anger

In my last post I talked about how I had been avoiding the news because the headlines over the last few years have mostly just made me angry, and how recent events have made me realize I can’t keep my head in the sand anymore. Since then I’ve been trying to stay more informed, and I’ve also been trying to acknowledge and analyze the feelings that rise up in me as I do. One thing I’ve learned is that I can only really manage a feeling by confronting it, not trying to ignore it or make it go away.

To keep myself calm, I think of a lecture from the series “Understanding the Dark Side of Human Nature” about anger. The professor talks about how some philosophers view anger as the only humane response to the suffering of others:

“To make this argument, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum appeals to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s experience of being rescued from a Nazi death camp. On seeing the horrors of the camp, Wiesel recounts, an American soldier started yelling and cursing. Rather than finding the soldier’s behavior upsetting or offensive, Wiesel found his behavior justified, reasonable, and genuinely humane.”

In contrast to this example, the professor then talks about Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. The story goes that when Avalokiteśvara became aware of how much suffering there was in the world, she was so overwhelmed that her head split into eleven pieces:

“The buddha Amitābha, upon seeing her plight, gave her eleven heads to help her hear the cries of those who are suffering. Upon hearing these cries and comprehending them, Avalokiteśvara attempted to reach out to all those who needed aid, but found that her two arms shattered into pieces. Once more, Amitābha came to her aid and appointed her a thousand arms to let her reach out to those in need.”

He then asks which you would rather encounter if you were a person in need: the angry soldier, or the compassionate bodhisattva. I see the value of both, and I don’t think it needs to be an either-or question. But I’ve started to realize that I need to work on being more compassionate and less angry. There are horrible people doing horrible things in the world, but instead of wasting my energy fixating on them, I need to be paying more attention to the victims and to the good that is happening. Like anything, it’ll take practice, but I need to stick with it.