And if you are a good practitioner
you have enough mindfulness in order to
handle
whatever
needs to be handled.
Suppose anger is coming up
in you, as an energy.
As a practitioner, you don't allow anger to be alone
in you,
because if you let anger be alone in you,
anger will cause a lot of damage
in your body, in your mind
and maybe around you.
And that is why you practise mindfulness of anger.
Breathing in, I know anger is in me.
Breathing out,
I smile at my anger.
I embrace my anger.
You have a seed of anger
deep within yourself,
but you also have a seed of mindfulness deep within yourself.
You have a seed of compassion within yourself.
When anger is touched,
when the seed of anger is touched
it manifests
into
a kind of energy called "anger".
Suppose this is your consciousness.
It has two layers.
The lower layer is called
Store Consciousness
and the upper layer is called
Mind Consciousness.
You have a seed of anger here.
You also have a seed of joy
of mindfulness, of compassion,
of non-discrimination.
You have a seed of anger, of despair
of jealousy, of discrimination
in the depths of your consciousness.
But when the seed of anger
is left alone there
in the Store Consciousness,
you don't water it, no one comes and touches it, you are OK.
You can laugh, and you may have a good time.
But that does not mean you do not have the seed of anger in you.
As soon as you hear someone saying something
or doing something, the seed of anger in you is touched
and it becomes a zone of energy
in the realm of Mind Consciousness.
in Buddhism
we call it a Mental Formation.
Anger is a Mental Formation.
In my tradition, we speak of
51 categories of Mental Formations.
We have the seed of discrimination in us.
We have a seed of
non-discrimination in us.
That is true.
If the seed of discrimination is watered every day
it becomes very important
and
it doesn't allow the seed of non-discrimination to manifest.
If the seed of anger
becomes stronger and stronger every day
the seed of compassion
has less chance...
And that is why
every time a negative seed is touched
and manifests
we have to take care of it.
That is why
I spoke about mindfulness of anger.
When...
Mindfulness is the capacity
of knowing what is happening. What is happening is
anger has manifested.
So as a practitioner, you ask
the seed of mindfulness to manifest at the same time.
And if you are
a diligent practitioner
the seed of mindfulness in you is strong enough
and it's very easy for you
to touch
and invite it
to come up;
and it will come up and become a zone of energy.
Suppose anger
is energy 1,
mindfulness is energy 2.
Mindfulness is mindfulness of something
and here
mindfulness of anger.
Mindfulness here has
The following function: recognizing.
Recognizing
anger as anger.
Mindfulness of breathing...
Breathing in, I know this is my in-breath.
Breathing out, I know this is my out-breath.
Recognizing in-breath as in-breath.
Recognizing out-breath as out-breath.
Recognizing drinking as drinking,
recognizing walking as walking. That's the nature,
the function of mindfulness.
So the energy of mindfulness generated by your breathing,
your walking,
has the capacity of recognizing
anger as anger.
Breathing in
I know the anger is in me.
Breathing out
I take good care of my anger.
Recognizing anger and embracing anger,
this is an art,
this is a practice. This is no fighting.
Mindfulness is generated
not to fight anger
but to recognize anger and to hold anger
very tenderly.
That is Buddhist practice.
You do not transform yourself into a battlefield... The good fighting the evil, that's not Buddhism;
because you have mindfulness, but you have also anger.
And mindfulness plays the role of an older sister,
holding
the angry, suffering younger sister
and help her to transform.
A mother
is working in the kitchen
and she hears her baby crying
and she's very much careful of her baby;
so she stops
her work in the kitchen, she puts down
whatever she is holding and she goes
to the room of the baby and the first thing she does
is to pick up the baby and hold the baby tenderly in her arms.
That's the mother. She does not know what is wrong with the baby yet,
but
the first thing she does is to pick up the baby
and hold him mindfully.
We do the same thing, as practitioners.
Every time anger, or despair comes up
we generate
the energy of mindfulness
in order to recognize and to embrace tenderly,
tenderly.
And if we know how to practise
mindful walking, or mindful breathing,
we continue to generate mindfulness
and we have that energy, in order to recognize and to embrace
and we can bring relief;
because mindfulness as an energy
is embracing anger as another source of energy
tenderly. Big brother, younger brother.
Although the mother has not
realized what is wrong with the baby,
the fact that she is holding the baby tenderly
can already bring a relief to the baby, and the baby
may stop crying;
and if the mother continues
to hold the baby tenderly with mindfulness
she will find out what is wrong.
The baby might be hungry,
The baby may have a fever
or the diaper may be too tight.
As a mother
she can find it out very quickly.
As a practitioner
you can
find out very easily
why this anger [is there];
and you can see the roots of that anger.
You will find the nature of that anger,
the root of the anger.
If the mother finds out what is wrong
with the baby, she can fix the situation
very quickly. If the baby is hungry
she can give her son some milk.
If the diaper is too tight, she can just
undo it and do it again.
So after having embraced
tenderly
your anger
you might like to continue
the practice of mindful breathing,
the practice of mindful walking
and look deeply into the nature
of your anger, and find out
what is the root of your anger.
Recognizing, embracing and looking deeply.
Because mindfulness
is the kind of energy
that carries with her
the energy of concentration.
Wherever mindfulness is
concentration is [there] also.
When you are mindful of your in-breath
you are concentrated on your in-breath.
When you are mindful of your tea
you concentrate on your tea.
And that is why
the more powerful mindfulness is
the more concentration you get;
and with that mindfulness and concentration
you practise looking deeply and you will get an insight.
And that insight is going to liberate you,
transform your anger.
There is a story
of a young boy
who used to come to Plum Village every summer
with his younger sister,
and they practise mindfulness
as children.
The boy had difficulties with his father,
he blamed his father.
Every time he fell down and got hurt
his father always shouted at him
instead of coming and help him.
So his relationship with his father
was difficult,
and he vowed when he grows up he would not be
like his father;
if he had children and then if
his child fell down and got hurt
he would not shout at him; instead he would come and try to help.
That was
his determination.
One day he was playing
in the lower hamlet, at Plum Village,
and his sister
while playing with another little girl on a hammock
fell down and got hurt,
and blood
was coming out. Suddenly
he found himself very angry;
he wanted to shout "Stupid!
How could you
do something like that?"
And because he had been practising
mindfulness, he was able
to refrain from shouting
and he recognized
that he was exactly like his father.
Instead of trying
to come and help
his sister,
he had the tendency to shout at her.
He hated
what he had within himself.
So when he practised
mindful breathing
he knew that this is the continuation
of his father inside of him;
he is not different from his father
and with that insight
he turned around and practised slow walking,
when he had seen someone coming to help his sister;
and during slow walking
he recognized that
he is the continuation of his father. The energy of anger
has been transmitted by his father
and if he does not practise
he is going to become exactly like his father
and he will treat
his children, in the future, in the same way.
That is called Samsara,
continuation.
And suddenly he had a desire,
that he had to go home and tell his father that
he has exactly the same kind of energy
and he would invite his father to practise with him.
And when that intention was born in him
his anger and resentment towards his father
began to dissolve.
What kind of insight
did he get?
He got the insight that
he is exactly like his father,
he has the same kind of habit energy.
And that is why he wanted to practise.
And he saw himself as a victim of that energy,
a victim of the transmission
of that habit energy;
and he saw that his father also was a victim
of that transmission too. His father
might have got it from
his own father.
And when he had that insight, his anger
vis-à-vis his father just
stopped.
He got a transformation. I think
for a young man of 12
that is a remarkable
achievement.
It is insight that transforms our afflictions;
and mindfulness has the power
of recognizing, embracing, looking deeply,
getting the insight that transforms you,
that makes you free.
Transformation, healing, freedom.
And when the young man was liberated, the father in him was liberated; and the ancestors in him were liberated
and [so was] the circle, the realm of the samsara.