Tags
Adrenaline, Amitabha, Amitofo, Anger, Awake, Compassion, Faith, Meditation, Mental Health, mindfulness, practice, pure land, Rationality, Shunryu Suzuki, Violence, vows
I recently saw a quote on Twitter that struck me1
When anger rises remember compassion
It’s one of those sound bytes that tugs my strings. When I’m angry, how can I be compassionate? I’m too busy being angry. If, as the Buddhist teachings imply, I’m perfect the way I am, why do I need alternative behaviors?
I was reminded of another quote from Suzuki-Roshi:
All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement. – Shunryu Suzuki
Buddhist sound bytes can seem like double speak. Can we be an angry person and compassionate at the same time? You’d think no.
Loosing Our Minds
For many years I worked in the the mental health industry caring for people with severe behavior disorders. Sometimes I would need to use restrains to prevent them from doing harm to themselves and others.
Part of my training was learning when and how to apply safe restraint techniques. The most important tool was the ability to gauge rationality. Violent behavior is typically preceded by a loss of rationality and it’s associated with the hormone adrenaline. When adrenaline kicks in, our ability to reason is severely diminished if not completely gone.
Adrenaline prepares us for fight or flight. It causes our bodies to react differently. We become faster and stronger, but we become mentally inflexible. Humans are hardwired for irrationality when we feel cornered.
What does it mean for us to be cornered? If we see our corners as the sphere of our individual control, we discover they are very tiny. With our busy lives the smallest imbalance can wreak havoc and we become defensive. Our adrenaline kicks in and things can get ugly.
How Big Are Our Corners?
In Islam, the gesture made by the hands in prayer is open and palms up. It is a fitting gesture. It is the motion we make when we are given something. It is the gesture of receiving grace. The practice of mindfulness is being awake to grace.
Here’s an example. Think about your alarm clock. For it to go off at the right time, you rely on a vast network of people and materials all outside of your control. You need the power company. You need the electricity to be transported across the wire into your home. Any number of things could go wrong. Yet most days, you make it to work on time.
The notion that we are independent and self reliant is extremely naïve. We are inextricably dependent upon things far beyond our control. From a Buddhist perspective, we don’t develop faith. We come to recognize it. Faith and gratitude all come from the knowledge that we rely almost completely on others. Acknowledging our faith is taking refuge in the Buddha.
Getting Real
Mindfulness and meditation give us the power to transform just by opening our eyes. When we open our eyes to the faith that we have, we are naturally drawn toward gratitude. This insight provides the energy that we need to keep our eyes open.
It is easy to draw back into the tiny corner of self, but it is the source of our suffering. If we act out irrationally in defense of our tiny corner, we suffer the consequences. This is true when we quarrel with our partners or when we commit crimes of passion.
The greatest faith we have is not in our selves, but in the web of life. When we see this, our corners grow. As our corner’s grow our tendency to respond defensively decreases naturally. Anger can still arise, but it arises in a larger space.
Recognizing our faith and the sources of our suffering lead us to take steps to transform our lives through mindfulness and meditation.
Faith, Vows & Practice
The three cornerstones of Pure Land Buddhism are faith, vows, and practice.
Faith is refuge in the Buddha – in reality. This is simply acknowledging that things are out of our control and that we live in the grace of the Buddha.
Our vows are our determination to be born in the Pure Land. Being born in the Pure Land is being born in a world where the Dharma can be seen everywhere. If we have our eyes open in mindfulness it is here before us. Our vow is to be awake to our faith and reality.
Our practice is chanting Amitofo, the name of the Buddha. It is the practice of mindfulness and meditation, bringing our minds back to reality. Practice is the way that we keep our eyes open and act on our commitment to transform ourselves.
Compassion in Anger
Can compassion arise with anger? Not in our tiny corners. We don’t have the spaciousness to hold anger in compassion. But if we accept the spaciousness of our faith, when anger arises we can offer it up to the Buddha to hold for us. The Buddha is the ocean of all creation and can receive it effortlessly. When anger arises, remember compassion. Remember the Buddha is there to hold it for you.
All of you are perfect just as you are and you could use a little improvement. – Shunryu Suzuki
1 WeAreWMRI (We are What Meditation Really Is)
