Anger

by Thich Nhat Hanh

According to the Buddha’s teachings, the most basic condition for happiness is freedom. Here we do not mean political freedom, but freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and delusion.

When a person’s speech is full of anger, it is because he or she suffers deeply. Because he has so much suffering, he becomes full of bitterness. He is always ready to complain and blame others for his problems. This is why you find it very unpleasant to listen to him and try to avoid him. To understand and transform anger, we must learn the practice of compassionate listening and using loving speech.

Listen with only one purpose: to allow the other person to express himself and find relief from his suffering. Keep compassion alive during the whole time of listening.

If we can overcome the duality that sees the mind and body as entirely separate, we come very close to the truth.

We have to take very good care of our body if we want to master our anger. The way we eat, the way we consume, is very important.

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.

Many people like to read books about different spiritual traditions or to perform rituals but don’t want to practice their teachings very much. The teachings can transform us no matter what religion or spiritual tradition we belong to, if we are only willing to practice.

Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself.

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. You accept your anger because you know you can take care of it; you can transform it into positive energy.

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.

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.

So in taking good care of yourself, you take good care of your beloved one. Self-love is the foundation for your capacity to love the other person.

Your capacity for loving another person depends entirely on your capacity for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself.

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.

It is natural that we share our joy and good feelings with our beloved one. But you also have to let the other person know when you suffer, when you are angry with him or her.

You have the duty to tell him or her when you suffer. When you are happy, share your happiness, with her, with him. When you suffer, tell your beloved one about your suffering. Even if you think your anger was created by him or her, you still have to keep your commitment. Tell him or her calmly. Use loving speech. This is the only condition. You must do this as soon as possible. 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.

Energy Zone One is anger, and Energy Zone Two is mindfulness. The practice is to use the energy of mindfulness to recognize and embrace the energy of anger.

It’s not healthy to keep your anger inside for too long. Do not keep your suffering or your anger to yourself for more than one day. You have to say these three things in a calm, loving way, and you must train yourself to do so. If you are not calm enough to express your anger and the deadline is drawing close, then you have to write the three sentences down on a piece of paper and deliver it to him or her.

Anger is in us in the form of a seed. The seeds of love and compassion are also there. In our consciousness, there are many negative seeds and also many positive seeds. The practice is to avoid watering the negative seeds, and to identify and water the positive seeds every day. This is the practice of love.

When you are angry, and you suffer, please go back and inspect very deeply the content, the nature of your perceptions. If you are capable of removing the wrong perception, peace and happiness will be restored in you, and you will be able to love the other person again.

When you share your suffering, you have the right to say everything in your heart—it is your duty to do so, because the other person has the right to know everything. You have made a commitment to each other. You should tell him everything that is in your heart, with only one condition—you must use calm and loving speech. The moment irritation manifests, the moment you think that you are going to lose your calm, your serenity, please stop.

Compassion is possible only when understanding is there.

If you want to help correct her wrong perception, you have to wait until the moment is right. While listening, your only aim is to give her a chance to speak out and share what is in her heart. You don’t say anything.

Patience is the mark of true love.

In a time of anger or despair, our love is still there also. Our capacity to communicate, to forgive, to be compassionate is still there. You have to believe this. We are more than our anger, we are more than our suffering. We must recognize that we do have within us the capacity to love, to understand, to be compassionate.

Compassion alone can protect you from becoming irritated, angry, or full of despair.

If we are not in contact with pain, we cannot know what real happiness is.

When you are angry, you want to ease your suffering. That is a natural tendency. There are many ways to find relief, but the greatest relief comes from understanding. When understanding is there, anger will go away by itself.

If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love someone else. If you cannot accept yourself, if you cannot treat yourself with kindness, you cannot do this for another person.

Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is not the other person. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person. When we are armed with compassion and understanding, we fight not against other people, but against the tendency to invade, to dominate, and to exploit.