DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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Usually, when you are angry, you don't know that you are angry, or don't want to admit that you are angry. But no matter what, the feeling inside and the outward expression for others to see are unmistakable:

- About the body: The stomach is cramped, both sides of the ribs are tense, especially the right side is angry, and the heart is aching, so there is a saying: Anger will break the liver.

- In terms of appearance, his mouth is tightly pursed, his arms and legs are shaking, his lips and cheeks are purple, his breathing is rapid, and his eyes are red.

In this state, the ancient Greeks believed that because of too much anger, the gallbladder was overworked, turning your skin pale. Purple is still the color of anger, and also the color of poison. This is the result of anger poisoning the heart and mind, and often you tend to take out your anger on those closest to you.

You all know that anger is painful because it pressures you to relieve threats at all costs. Likewise, desire leads to obsession because you are in desperate need of someone or something to support you. But anger is very complicated because it puts you in a difficult situation. In the Mahayana Abhidharma Kumarajiva, the Venerable Master Asanga said:

- The conflicting emotions of anger and desire control your mind, creating a kind of dishonest reasoning about everything.

You easily get into discord due to the unintentional or intentional actions of others. These angry emotions create reflexes in your body and mind.

When desire is the core of all emotions, jealousy, and anger are torment and cause suffering. Beneath this sentiment lies the characteristic of anger. It is truly a green-eyed monster, mocking you while devouring your flesh and bones. When you are angry towards your relatives or loved ones, including those around you, you create a big hole that makes it impossible for you to express your feelings towards them. When you are jealous of a colleague or friend, you tend to remove that person's name from the list of people you love. In the end, anger can easily turn into resentment, you get angry or suddenly curse at the person or thing you are angry with. That's why you distance yourself even more from what you longed for when you first started.

When you can no longer control your anger, it will cause you to take cruel revenge. Acts fueled by jealousy can wreak havoc on your emotions, character, and sanity. Anger-fueled rage can inspire murder and suicide, destruction of property, and all sorts of criminal acts. You become crazy because of the tight grip of anger. Your mind is clouded by rational arguments that help you see the harmful consequences of those actions. You ignore responsibility, you get stuck in harsh behavior, which ultimately leads to destruction. Here is the story:

In ancient life, Bodhisattva (Buddha's predecessor) was born as a quail, the leader of thousands of quails living in the forest. At that time, a bird trapper wanted to catch quails so he went to the place where the birds lived. He often imitates quail calls to lure them to him. Then, waiting for the birds to gather in one place, he threw a net over them and pulled back the edges of the net, catching them all in one knot, then stuffing them in a basket and bringing them home to sell for money. One day, Bodhisattva said to the birds:

- Ladies and gentlemen, this bird trapper is slaughtering our relatives. I have a plan so he can't catch us anymore. From now on, every time he throws up the net, you will stick your heads through the holes of the net and then together take the net and fly it to a place where you want, and there, lower the net on a thorn bush. By doing so, we will all escape many traps.

The plan was so good, all the birds agreed. The next day, when the bird trapper put a net on the birds, they did as the Bodhisattva had told them. They brought the net up and lowered it over a thorn bush and escaped from below, forcing the bird trapper to stand there removing the net until dusk, then returning home empty-handed. The birds used that tactic continuously for many days afterward. And so, the bird trapper had to endure the situation of struggling to remove the net until evening and returned home empty-handed. Seeing her husband return home empty-handed like that, the wife angrily said:

- Every day you return empty-handed. I think it's because you feed some second base.

The bird-catcher said:

- No, I don't nurture a second or third base at all. The truth is that those quails are now working together. When I threw the net over them, the whole herd carried the net away, then they left the net on a thorn bush and they all ran away. But they won't be able to live forever in harmony. Don't worry, when they start arguing, I will arrest them all. Then you will laugh and laugh. Having said that, he read a few verses to his wife:

- When harmony is present

Birds carrying nets fly far away

When controversy arises

They fall into our hands.

Not long after that, a quail, when landing on the ground to look for food, accidentally stepped on the head of another quail. This quail cried out angrily:

- Who stepped on my head!?

The first quail said sincerely:

- I'm sorry. That's me. But it's not my intention. Please don't be angry with me!

But not paying attention to this ambiguous answer, the second quail kept holding on to his anger and continued to say:

- Do you think you can lift that net alone?

And so they started arguing, loudly cursing each other. When Bodhisattva saw them quarreling like that, Bodhisattva thought:

- Whenever there is an argument, there is no safety. Now the birds will no longer be able to lift the net, and thus they will meet with great destruction. The bird hunter will find his luck. Well, I shouldn't be here anymore. After careful consideration, Bodhisattva said his intention, so the flock of birds was divided into two groups. One group followed Bodhisattva and flew to another place to live, while the other half stayed.

As expected, a few days later, the bird trapper went to that place again. First, he lured the birds by imitating the sound of quails, waiting for the flock to arrive in large numbers, and then he threw the net over them. At that time, one of the two quails arguing earlier said:

- I heard that when you lift the net, the hair on your head falls. Now if you're good, lift the net!

The other bird replied:

- When you lift the net, it is said that all the feathers on your wings fall off. Now pick it up and try it!

While they were still asking each other to lift the net like that, the bird catcher came, pulled back the edges of the net lifted them, gathered them together into a knot, and stuffed them into a basket to take home. Seeing this, the wife smiled happily.

The above story gives you the lesson:

- Solidarity is considered a necessary factor to help create strength for a group or organization, and more broadly, a society or a country.

So everyone knows that solidarity is important and necessary to maintain the stability of a group, organization, or community. That's why people are always calling, even screaming, to unite. Because solidarity creates strength for a group or organization, it also creates fear for other groups or organizations. And so to sabotage certain groups, not wanting this group or this organization to be strong, there are also people with evil intentions who commit acts of division and destruction. Of course, it is secret and uses tricks including provocation to create anger and discord.

Solidarity, in general, is good from a positive perspective because there are times when you unite to do bad things. But to have solidarity, you also need to think about how to unite and for what purpose. Studying Buddhism, you already know the six methods of harmony, which are six methods to help an organization, here a Buddhist organization, has solidarity and harmony, and when there is harmony, there are benefits and happiness. So to unite, you need to have some common regulations or laws to implement, not just general solidarity. Nine people have ten different opinions, so how can you call for unity in a general way?

The Vinaya often emphasizes solidarity, and the practice of solidarity is built on the observance of the precepts. The Sangha maintains its alignment based on precepts, not on any individual, even the Buddha. Because of this, when studying the Buddhist Sangha, people consider it an organization with a very high democratic spirit. In the Sangha, no one has the right to judge anyone. Anyone who violates the precepts will be punished by the precepts. The precepts are general regulations that help monks live virtuous lives and are the glue that connects the community. When an organization has solidarity, work will be more effective, when there is no solidarity, the effectiveness of work will not bring certain benefits to group members.

  The question of where does anger lead you?

- The definitive answer is that anger leads you to the point of killing each other, then to disintegration and destruction.

How do you confront anger and transform it into kindness?

Buddha taught that:

- You must find the antidote when your mind is in pain by relying on the emotion itself. And your emotions must be filled with wisdom.

To understand the evils of anger, you should often feel ashamed and hate yourself, sometimes even scold yourself. This creates an opportunity to calm anger and develop goodness, and this awareness can cause anger to completely disappear. And then you feel even worse about yourself, not knowing how to appreciate the prosperity of your own life, thus making you strive even more, and find ways to be closer to everyone! That is intellectual reflection.

Wisdom is the key to deepening your practice and the relationship between you and the world around you. If you just paint an antidote on top of your experiences without actually facing them, you only add a layer of denial, hypocrisy, and lack of faith in your goodness, and can limit your true discovery of Buddha nature. The antidote to anger lies right in the heart of jealousy and envy. Here are five principles to help you overcome jealousy:

1- Mindfulness:

When you are bound by anger, you consciously turn to the very emotion that holds you. This is difficult to do because of the conflicting nature of anger and desire, along with feelings of humiliation and self-blame. But no matter what the feelings are, you should simply recognize them and let them go, without holding on or holding them back.

2- Identification:

Once you have been able to identify emotions through mindfulness, you set aside stories or explanations that lead to anger. These stories fuel your jealousy so much that you believe it to be true, you feel you have good reason to be angry, resentful, and greedy, and that's why you cannot contact the wisdom that lies within those emotions. Now, you take a step back and ask yourself. What is anger? How do you feel about it?

At this point, it would be great if you could take notes, but don't go into a long story. How do you feel jealousy in yourself and your mind? What is the situation of anger?

When taking notes on emotions. How does your body feel right now, in your chest, in your mouth, in your stomach, and in your arms:

- Sharp pain in the chest, clenched mouth.

The image that is easiest to describe clearly is:

- It means not being able to breathe, feeling suffocated like someone is strangling you.

The flavor of emotions running in your head every moment is:

- Tattered, desperate, scared, betrayed, humiliated.

In your mind, at that moment you feel:

- Thinking haphazardly, running back and forth between resentment and desire.

Anger and ignorance are very painful, the pain is unbearable. Pain lies in your feelings, physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. Even the suffering that it forces you to do. You want to make someone suffer, you want to make yourself suffer too. You cannot control yourself.

3- Give up pain:

When you see the suffering brought by anger, this is when you see the truth. You feel the pain directly, instead of being incited by a story clue that makes you jealous and the victim of endless torture. It may take time, but eventually, you will feel it. In Buddhist scriptures, it is taught that when you feel the suffering directly, you immediately let go, just like when you pick up a hot iron pan and make you withdraw your hand. When you feel the extreme and undeniable suffering of jealousy, you will want to be freed from it immediately. You feel it, you immediately let go.

4- Joy:

When you decide to give up, first of all, the roughest layer of emotions, anger and ignorance, disappears. This is a sigh of relief because you know that anger will not bring the desired results. Rather, it quickly and surely takes you away from the things you want to do. Next is the problem with greed. The Buddha considered non-seeking to be the key point in meditation. Indeed, just by being aware of suffering, the craving for wishes can quickly disappear. What will remain when anger and desire are weakened or no longer exist? You think you will be exhausted when your anger and desire are released, but that is not true. There was a moment of joy that appeared when the space of freedom was liberated. Joy is an unselfish joy that allows you to rejoice in the happiness and good fortune of others. It is considered limitless because it comes from the innate altruism and good nature of all of you. Knowing how to enjoy joy is a process that expresses the natural human personality of humans.

The foundations of attachment and greed, even though they lie at the heart of anger, have an underlying energy of genuine love and concern, but only the fire of desire. When the qualities surrounding the self are released through the realization of suffering, love is freed to become immense joy. Cheerfulness will promote the happiness and success of others, rejoicing in their health and freshness whenever they enjoy it. But at this point, you have only had a glimpse of the joy of being praised, so it needs to be nurtured further.

5- Practice every day:

To strengthen your belief in love and joy, you must practice every day to stabilize and deepen your joy for the happiness and success of others, instead of anger and ignorance. First, you direct your mind to someone you know who is usually cheerful and happy. Those people could be a friend, a co-worker, a child, or a spiritual teacher. You visualize this person overflowing with joy and cherish this joy with gratitude. This cheerful friend of yours creates a very special scene wherever he or she is! Just like that, you practice integrating into this friend's joy, as well as overflowing with gratitude, and joy, and creating a joyful scene. You continue praising this happy friend and feel your life suddenly lighten and brighten as you do so.

It's a hard thing to do, but you can do it when you can celebrate the success and happiness of others!

Finally, it is important that while you try to practice appreciating joy, you direct this practice toward the person or situation that causes you to generate anger and ignorance. You can continue to feel joy and pleasure in the success and happiness of the person who created your anger. If anger arises again, you return to contemplating the feeling of anger, its confining, imprisoning, and terrible pain. And anger will never directly bring happiness, on the contrary, it will only make you more miserable. After all, knowing how to appreciate joy is the medicine to cure jealousy and neutralize anger. 

In short, anger is always the biggest threat to success on the path of career and friendliness while connecting relatives and loved ones and is the biggest obstacle on the path of practice and study path of liberation. Instead of being angry, stubborn, arguing, and creating discord, you should be happy and forgiving to create friendship and solidarity. But solidarity has a purpose, and after answering the question of what purpose solidarity is for, the next questions will appear. For example, what does that purpose create, who does it benefit, etc. The story of the quail troupe and the bird catcher shows you clearly:

- Harmony and unity lead to life, and division leads to death.

Like the group of quails, the purpose of unity is to have the strength to carry the net away, and the benefit is that the entire flock of birds escapes the bird trapper. Unfortunately, in the end, the whole flock of birds fell into the hunter's basket due to anger and desire to quarrel, and in the end, they lost their lives!

Therefore, it is clear that the source of happiness is worth effort, worth observing more closely, perhaps preventing anger from being present for any of the following reasons:

- Exaggeration

- Proving that you are right and the other is wrong,

- Neither real nor imaginary,

- Not practical...,

But whatever the cause that leads to discord or lack of unity, you must eliminate it because of anger. There's no doubt about that. You must find a way to prolong the friendliness in the relationship, the foundation of that relationship must be solid. It is for that reason that the Dalai Lama encourages you to consider the fundamental basis of the relationship, if you find that you are in a relationship that is about to collapse, anger begins to escalate, The first thing that needs to be done is to combine with other materials before they can crack. Recognizing these materials, you return to the solution:

- Build a strong relationship, your relationship is based on the virtues of affection, love, and respect for each other as human beings.

Relationships based on these qualities help you achieve deep, meaningful connections not only with your lover, husband, or wife, but also with friends, acquaintances, and practically anyone, every human needs it. It opens up countless possibilities and opportunities for communication and living together in a family, a union, or a good community.

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