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BUDDHISM
> TEACHING: Teaching on Anger by LAMA ZOPA RINPOCHE
 While
in Taiwan, Rinpoche was taken to meet a banker. While there,
the banker asked Rinpoche why we get angry - and Rinpoche gave an impromptu
teaching, which resulted in the man and some of his secretaries requesting
Rinpoche’s blessings.
The
talk was transcribed and lightly edited by Ven Yeshe Gyatso from his notes
made while translating for Rinpoche:
(Rinpoche shows some mantras written on paper to the banker)
‘These mantras were taught by the Buddha. They are extremely
powerful mantras for purification and healing. We have a jeep where I
stay, in California. The jeep is used to travel to Madison, in
Wisconsin, where I go each year to take teachings. Along the route, we
have many farms along both sides of the road. When the jeep travels at
high speed, many insects hit the front of the jeep and the windshield,
and die on the spot. So I was thinking about what can be done that
would be beneficial for them when they die. So I wrote these mantras on
the front of the jeep. Just by their bodies touching the mantras, it
would have the effect of purifying their minds and resulting in a good
rebirth. At death, the mind separates from the body, and takes either a
positive or a negative rebirth in one of the six realms: human, deva,
hell, hungry ghosts and animal realms.
So this mantra purifies the negative karma of the dying insects as they
come into contact with it. Not only that, when the wind and rainwater
sweeping past the jeep touches the mantras and in turn touches others,
the wind and rainwater purifies the negative karma of whoever comes
into contact with it. It also plants the seed of enlightenment - the
highest enlightenment, as well as the seed of total liberation from
suffering and samsara - birth, ageing, sickness and death, in their
mindstreams.
On the right side of the jeep is written: “The source of
happiness is cherishing others”. This is to convey the message to
everyone about the correct and best way to achieve happiness.
On the left side of the jeep is written: “My religion is kindness
to others”. This quotation is often mentioned by His Holiness the
Dalai Lama in public talks and interviews.
Then, at the back of the jeep is written: “If no anger, then no enemy”. Anger is our real enemy.
About how anger arises and why it arises: Whether anger rises or not
while the other person is behaving arrogantly, being disrespectful to
you, not repaying your kindness, ignoring you or simply because that
person’s attitude towards you suddenly turns negative, depends on
your way of thinking at that time. When you see their body, speech and
mind change, whether this causes anger to arise or not, depends on your
state of mind.
In reality, it is not due to the change in that person’s
behaviour, although that looks like the actual cause for you to get
angry. It depends on your mind. For example, when the other person is
angry, if at that time your mind is filled with compassion wishing that
person to be free from suffering and problems, especially if you have
strong compassion thinking: “I want to make that person free from
all of his/her problems”, then that helps to have a positive
mind, to keep the mind in peace.
For example, when a person hits you with a stick, there is no point at
getting angry with the stick, as it is in the hand of the person. There
is no sense at all to get angry towards it. Like the stick, the person
has no freedom. The person is completely a slave to anger, completely
controlled by anger. So this person does not have the slightest
freedom. The person is being used by anger. He/She is only the
object of compassion. So when we think like this, compassion
arises, pity, wishing for the person to be free from problems.
Therefore generating compassion, especially taking responsibility to
free this person from anger, thinking, “What can I do to help to
free this person from being used as a slave by anger?” Even
though you cannot help now, you can still pray to be able to do so. In
this way, no matter how angry he/she is, it doesn’t affect you:
even though they may constantly insult you. So how anger arises is not
dependent on how the person behaves.
Thinking of the suffering they undergo, pity arises within your heart.
This causes you to have a healthy mind: seeing the person only causes
compassion to arise within you.
At that time, you only want to help that person. Also having wisdom, if
you meditate on the ultimate nature of self as empty and that person as
empty, meditating in that view of wisdom-emptiness, again anger
doesn’t arise. No matter what may happen, even though that person
may physically beat you and so forth, but with a positive mind, you
only want to help them.
When one’s mind is in a state of attachment, renouncing others
and thinking only of oneself, only working for the happiness of
oneself. This is not talking about working for future lives, working
just for this life. Then what that person does in this life:
anger, harsh words, disrespect, physically expressing with the body.
What the ego wants is respect (like nice words, love, what one’s
own mind wants), but what one receives is opposite to the ego and
attachment. Then anger arises in your mind, that state then depends on
how you label it. If you label this is bad, this is harming me.
Actually your positive mind, compassion, doesn’t think
‘harming me’. What the person does doesn’t hurt me.
If you practice patience by thinking: this person is teaching me
patience, then gradually no anger. Only the state of happiness,
so with this state no anger. So much peace and happiness comes. Because
you never get angry, you give peace to your family and numberless
sentient beings. The way to do so is through training in patience,
dependent on this person. This person is so kind. Especially when the
mind appreciates patience. From the viewpoint of patience, this person
is only kind.
With the thought of attachment, what this person did hurts the
ego. We put a negative label saying this is bad (harming me).
With attachment and anger, seeing that person as harmful and bad. Not
only did we attach a label, we believed in the label, thereby harming
the attachment and ego. Therefore you think, “This is hurting
me”. If fact, that is only one part of your mind. Your mind also
has compassion and wisdom.
If you don’t put a negative label, anger doesn’t arise.
This is due to having put a positive label - patience. When you put a
negative label, due to your attachment, you get hurt. So the enemy
comes from one’s own mind. Because attachment and anger labels
“enemy”, therefore one sees that person as enemy.
So the whole evolution is like this. Now we are coming to the point as
to why anger arises. Because negative imprints are left on one’s
own mental continuum from a past time, this plants a seed for anger to
arise again in the future. Because there are so many imprints left on
one’s own mental continuum by past anger. That’s the main
cause. When in a situation of getting angry, such as receiving verbal
abuse or physical disrespect, if you do not apply meditation - the
wisdom meditating on the ultimate nature of mind, then it’s like
encountering an enemy with no weapons or protection. At that time, the
negative imprint from past anger grows; because of past anger, again
anger arises. Meditation then becomes like taking medicine. The imprint
is the main cause, and the very source of that anger is ignorance - the
mind not knowing the nature of the ‘I’ (self).
Therefore everyday it is important to think continuously that the body
is not the ‘I’ or self, even the mind, which has no colour
and shape (formless), and is by nature clear and knowing. Even the mind
is not ‘I’.
This association of body and mind is not ‘I’, that which
tries to cease suffering and to achieve happiness. The ‘I’
cannot be found from the tip of the hairs down to the toes, anywhere,
even inside the body. This doesn’t mean that the ‘I’
doesn’t exist. That ‘I’ which exists in trying to
cease suffering and to achieve happiness, exists as an extremely subtle
phenomena; never in the way we believe it to exist (as it is appearing
to be).
What it is, is totally something else; nothing exists from its own
side, except in mere name. That is the reality of the ‘I’.
On the body, this I is never appearing in such a way, but appears as
100% true.
The ‘I’ which doesn’t exist, believing in this is ignorance, which is the root of anger and jealousy.
Anger can destroy the whole world, like Hitler, who didn’t
practice patience and ended up harming many sentient beings. So in
Buddhism, meditation is very important, especially focussing on
compassion and wisdom’.
MAY ALL BEINGS BE HAPPY!
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