..续本文上一页it, to be open to it, to receive it non-judgementally. As I did so, it began to unravel. It looked almost like it was unpacking itself. What I had thought was anger turned out to have a complex mechanism. It turned out to be a series of things.
After resentment, fear came up, fear of letting this resentment out, of it exploding, and fearing what the other person would do if I let it out. The fear lasted three or four days. Below fear was frustration. I spent three or four days with that one. Each day was an unravelling of this feeling
I had called ”anger.” It began to unravel in an almost mechanical way. As it unravelled, it opened up. As it opened up, it got more scary, because it didn”t have a shape any more. It became more nebulous, and it became bigger. It became bigger than me. But as it unravelled it became less solid and more spacious, and there was more flexibility with it. When it reached frustration, it seemed less personal. It seemed more universal. This unravelling went on for a few weeks. Then one day I noticed it was just this colourless energy. It had neither colour nor texture nor emotion. I couldn”t say it was either resentment or frustration; it was just this pulsating energy, a colourless energy, though it wasn”t pleasant. I could see that it was not me, and there was a fear with that. At least with anger I could say, ”Well, OK, that”s me”. But as it got more and more unpacked, it got down to sort of an archetypal level. It was a basic fundamental emotion. Then there was just this energy there, pulsating. A powerful energy without colour or direction. I couldn”t say it was mine. I could only say it was life-force. And this was a revelation to me, to find that anger is part of our being. It is an expression of life-force. Of course it”s been polluted by negative influences, in this case by my own stuff, my frustration and resentment and fear. But at its source it is just the life-force. This was frightening to discover, because I had no control over it. With anger I had a certain degree of control: I could keep my mouth shut, or let it out; but this stuff, what is it
It is important therefore, that we work with anger, not against it, because it is part of our life-force. If we try to work against it, it is like trying to kill ourselves. This is what many people do, they try to strangle their anger.
They try to stop it and then they get depressed and resentful and frustrated, because they”re stopping their life-force. To work with anger doesn”t mean to let it out, but to work with it, to be able to tune into it at a level where it”s at this life-force level. Once we can see in a different way it has a different meaning for us.
I realised that when I thought it was simply ”anger”, certain scolding thoughts arose in me, ”Oh, you shouldn”t be angry. Thirty years of meditation and you”re still angry.” But when it became this energy, a pulsating energy, then all these voices stopped, because there was no history with it. There was no history, no colouration and no personal investment in it, because it is just natural life-force. That”s surely what the Buddha was telling us, not to take the things we”re aware of as an expression of ourselves, but to be aware of what their real implications are, what is their real depth. Many times we”re just looking at the surface, we aren”t really seeing what the source is. If we cultivate mindfulness, awareness, it can begin to penetrate through; it can unpack emotions like anger.
Anger is not something to be throttled and strangled, but something to be explored and opened to and discovered. It is to be transformed into something which is enlightened. Practice is about enlightening that quality, not about pushing it away, or trying to strangle it or ignore it. Anger is telling us something about ourselves whether we want to hear it or not. We should remember the teaching of Ajahn Chah, that ”all things are teaching us”, and remember that the things we don”t like are probably the things that are teaching us most of all.
Forest Sangha newsletter: April 2004, Number 68
《Rounding Out the Practice》全文阅读结束。