The ninth precept, or aspect of the Ten Wholesome Paths, in Mahayana Buddhism concerns anger. Sometimes the precept is translated as "I vow not to get angry," but more often it concerns indulging in an angry state which leads to the mind of hatred. We say this precept as "I vow not harbor ill-will." However, Krodha, the Sanskrit word that is translated as anger means hatred, intentionally wishing to harm, and even taking pleasure in harming others. The acts of hating, maintaining anger, harboring ill-will and bearing a grudge are possible because we create a story that justifies feeling this way. Repeating the story is a strong factor in maintaining our anger. The justification we use to support our anger also helps create a sense of a solid, separate self, particularly a self in opposition to another self. Because self-righteousness and self-justification give a feeling of sureness, we miss how it traps us in our own world and cuts us off from others. Bodhidharma’s commentary on this precept is, "Not contriving reality for the self is called the precept of not indulging in anger." Self-justification fixes a self, it feeds and is fed by maintaining ill-will which is basically the story of how we were wronged. The longer we maintain our story, the stronger it becomes, and the more we believe it and actually live in our story about the past, surrendering our present life to the story of our past wrong. So, we lose our freedom to inhabit our present life, to meet the joy of this moment.

The idea that love or loving-kindness is an antidote to hatred is pretty common to Buddhist teaching, but I always took it to mean turning one’s hatred for someone into loving-kindness toward them. But for me, again, what works is directing the kind, understanding, open-hearted part of myself to the part that is critical or upset.

In the book Forgive For Good, Fred Luskin talks about the idea of unenforceable rules. He said that unenforceable rules "are at the root of almost all our suffering," and that whenever we are very upset about anything, other than a very recent loss or illness, our attempt to enforce an unenforceable rule is at the root of it. He defines a rule as "any expectation you have for how something should turn out or how someone should think or behave." One common unenforceable rule, probably the most common, is that life should be fair. One way to practice with our anger and frustration is to look for the underlying rule or assumption that’s helping to create our attitude. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to change our rules or values, but becoming aware of what our expectations are may help us understand why we are frustrated or angry, or how our expectations may be blocking out what’s actually happening.

A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way or the Bodhicaryavatara, by the 8th century Indian Buddhist master, Shantideva is a highly regarded Mahayana Buddhist text. I have been reading Pema Chodron’s commentary on this in her book No Time to Lose, and I also have been studying her book Practicing Peace in Times of War which is about how to practice with negative emotions, especially our emotional responses that have become ingrained or habituated. To change habitual patterns takes awareness, determination and courage. In Practicing Peace Pema Chodron made a point that I find really interesting. She talked about when we step away from a habitual response, a vacancy or unknown area is left in the way we process our experience. She gave the example, that if our automatic response to a perceived emotional threat is to tense up and hold on tightly to our point of view; and if instead, we try to relax, to soften and open, she says that we will meet an underlying uneasiness, and that this underlying uneasiness is what we were trying to get away from in the first place. She wrote that "Whenever there’s a sense of threat, we harden. And so if we don’t harden....We’re left with that uneasiness, that feeling of threat." And she said, "That’s when the real journey of courage begins." "This is the real work of the peacemaker, to find the soft spot and tenderness in that very uneasy place and stay with it." And "If we can stay with the soft spot and stay with the tender heart, then we are cultivating the seeds of peace."

The determination to work with our painful emotions – is the second most important factor after awareness in the process of stepping back and refraining from our automatic responses. So, once we’re aware of a habitual pattern that we want to change and we are in touch with the pain it is causing, our determination to refrain from that automatic response is essential. The determination can be used as a vow. Pema Chodron talks about creating a vow in words that are meaningful and true to us so they express our own highest, heartfelt wish for ourselves. She qualifies the vow by saying "to the best of my ability." So, we put our vow into our own words. But because a habit is a deep-seated pattern that has had a lot of reinforcement usually over years, it is likely that we will slip up. It is important all the way through the process to encourage ourselves to continue rather than scolding ourselves for slipping. By saying, "I vow, to the best of my ability, to do such and such..." recognizes that we are likely to slip up–you know, sometimes we don’t have much ability. But the more we try to change a pattern and the more we forgive ourselves when we slip up, the more we will be encouraged to keep trying. Pema Chodron said that "Your motivation behind the vow is that you equate the vow with the ultimate kindness for yourself..." I think that when we can feel genuine kindness for ourselves, that this is a tremendous support for staying with this kind of work.

The third condition that’s needed to change negative or neurotic patterns of response is courage. When we refrain from our usual reaction, we face the unknown; and the ability to stay in that place of unknown territory requires courage. According to Pema Chodron, "There is a teaching that says that behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky. You find that which is ineffable, ungraspable, and unbiased, that which can support and awaken us at any time."

In Buddhism the traditional antidote to anger is patience, and sometimes patience means just to pause, or take a breath, and create a little space. Pema Chodron talks about the seductive quality of aggressive emotions, the force we feel pulling on us, consciously or unconsciously, to relieve the pain we are feeling. Sometimes this pain is so acute and our response is so automatic, that it’s like a trigger; and we react blindly and strike out at others. Pema Chodron suggests that when we are in the midst of discomfort and emotional pain, that we pause in order to refrain from acting out of habit and that we refrain from talking to ourselves, and simply connect with the soft spot. She recommends that we continue to try to interrupt "the torturous story line and stay with our underlying vulnerability... relaxing with the restless hot energy – knowing that it is the only way to find peace for ourselves or the world." In this context, refraining is a renunciation of the words and concepts that justify our anger. When we are able to refrain from the story and justification for being angry, we can be present with what she calls the "rawness" of our experience. This isn’t repression, she refers to it as "going cold turkey with the aggression" and getting to "know the naked energy of anger and the pain it can cause if you react."

I would like to try to distinguish between repression and refraining. In my experience, repression involves a kind of self-discipline which binds us and often results, sooner or later, in an explosion; whereas refraining is characterized by awareness, engaging instant by instant in awareness which will, hopefully, be warm-hearted and which creates space in a chain reaction. Refraining is an energetic engagement which is also quite different from being passive, or laid back, oblivious or asleep to what we are feeling. Refraining gives space to choose a response.

Our essential nature is described as being empty of any permanent, unchanging Self, and that impermanence or interdependence is the essential nature of everything. There is a Zen story that addresses this. Once a monk asked the Chinese Zen Master Fa-yen, "What is the ground of the Absolute Truth?" and Fa-yen replied, "If there were a ground, it would not be Absolute Truth." Similarly, Akiyama Roshi, the founder of the Milwaukee Zen Center when asked, "What is the absolute basis of reality?" replied, "There is no Absolute."

With this in mind, I want to go back to the practice of refraining from striking out when we feel painful emotions. Pema Chodron said that "When we stick with this process we learn... there is no resolution for the uncomfortable feelings..." She talks about a characteristic of aggression or anger as "an energy that is determined to resolve the situation into some kind of solid, fixed, very hard pattern where somebody wins and somebody loses." She said that "We long for something we can hold onto..." But patience "... never resolves itself into something solid." She says that we involuntarily seek solid ground. But this practice is "a way of completely shifting the fundamental human habit of trying to resolve things..." She compared the urge to resolve our emotional pain to an itch that we really want to scratch. This practice is a way to learn to be with uncomfortable emotional spaces. The more we are alright with our uncomfortableness, we can listen to it and learn from it. It’s another way of getting to know ourselves more deeply rather than just changing the subject to something we are comfortable with.

She described practicing patience with our automatic responses as a four-fold process: First, recognize that you’re experiencing an aggressive, negative emotion; second, refrain from acting on it; third, relax into the underlying force or urge to relieve it, staying present with its raw energy; and fourth, vow to interrupt the momentum of this kind of energy whenever it arises. One tool for interrupting the cascading effect of emotional response, is to bring your awareness to your breathing. Actually, any way that we can find to connect with our physical presence interrupts our story line.

I want to end with another passage by Pema Chodron. She said that behind resistance, behind aggression and jealousy, behind any kind of tension, there is always a soft spot that we are trying to protect. But in almost every moment we have a choice whether to open or close, to harden or soften, to hold our seat or strike out, to hold on or to let go. She said that "If you let go, something will die, but it’s something that will benefit you greatly."