When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak. I will practice mindful breathing and walking in order to recognize and to look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person.
– the Fourth of the Five Mindfulness Trainings
Dear friends,
Below we explore some of the teachings on anger by Thich Nhat Hanh and other Dharma teachers along with a list of resources to help you dig deeper.
In Buddhism, anger is one of the six main afflictions and one of the three poisons that has been responsible for much suffering and destruction in the world.
When anger manifests, it’s like a fire which burns down everything. In the 1997 Dharma Talk ‘Discourse on Love’, which was given in Vietnamese and is due to be published on the Thich Nhat Hanh’s Talks website on May 18, 2024, Thay said:
“Anger, resentment, and ill will are very strong energies. But they’re blind energies. Because in anger, resentment, and ill will, there’s ignorance. This is very clear in Buddhism. In desire and anger, there’s always ignorance or confusion. Because one is ignorant and confused, one is full of desires and anger.”
In Vietnamese, ignorance is called “vô minh”, literally meaning “non-light”. Used interchangeably with “vô minh” is the term “si mê”. “Si” literally means “illusion”, “delusion”, or “stupidity”, and “mê” means “blindness”, “unconsciousness”, or “confusion”.
From this perspective, when not conscious or mindfully aware of oneself and one’s situation, one is living in the darkness of ignorance. Just as, when walking into a dark room, one can’t help but trip over one object after another, being in the dark about oneself and one’s situation, one can’t help but trip over one mental object after another.
Forgetfulness is the darkness.
‘Turning On the Light’ (gatha by Thich Nhat Hahn)
Mindfulness is the light.
I bring awareness
To shine upon all life.
Mostly (if not always), when anger manifests, it’s because we’re in the dark about ourselves and the object of our anger. But instead of acting out during these moments of anger, we can look at them as bells of mindfulness, gently inviting us to pause and assess whether our understanding is complete and accurate.
Right understanding comes from having right mindfulness, and from maintaining it long enough in oneself; this is right concentration. In order to “bring [the light of] awareness / To shine upon all life”, as the gatha goes, one needs to “practice mindful breathing and walking” (as the Fourth of the Five Mindfulness Trainings suggests), for long enough.
After following our breathing and our footsteps long enough for the feeling of groundedness in the body to set in, we can look at anger with the eye of compassion, non-violence, and non-discrimination. “Hello, anger, I know you are there and I will take good care of you,” Thay would say, recognizing anger just as it is.
Everything manifests due to the interdependent co-arisings of countless near and far causes and conditions—nothing has a fixed makeup and identity. Anger is no exception. The key to turning anger to our advantage is knowing how to be mindfully aware during its whole manifestation.
In fact, thanks to the energy of anger, many historic figures—including Thay—have been able to accomplish great transformations in themselves, their countries, and the world at large.
In her 2023 Dharma Talk ‘Simple Life, Spiritual Richness’, Sister Thuận Nghiêm shared that, “Anger is a source of energy that we can cultivate and we can harness. Thay used to say, ‘I’m angry [about] how angry I am with the situation in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam.’ He said he was angry [about] his anger. But the anger he was talking about is the anger that he focused, and he transformed that anger into something else. That is, Thay had this volition to work for peace.”
Talking about other historical figures, Arun Gandhi has described his grandfather, the famous Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, saying that “anger is like electricity. It’s just as useful and just as powerful but only if we use it intelligently. But it can be just as deadly and destructive if we abuse it. Just as we channel electrical energy and bring it into our lives and use it for the good of humanity, we must learn to channel anger in the same way so that we can use that energy for the good of humanity rather than abuse it and cause death and destruction.”
Arun Gandhi on his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent take on anger.
When Thay still manifested, he always said we should never treat anger (or any unwholesome feelings and emotions) with discrimination and dualism: loving or hating it, or being attached to it or pushing it away. This is because, when accompanied by right views, its energy can give us great strength in the aspiration to make the world a better place.
For right views to be at our disposal, we need to practice right mindfulness every day, rain or shine. This is a mindfulness practitioner’s daily ‘business’.
Don’t wait until the storm comes to practice this. Normally if we wait until the storm comes to practice, we won’t remember to practice. We’ll be ‘done for.’ We’ll be carried away by that storm. That’s why, […] when there’s no storm yet, practice now, don’t wait. Once per day, at least tens of minutes every time.
Thay (from 1998 Dharma Talk ‘Taming the Body & Observing the Feelings in the Feelings’, given in Vietnamese)
Who would have thought that the repetitive rhythm of a mindfulness practice center—from waking up early in the morning for sitting meditation, through eating meditation at mealtimes, to working in meditation in the afternoon—is building a concrete foundation for radical changes to happen in oneself and in the world?
Below, you are invited to read an excerpt from Sister Thuận Nghiêm’s Dharma Talk on using anger to our advantage:
Extract from ‘Simple Life, Spiritual Richness’ by Sister Thuận Nghiêm (2023)
When we train ourselves with the practice of mindfulness, we will be able to walk and our feet will follow our head.[…] [I]t’s like a shadow following you on a sunny day. You walk in the field or you walk around the hamlet, your shadow will follow you wherever you go because there’s the sun. […]
Thay said when we come here [Plum Village] for three months, we will not have course after course. But we’ll have a lot of time to practice. And this is how we design our schedule, that we will have sitting, we will have eating, we will have walking, we have deep relaxation, we have sharing, we have working. So [for the] whole day, continuously, we will train ourselves to come back, to bring our mind back to our body, so that our feet and our brain will go together.[…]
[A]nger is a source of energy that we can cultivate and we can harness. Thay used to say, “I’m angry [about] how angry I am with the situation in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam.” He said he was angry [about] his anger. But the anger he was talking about is the anger that he focused and he transformed that anger into something else. That is, Thay had this volition to work for peace.
So I like to use that image of a fire. Anger can be a fire that can burn down everything. But if we use anger, we can use the image of a charcoal. At first when it burns, it burns very, very strongly. But after a while, the charcoal will calm down. And we can cook, we can roast, we can bake on the charcoal.
So, anger—if we can practice to transform it, to discipline it, it can be a source of energy for us, to move us forward. It’s a source of energy that propels us to work for or to fight for what we believe that can break down the barrier or break down the misunderstanding. We all have this seed of anger in us. And depending on our practice, we can harness this source of energy into something that is very constructive.
Relevant resources on the Plum Village App and its YouTube channel
- The Roots of Anger – a short teaching video by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Transforming Depression, Anger and Fear with Mindful Breathing and Mindful Walking
- Tools for Dealing with Anger – a short teaching video by Thich Nhat Hanh
- How to Fight Injustices Without Being Consumed with Anger
- Anger – insights by Brother Trời Nguyện Lực
References
- Thich Nhat Hanh, 1997, “Discourse on Love,” retrieved from Thich Nhat Hanh’s Talks website (to be published May 18, 2024).
- Thich Nhat Hanh, 1998, “Part III—Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness: Taming the Body & Observing the Feelings in the Feelings,” retrieved from Thich Nhat Hanh’s Talks website (to be published October 5, 2024).
- Miranda Nobles, 2016, “Gandhi’s grandson spreads message of nonviolence,” retrieved from Auburn University
- Definition of “si”
- Definition of “mê”
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