The Answer to Anger & Aggression is Patience
By Pema Chödrön
We can suppress anger and aggression or act it out, either way making things worse for ourselves and others. Or we can practice patience: wait, experience the anger and investigate its nature. Pema Chödrön takes us step by step through this powerful practice.
The Buddhist teachings tell us that patience is the antidote to anger and aggression. When we feel aggression in all its many forms—resentment, bitterness, being very critical, complaining and so forth—we can apply the different practices we”ve been given and all the good advice we”ve heard and given to other people. But those often don”t seem to help us. That”s why this teaching about patience caught my interest a few years ago, because it”s so hard to know what to do when one feels anger and aggression.
I thought, if patience is the antidote to aggression, maybe I”ll just try that. In the process I learned a lot about what patience is and about what it isn”t. I would like to share with you what I”ve learned, to encourage you to find out for yourself how patience works with aggression.
To begin with, I learned about patience and the cessation of suffering. It”s said that patience is a way to de-escalate aggression. I”m thinking here of aggression as synonymous with pain. When we”re feeling aggressive—and in some sense this would apply to any strong feeling—there”s an enormous pregnant quality that pulls us in the direction of wanting to get some resolution. It hurts so much to feel the aggression that we want it to be resolved.
So what do we usually do
We do exactly what is going to escalate the aggression and the suffering. We strike out; we hit back. Something hurts our feelings, and initially there is some softness there—if you”re fast, you can catch it—but usually you don”t even realize there is any softness. You find yourself in the middle of a hot, noisy, pulsating, wanting-to-just-get-even-with-someone state of mind: it has a very hard quality to it. With your words or your actions, in order to escape the pain of aggression, you create more aggression and pain.
At that point, patience means getting smart: you stop and wait. You also have to shut up, because if you say anything it”s going to come out aggressive, even if you say, “I love you.”
Once, when I was very angry at a colleague of mine, I called him on the telephone. I can”t even remember now what I was angry about, but at the time I couldn”t sleep because I was so furious. I tried meditating with my anger and working with it and doing practices with it, but nothing helped, so I just got up in the middle of the night and called him. When he answered the phone, all I said was, “Hi, Yeshe.” But he immediately asked, “Did I do something wrong
” I thought I would very sweetly cover over what I was really feeling and say something pleasant about all the bad things he had done, whatever they were. But just by the tone of my greeting to him, he knew. That”s what it”s like with aggression: you can”t speak because everyone will feel the vibes. No matter what is coming out of your mouth, it”s like you”re sitting on top of a keg of dynamite and it”s vibrating.
Patience has a lot to do with getting smart at that point and just waiting: not speaking or doing anything. On the other hand, it also means being completely and totally honest with yourself about the fact that you”re furious. You”re not suppressing anything—patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. If you wait and don”t feed your discursive thought, you can be honest about the fact that you”re angry. But at the same time you can continue to let go of the internal dialogue. In that dial…
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