Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Thubten Gyatso, also known as Adrian Feldman, addresses one of Buddhism’s most universal challenges in this 45-minute talk on dealing with anger and cultivating patience. He begins with a precise definition of anger as the desire to harm another being or ourselves, then maps anger’s many disguises—belligerence, resentment, jealousy, spite, and lack of compassion—so listeners recognize it in subtle forms. The heart of the teaching lies in understanding anger’s five main faults: it destroys positive karma accumulated over lifetimes; it is our worst enemy, more destructive than any external adversary; it steals present peace of mind and physical health; it clouds reason and leads to harmful action; and it ultimately isolates us. He explains the immediate cause of anger is irritation and unhappiness, not the root cause, and teaches concrete techniques to interrupt the progression: logical analysis of whether a problem can be fixed (either way, agitation worsens it); reframing difficulties as natural consequences of karma and affliction; using small problems as training for larger inevitable sufferings; and cultivating compassion by recognizing the other person’s anger as a mental sickness. He cites Śāntideva’s Bodhisattva’s Way of Life as a deeper resource and concludes with Q&A on anger management methods, meditation, and the tension between Buddhist and Western psychology approaches to anger. Suitable for practitioners beginning to work with difficult emotions and those seeking doctrinal grounding for emotional practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 DE 1995 10 21.mp3
UUID: d3679b04-3427-4f93-8902-ae16f8faccb8
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Dealing With Disturbing Emotions (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 1995-10-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~5,077
So I’ve said a little bit about the false appearance, what we call the I-grasping ignorance, is the root of our problems. I wanted to cover now a more detailed discussion of the disturbing emotion of anger because this is a universal problem and we need to know how to deal with anger when it occurs in our mind. First of all, when we’re talking about anger, we need to be clear what it is that we’re discussing. Defined, anger is defined as being an attitude in our mind where we have the sort of desire to inflict harm upon another person or another living being or an attitude wanting to harm even our self. When there is some pain or suffering, some unpleasant thing about our own being, We have anger towards our self or we can have anger towards even an inanimate object.
We can be angry at a stone if we stub our toe on it. We want to harm it, want to smash it. When I was a kid I remember I had a really bad toothache. The dentist extracted the tooth and gave it to me So I took it home which was next door and put it on the concrete path and smashed it with a hammer. So there’s anger towards an inanimate object.
Now, so anger in so anger is this attitude of wanting to inflict harm on something that’s disturbing us. Right? Now, it doesn’t mean where people are causing harm that we shouldn’t react, we shouldn’t act in a way to prevent their inflicting harm. But we don’t have to do it with anger. We can indeed feel a sense of injustice within society where we see one social group or individual doing a very unjust thing and oppose antisocial behavior.
But we don’t have to do it with anger. We can do it with love. In fact, we should do it with love. And love is more powerful than anger. So to not be angry does not mean that we become passive and weak and and we’re used by everybody.
Love can be extremely powerful and it is the most skillful way to deal with adverse circumstances. The best way, the only way to deal with adversity is to react with love. And as I said earlier, the expression of love can be very strong Even if what we do out of love might upset the other person, it won’t upset them as much as if we restrain them with anger and hatred. In fact, if we try to restrain others with anger and hatred, it will only increase their animosity towards us. It will only worsen the situation.
So there’s no place for anger and hatred. It only makes matters worse. Alright. Now, again, when I’m talking about anger, I’m not just talking about the gross explosive shouting, you know, red faced, wide eyed thing which we will call angry. Right?
Anger has many subtle manifestations. So very heavy is belligerence. Belligerence is a state of mind where we feel irritated. When we come close to a harmful object, actually belligerence is very heavy. It’s this mental attitude attitude of we’re about to inflict some sort of punishment or some harm upon that which is disturbing us.
Belligerent. When we’re in a belligerent mood we are really at the point of someone can say one thing and boom our reaction is very quick and very powerful and very hurtful, very hurtful to whoever or whatever it is that we don’t like. So belligerence. Then there is resentment which is more internalized. It’s like holding a grudge.
We’re not sort of at the point of fighting back resentment is grudge holding. Our mind is sort of eating away. There is this underlying grudge and dislike going on in our mind. Jealousy. Jealousy also comes from anger.
Jealousy is a feeling of dislike towards somebody and being unhappy about somebody when they have good qualities, when something good happens to them. Jealousy, this dislike, harmful thought towards others comes from anger. Other ways anger can manifest as spitefulness, you know, being spiteful and wanting to abuse, you know, to say hurtful words. You did that out of spite. We can even do things out of spite.
We don’t have to say things out of spite. Can be spiteful. See the expression of this behavior in children very much but in adults also. Harmfulness is a state of mind where there’s no compassion, and harmfulness comes from anger, a lack of compassion. Compassion is a sense of feeling, you know, empathy for the suffering of others.
And a compassionate mind only has to, you know, see others experiencing misfortune and just automatically wants to help. Harmfulness is the absence of this empathy, absence of compassion. And not only that, there is a sense of disregarding the welfare of others and even wanting them to be harmed. So, harmfulness. So, all of these are more subtle ways.
So, when I’m talking about anger, I’m talking about all of these. Now, anger is something that we all experience and we have it in different degrees. Sometimes we might think that we don’t have a problem with anger but it may be that conditions are such that things are going well and we don’t manifest anger very much. But we shouldn’t become complacent and think that we don’t have anger. If we’ve got the I-grasping ignorance we have the seeds of anger for sure.
Even though it may not be a major problem now, it can be. When it does come it is the worst problem. So it’s important that we deal with anger. And the method in dealing with anger is first to convince ourselves that it is undesirable, that it is it has faults, and it has no value. There’s nothing positive at all to be acquired from the expression of anger.
So first think about the first fault anger. Now, comes in the context of you understood karma. karma means action. And When we do things, every action we do, establish imprints upon our mind which are called karmic imprints. These are like potentials to experience things in the future.
If we do a harmful action we create a potential to experience an unpleasant result in this life or future life. If we do a helpful, pleasant action to help somebody else we create imprints in our mind to experience pleasant things in this life or in future lives. Now, imprints or these potentials in the mind, from their side they will never degenerate, that they will last life after life after life until they give their effect when the conditions are right. But from their side they don’t wane, they don’t lose their potency. But from our side we can destroy their potency.
The positive imprints of karma, what we call the accumulation of virtue or positive karmic imprints that we may have established in our mind for helping others. Their power can be totally destroyed by anger. Anger, first it weakens and then makes those positive imprints incapable of bringing the happiness that they could have. That’s a major danger that it destroys all the money in the bank, all the positive karma that’s been accumulated for future happiness is destroyed by anger. We’re not conscious of that fault but it is a major problem with anger.
The second thing to be aware about with anger in terms of its faults is that there is no greater enemy than anger. Not only does anger destroy our past merit, our past positive karma, but it prevents us from being happy in the present. Now, if our mind is captured by anger, if it’s agitated with anger, we can’t be pleasant. We can’t be happy in the present moment. Anger is contradictory to happiness.
The mind can’t be happy and angry at the same moment. It’s necessarily unhappy. That’s the nature of anger. So, not only does it destroy our past merit and the present happiness but destroys any possibility of future achievements on the path. Liberation, enlightenment, there is no way we can achieve realizations.
Understanding emptiness, developing the altruistic mind of bodhicitta, None of these achievements can be attained if we allow our mind to abide in anger. So, as it prevents the past, destroys past causes of happiness, present happiness and future happiness. It’s our worst enemy. Normally we label enemy upon something which is going to make us unhappy. Now the worst a living enemy can do to us in this life is to kill us.
Anger can do more than that. Our own anger, can bring about our death, but also it can throw us into incredible suffering in future lives. And no other person can do that. No other person can throw us into the hell realms or the hungry ghost realms or an animal realm. But our anger can do that.
Therefore our anger is our worst enemy. We have to be clear and be convinced. That’s why we’re going through its faults. The third fault, the first fault is it destroys our positive karma. The second was that there is no greater enemy.
The third fault is that when anger manifests we lose our peace of mind. When we’re agitated with anger, our body is restless, try and sleep at night and we toss and turn and just this turmoil of thoughts and we can’t sleep. Not only are we physically and mentally agitated but we can become sick. Can become physically sick with this anger can generate acute illness, blood pressure and all that stuff and even long term illness they say. Is it true?
Did I read somewhere that people with angry dispositions might have a tendency towards chronic illness, cancer even. Not everybody gets cancer for an angry person but emotional disturbance is certainly associated with the development of severe illness. That’s for sure. There’s no greater emotional disturbance than anger. It physically makes us sick.
When anger manifesting we can’t enjoy ourselves. If we’re angry and our friends try and make us happy, we just throw them out of the house. We can’t laugh at their jokes even if they give us our favorite food. We can’t enjoy the food, we can’t even taste the food because of our anger. Fact food tastes bad to our mind just because of this agitation of anger.
No way can we enjoy pleasure. We can’t relax. It’s very disturbing. The next point is that it makes us, unattractive. Even if normally we’re an attractive person, when an attractive person is angry their face becomes ugly, becomes frightening.
Little children will see us walking down the street and they’ll run away just looking at our face. We become repulsive. Fearsome. Scary. And we make others sad.
Just our presence makes others sad that they are uneasy in our company. Anger does not resolve our misery. It’s precipitated by misery. It doesn’t resolve it. It just compounds our problems and our misery gets worse and worse.
The fourth main point in the faults of anger is that anger robs us of our reason and our good sense. It makes us act irrationally. And in our irrational behavior, we expose ourselves to danger and also our loved ones. We harm those who are close to us in this burst of aggression. We have regret afterwards, but irrationally.
We we do irrational. We say irrational things. We think crazy things. This is the fault of anger. So the final result, the final fault is that we find ourselves alone.
Our family and our friends can no longer bear to be with us and so we’re deserted by our family and friends which only makes us more angry. And then often the anger is internalized and so we resort to alcohol or even smoking. How often have you seen that somebody has given up smoking? And then they start smoking again because they get angry. They don’t care that this is going to hurt their body or their lungs.
So we internalize our anger, maybe external things and we turn it on ourselves and we damage our body and mind. When we paint the picture of anger in terms of its faults, it is a very ugly picture and there are no redeeming features of anger. It doesn’t resolve problems. It only makes them worse. Anger, if we’re right, we have an argument, but if we use anger to force our argument through, then our opponent, which might be opponent, we were angry at them, even if we were right, they were going to resent us.
We were resented. It’s not really going to make us kiss and cuddle and make up. So there is no point in getting angry in any situation and thinking that this will resolve the problem. If we win the argument with love and kindness and without shouting, without being aggressive, then the other person, even if they are still unwilling to accept that we are right, we still have given them no more reason to hate us or to dislike us. So you got the picture of anger as being something undesirable.
Now what do we do about anger? Well, the antidote to anger is patience. Patience is a state of mind and it is a state of mind where we are able to remain calm in the face of hostile circumstances, something which would normally precipitate anger. We have the strength of mind to remain calm, patient. And it is indeed a virtue.
Patience as opposed to anger, patience when it’s manifested makes us happy now and it makes us happy in the future. It is so worthwhile. So having contemplated the faults of anger we should now contemplate the benefits of patience and generate strengthen our mental quality of patience. We all have a degree of patience but we don’t have enough. As the policeman told me when he stopped me in Melbourne late at about two in the morning.
I’d stopped at this red light and it seemed to be ages and I thought, Oh, it must be broken. So I drove off. Deserted roads and of course the car behind me was a policeman. So he pulled me up and he said, You need more patience. I said, Well, thank So we all need more patience, especially me.
So the ability to remain calm despite hostility. Anyway, I was going to bring up a point of how to practice patience but that comes. Now if we think about, you know, value of patience then we should think that it really is the best thing to do in our life is to practice patience because anger has no purpose and it only causes suffering, and patience only brings happiness. Nobody wishes to suffer, and yet through anger we continue to to generate the cause of suffering. So that’s contradictory.
If we really understand cause and effect, karma and so on, it’s contradictory to want to be happy and to be angry at the same time. We will not achieve our goal of peace and happiness through anger. Thoroughly convinced of that. So, on the basis of that thorough conviction that I am going to come to grips with my anger and get rid of it, we enter into the practice of cultivating patience. Already the first part of the practice is what we’ve just done, faults of anger and seeing it as our worst enemy.
So that’s the first step is recognizing the faults of anger. The second step is to recognize why we become angry. What are the causes of anger? And to to eliminate the causes of anger. Alright.
So so the root cause of anger is, as I began talking earlier today, is the this sort of in inborn I-grasping ignorance, this self consciousness, this clinging to the self image, and preoccupation with I and my image. When that is threatened, when the self image is under threat, that’s when we become defensive. And in our defensiveness, we become harmful towards whatever it is that’s threatening our self image. So anger, the whole, you know, the fully blown anger manifests. Now, so the ultimate solution is to generate the wisdom realizing emptiness, Śūnyatā, the ultimate nature of self.
Then once we’ve realized that, there will never be a moment of anger. Well, not true actually. Even His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, has said that he could well be a Buddha actually without any anger at all. My karma, it’s difficult to say, but even if you were to say a Bodhisattva on the high levels of the path where they have realized emptiness, the Dalai Lama has explained that sometimes he can get the impulse for anger but he doesn’t act upon the impulse. So what he is actually telling us, he is teaching is that even when we realize emptiness, because we haven’t abandoned the subtle afflictions in our minds yet which have to be progressively abandoned, we can still get the impulse of anger but at least having realized emptiness we won’t act on the impulse.
We won’t create negative karma. It won’t manifest in terms of a karmic action. So it’s deeply ingrained. Ourselves who haven’t realized emptiness, not only do we get the impulse for anger but we act on that impulse and we become angry. So we have got to learn how to divide the action from the impulse.
Now the way to do that is to recognize the immediate cause of anger. The root cause of anger is the I-grasping ego. The immediate or how do you say the here and now cause of anger is irritability or unhappiness, just plain unhappiness. When we feel frustration in our wishes to experience pleasure or for things to go well, we become irritable, we become unhappy. That’s not anger, but that is the immediate cause of anger.
When our mind is irritated our fuse is very short and anger is close to the surface. We can tell when Mum or Dad comes home from work, members of the family check their body language, how the car door is closed the steps and whether mom or dad is irritable after a difficult day at work. Then we modify our behavior accordingly. If we realize there’s irritability we know that the fuse is short and that the explosion of anger can come and the happiness of the household is gone for the night or for the week. However long it takes.
So we tread very carefully. We’re practicing Buddhist psychology. We learn this at a very young age, especially when a child has broken something with mom and dad. So our immediate psychology is then to make mom and dad happy so then we’ll go and we’ll do some work that we had to do in the house and we’ll go overboard. We’ll do something we don’t even expect to do.
When Mum or Dad comes home we’ll say all these good things and then casually we’ll mention that, Oh, I’ve broken it. This is very good psychology. It works! The happier we can prepare the person, then the less angry they will be when they find out. So irritability or unhappiness is the immediate cause, the immediately preceding cause of anger.
Now for ourselves, we have to practice that psychology on ourselves. When we recognize that our body language is building up towards anger, that we are starting to get tight, muscles are clenching, our blood pressure is rising or our voice is rising, we are irritated. Then our internal alarm bells should be ringing and then we should deal with this unhappiness. This is so dangerous. It’s so dangerous.
This very terrible virus that appeared in Africa, this Ebola virus, terrible sickness causing death very quickly for everybody who comes in contact. Then when the scientists are trying to identify unbelievable precautions they carry with masks and sterile techniques to avoid contamination. They see the danger. They know the inherent danger and that really steer clear or if you have something radioactive, really take a lot of precautions. Our anger is far, far more dangerous than radioactivity than the Ebola virus is.
Much more dangerous. So that is how we should react as soon as we spot our internal signs of irritation. Then we should bring in every precaution to deal with this. Deal with the irritation before the anger explodes because once the anger explodes it’s too late. The energy is so destructive that we’ve lost control.
Now anger is controlling us. So we have got to prevent the explosion and we do that by dealing with our irritation. So let’s imagine we have recognized the faults of anger and we want to get rid of anger. Now we recognize that we are getting irritated. Alright, now how do we deal with that irritation, that unhappiness?
Then we ask ourselves, we talk to ourselves and say, this has gone wrong. Now if this problem can be resolved, why am I agitated? My agitation is not helping. The problem can be resolved. The agitation is only going to make me angry and it’s unhappiness anyway.
Get rid of it. Don’t be agitated. It can be fixed. Tell yourself. Right?
Then if the problem can’t be fixed, then think that, well, the problem cannot be resolved. Still, my agitation will not help. If I you know, it’s it can’t be turned back. And if I maintain this agitated unhappy mind, it’s only making it worse. It’s only compounding the problem.
It’s not helping in the least. And in fact, it is bringing me to the brink of anger and so it’s dangerous. So get out of that irritation. Go away, unhappiness. Get lost.
Just tell it to our minds, and you’ll be surprised how you can tell your mind to forget something, to free your mind of these unwanted, emotions when you’re convinced of the faults of anger. So that’s one way. Alright. Now if that doesn’t work, then there are other ways we we can look at that irritated sort of angry, reaction. We can I think I’ve already mentioned the thought that we recognize that agitation only worsens the pain?
If we remain unhappy then the problem or the pain gets worse. If we’re anxious and worried the pain gets worse. If we’re going have an injection and we really don’t like injections and needles, it hurts more because of our worry and our fear. Whereas if we don’t care, if we’re not worried, then it’s like a pinprick and we don’t even notice. It’s an agitated mind.
We see it with children who have a real phobia and they can’t even get them to the clinic for their injection. And they just see the needle faint. So terrified and then when it goes in it’s so painful because the mind is really their threshold. The threshold for pain decreases with agitation, with unhappiness. Agitation makes it worse whereas our threshold can be raised with less worry, less agitation.
So we say agitation means go away. Also, if problems happen, then we can tell ourselves that that’s the way life is. It’s natural, isn’t it? If these things in life are a result of karma and the afflictions and nowhere is there perfection in the wheel of life, that problems are constantly arising as a result of mental afflictions — they’re natural. So, now by thinking in that way, instead of seeing something as a problem, we can see it in reverse.
It’s not a problem. It’s actually an advantage because it helps to generate the state of mind which lets go. Lets go at our grasping at perfection within the wheel of life which we all do. Lets go at our grasping at the happily ever after myth from the children’s nursery tales and so on. The prince and the princess get together and live happily ever after.
That’s a myth. But not only is it forced into us as children but the advertising scene keeps showing all these happy beautiful people laughing and enjoying themselves. It’s a total myth. But we think that we’re not as happy and beautiful and relaxed as they are, there’s something wrong. So, that’s completely false.
So, when problems happen, we say this is exploding the myth. Not only the myth imposed upon me by society, but the myth that I imposed myself upon my ambitions for perfect life, for perfect partner, perfect children, perfect house, perfect job. We do have these expectations, but it’s unreal. So when problems come up, think this is showing me reality. And then we can let go of our expectations and we can be more relaxed.
Anyway, I don’t know whether this works for you. It can be debatable. I’m sort of and it’s hard to put it into practice. Know I can’t do it. I just read about it.
Logically, can say, well, if you could do it, it would work. So, another way of telling our mind is that, well, there are going to be big problems in life. Know? Might have certainly sickness and death and old age I’ve got to face up to. So this small problem that I’ve got now is good.
It helps me to train. If I can endure small problems, then that endurance that will strengthen my mind to deal with the bigger problems which are just around the corner in life. And that’s true. Also, when we experience pain and suffering we can use that to generate compassion by understanding the suffering that others in similar situations are experiencing. So instead of being agitated and unhappy, we can see the advantage of the situation that it enables me to generate compassion and understanding of the suffering of others.
So these different attitudes that we should look towards the suffering circumstances in order to overcome anger. Otherwise, like if somebody is hostile towards us, alright, they’ve got a problem with anger. Okay, but we’ve got a problem with anger too without an angry reaction. So that’s what we want to deal with. So we think well well who caused this situation to happen?
Sure it’s mutual but there has to be some condition from my side which makes this person angry towards me. So if we understand that then we have less chance of getting angry in response to their harm. Also, can look at the other person who is angry at us and we can think anger is like a sickness, They’re suffering from an illness in their mind. So it’s not right to respond and harm them back just as if somebody in our family goes crazy and even tries to kill us, we recognize that we’ve got a mental sickness and we don’t inflict harm but we restrain them and we seek help. Similarly when somebody is angry at us we see it as like sickness and try to prevent the harm that they are causing and restrain or ease the situation and then we try to help however we can.
So, this advice comes from there’s a book called The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Śāntideva, the great Indian pandit. Chapter six is the chapter on the development of patience. He goes on many verse after verse of how to deal with anger and cultivate patience. I recommend that you follow-up and read not only the root text but commentaries on the text if you want to get more information on dealing with anger. Any questions or any discussion?
Probably. As long as we’re not harming the person or visualizing that this pillow is the person, then it could be dangerous. But if we recognize that we’ve got this pent up emotional energy and we do something to release that, I think that would be okay as long as we know what we’re doing. Are letting off steam and certainly we all recognize that if we do bottle up our resentment, like maintain it and just bottle it up, then indeed there could be psychological problems resulting from that and that’s true. So it’s not right to bottle it up.
What the Lamas say, they say it’s not skillful to act on the impulse towards the object of our anger. If we can’t do anything, at least we should separate ourselves from the object, get out of the room if we can’t control our anger in any other way. Separate from the object and then let it come up and deal with it in any of these ways that I’ve mentioned. Maybe shouting, if that helps. I find that meditating and what we do in the meditation that we did in the beginning, remember we generated love and compassion.
We sent to our mother, our father, our family and friends and then our enemies. These are the irritable persons. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to send love there. But we should try.
And so having imagined them there, we contemplate the good qualities and forgiveness and then we can actually send love. So that’s a good way if we can handle it. But sometimes we can’t even think of the person without it. Even if we see them walking down the street, we’ll cross the other side of the street or we’ll turn around and go the other way. We even get angry at their dog or we see their car we get angry.
I think it is useful to analyze why we’re getting angry. I don’t think it’s necessary but if we have understanding then sure. I think any method that recognizes our anger as being a problem and wanting to deal with our anger in a skillful way is worthwhile. Is that what you meant? If we see What?
Our anger Mainly I think we should concentrate on our side of the deal, our role in problem. The point is that we’re trying to avoid this anger towards a harmful person. We can’t stop their anger immediately. What we’re trying to stop is our anger, our anger response. So there are these different ways.
In Western psychology it’s difficult because say anger is justified and we’re encouraged to express anger and fight back. And they say that anger exists therefore