Anger

Illustration credited to Alex Hill

Friends and Readers,

This is not an exposition on the phenomena of anger, but it is my anger that I will be pouring out. As the religious have for eons written confessions, dreams, and their angers as well, it is my turn.

We Buddhists attempt to channel our anger (hopefully not just get rid of it, ultimately impossible) in the proper ways, through meditation, through action, through illumination and through community activities. These can all be either positive reactions or negatives to the anger that is boiling within us, but I am getting off topic. Let me tell you what is making my own blood boil.

I am angry that many have lost the need for depth in life. In fact, I am furious. Just today I was serving a gentleman  (I’m a waiter, which is the fate that befalls us philosophers) who looked at me after I told him I study philosophy and said,

“Why don’t you study something useful like economics?” I am still infuriated by this notion and I am now shifting by belief that I have no reason to prove to anybody why philosophy is still important, they have to show me why it's not.

I am angry that we believe we can ultimately be pleased by a surface existence. Popular culture has no evil intrinsically, but my satisfaction cannot be sustained by watching the latest TV show, no matter how good, by the most recent fashion fad (which will change in a few hours anyways).

My anathema is the continuation of staring into screens, onto pages, into each other and only seeking information. Catalogs only suffice to those who want more of the surface. The ocean is much more than just how far it stretches, but its depths make it the most mysterious of all. We are like this. You will only find some life on the surface of the ocean but to be a functional habitat for the trillions of life-forms that live there, depth is required.

Walt Whitman said there is a multiplicity within us, there are lives within us, depths to be explored, criticized, praised, changed, and kept. It infuriates me to state that our lives can be lived happily enough if we just stay on the surface. Yes, the depths are dangerous, dark, sometimes bringing from themselves nightmares and poisonous serpents but without those depths, there would be no surface for us to frolic on.

There is ferment within me. The inferno within wishes to engulf the sick belief that money automatically means anything at all besides being money. This is hardly anything new, in fact, I am beating a field of dead horses by writing any of this, but the inferno is only growing and cannot be contained. Money automatically means happiness? No. Money automatically means evil? No (despite how lovely this view looks).

Our egos have exploded and grow to disproportionate sizes—a sex tape conjures the belief that one is a celebrity who requires attention, fame, money, power. The surface, it seems, has satisfied us and has turned us into monsters. We are zeppelins that are inflated with the thin hydrogen of our most basic desires. We fly around, slowly, demanding awe from the onlookers who will only shortly burn up in the crash along with us and just another moron (pardon my French) will attempt to rebuild it, alter it just slightly, and set it up into the sky.

I am tired of dogmatism—certainty stains the eyes and the souls. I am not arguing with matter-of-facts, I am not proposing, asking, or trying to even all together persuade why all of these lead to horrendous ends, we have seen it time and time again. I am demanding that it STOPPPPPPPPP.

Has our beasthood (which is not to criticize the animal world, which is not ‘beastly’ as we like to believe, in order to inflate our own egos some more) taken over? Soon we shall be shedding our skins and underneath will not be another layer of skin, but bones and muscle. We have become this dull. We have become boring, incapable of opening our minds to foreign concepts (and the more tragic part, to “foreign people.”) We treat those who are different with disgust because they are not us.

This has gone so far that we even spread democracy with the gun. Really?????????????

What is all of this for? For life? For happiness? This provides no happiness for me, it drives me to the belief that there’s something wrong with me. How sick. Am I to believe that my belief that we have dimensions of us (and the world) that are unexplored and won’t be, that things change; there are variations and perspectives, that philosophy is dead, that the humanities are dead—no—that humanity is dead.

These are not my wishes. Humanity shouldn’t continue to decay in its iniquity, it should reach and fish within its own dangerous depths to find the pearls that only lurk at the bottom of the seas. I don’t have the answers my friends, I have my frustrations, my convictions, my love and my hope and for now, I have my life and that will suffice. But know, because I have my life, hope, convictions etc. I will not just sit idly and be satisfied with only things that I’m “supposed” to be satisfied with. I am furious that people are becoming automatons because I know for a fact they are not, but reorienting themselves to be. Let’s stand together, move together, love together and all go fishing together, within ourselves, so that we may come to the bottom and bring the pearls to the surface, which will illuminate the waves that crash along the shores of our lives.

Confronting Conflict and Avoiding Extremes

During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived - everyone except the Zen master. Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn't treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger.
"You fool," he shouted as he reached for his sword, "don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!"

But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved. "And do you realize," the master replied calmly, "that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?"

Drenched in the blood of martyrs and saints, heroes and villains is the brutal, and sadly sometime necessary human activity of conflict. Whether it takes a singular form, one person versus one person, or a much larger rage of one culture versus one culture, somewhere, before reason was set aside and emotions took the rank of general, there was lost a beautiful and fleeting opportunity for one side to stand naked before compassion and take the difficult road of understanding and reconciliation. Conflict itself can be violent or non-violent, verbal or physical and is one of the most difficult experiences we us as humans must endure. It is the ultimate expression of extreme beliefs we all take.

Everyday, we all in someway or another participate in small scale conflicts, pushing our notions and concepts over others, or enduring others aggression towards us. We may say we can rise above the fray and be above conflict, but we all know it is neither as easy nor practical for us to follow the lead of the Zen Master in the story above. When it comes to conflict, it maybe difficult at times to figure out what the right thing is to do. So, do we stand our ground no matter the cost or do we give in realizing their may not be a absolute right or wrong?

For there may not be much we can, as singular people, do to defuse large scale conflicts and war, but as individuals, as Buddhists, we can most certainly seek a mindful understanding of personal conflicts, whether at work or home, with friends or strangers. When one side see's an attempt of the other side to reach out a hand of friendship and a kind smile, many volatile situations will resolve quicker and with much less hardship than those that make no attempt at reconciliation. However, nobody expects you to relinquish your point of view or conception of a certain situation, and to do so would just lead to you being stepped on and taken advantage of in future dealings. As in all things, a balance is key.

As tired as you maybe of hearing it, we all know there is almost always a middle way. With right effort and compassion, I see we can indeed become a shepherd of compromise, a voice reason, even in the face of intolerance or ignorance. Perhaps we can point out our similarities and the areas we agree rather than exaggerate the places we do not. 'Hate begets hate' and as Booker T Washington said " I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. " I promise you, when you make an effort to be kind, listen, compromise, you will shock yourself how far the virtues of consideration, charity and grace do go.

Martin Luther King Jr said

"On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man."