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.

The Squirrel Master

Tom over at Homeless Tom wrote a quite pertinent and interesting post entitled "Is hatefulness outside the realm of Buddhism?" Over the last few weeks I have seen myself, on both sides of the fence, how ignorance, anger and hate have and do propagate through the internet, from Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.

Tom writes;

"But we Buddhists know better than others that America's chutzpah is its Achilles' heel. The arrogance and creaturely neediness of Americans dams the way to happiness" then suggests "The easiest of it ought to be to embrace what seems hateful: to understand it and engage it."

I think Tom definitely hit the mark about conquering hate by embracing it to understand it. Hate is unfortunately inevitable, and we will all at some point in our lives experience both being on the receiving side of it or on the initiating side of it. It can even be argued that hate is the pinnacle expression of destructive human emotions; however, I don't see this as an entirely bad thing. Indeed, if we are mindful of ourselves, and how these types of negative and harmful emotions arise within our own minds, I think it can actually benefit our practice.

Carrying around hate is much like trying to physically hold an angry squirrel in your hand. Ok, yea thats silly, but hear me out....I know first hand that actually trying to hold an angry squirrel is one of the most unpleasant yet hilarious experiences a person can endure. It was brutally hot that Sunday afternoon in July 18 years ago, and the squirrel looked so cute, furry and innocent, so being the teenager I was I took the unfortunate decision that I wanted to hold him. In not one of my more brilliant moments as a member of an advanced animal species I reached down and picked him up like I was picking a flower from a plant. The squirrel obviously startled, proceeded to immediately chomp down into my hand and violently flail about with his claws, trying desperately to get away. My brother, both amused and worried, shouted at me, "Why are you holding that squirrel?" In the chaos of the moment, with the blood and the fur and the squirrel teeth and the little mini claws flashing about me like some slow motion epic battle scene, all I could utter were the words "Fucker bit me!" Despite his unrelenting assault on my arms, hands and face, I sensed I was engaged in a mortal struggle of man vs. squirrel and for some egotistical (i.e. stupid) reason I just wouldn't let go. When I finally had enough and let him go, my brother said I looked like I was attacked by an army of extremely aggressive kittens.

Although extremely humorous now, I had let my pride and ego speak louder than my good judgment and common sense, hence I got my ass kicked by a squirrel. Many times I think we fail to make the connection between hate or other powerful emotions and our own suffering; preoccupying our thoughts and mind with this protection of ego and pride. This is where our knowledge and practice of Buddhism can help us identify the root of hate and understand the nature of attaching to such painful thoughts and emotions. When we make an effort to understand how confusion and suffering arise within ourselves, we can begin to see the beauty of the practice of mindfulness and meditation. It is in this moment, this magical and beautiful moment, when we bring ourselves back to this moment that we can fully understand the connection between mind and suffering, self and dukkha. While we shouldn't celebrate such destructive thoughts, when they do occur they can certainly be embraced to enhance the understanding of ourselves and our place within this world. In that moment of understanding we may be able to finally see the significance of non-attachment and find true freedom of mind.

(And freedom of squirrel of course.)

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned."~Buddha