Taking care of anger - Thich Nhat Hanh

In this short teaching video from the Plum Village app, https://plumvillage.app/ , Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the midfulness of anger.

Excerpt from Ending the Vicious Circle of Negative Habits - Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, 2004.03.25.

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.