Angry Man

I had another experience with anger the other day. In one way, I am very glad this has become enough of a rarity that this fact is worth noting. This has not always been so. Anger can also be a valuable teaching tool, when I allow it to be. But it takes me several days before I can get over the recrimination and blame I feel whenever I am angry.

This itself is worth exploring. Anger is not who I am, but when it happens, I feel as if I have truly done something awful, something irreparable. Now, while I don't wish to encourage anger, I find it odd that something in my experience has led to a feeling of self-loathing when anger arises. It feels much like the conditioning young Alex underwent in A Clockwork Orange, which caused him to become debilitated by nausea and cramping whenever he contemplated violence. In that case, it was clear the conditioning was itself an evil thing, regardless of what Alex may have done (and he did plenty) to earn the enmity of society. Just so, without condoning my outbursts, I need to find a way to regard my anger as a natural extension of who I am, who I have been, and the experiences I have encountered in my life and (who knows?) perhaps many lives.

Part of the disapprobation I feel is made up of societal expectations. In many circles (unless you are a character on television or in film), any level of expressed  anger is entirely unacceptable. It seems to be considered manifestly unsafe. I am beginning to question whether or not this absolute prohibition is wise. Not that I am arguing for anger as a constructive force; generally speaking, by its very nature it is destructive. But when we look at it as an expression of generations upon generations of accumulated assumptions about the world, assumptions about  fairness and justice and reasonability, perhaps we can begin to consider anger more in  the light of a common emotional state than a problem. Could there possibly be the same acceptance and constructive engagement around anger that there currently is around, say, depression and anxiety? Could we come to recognize  that it, too, just like these other emotions, comes at least in part from a learned and possibly dysfunctional way of viewing the world? Especially since, it seems to me, a good part of anger comes from depression, anxiety and fear.

Not that I am asking  for special treatment, but if I am to have compassion for my anger, it would be helpful if those around me had compassion for it, too. In this most recent incarnation of my anger, which was work-related (these days, my anger is almost always about something at work), though I didn't anticipate the outcome to be this extreme, in my imagination I thought about what I might say if it came before someone from human resources. I thought quite seriously about claiming an emotional  accommodation. Once again, this would not excuse the behavior associated with it (though this was, in fact, rather mild), but would take into consideration this emotional predisposition with which I struggle. In the final analysis, once I have gotten over castigating myself, it does feel a bit like a prejudicial act to assume that my emotional states are the result of bad motives, while those of other emotionally challenged people are thought of in a more lenient light.

It  just so happened that the dharma talk I was listening to soon after this encounter with anger was one by Joseph Goldstein on what is known in Buddhist circles as aversion. The basic deal is this: there are three broad categories of mind states which stand in the way of one's ability to practice the Buddha's teachings. These are known as kilesas. This Pali word is usually translated as "defilements". That sounds  a little extreme, until we consider that what the Buddha taught was "purification" of mind states. Thus, much like the processing of raw ore into precious metals, wherein the dirt and detritus must be removed  in order to get at the pure treasure, when the defilements are present we cannot hear the dharma as well as we might otherwise. And without this clarity of understanding, we can never reach the ultimate state of nirvana.

In the Buddhist cosmology, the kilesas are craving, aversion, and ignorance. Anger is a form of aversion (though, it seems clear, it incorporates elements of the other two, as well). So it was particularly telling to encounter a talk on aversion just as I was contemplating my own aversive behavior. At one point, Joseph quotes Carl Jung as having said, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular." I would add that making the darkness visible is also not socially acceptable, which increases the difficulty. Nonetheless, the Buddha also referred to anger as that which has a honeyed tip and a poisoned root. This is especially true of self-righteous anger. It  feels so good to rip into someone who is clearly in the wrong that it can be some time before the high of the anger passes sufficiently for us to realize that even under such circumstances, our anger is not useful.

In accord with the dharma teachings, Joseph suggests four responses to aversion: mindfulness, investigation, wise reflection and, if all else fails, inattention to the subject of our aversion. Note that none of these approaches involve blame, shame, or rejection. In fact, he quotes the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh that in response to anger, "we don't suppress it, we don't run away from it, we just breathe and hold our anger in our arms with utmost tenderness. The anger is no longer alone." He goes on to recommend staying with it because eventually "mindfulness particles will infiltrate the anger"  and "if you keep shining your compassion and understanding on it, your anger will soon crack and you will be able to look into its depths and see its roots."

Thus, despite my characterization earlier, anger is not necessarily a destructive force. It can be a force for good if contemplated with gentleness and care. This will  take some work on my part. Even more deeply than the sources of my anger seem to be the predisposition to shame and remorse associated with its expression. For me, these seem to follow as naturally as night follows day. This is not all bad (I would hate to feel that there was no need for restraint in expression of my anger, for instance), but I need to cultivate a pause in there, to consider what my anger has to teach me about being a compassionate, caring, loving human being. No matter how it is looked upon by my boss or you or anyone else, there is no part of me that is unworthy, that must be rejected out of hand. I can, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, hold my anger with love. And in so doing I can hold yours, too.

Namaste.