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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780834825819 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Shambhala |
| Publication date: | 08/11/2009 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 331 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
From Chapter 12: Transforming Anger
Many
practitioners get discouraged when they realize how difficult it is to
maintain an awake state. Quite often, even after a good period of
meditation or yoga first thing in the morning, where we feel somewhat
aware and awake, we may “come to” later in the day with the realization
that we’ve since spent hours in a state of waking sleep. The question
is, why is it so hard to awaken? In part, it’s because the life force,
or energy, necessary to awaken is constantly leaking away, from morning
till night.
Perhaps the most significant leak occurs through the
manifestation of negative emotions, where energy is squandered in small
and sometimes huge doses throughout the day. The word negative,
as used here, doesn’t necessarily mean “bad,” but simply something that
negates or denies. It says no to life. Anger, for example, says, “I
don’t want this!” This does not apply only to loud outbursts of anger.
We manifest negative emotions, in smaller doses, all day long: as
irritability, judgments of self and others, impatience, passive
aggression, and so on.
Working with Anger
One
important emphasis in practice is learning what closes these leaks.
This is why we must pay attention to how to work with our negative
emotions, particularly the many forms of anger. An analogy might be
helpful in understanding this process: we all know that food provides
energy for the body. But there’s another kind of “food” that feeds our
being, namely our impressions or experience. Every experience, much
like the food we consume, can either nourish or deplete us, depending
on how much awareness is present and what our intention is. When we
react to an experience negatively, it’s like eating bad food. It
doesn’t digest. In fact, it can even poison us. When that happens, we
often spew the poison back out into the world, usually at another
person.
The alternative to manifesting negative emotions is to
bring physical awareness to the actual energy of the reaction.
Normally, we fuel our reactions by believing and justifying the
thoughts that accompany them. But when we disengage from this pattern,
attention can instead be focused on the visceral experience of the
emotion itself. This attention allows a different type of digestion to
take place. For example, when we can stop the expression of anger and
instead experience its actual energy, that raw energy may actually
transform into nourishment for Being Awareness.
I’m not
suggesting that emotions should not arise, nor that we should repress
them. The practice instruction is simply to refrain from expressing
them, either outwardly through words and actions or inwardly through
spinning and obsessive thoughts. It is only through the process of not
expressing negative emotions and instead actually experiencing their
energy that we learn to live in accord with our true nature, our
natural Being Kindness.
If we could see our angry emotional
reactions clearly, it would become obvious how they deplete our energy
and consequently narrow our life. We would also see how, when we’re
caught in anger, we’re cut off from the heart, from a sense of our
basic connectedness. For example, when someone swerves in front of us
on the freeway, anger arises instantly, and we may get caught in the
strong impulse to yell and gesture. We will certainly feel justified in
being irate. But what happens if, instead of expressing the anger, we
simply stay with the visceral experience?
Practicing in this way
over time teaches us to connect more deeply with our experience, and
finally we are able to recognize the situation as it is: that another
driver simply cut us off, and that is all. Perhaps we can also label
the reactions we have as just believed thoughts, such as, “Having a
believed thought: ‘he’s a moron,’” “Having a believed thought: ‘she
shouldn’t be allowed to drive,’” or “Having a believed thought: ‘this
always happens to me.’”
As we learn to see our reactions more
clearly, and to label the thoughts associated with them, we become more
and more capable of experiencing our anger as just what is—heat in our
face or tension in our muscles and gut. We might even see that what
really happened is that we simply got scared. Above all, we no longer
hold on to our emotions and thoughts as the objective truth about what
actually happened.
At a certain point, in addition to
experiencing our emotions and labeling our thoughts, we may even feel
compassion—in this example, for the driver who cut us off—or at least
we might laugh at ourselves for getting so worked up over an
objectively small or insignificant occurrence. The point is, when we
don’t express anger, not only is the energy leakage closed, but the
very energy that would have leaked away also becomes available for
nourishing a genuine reconnection with life.
One common point of
confusion relating to this process is misunderstanding the difference
between nonexpression and suppression. When anger is suppressed, it
means that we are not feeling it. This can be particularly problematic
for meditators who have been brought up suppressing their anger,
because they can easily mistake their suppression for spiritual
maturity. But suppressed anger tends to fester; the poisonous energy of
anger can even pollute the body, often impacting our physical health.
When we instead withhold the expression of anger, it is very different
from suppression. Nonexpression actually allows us to feel—to fully
feel—the emotion of anger directly, letting it simply be there without
needing to do anything about it.
So why is it so difficult to
stop the expression of anger? We seem to hold on to this habit with a
stubbornness that defies all sense. The simple answer is we want to be
angry. We want to be right. This may not always be obvious, but the
feelings of juiciness and power that can accompany the expression of
anger are often intoxicating. This makes sense from an evolutionary
point of view, where raw instinctual reactions served a real
purpose—they allowed us to ward off physical threats in order to
survive. However, even though we no longer face the same kinds of
danger, and thus no longer need the same kind of response, our bodies
and minds have not yet caught on. So that juicy, “good” feeling of
anger remains, though it no longer serves us, particularly if we are on
the path of trying to live a more harmonious life.
Table of Contents
What Is Our Life About? 1
Introduction: Three Phases of Spiritual Practice 3
Part One
The Me Phase of Practice
1. Detours from Reality 21
2. Inner Hindrances 29
3. Strategies of Control 43
4. The Pillars of Practice 53
5. Three Breaths Practice 67
Part Two
The Foundations of Being Awareness
6. Qualities of Awakening 75
7. The Three Most Essential Questions 91
8. The Art of Awareness 101
9. Three Point Awareness Meditation 111
10. Helpful Daily Life Practices 117
Part Three
Cultivating Being Kindness
11. Student-Teacher Relationship 127
12. Transforming Anger 139
13. The Things We Fear Most 153
14. Relationships and Love 163
15. Three Heart Meditations 179
Appendix 2: Basic Meditation Instructions 195
Appendix 3: The Three Vows 197
What People are Saying About This
"Bayda writes with exceptional clarity and simplicity about the awakened life. His style is as plain spoken as Pema Chödrön's. He deserves membership in the ranks of respected meditation teacher-authors."—Publishers Weekly
"This book is like a personal retreat. I'd like to read it once a year. It has the best of the Zen spirit—not indulging but experiencing every ounce of life, good and bad. You will have to read closely, because the lessons are more difficult than they appear. At the same time it is a beautifully simple reflection on what it means to be, rather than to try to be. I'm certain of its wisdom because it is not there to be grasped and celebrated. The wisdom is all in the spaces, the pauses, and the wonderment."—Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and A Life at Work
"A clear and comprehensive guide to life transformation. Readers will find down-to-earth advice and effective practices for going beyond basic fears and conditioning to live a more awakened and openhearted life."—Dennis Genpo Merzel, Roshi, author of Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way