Anger

by Thich Nhat Hanh

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.

Listen with only one purpose: to allow the other person to express himself and find relief from his

Compassionate listening is a very deep practice. You listen not to judge or to blame. You listen just because you want the other person to suffer less.

We have to put into practice the teaching of the Buddha, concerning deep listening and loving speech in order to restore communication and bring happiness to our family, our school, and our community.

In the teaching of the Buddha, we learn that our body and mind are not separate. Our body is our mind, and, at the same time, our mind is also our body. Anger is not only a mental reality because the physical and the mental are linked to each other, and we cannot separate them.

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 we eat well, we can eat less. We need only half the amount of food that we eat every day. To eat well, we should chew our food about fifty times before we swallow.

Eating is a deep practice. When I eat, I enjoy every morsel of my food. I am aware of the food, aware that I am eating. We can practice mindfulness of eating—we know what we are chewing.

When the food has become liquid, mixed with your saliva, it is half digested already. So when it arrives in your stomach and intestines, the digestion becomes extremely easy.

If you drink alcohol mindfully, you can see that it creates suffering.

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 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. And because you have not practiced the methods for taking good care of your anger, the seed of anger has been watered too often in the past.

When you sit in a café, with a lot of music in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you’re not really drinking your coffee or your tea. You’re drinking your projects, you’re drinking your worries.

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.

The fact that you are fresh and pleasant to be around already changes a lot. No one can resist coming close to you. You become a tree with a cool shade, a stream of cool water. Both people and animals will want to come near you because your presence is refreshing and enjoyable.

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 believe very naively that if we can say something or do something to punish the other person, we will suffer less.

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.

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

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.

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.

When you say “I am doing my best,” you are aware that in the past you have gotten angry many times because of your wrong perception of what was going on. So now you are very careful.

If you get angry very easily, it is because your seed of anger has been watered frequently over many years. You have allowed it to be watered.

When you turn off a fan, it continues to spin a few thousand times before stopping. Anger is like that. Don’t expect the other person to stop being angry right away. That’s not realistic. You have to allow anger to die down slowly. So don’t rush.

Every mental formation—anger, jealousy, despair, etc.—is sensitive to mindfulness the way all vegetation is sensitive to sunshine. By cultivating the energy of mindfulness, you can heal your body and your consciousness, because mindfulness is the energy of the Buddha. In Christianity, it is said that Jesus has the energy of God, of the Holy Spirit, within him. That is why he is able to heal many people. His healing energy is called the Holy Spirit. In Buddhist language, that energy is the energy of the Buddha, the energy of mindfulness.

Mindfulness contains the energy of concentration, understanding, and compassion.

Sometimes you get lost in your suffering, in your worries.

As a father or mother, you have to listen to your son or your daughter. This is very important because your son is yourself; your daughter is yourself. Your child is your continuation. The most important task for you is to restore communication between you and your child.

In this case, the Buddha proposes that you give the other person a present. It sounds childish, but it is very effective. When we’re angry with someone, we want to hurt them. Giving them a present changes that into wanting to make them happy.

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.

That is why handling your aggression by hitting a pillow, or venting, is not helpful at all.

the continuation of your father. So if you can communicate

Our educators need to know this and help all of us take care of parents in order to take care of children. Serving Our Country

You have to be aware that your emotion is just an emotion. It comes, stays for some time, and then goes away.

A good practitioner is not someone who no longer has any anger or suffering. This is not possible. A good practitioner is someone who knows how to take good care of her anger and suffering as soon as they arise.

Whenever our habit energy comes up, all we need to do is recognize it and call it by its name. We breathe mindfully and say, “Hello, my jealousy; hello, my fear; hello, my irritation and anger. I know you are there, and I am here for you. I will take good care of you and embrace you with mindfulness.”