Summary
The real purpose of Buddhism Dharma is to help transforming the negative emotions into positive emotions, just because they make us unhappy which is why we have been suffering for all these lives in Samsara. Anger is one of the negative emotions that actives quite often in our daily life.
The Buddha’s teachings are like a prescription in which he explained clearly the nature and cause of these negative emotions, how to eliminate them and the medication needed for such each mental illness and how is the method of use.
And all the teachings of Buddha shows the method which helps us to eliminate those negative emotions and high are mental illness and just as reading the prescription does not cure the disease, only reading Buddhas’ teachings is not enough to remove negative emotions like anger completely. So we must practice those teachings of Buddha. And with the appropriate application of the medication like compassion practice, wisdom practice, patience practice, moralty practice and so forth. We can find ultimate happiness.
Regarding anger, the best medication is patience practice. Lama Nawang Kunphel has given an actual simple method to practice it. That is thinking the negative results or disadvantages of being angry and concentrating on the advantages of not being angry. To be able to concentrate in thinking two aspects of being angry disadvantages and not being angry advantages, based on his own experience, Lama has introduced 8 points that he practiced since he was still a child until now and achieved the expected results. Those are:
- If you get angry you will lose your values, you will lose your respect and reputation.
- If you get angry, it not only makes you unhappy but it destroys the happiness of those people who are so beloved to you.
- When you have the anger in you, it is like a fire, it burns you.
- If you have that anger again and again, it creates a sort of loneliness and you lose your friends and your good relation.
- When you are angry, you lose your capability to analyze the good and the bad, your analytical mind, your decision making ability, your intellectual brain is not going to work anymore.
- When you are angry, people don’t feel you’re nice, people don’t think you are friendly enough to be around
- When you’re so angry, it breaks the long-term relationship.
- When you’re so angry, you want to hurt other, that is only for your ego.
And the daily 8-point practice does not take time, just a concentrative meditation within 2 minutes of thinking each point, maybe twice per day in the morning and in the evening, is enough. Therefore daily we just have two meditations about 30 minutes or once within 14 minutes if we are busy. We can see the big change for about at least two weeks even just two – three days we start to see our anger transforming toward positive.
So, right in this life, if we have no anger, if we can control our own anger, we will be peaceful. That’s exactly what Buddha said: “Transformation is what you’re needed”.
If we love ourself, if we really have the compassion to ourself, then we should to remove the pain that can come from negative actions, negative actions come from emotions like anger. So to remove the anger, we need to practice patience, the way to practice patience is these eight points.
Introduction
The real purpose of Buddhism Dharma is to aid or support you to transform your negative emotions like jealousy, anger, attachment, envy, ego, pride, greed into positive. Those emotions make us unhappy which is why we have been suffering for all these lives in Samsara.
You need to understand why doing such a thing helps us, how the way helps us to transform is something very important to know that we need to focus on.
All the Buddha’s teachings are like a prescription.
If you have a sickness, you go to the hospital and what the doctor gives you is like a ritual: after writing your name and the date, the doctor writes what kind of symptoms you have, such as maybe you have a fever, you have this and you have that. And then based on the symptoms and the result of analysis, the doctor comes to a conclusion like “You might be infected with this and that virus or this and that bacteria”. The doctor gives the name of sickness and based on that sickness and its causes, doctor gives you a medicine and advises you to eat this medicine, to drink this medicine, and then your doctor also gives you an instruction like you eat twice a day, try one in the morning and one in the evening, and so forth. So that is called a prescription.
Buddha is also our doctor, Dharma is a medicine, and Sangha is supposed to be a nurse who guides you when the doctor is not around. So exactly the same way, what Buddha has given in the books? What are those books? Those books are as prescriptions, they contain not only your name but also the name of the doctor himself, the date that doctor has given those prescriptions, the people who are around there when the doctor is giving the prescription, your sickness, what kind of medicine you need to intake and when you need to intake and how you need to intake. If you open a sutra, if you look at the book, any book or a teaching of sutra, you’re going to find like to whom this teaching has given and when this teaching has been given.
You have an angry issue, you have a jealousy issue, not only explained about the anger but Buddha also said about the nature of anger and its causes as well, exactly like the nature of sickness and its causes. Buddha explained about how to reduce, how to get rid of the sickness, then he gave a medicine which can be a compassion. Practice of compassion is a medicine, practice of love is a medicine, practice of morality is a medicine, practice of physical discipline, like morality, is also a medicine. Likewise the patience of Buddha, practice of patience is also a medicine, and Buddha said like how you should practice. So exactly like the prescription.
What we are doing is just reading the prescription that the doctor has given, we’re just reading the sutras, of course, it is helpful, it helps us to accumulate a lot of merits, positive energies, and so forth, but just by doing this, it is not enough to get rid of our sickness which are anger, jealousy, envy, ego, greed, pride. These are our sickness that everybody has in this world.
We have a lot of doctors who treat our physical issues, but the problem is that we don’t have any doctor besides Buddhist Teachers who treat the inner sickness, like envy, jealousy, ego, anxiety, stress, depression. These make us suffering much more than some physical pain. You won’t find any suicide case because of physical pain, very rare, extremely rare. Ninety-nine percent of the suicide cases are because of the mental pain, the pain in the heart, the pain in the mind, not the pain on the body. Unfortunately we don’t have many doctors for these, Buddha is the dead doctor and meditation is like one of the ways for these issues.
And now we will go through the anger and its antidote because this is something that everybody has more or less and is something that creates a problem in daily basis. Since you won’t find a person who says that “I’m really enjoying these days because I’m so angry”. You won’t find such a person because whenever you are angry, whenever you are having this hatred towards someone else you are unhappy.
If you hold the anger for a long period of time, you’re not happy, for example, if you’re angry to the neighborhood, whenever you see the neighborhood, you’re not happy. Unfortunately you see the neighborhood every day, then you are not happy every day. This is one of the reasons that many people can’t find a way to bring peace within themselves when they have these issues. When you go to the doctors, they can’t do much, so the best way is practice Buddhism because Buddha had given medicine for this kind of pain and problems that we face in our day-to-day life.
Dharma should help to those believe in Buddhism, use Dharma, apply Dharma in day-to-day life and try to have more meaningful life, happier life, it doesn’t matter what you have. Happiness is not something based on external phenomena. Happiness is just a state of mind, it’s just state of satisfaction.
If you are satisfied with whatever food you are eating, you’re happy. If you’re not satisfied with what you’re eating, then it doesn’t matter how good or how expensive your food is, you won’t be happy eating that. It’s very simple, it’s very logical.
So I would like to try to go through a very rational approach, very ethical approach. I won’t say much about Buddha said this or Buddha said that, I will also not go through saying like “Okay if you get angry, you’re going to go to the hell” or I won’t say that at all because I want this, I want you to take it very seriously, very practically, and I’m not giving this one hour for you to accumulate some merits just by listening to it, but to really practice and I would strongly suggest you to go seriously at least for 14 days, because you’ll start to see a big change in around 14 days. But if you go through these methods for about two or three days, you also start to see a positive result in like two or three days.
Buddha said that if you want to remove the darkness in the room you need to turn on the light. If you have the darkness in the room you go outside and ask the whole world to pray for you to remove the darkness. It does not help you to remove the darkness unless you turn on the light. And if you are so hungry then you pray, pray, pray, it’s not going to work, it’s not going to get rid of that hunger and the only way is to eat the food because that’s the opposite side, that’s the antidote! If you have a virus in your phone then you go to the temple and pray, it’s not going to work. Logically you need to install antivirus, this is the only way to get rid of the virus from your phone or from your computer. Very rational, very logical! This is how Buddha explained, not through the virus and anti-virus in a convenience, but through the light and the darkness, cold in the heat. It is very hot, you turn on the AC (air-con).
You just go over there, pray whatever you do, even if you’re being so generous, even if you do some charity, it’s not going to remove the darkness in your room unless you turn on the light. There’s no way! If you turn on the light, you may not be able to make the light so strong which eliminate the whole darkness in the room but if you make the light stronger and stronger then you will be able to eliminate the darkness.
Similarly the anger, you need a wisdom to remove the ignorance; you need a knowledge to remove the doubt. Suppose you have a doubt, maybe this is that? So what you need to do is to know it. When you have the knowledge, you don’t have any doubt anymore isn’t it? If you have a closed, locked box, then you have a doubt “What could be in this box?” Now to remove that doubt, you cannot go to temple and pray. This is not going to remove that doubt at all. What you need to do? You need to know what’s in there. Open the box and see what’s in there then you don’t have any doubt anymore, even if you want to have the doubt, you don’t have any doubt because you have seen, you know it now. Because the knowledge is the antidote, is the opposite side of darkness, when you have a knowledge, the doubt goes away, when you have the wisdom, ignorance goes away.
Exactly the same way, the anger is also a virus where we need to apply the antivirus. So the antivirus of the anger is patience, a practice of patience, that’s what you need to do, you need to apply the patience to get rid of the virus called anger. And you might think that “I might not be so angry and short-tempered or I don’t have any anger issue”, but everybody has it more or less unless you are so good in practice, unless you are really realized.
Patient Practice, Antidote of Anger.
Everybody has this more or less, if you still think that you don’t have, just imagine that somebody come and hit your mother or harm your family, you’ll know how much of anger you have. If getting angry helps then it’s okay but it doesn’t help at all, it destroys! So the patience is the practice. If the patience is what we are supposed to practice, then the question is how to practice the patience?
A funny story about a small monk, some of his friends did something wrong, and then he was really pushed, he looked very red and then he’s looking down on the floor and one day I asked him like “What happened?” He replied “I’m practicing patience”, “Oh very good but how you’re practicing patience?” I’m not saying anything to that person. But this is not a practice of patience. Many people in our country have the misunderstanding. They consider that, maybe in Bhutanese as well in Tibetan or in Ladakhi, those students with a good practice of patience, are very quiet, maybe, but not necessary! In this society, we say that those kids who are very quiet “Oh he is very good, he is very quiet”, are very good, maybe yes, maybe not.
If you think all the bad things about other person who harm you, even it doesn’t matter whether you say something or not, you shouldn’t consider that as a practice of patience. It’s good that you’re not saying something, if you don’t say something that is not harming the other person but you are harming yourself and that is not a practice of patience.
If you are holding that anger in you and actually from one point of view, holding that without dealing with it, holding a pain, that is sometimes more dangerous. If you hold it for a long time it will create loneliness in you and it will literally disturb you, it will make you unhappy, that’s not healthy for physical body as well. So if this is not a practice of patience then the question is “what is the practice of patience?”
Now I would literally classify the practice of patience into two:
- thinking or concentrating on the disadvantages of getting anger is one way, and
- another way is thinking of the advantages of not being angry.
Very simple! Practice of patience is thinking the negative results or disadvantages of being angry and concentrating on the advantages of not being angry.
If you concentrate this part for a while you will see a huge transformation in yourself. You will start to see it in few days. I used to be short-tempered, but when I became a monk like 11, 12, 13 years old, around the 14 or 15 years old I really was able to transform myself through some of these practices and the majority of these practices come from perhaps six, seven points. I’m going to see the disadvantages of getting angry, and you need to concentrate and meditate on each point for about two minutes a day, if it is possible, you can practice two minutes in the morning, two minutes in the evening on each seven points, so you need to give like 14 minutes in the morning, 14 minutes in the evening. Very little effort!
You just need to give half an hour a day or just 14 minutes a day, it’s a very small invest and then you’re going to get a huge result for the whole life. You forget about merits, forget about next life, good rebirth and these things, but even in this life you’re going to find a huge amount of results, a positive result, much happier, much peaceful, when you become old, people will love to be around you.
But if you are so angry, when you become an old man or an old woman, if you have a very short temper because you’re angry, people will feel uncomfortable to be around. Even with the monks, if some senior very old monks are really short-tempered and they say all the bad things, even the young monks don’t feel comfortable to go around. So forget about next life, even for this life, it’s very helpful if you don’t have anger, if you don’t have a growing anger, if you are able to control your anger, you are very peaceful.
Eight points of patient practice
Now let’s go to those eight points, these are really very precious, it may sound very easy, it may sound whatever it is. But these are the methods not only from Buddha himself but also from the Great Nalanda Masters, such as Chandrakirti, Shantideva and so forth. You’re going find these methods, these skills, these techniques in those books written by them and also, of course, in Buddha’s sutras. So I would strongly suggest you can go on each point for about two minutes a day.
This is quite interesting and I have many students who have been practicing, who have practiced, who are starting to practice nowadays and the consequences are quite visible. Many of my students really like the classes with me. There are some students who really like my class just because of this teaching these points, because they found that this has totally changed their life. So what are the eight points?
The first point: if you get angry you will lose your values, you will lose your respect and reputation.
Suppose you have your life principles, everybody has this principle like “I’m not going to hurt anyone, I’m not going to say this to anyone” and based on your life principles, you have a respect towards yourself and you have a respect from others; and based on those respects you have a reputation among your family, your friends and your community. If you are in a school, in your school; if you’re in a college, in your college; if you’re in an office, in your office, you get angry, you lose your values.
When you lose your values, you lose your self-confidence, you don’t know what you are, you think that you are very nice person, but then you are not as you think. At the end of the day, based on your actions speaks otherwise, people will start to judge you, if you have a very good reputation in the eyes of people, it won’t be there anymore.
I won’t go with lots of stories on this point, I think this is quite enough for you to understand the first point that it loses your values, it takes away the respects that you have from yourself and from others, you also reduce your reputation. So concentrate on this one for two minutes, it’s like a free, you can think of any example that is relevant to you, relevant to your life that has happened to you, that has happened to your friends or your family member or some people, that has happened to some people in the history. Actually you can meditate on this topic as long as you want but I just want you to go through two minutes with the things that really move your heart.
The second point: if you get angry, it not only makes you unhappy but it destroys the happiness of those people who are so beloved to you.
When you came to this world, you came naked, with nothing, not even a single piece of clothe. I don’t know whether you have a head at the time, but you pretty much have nothing from that age. From that time your father and mother and your family members have been taking care of you as if you are their body. They respect you and they took care of you much more than their own body. If somebody hurt you, a mosquito bites you, then many people kill it, right? Just hurting you a bit and then you kill that mosquito. And those family members, they literally ignore their own physical body to give you a birth, they might go through the unhealthy food in order that you can have a healthy food. They might sacrifice their own delicious food that they want to eat by thinking that “It might not good for the baby that I have in my stomach”.
Imagine that you are carrying a bag of two kilos on your back for one day, how difficult would it be? And our mothers have been carrying in her own stomach for like 24/7 for nine months, it doesn’t matter whether it makes her sound uncomfortable or comfortable, it doesn’t matter how hard it is, even with the sleeping, some mothers had to change the sleeping position because it’s not unhealthy way to sleep when they are having a baby.
I’ve heard that some women they have been through many sleepless nights because they had to change the sleeping position for the baby. There are some people who like to sleep by just downwards, they can’t sleep like that when they’re having a baby, I mean having a baby in their stomach. And some people have been sleeping in that position for the whole life, and then all of a sudden, one has to change and can’t fall in sleep in this way.
And the woman want to eat a delicious food but she cannot because she thinks that it might not good for her baby. Likewise it’s not only our mother but also our father and our relative and our family members, they have sacrificed a lot. If we are left unattended, suppose you are like a one year old infant, you eat everything right? If somebody gave you like a pencil sharpener, you’re going to eat; if somebody give you a spoon, you’re going to eat; if you find a coin, you’re going to eat; you’re going to eat everything; if you get a pen you’re going to eat the pen. So you have been guided by your parents like 24 hours, otherwise you’re going to tap everything to your face and then you would be like full of scars, if your parents have not been taken care of you when you were young. So such people, who have really sacrificed not only nine months but also a lot of time, have been your watchmen for a quite long period of time.
If somebody asks you to give your nutrition from your body, if somebody asks that “I’m going to pull all your nutrition from your body by through some injections” for his body, you will not agree. Who would agree? But that’s exactly what our parents did, our mother did, especially.
If you are unhappy, especially if you are angry, no matter how hard you try to hide it from your parents, your parents see it, even if you try to talk something very normal, people see on your face. If you have the fire of anger in your heart, then the smoke comes out of your mouth, you cannot hide the fire? No. You may think that “Okay I’m going to put a blanket on it” or “I might put something on the fire”. You won’t, you might press down the fire but the smoke comes out.
Exactly the same way, you might think that “I’m not going to express this anger in my family when I got back”. Suppose you are angry in your office but when you come back house, even if you try to talk something nice, it’s not usually, people sense it. Even if you’re not showing some angry, you are very straightforward, it makes your family unhappy, who live with you, who share the house with you, who share the food with you, who have been having the meal from one vessel, who you’ve been sharing the kitchen, who you’ve been sharing the bathroom.
So this is the second point, if you are angry, it not only ruins your happiness but it also ruins the happiness of your family members who have been kind, beloved, who have been there, who have stood there when you had nothing; who have stood there whole of the time, whole of the day in your life, it makes them unhappy. Suppose you are angry to your neighborhood then you are hurting yourself, you’re hurting your parents, you’re hurting your family members, and it’s really not fair.
The third point: when you have the anger in you, it is like a fire, it burns you.
Suppose you are so angry to Tashi, Tashi said something, Tashi wrote a message to you and maybe he did not mean that but he doesn’t even know that you are angry on him. But what happen? You hold this anger and you think about the message again and again. Then what happens? It just creates a sort of fire in you and then it burns yourself, you don’t even know what is happening to the Tashi.
The anger has two faces, one face is when you get angry, you never see the object as it is, you see the object much worse than it actually exists. Tashi actually is Twenty percent bad, but when you are angry to Tashi, forty percent, sixty percent, eighty percent, even ninety percent, sometimes even one hundred percent you would see Tashi is so bad whatever he does it back, that can happen.
So the first face of anger is that it exaggerates the situation, it sees the situation much worse. And the second face of the anger is it want to hurt. If somebody said like “you look like a monkey” then your natural innate responses is like “No, you look like monkey”. Because the another face of anger is to hurt back, so you try to hurt back, verbally, physically, that’s why you say “You look like a monkey.”
Also if a mosquito bites you, it hurts you, and you are angry, and then the immediate response is to kill it back. Mosquito is taking just one drop of your blood and then you are taking its life, and it’s not really fair, but this is how it is when you get angry, this is how what the people seems to be doing.
Unfortunately, this is like so naturally, you don’t even think about it, it looks like pretty much unintentional, because you’re so used to this anger for many past lives, that’s why when you’re born from a very early age, you don’t need to be taught how to get angry. Nobody teach you to get angry but that’s what you’ve been doing in the whole previous life, you don’t need to be taught how to get jealous, you just know it, okay?
This is a bit explanation of what anger is, anger is mentally a mental consciousness, anger is a mind which has two faces, one face, it exaggerates the situation and sees the situation much worse and the second face is that it want to hurt back, harm back.
So the third point, if you are angry to Tashi, it doesn’t hurt Tashi at all, it desires to hurt Tashi, but Tashi doesn’t know, it is not affected at all, what you’re doing is creating this fire inside you which burns you, which takes away the peace in your mind. And maybe you’re eating a very delicious food, no taste! Maybe you are with your most beloved people surrounded, not nice! Maybe you are having a nice party but then you’re not happy because you just had a fire with Tashi and you still have that anger in you, isn’t it? So whatever you do is not pleasure.
Think about that is one of the points to reflect on disadvantages of anger, because it doesn’t burn the other side, it burns yourself, it’s more like you want to burn neighbors’ whose house and what you are doing is burning your own house, there’s the level of stupid that the anger creates. So that’s why we should control our negative emotions, we should not let those control us, we try to control the negative emotions and convert them into positive. That’s what Dharma means, that’s what the real practice of Buddhism, Buddha’s teaching is.
The fourth point: if you have that anger again and again, it creates a sort of loneliness and you lose your friends and your good relation.
For example, if you are a student, you might have a good relation with your teacher but if you show anger to the teacher, then it breaks. If you are a teacher, you get angry to the student, every time you get angry, you create some scars into the image of the relation that you have. If a monk get angry to a person, he or she starts to lose the faith towards the monk. Monk should be the one who set this example for the people and if the monk starts to show the signs of not practicing Dharma, not transforming, then he loses their faith. This goes with everyone and it creates a sort of loneliness. Suppose you have five close friends, you got angry to this one, now you don’t have a good relation with this one, you’re angry to this one and then you angry to this one, this one and this one and at the end of the day you becomes more and more angry. You will be with lesser and lesser friends and won’t feel like sharing your secrets even what you feel in your heart, and as a consequence you will be more and more lonely.
The fifth point: when you are angry, you lose your capability to analyze the good and the bad, your analytical mind, your decision making ability, your intellectual brain is not going to work anymore.
When people are so angry, they become like crazy, they become so stupid, they harm those people who are most precious to them. Like I’ve seen, mothers always love children above anything else, I’ve seen many mothers divorced their own husbands for the sake of children. Many of the times, I’ve seen that there is a lot of domestic violence going on but the woman is still not divorcing with her husband for the sake of children. She’s literally sacrificing her happiness, she’s being with the person who she doesn’t like anymore who is harming her, for what? For the children.
What I’ve seen many women doing, especially in Asian countries, I don’t support that personally but that’s how people are doing out of their love with their kids. Even if the mother loves the kids much but if the mother is angry, she’s being a bit violent to the kids. This is really sad but this is what is happening, not acceptable according to Buddhism. If you beat children, you’re literally killing the confidence in the children. If supposed to ask some questions, people don’t ask easily, people hesitate to ask some questions, because they’ve been pressed down by their parents, by their teachers. In many schools, some teachers are being a bit violent, and as a consequent, it might help the children to get few more marks in exam but they fail in confidence, they fail in life because they’re lacking of confidence.
I won’t make it clear right or wrong, but personally I don’t support that, I’ve heard from some Masters and Teachers saying that it’s okay to bring a violence sometimes. It’s their opinion but I personally don’t agree with that.
Anyways the point is if you have a very good decision making mind and very good analytical ability, very intelligent and sharp to make decision, but when you are angry, it just blocks all those brains, you just block all this intellectual part, it creates you a bit of stupid.
That’s why if you go to a prison, in India there is a big prison called Tahar Jail. There was an interview once with all those people who are murderers and when they are asked “Why you do that”, majority of them say that “I don’t know, I really don’t know, I feel like a demon inside me”. The demon is nothing other than anger, when they got it, they don’t know what they were doing and they regret the whole life, they go to the prison, they suffer over there. Even if they go out of the prison, they don’t get a proper job because all others think that they’re murderers. What happened? Why? Because they were angry. So the fifth point is that it decreases your intellectual part, it pushes you in ignorant darkness as a consequence you don’t know.
The sixth point: when you are angry, people don’t feel you’re nice, people don’t think you are friendly enough to be around
It doesn’t matter how good you look, not only the physical but gesture. It says that beautiful attachment is not only the color, not only the shape, but also the gesture, like if you smile you are a beautiful person. A bit more of smile is also one of the biggest parts of beauty. And the beauty is not something that a person can judge or two persons can judge, because it depends very much on individuals, not all. Not one phone is beautiful for everyone, not one pen is beautiful for everyone. Everybody like different pens, different cars, different color of the hairs. In Asia, culturally, maybe it is not really nice to have different colors of the hairs, you might not have varieties of colors of your hairs, but it’s not necessarily meant that you like the black. Even with a dog, it looks beautiful, there are many other dogs that really love it, and if you give a choice to a dog like “You can choose anyone in this world as your wife or as your husband”, the dog will never choose a human, the dog will choose a dog because for it that dog is the most beautiful.
So exactly for every human, there is the different beautiful ones to them. In one of the conferences, I was telling that each and every phenomena, not just human, but each and every phenomena is beautiful, it has its own entity, because it is beautiful for someone, so based on that how beautiful you are to someone, if you are angry, you are reducing that beauty of you.
And this is good to say in Ladakh, I don’t see people are focusing much on the appearance, because I haven’t seen that much of make-ups and surgeries and so forth. But there are some places where some people focus very much on the physical appearance, I can easily say because I can see a lot of make-ups on. And all these things, it’s good, it’s a self-respect in one sense, but at the same time, if you lose the beauty of gesture, I think that’s the main thing.
A person can be beautiful by characters, manner, gesture and for Asians maybe colors. Unfortunately, this is really strange, but this is one of the reasons in Tibetan or in Buddhism as well, we can say who is more like a virtue, who is more like a sin. If you see a black cat “Oh it’s bad because it’s a black cat”.
So there is a huge discrimination based on colors and we have been raised in such an atmosphere which is why the white is maybe considered as a bit better, I don’t know. But everybody like to eat chocolate and people don’t care when it comes to eating chocolate isn’t it? And when it comes to hairs, people don’t like white, people start to get to worry. And when it comes to teeth, people like white.
Maybe in Buddhism we should not see the phenomena or discrimination based on colors and that’s not how we should think, but anyways, when you get angry, it doesn’t matter how you are beautiful, you reduce that value of the beauty and you don’t look nice. Also you are very nice persons to be around, you are very friendly person to be around, but when you are angry, people don’t feel you’re nice, people don’t think that you are friendly enough to be around. That is for the sixth point.
The seventh or the second last point: when you’re so angry, it breaks the long-term relationship.
Suppose you have a very long time relationship with your clients, that is a huge thing when it comes to a business. The long-term relation really makes a sense because that creates a sort of trust and even if you do some minor mistakes, people understand you, because they have been knowing you for a very long time. But if you keep getting angry again and again, then it breaks that long-term relationship. That can be even with a friend, neighborhood, family relative, customer, teacher, student, whatever it is. So the seventh point is it breaks the relationship that you have been earned and you have been taking care from many years.
The eighth point: when you’re so angry, you want to hurt other, that is only for your ego.
I’ve asked some people “Why you want to hurt others?”, “Because if I hit that person, that person hit me, say me something very bad, I see, if I say something very bad to that person I would be so happy, it would really help me so much, I will find a peace in my mind etc.”
Now the eighth point is when someone hurts you, you want to hurt back because you think that is going to benefit you, that is going to make something change in you, it would really help you or it will bring peace and things like that. But if you think carefully where does it bring peace? Where? Does it bring peace in your hand? Does it heals your scar? Does it helps you to grow your teeth back? Nothing, it doesn’t help your physical body at all.
Check. Does it help your eyes? Does it help your hairs? Does it help your hands? None of our physical body has been benefited. Then which is benefited? What is benefited? Or what’s nice or what’s beneficial that you’re talking about? If you just check closely, if you hurt someone back, does it help your compassion? No. Does it helps your patience? No. Does it help your refuge to the Buddha? No. Does it help any of your positive mind? No. But do you think that it helps your mind? It gives a peace in your mind? So which mind that you’re talking about? If you closely check that, it is only your ego, if you hit back, it only helps your ego, it only gives some peace to your ego.
That ego who has been torturing your whole life, that ego who have been refraining you from getting knowledge from your friends, that ego who also put you down sometimes. What’s the point of feeding that ego which has been hurting you the whole life? If you hit back, if you say something back, all its benefits only enhance, all it promotes, all it helps is your ego. Is it really worth feeding your ego by hurting others? By saying bad words to others, even if a person says? But remember you don’t need to be a stupid, you don’t need to pretend like you don’t know it. You can say that “I know what you have said to me is bad, but I’m not saying something bad to you because that’s not me”. What other people say to you, what other people do to you shows what other people is, that shows the way person is. What you react, the way you react shows the way you are, that shows the life values that you have. But you don’t need to pretend like you don’t know it, then people will take advantage like “He’s so stupid”, “It’s okay that I can just bully him or her, it’s okay if I just release all my tension by yelling at this person”. You need to tell them “Okay I’m also living being with the feelings, but yes, sometimes it is good to just keep quiet at the time”. You can tell the person after few hours when the person seems a bit more normal. Maybe you can say tomorrow in the office or at the school that “Yesterday you really said this and that but then I thought like maybe it’s okay, this happened to everyone if you understand” and then people embarrass, it really changes, it really pushes the person to think.
Now please spend just two minutes for each eight points every day, if you really love yourself, twice a day, if you don’t care much about yourself, then just go on with one. Like your family, your parents are important but it is only you, the real best friend who always stood beside you, the real friend who always is with you, is yourself. You are your friend, you are the best friend who always were there. Mind creates something bad, mind got angry and then the physical body got pain, the mind decides to eat something spicy and then the physical tongue has to suffer.
Now it’s time to do something good for yourself, be compassionate to yourself, love yourself. It’s worth doing it for the peace of your mind, for the happiness of your family. If you are very calm, compassionate, then you become a person who everybody loves to be around. You can ask to everyone this, I say to majority of my students that some people think that “I don’t have much friends, I don’t have these friends”. They complain of themselves, they might not say, but they complain in their heart. But then if you make a survey to the whole world, you ask everyone what kind of friend they really want to have? Then each and every person will say that “I need a kind friend, understanding friend, a friend who is not getting angry, a friend who is not getting jealous, a friend who is not selfish, a compassionate friend, a friend who are there to help when you need”. Everybody will say this.
Perhaps some people will say that “It doesn’t matter even a friend is jealous, angry, selfish whatever if he is rich, he’s okay”. Maybe some people might say that, but even if a person is rich, if he is very selfish, angry, jealous and then arrogant on all these things maybe you won’t like it, maybe you go along for like two days, three days, but then you won’t be there, even if you are a friend of an actor or an actress, the world most famous actor or actress. If he or she is very selfish, short-tempered but jealous and ego and all these things, you won’t find peace to be around that person. At the end of the day, everybody like a kind, understanding, compassionate, loving one, if he’s there for you when you ready meet, you like that kind of friend, isn’t it?
Conclusion
So if you make yourself such a person, if you transform yourself to be a friend, to be a person who is kind, understanding, compassionate, loving, who help others when there is a need, then you literally are an eligible to someone, who everybody want. If you make yourself such a person, then you have created a person that everyone in this world wants you to be their friend.
Now as long as people know you, everybody want you to be their friend, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a king or a queen or a beggar or a rich or a poor. So, why don’t you make such a person out of yourself. That’s exactly what Buddha told, that’s what Buddha said “Transformation is what you’re needed”.
I would like to say if you love yourself, then you can transform this love, you can expand this love. If you don’t love yourself, then you cannot expand it to others. If you don’t have a compassion to yourself, you cannot expand this compassion to others. If you really have that compassion to yourself, then try to remove the pain, you need to remove the causes of pain that can come from negative actions, negative actions come from emotions like anger. So to remove the anger, you need to practice patience, the way to practice patience is these eight points. So spend two minutes by being compassion towards oneself and with that request.
The Note Down of A Dharma Talk on Anger by Lama Nawang Kunphel.
Source.
youtu.be/D3AfRp08kKs