The ninth precept: not giving rise to anger
from Hoko
This is one of the hardest precepts for many folks. How can we help being angry? We’re not trying to be angry, but something happens and whoosh -- there it is. Then, even when the heat of the moment has subsided, it’s hard to let go of whatever happened and it gets calcified into a grudge or some long term ill will.
Sometimes people say, I can’t take precepts because I’m certain to break them, particularly the one about being angry. Well, yes you will. This is the karma of your human form. The question is, then what? Are you following up by taking unskillful action, or are you trying to learn something from your anger?
Anger is a fabulous dharma gate. There's usually a physical response that’s hard to ignore, an acute signal that our ideas about ourselves have been challenged, and we don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable. Then we get the chance to step back and see what’s actually happening, but to be able to do that, we need to have the space to step back rather than simply being immediately hijacked into habituated thinking and responses.
Now we’re not talking here about having strong feelings about the mistreatment of others or about an unwholesome situation that needs to be changed. Anger is antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Thus it’s based on our ideas about the needs of the small self, not on an aspiration to make things better for others. I expect to be treated a certain way, I expect certain things to be available to me in my life, and I expect events to unfold in a particular way. When those things don’t happen, my sense of self or ego is threatened and I get angry. What we say to ourselves at that point is: It’s not supposed to be this way! Well, says who? That’s just our idea about how things are supposed to be. That doesn’t mean the universe has the same idea. We create ideas about how things “should” be and that hardens into the yardstick by which we measure everything we encounter. This is reifying the ego.
This precept says we shouldn’t give rise to anger, but what we do when that anger arises is also important. OK, so we missed the first mark, but we still have a responsibility for skillful action. At every moment of that episode, we have the opportunity to regain our balance, step back from the brink, pay attention to what’s happening and try to do the right thing.
The clear mind version of this precept is: dwelling in equanimity, forgiving, cultivating kindness. To forgive is to open the hand and let go of two things: our idea about how things should be, and the anger itself. Logically we’d say that anger is uncomfortable and something we don’t want, but sometimes it feels good. If I’m angry, it’s because I’m right and you’re wrong, or because I’m better than you and you should know better, or simply because when I’m angry I feel alive. The adrenaline is addicting.
The reality is that someone who is angry or aggressive is not operating from a position of strength but a position of fear. If I intimidate you, you won’t know how scared or weak or unprepared I am and won’t challenge me. My anger means my ego or small self feels threatened. Someone dwelling in equanimity doesn’t need to act like that. We need to not mistake anger for strength. It's easy to just get angry and let that do our communicating for us. It’s much more difficult to look closely at our anger and see what’s really going on.
That investigation is really important, because this precept is not saying that we should suppress or ignore our anger, or engage in spiritual bypassing. Lots of folks get caught in that kind of misunderstanding. When we’re angry, we have to feel it 100% and be aware of it. Not doing that isn’t healthy or skillful and the anger is just going to leak out passively somewhere else. On a day by day basis, we engage in our practice and make an effort to see clearly, act skillfully and do our bodhisattva work in the world. Then when anger arises, we pay attention to where we’ve gone off the rails. Chances are, when we investigate we can pretty quickly see that it’s a simple case of our story being challenged. We create suffering for ourselves in a couple of basic ways: we want what we don’t have. and we have what we don’t want. Whichever one it is, things aren’t supposed to be this way! And we get angry.
Again, this precept is not telling us to ignore situations that should be changed. It’s telling us that anger is not how that happens skillfully. If you’re angry at your partner for always leaving his dirty socks on the floor, you don’t need to ignore that problem. You just have a useful conversation about it, recognizing that the real problem is probably not the socks on the floor but your feeling that you’re being disregarded or disrespected. What’s really going on?
This is one of the hardest precepts for many folks. How can we help being angry? We’re not trying to be angry, but something happens and whoosh -- there it is. Then, even when the heat of the moment has subsided, it’s hard to let go of whatever happened and it gets calcified into a grudge or some long term ill will.
Sometimes people say, I can’t take precepts because I’m certain to break them, particularly the one about being angry. Well, yes you will. This is the karma of your human form. The question is, then what? Are you following up by taking unskillful action, or are you trying to learn something from your anger?
Anger is a fabulous dharma gate. There's usually a physical response that’s hard to ignore, an acute signal that our ideas about ourselves have been challenged, and we don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable. Then we get the chance to step back and see what’s actually happening, but to be able to do that, we need to have the space to step back rather than simply being immediately hijacked into habituated thinking and responses.
Now we’re not talking here about having strong feelings about the mistreatment of others or about an unwholesome situation that needs to be changed. Anger is antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong. Thus it’s based on our ideas about the needs of the small self, not on an aspiration to make things better for others. I expect to be treated a certain way, I expect certain things to be available to me in my life, and I expect events to unfold in a particular way. When those things don’t happen, my sense of self or ego is threatened and I get angry. What we say to ourselves at that point is: It’s not supposed to be this way! Well, says who? That’s just our idea about how things are supposed to be. That doesn’t mean the universe has the same idea. We create ideas about how things “should” be and that hardens into the yardstick by which we measure everything we encounter. This is reifying the ego.
This precept says we shouldn’t give rise to anger, but what we do when that anger arises is also important. OK, so we missed the first mark, but we still have a responsibility for skillful action. At every moment of that episode, we have the opportunity to regain our balance, step back from the brink, pay attention to what’s happening and try to do the right thing.
The clear mind version of this precept is: dwelling in equanimity, forgiving, cultivating kindness. To forgive is to open the hand and let go of two things: our idea about how things should be, and the anger itself. Logically we’d say that anger is uncomfortable and something we don’t want, but sometimes it feels good. If I’m angry, it’s because I’m right and you’re wrong, or because I’m better than you and you should know better, or simply because when I’m angry I feel alive. The adrenaline is addicting.
The reality is that someone who is angry or aggressive is not operating from a position of strength but a position of fear. If I intimidate you, you won’t know how scared or weak or unprepared I am and won’t challenge me. My anger means my ego or small self feels threatened. Someone dwelling in equanimity doesn’t need to act like that. We need to not mistake anger for strength. It's easy to just get angry and let that do our communicating for us. It’s much more difficult to look closely at our anger and see what’s really going on.
That investigation is really important, because this precept is not saying that we should suppress or ignore our anger, or engage in spiritual bypassing. Lots of folks get caught in that kind of misunderstanding. When we’re angry, we have to feel it 100% and be aware of it. Not doing that isn’t healthy or skillful and the anger is just going to leak out passively somewhere else. On a day by day basis, we engage in our practice and make an effort to see clearly, act skillfully and do our bodhisattva work in the world. Then when anger arises, we pay attention to where we’ve gone off the rails. Chances are, when we investigate we can pretty quickly see that it’s a simple case of our story being challenged. We create suffering for ourselves in a couple of basic ways: we want what we don’t have. and we have what we don’t want. Whichever one it is, things aren’t supposed to be this way! And we get angry.
Again, this precept is not telling us to ignore situations that should be changed. It’s telling us that anger is not how that happens skillfully. If you’re angry at your partner for always leaving his dirty socks on the floor, you don’t need to ignore that problem. You just have a useful conversation about it, recognizing that the real problem is probably not the socks on the floor but your feeling that you’re being disregarded or disrespected. What’s really going on?
