, but the energy transmitted to him by his father was so strong that he almost did exactly what his father had done to him.

And lastly, “Darling, I need your help.” This is a very strong statement, because usually when you’re angry, you have the tendency to say, “I don’t need you.”

Many of us still have a wounded child alive within us.

If we do not know how to transform and heal the wounds in ourselves, we are going to transmit them to our children and grandchildren. This is why we have to go back to the wounded child in us, to help him or her heal.

“Breathing in, I go back to my wounded child; breathing out, I will take good care of my wounded child.”

You have to practice going back to your wounded child every day. You have to embrace him or her tenderly, like a big brother or a big sister. You have to talk to him, talk to her. And you can write a letter to the little child in you, of two or three pages, to say that you recognize his or her presence and you will do everything you can to heal his or her wounds.

Before we can make deep changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then, we will have the strength to allow the best in us to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger, of frustration.

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. This kind of belief should be uprooted.

Punishing the other person is self-punishment.

The Buddha never advised us to suppress our anger. He taught us to go back to ourselves and take good care of it.

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.

“Darling, I suffer, and I want you to know it. Darling, I am doing my best. I’m trying not to blame anyone else, including you. Since we are so close to each other, since we have made a commitment to each other, I feel that I need your support and your help to get out of this state of suffering, of anger.”

Some of us keep a pebble in our pocket, a beautiful pebble we picked up in the front yard. We washed it very carefully and always carry it with us. Every time we put our hands in our pocket, we touch the small pebble, and hold it gently. We practice mindful breathing and we feel very peaceful. When anger arises, the pebble becomes the dharma. It reminds us of our three sentences. Just holding the pebble, breathing in and out calmly and smiling, can help you tremendously. It sounds a little bit childish, but this practice is very useful. When you are in school, at work, or out shopping, you have no reminders to bring you back to yourself. So the little pebble in your pocket serves as your teacher, as your fellow practitioner—it is a bell of mindfulness, allowing you to pause and return to your breathing.

The practice is to use the energy of mindfulness to recognize and embrace the energy of anger. You have to do it tenderly, without violence. 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.

Our practice is based on the insight of non-duality. Both our negative feelings and positive feelings are organic and belong to the same reality.

Our method of practice should be non-violent. Non-violence can be born only from the insight of non-duality, of inter-being. This is the insight that everything is interconnected and nothing can exist by itself alone. Doing violence to others is doing violence to yourself.

This is why having a community of practice is so important. You need the sangha; you need a brother, sister, or friend to remind you of what you already know.

Most of the time, anger is born from a wrong perception.

We should not be sure of any perception we have.

When you turn off a fan, it continues to spin a few thousand times before stopping. Anger is like that.

Patience is the mark of true love.

We are more than our anger, we are more than our suffering.

Deep listening, compassionate listening is not listening with the purpose of analyzing or even uncovering what has happened in the past. You listen first of all in order to give the other person relief, a chance to speak out, to feel that someone finally understands him or her. Deep listening is the kind of listening that helps us to keep compassion alive while the other speaks, which may be for half an hour or forty-five minutes. During this time you have in mind only one idea, one desire: to listen in order to give the other person the chance to speak out and suffer less. This is your only purpose. Other things like analyzing, understanding the past, can be a by-product of this work. But first of all listen with compassion.

Touching suffering can help us nourish our compassion and be able to recognize happiness when it is there. If we are not in contact with pain, we cannot know what real happiness is. So touching suffering is our practice. But each one of us has limits. We cannot do more than we can do.

Nowadays, people, lovers, don’t write letters to each other anymore. They just pick up the phone and say, “Are you free tonight? Shall we go out?” That’s all, and you have nothing to keep. That is a pity. We must learn to write love letters again. Write to your beloved one, he may be your father or your son. She may be your daughter, your mother, your sister, or your friend. Take time to write down your gratitude and love.

compassion is the antidote for anger. If you allow compassion to spring from your heart, the fire of anger will die right away.

The roots of anger lie in ignorance, wrong perceptions, in the lack of understanding and compassion.

While you pound the pillow, you are not calming or reducing your anger—you are rehearsing it. If you practice hitting a pillow every day, then the seed of anger in you will grow every day.

Furthermore, you yourself must also figure out a way of living that will bring you harmony and peace. You have to sign a peace treaty with yourself, because very often you are torn apart by the war and the conflict inside of you. You are at war because you lack wisdom, you lack insight. With understanding, you can restore peace and harmony in yourself and in your relationships with others. You will know how to act and how to react with intelligence so that you are no longer in a war zone, a zone of conflict. If there is peace and harmony in you, the other person will recognize it, and peace and harmony between both of you will be restored quickly. You will be much more pleasant, much easier to be with, and that will help the other person tremendously. So to help your son, make peace with yourself. Look deeply into yourself. If you want to help your mother, restore peace in yourself. Discover the insight that will allow you to help your mother. Helping yourself is the first condition for helping the other. Let go of the illusion called self. This is the essence of the practice that will free you and the other person from anger and suffering.

Violence can never bring about peace and understanding. Only by looking deeply in order to understand the true roots of violence can we achieve peace.

Anger always goes together with confusion, with ignorance.

True wisdom and compassion are born from touching real suffering.

The capacity of being mindful, the capacity of being understanding, loving, and caring is the Buddha in us.

I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape old age. I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape ill health. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape dying. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. I cannot keep anything. I come here empty-handed, and I go empty-handed. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

Every time you give your internal formations a bath of mindfulness, the blocks of pain in you become lighter and less dangerous. So give your anger, your despair, your fear a bath of mindfulness every day—that is your practice. If mindfulness is not there, it is very unpleasant to have these seeds come up. But if you know how to generate the energy of mindfulness, it is very healing to invite them up every day and embrace them. And after several days or weeks of bringing them up daily and helping them go back down again, you create good circulation in your psyche, and the symptoms of mental illness will begin to disappear.

If you learn not to fear your knots of suffering, you can learn how to embrace them with the energy of mindfulness and to transform them.

We have to realize that even when anger does not manifest, it is still there.

After the damage has been done, you are full of regret and you vow that you will never do such a thing again. You are very sincere; you have a great deal of good will. But the next time the situation presents itself, you do exactly the same thing, you say exactly the same thing, and you cause the same damage again and again.

Your intelligence, your knowledge, does not help you change your habit energy. Only the practice of recognizing, embracing, and transforming can help.

You should nourish yourself with the nectar of compassion before you approach another person in order to reconcile.

If you don’t live in concentration, in mindfulness, if you don’t live every moment of your daily life deeply, then you cannot write. You can’t produce anything valuable to offer to others.

Your insight, your compassion, and your ability to write in a way that will move the other person’s heart are flowers that bloom on your tree of practice.