The Memory of Rage that Came Up for Me…
in the meditation this morning was getting angry at my son Nelson. It’s this horrible, bitter memory of anger that I want to share because it illustrates how intense the emotion is, and how important it is to come to terms with as a force in our life.
We were coming home from a family camping trip. We had canoed across this large straight of ocean water up in northern Maine and camped on this island. It was a long crossing, completely exposed, in two canoes. My wife, daughter Anna and son Nelson were in one canoe. Our youngest son Roy and I were in the other.
Every time I looked over at the other canoe, I thought Nelson was slacking off - not pulling his weight. Anna and Ruth were paddling hard. Little Roy was paddling hard to get across. Nelson was slacking off.
I was stressed about making the crossing, worried about the weather, concerned about passing boats, fearful of one or both of us tipping over. The wind was against us. I was scared but there was only one way across.
When we got to the shore and hauled our boats, the rage just overtook me and I yelled at Nelson for a good five minutes. “How can you slack off that way? Why didn’t you paddle hard? How could you expect Anna and Ruth to carry you across?”
I was fuming. Ruth tried to calm me down, but I couldn’t get ahold of myself. I was afraid of the crossing but I was also afraid that he would grow up to be a slacker, someone who takes things for granted.
But here I am, a 6’1” giant screaming at a nine or ten year old boy. Totally lost it.
Nelson and I love each other deeply. Always have and always will. Three things saved our relationship from that experience:
- I apologized. An hour or so later, when I calmed down and realized what an ass I was being, I apologized to him. Told him that I was wrong to act that way and that no one should treat him the way I did - especially not his father who loves him so much.
- This was a rare event. Thanks to meditation practice and these teachings, I have come to know my emotions better. I’m more skilled in processing, expressing and holding back my emotions than I was before I started meditating. This incident was rare in our family history.
- It happened in a context of love. Nelson knew and knows that I love him deeply. I have shared that with him countless times. He knows that I make mistakes, that I try to own up to them, and that my actions have more to do with my issues than they do with his.
None of this is to excuse what I did, how I treated him. I still feel terrible about it, as evidenced by this coming up in practice this morning.
I share this because it’s such a clear example of distorted Vajra energy. And because the more we can process, examine, apologize for and heal our distorted views of the world, the better a place it will be.
So this is not to say that if you practice meditation for thirty years, you won’t feel anger. Or that you won’t make a mess in relationships that you would give anything to preserve.
But I do believe that without meditation, without touching these distorted energies on the cushion and learning about them and their wisdom manifestations I would have made many many more messes in my adult life. And I would have been much worse at creating the loving environment that provides a container for us all to mess up in.
Mistakes are inevitable. When we screw up, we have to learn to apologize clearly and authentically. But let me share a teaching, closely related to these Five Buddha Families, that has dramatically reduced the number of times my distorted energy has caused harm in the world.
The Four Karmas
Each of these Buddhas, each of these Buddha Families, has a style of Action aka Karma. This is picking up on a question from yesterday about how to deal with a dinner party guest who is taking advantage of your generosity:
- Pacify - calm people down. Relax them. Like mud settling out of water. Allow the distorted emotions. Relating with your thoughts via the Pacifying karma is being super gentle with them. Popping the thought bubble with a feather. "Thinking". You can even talk with yourself in a gentle and pacifying way... "I know you are frustrated. I get that you are angry. You are safe here. It's going to be ok." We are not very kind with ourselves. It's incredibly powerful to examine the tone of your voice as you narrate your life and modulate it to show yourself more kindness. This is the enlightened or clarified wisdom activity of Vajra.
- Enrich - help people feel worthy. Encourage them. Help them laugh. Make them food. Serve them. Take off their shoes and give them a foot rub. Praise them. I would make them feel special. This is a great approach when we are feeling down about yourselves. When we have a lot of negative self talk, when our inner critic is just out of control, we can enrich ourselves by calling out our good qualities, remembering the ways we have benefited others, or the challenges we have overcome.
- I used to think that this kind of self-praise was ego re-enforcing and by doing this I was moving away from becoming enlightened, but now I think that's stupid. The ego will use everything in its reach to re-enforce itself - which includes negative thoughts and self flagellation. So speaking with yourself from an Enriching point of view can be really helpful. This is the Ratna wisdom activity.
- Magnitize - We are going to talk more about this style tomorrow in Padma, but if I was to relate with myself with the "Magnetizing" action, I would invite myself in. I would get to know myself as I really am - warts and all. Sometimes Magnetizing seems like charisma and seduction, but it's actually more like acceptance. "I see you. I see how angry you are. I see how jealous you feel. You don't have to change. You don't have to calm down. We can sit here together with these feelings just as they are. We can see them clearly, individually. There’s no problem with that.”
- Destroy - As Lama Liz described, this is clarified, purified wrathful energy devoid of hatred. Completely coming from a place of love. But fierce, powerful, intense. Relating with your thoughts via the "Destroying" or "Cutting" action is just to cut through. Just simply cut. The thoughts stop, the story stops, the drama stops. And you are just sitting there with your plain naked experience. Then you hang out in that space for a while and see what happens next. This is closely related to Vajra and anger, but it’s mostly associated with the Karma wisdom activity.
ALWAYS START WITH PACIFYING
The crucial point here, and bringing it back to my story of Nelson, is that skillfully working with yourself and with other people ALWAYS START WITH PACIFYING.
First try to calm the situation down. First step back, allow space.
That usually works. But if it doesn’t move on to Enriching.
That usually works too. But if it doesn’t, move on to Magnitizing.
And finally, if all else fails, or if it’s an emergency and there’s no time, rouse your Wrathful energy and cut.
Also, always start with yourself… If I hadn’t gotten so wound up on the canoe crossing, I would have pacified myself first - “It’s ok. We are going to make it. The weather is good. Stay calm.”
If that didn’t work, I’m still feeling agitated: “He’s trying the best he can. He’s just a boy. He’s amazing for a nine year old. You should be proud of the son you’ve raised. You’ve done a great job with him.”
If that’s not helping, go to Magnetize “I see you. I recognize these feelings. I get how you are worried, afraid. You can feel that way. I’m not judging. Feel that energy just as it is.”
Finally, if all else fails, cut. “Stop it. You are being ridiculous. Your emotions are ruining the end of a fantastic family trip. Cut it out. Drop it NOW.”
If you can do this progression with yourself enough times, you can start to work with other people in this way too. At some point along the path (so I’ve heard) the Action becomes effortless. Compassionate activity just flows out constantly, with nothing to get in its way.
Because that is who and what we really are.
Good exercise - go look in the mirror
Notes from Liz’s talk:
Vajrayana teaches to the shadow side.
“The More” that we are: the parts of ourselves below the level of our thinking mind.
Story about “They call that a tree” Can’t encompass the fullness of our experience with our conceptual mind.
Yi (mind) Dam (connect) practice - Binding the thinking mind to something that is beyond the thinking mind.
Uses the thinking process to bring us beyond the thinking mind.
Mirror-like wisdom
Akshobia is male Buddha, Lochana is female Buddha
Underneath the anger is a fear, hypervigilence. Over intellectualized. Disconnected from intimacy. Very hard to be connected.
Righteousness - sense of humor as the antidote
How is Vajra energy clarified? Like what is the process?
perceiving reality very clearly.
a perception that goes beyond the conceptual mind
powerful curiousity about reality
capacity to see through one’s own deceptions
Pacifying karma. Also mentions Destroying as a Vajra karma (but that’s really Karma)
eyes as a portal to the phenomenal world. All senses act that way.
The essence of Vajra Wisdom is sharp, diamond clarity. Imagine a scalpel or a razor blade that can slice through any confusion with precise, clean, dispassionate strokes.
Imagine that at any time, when you are feeling confused or overwhelmed, you could stop time, step back from the situation and look at it from a dozen or a hundred perspectives. Then you could choose the best approach, the right thing to say, for the maximum best result for everyone involved.
In my personal life I encounter Vajra energy when I work on spreadsheets. Everything laid out in its cells.
That’s Vajra Wisdom.
It’s easy to see how that clarity, that sharpness, could flip into anger. You think you see more clearly than anyone else. Instead of a surgeon’s scalpel you have a sword. Instead of picking the best approach to benefit everyone, you slash out at the situation to make your self feel better.
I most encounter anger these days when my dog won’t stop barking in the middle of the night. There is literally nothing there. There is no threat. And yet, she wakes up the house at 3am with these sharp, loud calls like the wolves are gathered at the door.
This blind rage flares up inside me. Why does she do this? Why doesn’t she see what I see? Why does she have to wake me up in the dead of night?
My job in this talk is to illuminate, to clarify why defending your “self” is counter-productive. Why it just perpetuates suffering, isolation and pain. I aim to talk about how we can see through self-loathing and aggression and cultivate self-compassion, self-love. If I can get to it, I hope to talk about how the essence of neurosis is actually wisdom.
One thing we know from just a little bit of sitting and a little bit of introspection, is that our “self” is hard to pin down.
Who am I? is the existential question. Am I the person other’s see me as? Am I my parent’s child? Am I the person my teachers graded or my coaches trained? Am I the person lying awake in the dead of night unable to sleep? That’s four distinct people right there in one paragraph.
When we are sitting in meditation, we see all those identities and more popping up, existing for a while and then fading away.
The best analogy I can come up with for my “self” is like a series of clouds. I can name various clouds, like “Quiet” “Angry” “Tough” “Perceptive” “Cooking” “Writing” “Swimming” and so on. But most don’t have names. There are dozens of clouds. They appear and disappear according to some mechanic I don’t understand. They overlap, run into each other. Sometimes they cause a storm. Occasionally they fade and there’s just the clear blue sky above.
There’s nothing solid that I can find about myself. I looked at my memories, the continuity of my memories, the story of my life as something I could call myself. But it’s amazing how unreliable my memories are. Talking with my mom, or my wife or my closest friends about events in the past make it clear that my version of events is often very different than theirs.
Interestingly, my version often stars me as the hero, and no matter what the storyline is, generally ends with me justified in my actions.
But no matter what the storyline is, or the memories, or the truth of what actually happened, are those things really Who I am? I’m just a combination of previous events? That doesn’t seem right. That doesn’t give any weight to the things that I’m doing right now in the present moment.
Is there any continuity between the one year old baby Matt, the high school lacrosse player theater kid, the college dropout hiking club kid, the business school student, the husband, the entrepreneur, the father?
I tell you. Over 30 years of meditation, study, retreat, introspection… I can’t find anything I can reliably point to and say “This is me.”
That’s why the best analogy I can come up with is a series of clouds. They look like something from the outside, but, like when you are in an airplane, you can fly right through them.
So what is there actually to defend? What Self gets offended when someone ignores me or doesn’t give me the credit I feel I deserve?
To be clear, I’m not advocating that you let people walk all over you. Not at all. That’s not helpful for you or for them.
I am advocating for dropping this aggressive defense of an empty cloud bank. I’m saying that rather than wield your intelligence to lash out at people, information, feedback that challenge your view of the world, instead we just pause.
Step back. Sit down. Allow the turbulent water to settle, the mud to drift to the bottom and everything to clarify.
What we find, and you know this as well as I do because we’ve all had these moments of clarity, is peace. The cold clear world is peaceful. There’s a lot of open space. It’s glinting and alive, sharp and clear.
The battle that we’ve been fighting to defend our Self by lashing out at others, or lashing out at parts of ourselves, is unnecessary. There actually is nothing to defend really.
That’s all well and good, fine to say. A good working theory. But in reality, that’s not how things feel.
So at this point I want to talk about Maitri.
Maitri means “friendliness to oneself” or “self-care” I’m not talking about facials and massages, although that might be good. I’m talking about a Maitri attitude, a friendliness attitude towards our experience.
When we are angry, it’s easy to lash out. It’s surprisingly easy to lash in also, blame ourselves or hate ourselves for feeling these strong emotions.
The Vajra wisdom in this case is to see through self-hatred as just another tactic for solidifying our “Self”. I am angry. I am pissed off at the world, at my father, at my teacher, my boss.
But instead of turning that anger in towards myself “I’m stupid for falling for this again” we just stop everything and feel the energy.
Feel the power of that anger. Feel the crispness of the cold air. Don’t do anything with it. Just feel it. Feel it and release. Touch it and let it go.
There’s a river of freezing cold water flowing by. Put your hand in and feel the cold. Then pull it out. No drama. There’s a whole huge river of cold clear flowing water going by.
The world is so big. There is so much beauty and energy in the world. It’s so much bigger than any little thing going on within us. And actually we are a part of it. We are not separate.
It’s not like there’s me, a cloudbank floating along, and then the rest of the world. No.
The cloudbank of me is floating in the world. Connected to the sky. Touching the trees. Carrying the water. Dissolving in the summer heat and steaming out of the ocean on an autumn morning.
There’s nothing to be angry at. There’s limitless energy in the world, but there’s no owner, no separation. No boundaries.
The flip from neurosis to wisdom is small, maybe a five degree turn. Like you are holding up a diamond to the light, and a slight shift turns a chunk of glass into a lighthouse of love.
[sit for two minutes]
Does that make sense? I’m happy to discuss this if anyone has questions or something they want to share.