Lama Zopa Rinpoche's Online Advice Book
Emotions :
Anger
| Harsh Words | |
| Rinpoche made the following comments on the importance of speaking kindly. | |
Your decisions are correct but the problem is the way they are expressed – with harsh words and anger. These are extra and unnecessary; they create problems. Of course, someone doing wrong needs to have it explained to him or her, but with compassion and no negative feeling. You should use only kind words, even though you are saying that what they did was wrong.
| Getting Angry | |
| Rinpoche gave the following advice to a man who works as a driver for a Dharma center, who complained of being very angry with his family and asked Rinpoche for some mantras to help him. | |
My dear Tony,
You have recognized that anger arising is not good and that you must do something about it. You’re responsible for stopping that problem. Even this is progression toward peace and happiness. Without this first discovery, there is no day-to-day, moment-to moment peace for you and others. The more you can stop getting angry and lessen your anger, the more you bring peace and happiness to all living beings, particularly the human beings, animals, and so forth in this world. All six billion people in the world get that much more peace and happiness and the billion people in your country get that much more peace and happiness. Of course, there is no question about your family, neighbors, and you.
If anger is completely eliminated through meditation and by collecting merit, you stop harming all beings, not only in this life but in all future lives, bringing them peace and happiness. It is incredible that you, one person, can offer this service to countless human beings.
You can see your family as your great, spiritual guru. This is what the Buddha said: the one you call enemy, who makes you get angry, is your spiritual guru. Why? Because he or she teaches you how to practice patience. Then, you train your mind in patience regarding that person. The only one who can help you put that into practice is someone who has anger toward you. You don’t have this opportunity to practice with friends, strangers, or buddhas, who have no anger. So, these people are the great teachers; they help you to eliminate anger and stop harming others. So many sentient beings then stop receiving harm and receive benefit, peace, and happiness. Without anger there is harmony and peace in the family, in the lives and hearts of others, and also in your heart and life.
So, you can see that those who are angry with you or criticize you, those who insult you with their speech or beat you with their body, are most precious and kind. You see they are the kindest ones in your life.
If you get angry you create negative karma and that creates hell and suffering. If you don’t have anger, attachment, and ignorance, there is no hell. This means those beings are helping you to learn about anger and to practice patience. They are your protectors, protecting you from rebirth in the hell realms, where one has to experience the heaviest suffering for so many eons.
Therefore, when you have the conditions to get angry and it’s about to happen, be aware of the great dangers that could befall you, of hell and all the sufferings. If you get angry, it also makes many other people engage in anger. By getting angry back at you, they can also be born in hell instead of gaining a higher rebirth in their next life.
Sometimes you can put yourself in their place, thinking that they are you while they’re criticizing you. If you do that while the person is criticizing you it is great fun. We always think that he or she is bad or mean to me, but then where are you? You can’t find the “I,” you, the person who is receiving harm. You can’t find the “I” inside the body, from the tip of the hair down to the toes, in the nose or the ears.
Of course, there is the “I” who creates negative karma, has delusions, and brings many sentient beings to hell by causing them to get angry, but that is not the “I” in which we believe. But you also can’t find that “I” inside the body or mind, or both together. It’s good to analyze this. It can be a very deep discovery and a great shock. You believe the “I” is in the body, somewhere in the chest, but when you check you can’t find it. I’m talking of the “I” in which you normally believe.
You can also think of the kindness of the enemy, the person who is angry with you or abusing you. It helps you to complete the paramita of patience, the path to enlightenment. Without that you can’t achieve full enlightenment, you can’t be perfectly qualified (a Buddha), liberate many sentient beings from the oceans of sufferings of samsara, and bring them to enlightenment, the greatest happiness. The person whom you call enemy, whose anger you see as bad, is helping you to practice patience. He or she is actually the one who is giving you liberation from all suffering, and enlightenment, by letting you practice the Mahayana path, the paramita of patience.
Even Shakyamuni Buddha and the numberless buddhas were ordinary beings like us, with mistakes, delusions, and problems, then they discovered the nature of suffering, practiced patience, developed their minds on the path, and achieved great liberation: enlightenment. That is how they were able to liberate beings from suffering and bring them to enlightenment. They showed the complete path to full enlightenment to sentient beings in this world, how to achieve happiness, a good rebirth in the next life, and the ultimate happiness of liberation from samsara and full enlightenment.
As well as these meditations, please chant every day OM MANI PADME HUM: the Chenrezig mantra, who is the Buddha of compassion, for all sentient beings, to bring every sentient being, every hell being, preta, animal, human being, asura, and sura to enlightenment. OM MANI PADME HUM is the most precious mantra, cherished by numberless buddhas. It is like a wish-granting jewel, giving all happiness to all sentient beings.
Please also recite the Maitreya Buddha mantra, the Buddha of loving kindness. It’s very good to recite this to develop loving kindness toward others and reduce anger, this poisonous mind, the continuation of which has no beginning. I will enjoy seeing you reciting these two mantras and practicing the meditations as explained. What I appreciate is your practicing patience and abandoning anger.
Thank you very much.
One more thing: every day that you stop getting angry, you bring so much peace to your family, the world, and yourself. If you don’t stop getting angry, you will cause harm and suffering to others and to yourself.
Again, thank you very much.
| Patience | |
| Dealing with Anger | |
| Rinpoche made the following comments on practicing patience. | |
Anybody who experiences anger needs to practice patience. If you have a sickness, you need medicine. Like that, patience is needed. It is not a burden; it’s necessary. When you practice patience, anger becomes gradually more and more rare. Eventually, there is no anger, and then there is no enemy to destroy your merit. That is how you can achieve liberation. When there is no enemy to destroy your merit, you can have realizations. Realizations come, liberation comes, then enlightenment, and you will be able to liberate so many sentient beings from cyclic existence. That is the benefit. Each time you practice patience, the benefit is as vast as the sky. Think in the long term.
Practicing patience is the path of the bodhisattva. When you meet obstacles, be strong. Then the obstacles won’t last. If you are strong and practice compassion, patience, thought transformation, and emptiness, then obstacles don’t last.
| Practicing Patience | |
| A student wrote to Rinpoche saying that he had been a monk for 21 years but there had been many interferences in his life. Rinpoche replied as follows. | |
It is extremely effective to practice patience. That is why you have been able to stay a monk for so many years. Otherwise, your life could be something else.
Anybody who experiences anger needs to practice patience. If you have a sickness, you need medicine. Like that, patience is needed. It is not a burden; it’s necessary. When you practice patience, anger becomes gradually more and more rare. Eventually, there is no anger, and then there is no enemy to destroy your merit. That is how you can achieve liberation. When there is no enemy to destroy your merit, you can have realizations. Realizations come, liberation comes, then enlightenment, and you will be able to liberate so many sentient beings from cyclic existence. That is the benefit. Each time you practice patience, the benefit is as vast as the sky. Think in the long term.
Practicing patience is the path of the bodhisattva. When you meet obstacles, be strong. Then the obstacles won’t last. If you are strong and practice compassion, patience, thought transformation, and emptiness, then obstacles don’t last.
| Dealing with Anger | |
| A student wrote to Rinpoche about his anger and its impact on other people. Rinpoche wrote the following letter to him. | |
My very dear Christian,
This is really an opportunity to practice the path of patience. The purpose of practicing patience is to have immediate peace and happiness within you. That moment when you don’t get angry means you don’t harm yourself, you don’t cause yourself unhappiness. When the mind becomes negative, it is like a bomb inside you.
Even if you are killed in a war by a bomb, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be born in the lower realms; you can be born in the upper realms. The bomb of anger is billions of times worse for you than any external bomb. When it arises, you create negative karma and throw yourself into the three lower realms, where you have to experience terrible suffering for an incredibly long time—for eons!
It is said by Shantideva in A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life that the negative karma created by one second of anger causes us to experience the three lower realms for eons—one can’t be reborn in the realm of a happy transmigratory being. There is no need to mention the negative karma collected from infinite past lives.
Another quote is that the merit collected for one thousand years by making charity and offerings to Those Gone to Bliss and so forth is destroyed by one second of anger.
The first quote is saying how much anger causes you to suffer in the three lower realms. The second one is concerned with destroying eons of merit. The third disadvantage is that anger delays realizations, depending on who you get angry with and who you create the negative karma with. Then, anger also causes you to have an ugly body in your future lives. Practicing patience brings you a beautiful body in future lives.
In this way, anger is unbelievably harmful to oneself. Being angry just one time is so harmful, so you can imagine if it happens all day long or for weeks, months, or years. It is terrifying to think about. Just being angry one time brings so much suffering.
If you are angry you can’t really work with others. They get upset and leave, because they are so unhappy with you, and seeing this also makes you unhappy. Also, if you get angry, it makes others angry, and then this makes you angry again! You make yourself the target for others to get angry at you and harm you with harsh speech and dislike. If anger gets worse, it can even cause physical harm.
If you are patient, you don’t get angry at sentient beings. In that way, sentient beings only receive peace and happiness from you. Each time you stop being angry, by practicing patience, this becomes your most practical contribution to world peace. It brings so much peace and happiness to your own world, mind, and heart. For others, it brings peace and happiness, not only in this world, but for all living beings. If you are able to practice patience in this life, it will be much easier in future lives. By developing your mind in patience through the continuity of lives, you will bring happiness to all living beings.
Also, each time you come closer to completing the perfection of patience, it means you are getting closer to enlightenment, and much closer to bringing all sentient beings to enlightenment. So, you can see that each time you practice patience, there are long-term results. This is the power of the mind. Not only can you bring sentient beings temporary peace, but also full enlightenment.
At your work, you can change the staff if you don’t like them, but that will happen over and over, and it is difficult to bring your mind to peace. Whereas with patience, the mind is happy all the time. Your decisions at work are correct, but the problem is the way they are expressed—with harsh words and anger. These are extra and unnecessary; they create the problems. Of course, someone doing wrong needs to have it explained to them, but with compassion for them and with no negative feelings. You should use only kind words, even though you are saying what they did is wrong. And along with compassion we need wisdom. So, we who practice Buddhism have to live life with compassion and wisdom, and work with compassion and wisdom. So, of course, one has to develop compassion and wisdom.
You have a great opportunity to gain experience in patience. Each time you wake up, you must plan this—especially today! And be mindful when a circumstance occurs that provokes anger. If you don’t make a firm plan in the morning, you won’t remember the teachings when anger comes up.
Practicing patience and controlling anger become easier. The more you cherish others in daily life, the less anger you will have. You should think that each person you meet is the source of so much past happiness, and will be the source of so much future happiness, including the realizations of the path to enlightenment. So, respect others and practice kindness toward them, especially toward those who get angry with you.
So, to conclude: Practice patience, cherish others by remembering their kindness, respect others, and practice kindness to others. Then, everyone will love and support you and be your friend. They will be surprised and change their minds about you. They will be inspired when they see that your mind can change and develop. This shows the power of the mind, especially those with whom you got angry and who got angry with you.
Thank you very much.
With much love and prayers...
Fed Up with Anger
An old student who was directing a new Dharma center received a timely phone call from Rinpoche one morning. She said, “I had become angry the previous evening, and was thinking about my anger, how happy I would be if I could never be angry again. There has never been a real reason for being angry at all, and the moments of anger keep returning. The next morning during my morning prayers, I was thinking about this and got very sad. I was praying to Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche as I was crying, and asking them for help. The phone rang as I was starting my morning in the office. It was Rinpoche wanting to talk with me! His first question was: 'How was your night?' and I replied that I had had a bad night. I told him that I’d been thinking about my anger, and wanted to get rid of it. This seemed to please Rinpoche."
Very good. That’s very good. It’s very good if you get some aversion to your anger. It helps you to get free from samsara. If you develop aversion toward anger and toward all the delusions, it helps you to reach enlightenment quickly.
Without aversion toward delusions, nothing happens. In the West, the way of thinking is just the opposite to this. You think you have to have desire, you have to have anger, you have to have a strong ego, and so you build up a strong ego. You think it’s not possible to live without a strong ego. You think you need desire, anger, and all those delusions. This is how they talk in Western psychology, but it’s exactly the opposite.
By following the delusions, you only create negative karma. You are looking for happiness, but by following desire, anger, and all the other delusions, you will only experience suffering. And, it’s leading to rebirths in lower realms, as hell beings, hungry ghosts, or animals—or even as a human being, you experience much suffering, and you will be creating negative karma again and again by following the anger, the desire, and all the delusions all over again. That’s what they teach you in the West.
That’s why I say it’s good if you develop aversion to your anger. By having aversion toward anger, by having aversion toward desire, attachment, toward all the delusions, you will start to give up these delusions. You realize their harmfulness, and develop some aversion. The aversion toward the delusions is the only way to get free from them. When you realize their harmfulness, you do the practices to get free of them. And like this, you will get closer to higher rebirth, to liberation and to enlightenment. The aversion toward the delusions is leading you to enlightenment. Buddha Shakyamuni saw the harmfulness of delusions, developed aversion toward them, and reached enlightenment.
You can understand from this how good it is to realize the harmfulness of the delusions, and to develop aversion toward them. It’s a good sign. It means you are getting closer to enlightenment, and to becoming beneficial for all sentient beings.
More talks by Lama Zopa on this topic:
Anger (a talk given in May, 1997)
