Good morning, all. Stuttgart is snowy and cold, with almost no wind so that even the overhead power lines carry a delicate ridge of snow. Very pretty. The start-of-Spring that I mentioned a week ago now seems a long way off.
I am pleased that yesterday's quotes link found such a good resonance. Ruth, I saw them on your blog and recognized the source :-)
Good morning, everyone...and welcome back, Dale. Anger isn't something I'm currently sitting with...but yep, I've been there, brother. I think sitting with physical pain is easier (for me) than sitting with inner emotional stuff, so good luck to you!
I didn't practice yesterday, spending the day instead catching up with non-teaching chores. I'm still working the balance between busy teaching days and "busy in a different way" non-teaching days.
Today, though, I did 54 bows & 20 minutes of meditation first thing, so it's (so far) a good day. :-)
Dale, sorry to hear you're in a funk, but your wisdom about it is marvelous. Anger, too, will pass; storms always do. This is especially important to remember when we are dealing with uncomfortable emotions, like anger, jealousy, greed (what a word, yet it's what the consumerist society is founded on, surely). It's curious why we find certain emotions uncomfortable and perhaps even threatening to our well being. I suppose it's because of the action that could come out of them that could be most regrettable. Although when I dance I sometimes dance with all the anger I have, there is tremendous energy in anger, and it's quite liberating. A shamanic psychotherapist that I saw once for a couple of months said anger, if you just sit with it, can be a powerful cleansing force. Have I ever gotten that far with it? I think of emotions like the weather, everything washes through, and nonstop hot and sunny could get quite tedious, the full range is better, but not to be attached to any of it, always an undercurrent of compassion and love, the flowing foundation...
In my nightly struggle with what my mind-preparing-for-dreaming is collecting and my meditative mind is stilling has entirely to do with relationships.
Without each other would we feel much of anything?
Isn't that where anger and love arise most strongly?
I think of meditation as the sum total. Not an escape from. I like meditation because I recognize it as an ultimately subversive act of total freedom, where what is cultivated and calm, or raw and wild can be.
My problem is that I could easily meditate all day every day, could get into the cloistered life without too much difficulty. My challenge is not to find time to meditate, but to find time to be in the world.
White-rabbit mode this morning. I did not sit. I miss it. I will sit later. Went to yoga class at lunchtime - still in white-rabbit mode; I was reprimanded by the teacher for arriving late and storming in while everyone was in savasana. Agh! It felt good, though, once I'd swallowed hard on the unfortunate beginning :-)
Dale, I'm kind of glad of course that you got angry about what you did, if you have to get angry at all, but not that the feeling makes you suffer so much.
I had a flash of bad temper and was really unkind to a friend about ten days ago and have been feeling so bad about it ever since, until we finally had a long talk and felt more like us today. In the meantime I was trying when I could to be fully open to how much I love her and how sad and ashamed I felt about what I'd said, instead of trying not to think about it because it was uncomfortable. I'm glad I could do this, but gosh it was painful. I couldn't bear the thought that for a minute there what I felt towards a beloved person was sheer unkindness and impatience and nothing else, as she certainly realised. I've turned away from strong feelings all my life - for all the awful, cliched reasons young kids learn to do that - and learning at an advanced age to do so less is difficult and uncomfortable, as well as rather wonderful. It's bringing tears to my eyes just saying it now. Of course, this is the point at which I have in the past decided never to do it again, to become as 'un-present' as possible. That's what I did with loving kindness meditation for a long time, after I found out how powerful it was (as it sounds as though Ruth is finding out. The latest piece you wrote on your blog moved me so much).
Brenda, I love what you say here. The description of anger as a cleansing force does resonate with me - though I guess it can be a dangerous idea to espouse, more useful to timid souls who fear their feelings than to those who indulge in them and are not sufficiently aware of the damage they can do.
This group of us here seems to me so wonderfully diverse - it certainly gives the lie to any thought that meditation always attracts the same type.
"Even Dale has days of being angry and irritated..." Oh Lord. I must have snowed you guys good, then.
Thanks for all the kindness. It helps a lot.
Much better today. Just occasional aftershocks.
20 minutes shamatha & 21 accumulations yesterday.
It seems like the shamatha does nothing for me, but I have to remember that ten years ago I could have gone through a day such as yesterday and never even known I was angry, never understood that I was operating with distorted perceptions and that I needed to wait before pouring out words and making decisions.
I haven't sat today, but mean to before I go out this evening (not working this week).
Janice: thanks for your kind words yesterday.
Udge: good quotes, thanks!
Dale: welcome back.
I am still sitting most days, which is good albeit fairly perfuntorily on some occasions. Also struggling with some of the dark stuff (jealousy, pettiness, self absorption) that meditation seems to be shining a light on and throwing into consciousness. Not comfortable. No hiding place when you start meditating it would appear. But I know that pretending it isn't there isn't good either so as well that it does surface. Also questioning how much is right for me to reveal online about my life - still haven't resolved that one.
Brenda: Talking of dancing reminds me how important that can be for me. It's been too long - and all I need to do is draw the curtains and put a CD on! Thanks for sowing the seed.
It’s been said that depression is repressed anger, and I’d sure rather be angry than depressed. I’ve been both places, and done a lot of work with a gestalt therapist. I can’t count the number of times I had to kill my father before I could forgive him and accept him and embrace him.
My Zen teachers have said and written a lot about anger … sitting with that hot ball of fire in my gut has not worked for me. Anger has tremendous energy, and I’ve often worked it out by slamming a tennis ball fiercely and relentlessly against the brick wall behind the shopping center until my body is dripping with sweat and tears.
I don’t feel that anger much anymore, and I wonder where it went. Did I sit it out? did I beat it out? am I dead?
Yeah, it seems to me there's a large number of people who need to express their anger and own it somehow, like you, Janice, and a large number for whom that just makes it worse, like me. For me doing that just reifies and solidifies the anger -- I think because it's basically what I was doing with the anger in the first place -- externalizing it and making words of it. Whatever unknots it is the right thing to do, & that's probably something you can only find out by experiment.
It's critical for me not to trust my anger. It can teach me some startling important truths, but it also always tells me lies -- especially, it tells me I thoroughly understand the motivations of the people I'm angry at. That always turns out to be false; in fact, one thing I've found I can count on 100% is that when I'm angry at someone, there is at least one significant way in which I'm mistaken about their motivations. Usually more.
Yet I don't know that it's just anger which makes us blind to another person's totality. Love can do the same thing to me. I can completely misread someone if I am infatuated with them, or consciously suppress anything which doesn't fit my model of love. So love can be as dangerous as anger, in the sense that you're talking about. Which leaves what?
Perhaps we can say that any singular view of another person, their motives, or what they do is perhaps what needs to be addressed. People are complex, multi-facted. When I'm angry I only see one issue, and hammer it to death, over and over. I'm not at all open to other explanations or ideas. I've shut down, ranting away in a storm that I may be hailing on others. With one thing to say. When I hear people arguing it amazes me that after 5 hours they are still going over the same ground with the same anger and neither has moved an iota and all they do is repeat themselves and are oblivious to this. The rational has disappeared. Which it does in love too.
Oh, I am trying to figure out what I can say about anger that is generally true of the way I feel and express fury. Or any of the class of emotions associated with it- from mildly irked all the way through to WWIII if someone's done something really dumb and put another person's life in danger.
Sometimes in meditation, though, I've had to work really hard to find my anger about a situation and pull it up through my body because I need it's energy, it's sense of rightness, it's single-minded sword.
But it's like playing with fire, you have to be very careful not to hurt yourself, anyone else, or burn the place down.
Sometimes the only way I've finished a painting is to let my fury out and go with the energy and let it put life back into whatever I've been working on.
Some people are hotheads, and need a little water; but all water without fire, oh, no excitement.
Perhaps anger is a dangerous beast that can't ever be fully tamed and needs always to be watched so that it doesn't break loose and hurt anyone, including oneself.
Except that my beast isn't that strong. Which is maybe why people can steamroll me so easily.
I could write all night on this, you know. So I'm going to turn off the computer and meditate, and not think about anger at all most likely.
9 Comments:
Good morning, all. Stuttgart is snowy and cold, with almost no wind so that even the overhead power lines carry a delicate ridge of snow. Very pretty. The start-of-Spring that I mentioned a week ago now seems a long way off.
I am pleased that yesterday's quotes link found such a good resonance. Ruth, I saw them on your blog and recognized the source :-)
To sit, perchance not to think.
Good morning, everyone...and welcome back, Dale. Anger isn't something I'm currently sitting with...but yep, I've been there, brother. I think sitting with physical pain is easier (for me) than sitting with inner emotional stuff, so good luck to you!
I didn't practice yesterday, spending the day instead catching up with non-teaching chores. I'm still working the balance between busy teaching days and "busy in a different way" non-teaching days.
Today, though, I did 54 bows & 20 minutes of meditation first thing, so it's (so far) a good day. :-)
Dale, sorry to hear you're in a funk, but your wisdom about it is marvelous. Anger, too, will pass; storms always do. This is especially important to remember when we are dealing with uncomfortable emotions, like anger, jealousy, greed (what a word, yet it's what the consumerist society is founded on, surely). It's curious why we find certain emotions uncomfortable and perhaps even threatening to our well being. I suppose it's because of the action that could come out of them that could be most regrettable. Although when I dance I sometimes dance with all the anger I have, there is tremendous energy in anger, and it's quite liberating. A shamanic psychotherapist that I saw once for a couple of months said anger, if you just sit with it, can be a powerful cleansing force. Have I ever gotten that far with it? I think of emotions like the weather, everything washes through, and nonstop hot and sunny could get quite tedious, the full range is better, but not to be attached to any of it, always an undercurrent of compassion and love, the flowing foundation...
In my nightly struggle with what my mind-preparing-for-dreaming is collecting and my meditative mind is stilling has entirely to do with relationships.
Without each other would we feel much of anything?
Isn't that where anger and love arise most strongly?
I think of meditation as the sum total. Not an escape from. I like meditation because I recognize it as an ultimately subversive act of total freedom, where what is cultivated and calm, or raw and wild can be.
My problem is that I could easily meditate all day every day, could get into the cloistered life without too much difficulty. My challenge is not to find time to meditate, but to find time to be in the world.
Oh, my. Good morning everyone!
White-rabbit mode this morning. I did not sit. I miss it. I will sit later. Went to yoga class at lunchtime - still in white-rabbit mode; I was reprimanded by the teacher for arriving late and storming in while everyone was in savasana. Agh! It felt good, though, once I'd swallowed hard on the unfortunate beginning :-)
Dale, I'm kind of glad of course that you got angry about what you did, if you have to get angry at all, but not that the feeling makes you suffer so much.
I had a flash of bad temper and was really unkind to a friend about ten days ago and have been feeling so bad about it ever since, until we finally had a long talk and felt more like us today. In the meantime I was trying when I could to be fully open to how much I love her and how sad and ashamed I felt about what I'd said, instead of trying not to think about it because it was uncomfortable. I'm glad I could do this, but gosh it was painful. I couldn't bear the thought that for a minute there what I felt towards a beloved person was sheer unkindness and impatience and nothing else, as she certainly realised. I've turned away from strong feelings all my life - for all the awful, cliched reasons young kids learn to do that - and learning at an advanced age to do so less is difficult and uncomfortable, as well as rather wonderful. It's bringing tears to my eyes just saying it now. Of course, this is the point at which I have in the past decided never to do it again, to become as 'un-present' as possible. That's what I did with loving kindness meditation for a long time, after I found out how powerful it was (as it sounds as though Ruth is finding out. The latest piece you wrote on your blog moved me so much).
Brenda, I love what you say here. The description of anger as a cleansing force does resonate with me - though I guess it can be a dangerous idea to espouse, more useful to timid souls who fear their feelings than to those who indulge in them and are not sufficiently aware of the damage they can do.
This group of us here seems to me so wonderfully diverse - it certainly gives the lie to any thought that meditation always attracts the same type.
"Even Dale has days of being angry and irritated..." Oh Lord. I must have snowed you guys good, then.
Thanks for all the kindness. It helps a lot.
Much better today. Just occasional aftershocks.
20 minutes shamatha & 21 accumulations yesterday.
It seems like the shamatha does nothing for me, but I have to remember that ten years ago I could have gone through a day such as yesterday and never even known I was angry, never understood that I was operating with distorted perceptions and that I needed to wait before pouring out words and making decisions.
I haven't sat today, but mean to before I go out this evening (not working this week).
Janice: thanks for your kind words yesterday.
Udge: good quotes, thanks!
Dale: welcome back.
I am still sitting most days, which is good albeit fairly perfuntorily on some occasions. Also struggling with some of the dark stuff (jealousy, pettiness, self absorption) that meditation seems to be shining a light on and throwing into consciousness. Not comfortable. No hiding place when you start meditating it would appear. But I know that pretending it isn't there isn't good either so as well that it does surface. Also questioning how much is right for me to reveal online about my life - still haven't resolved that one.
Brenda: Talking of dancing reminds me how important that can be for me. It's been too long - and all I need to do is draw the curtains and put a CD on! Thanks for sowing the seed.
It’s been said that depression is repressed anger, and I’d sure rather be angry than depressed. I’ve been both places, and done a lot of work with a gestalt therapist. I can’t count the number of times I had to kill my father before I could forgive him and accept him and embrace him.
My Zen teachers have said and written a lot about anger … sitting with that hot ball of fire in my gut has not worked for me. Anger has tremendous energy, and I’ve often worked it out by slamming a tennis ball fiercely and relentlessly against the brick wall behind the shopping center until my body is dripping with sweat and tears.
I don’t feel that anger much anymore, and I wonder where it went. Did I sit it out? did I beat it out? am I dead?
Yeah, it seems to me there's a large number of people who need to express their anger and own it somehow, like you, Janice, and a large number for whom that just makes it worse, like me. For me doing that just reifies and solidifies the anger -- I think because it's basically what I was doing with the anger in the first place -- externalizing it and making words of it. Whatever unknots it is the right thing to do, & that's probably something you can only find out by experiment.
It's critical for me not to trust my anger. It can teach me some startling important truths, but it also always tells me lies -- especially, it tells me I thoroughly understand the motivations of the people I'm angry at. That always turns out to be false; in fact, one thing I've found I can count on 100% is that when I'm angry at someone, there is at least one significant way in which I'm mistaken about their motivations. Usually more.
Dale, that's an amazing comment.
Yet I don't know that it's just anger which makes us blind to another person's totality. Love can do the same thing to me. I can completely misread someone if I am infatuated with them, or consciously suppress anything which doesn't fit my model of love. So love can be as dangerous as anger, in the sense that you're talking about. Which leaves what?
Perhaps we can say that any singular view of another person, their motives, or what they do is perhaps what needs to be addressed. People are complex, multi-facted. When I'm angry I only see one issue, and hammer it to death, over and over. I'm not at all open to other explanations or ideas. I've shut down, ranting away in a storm that I may be hailing on others. With one thing to say. When I hear people arguing it amazes me that after 5 hours they are still going over the same ground with the same anger and neither has moved an iota and all they do is repeat themselves and are oblivious to this. The rational has disappeared. Which it does in love too.
Oh, I am trying to figure out what I can say about anger that is generally true of the way I feel and express fury. Or any of the class of emotions associated with it- from mildly irked all the way through to WWIII if someone's done something really dumb and put another person's life in danger.
Sometimes in meditation, though, I've had to work really hard to find my anger about a situation and pull it up through my body because I need it's energy, it's sense of rightness, it's single-minded sword.
But it's like playing with fire, you have to be very careful not to hurt yourself, anyone else, or burn the place down.
Sometimes the only way I've finished a painting is to let my fury out and go with the energy and let it put life back into whatever I've been working on.
Some people are hotheads, and need a little water; but all water without fire, oh, no excitement.
Perhaps anger is a dangerous beast that can't ever be fully tamed and needs always to be watched so that it doesn't break loose and hurt anyone, including oneself.
Except that my beast isn't that strong. Which is maybe why people can steamroll me so easily.
I could write all night on this, you know. So I'm going to turn off the computer and meditate, and not think about anger at all most likely.
{{hugs}} xo
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