Living with Anger (Part One)
The snow falls on the mountain
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JoeUser Forums
Part One
With palms together,
There is a deep blanket of snow covering ther refuge this morning. The air is thick with it. The pines trees, stout as they are, bend under the weight of it. And more is falling.
Last night I sat zazen at our alter deep into the night. I lit stick after stick of incense. Bowed many times. But mostly just sat, erect, wrapped in my robes.
My ex-wife is dying of cancer. Our son is with her.
There are human beings killing and being killed all over the planet.
I realize the snow falls and the sun dies, and the days are shorter. The cold that forms the winter's nest sooths my heart.
Anger is a hot emotion. As all emotions it rises and falls away. We need not hold onto it or try to let it go. To do anything other than witness it adds to its power and fans its flames.
To bear witness to our anger is to look deeply into its true nature. It arises from perceptions distorted by experience and our memories of our thoughts about the meanings of those experiences. As quick as a flash of lightening, the perception whips through our assumptions and comes up as a thought. This thought kicks off a feeling and we are there.
These assumptions usually have something to do with our experience in the world. How fairly we believe we were treated...or unfairly. How we think we are being received, evaluated by others, etc. The most interestingthing about them is they are all non-existent. That isto say, they are in the past, mere momories, yet when we store them away, use them, as filters to understasnd the present moment, we are offering them a new and undeserved life.
Perceptions, memories and our assumptions, thoughts, feelings are all unstable. They are easily manipulated, reframed, if you will, and thus are not at all trust worthy, Like the snow, they give the illusion of stability, yet melt away with a clear eye to reveal the ground underneath them..
It is important for us to keep our eye on that ground. The ground of our being is discovered by simply stopping and sitting still. When we turn our eye inward it reveals the truth about our existence. We are the snow, the trees, the air, the earth. We rise up and we fall away. Nothing special.
Sodaiho
With palms together,
There is a deep blanket of snow covering ther refuge this morning. The air is thick with it. The pines trees, stout as they are, bend under the weight of it. And more is falling.
Last night I sat zazen at our alter deep into the night. I lit stick after stick of incense. Bowed many times. But mostly just sat, erect, wrapped in my robes.
My ex-wife is dying of cancer. Our son is with her.
There are human beings killing and being killed all over the planet.
I realize the snow falls and the sun dies, and the days are shorter. The cold that forms the winter's nest sooths my heart.
Anger is a hot emotion. As all emotions it rises and falls away. We need not hold onto it or try to let it go. To do anything other than witness it adds to its power and fans its flames.
To bear witness to our anger is to look deeply into its true nature. It arises from perceptions distorted by experience and our memories of our thoughts about the meanings of those experiences. As quick as a flash of lightening, the perception whips through our assumptions and comes up as a thought. This thought kicks off a feeling and we are there.
These assumptions usually have something to do with our experience in the world. How fairly we believe we were treated...or unfairly. How we think we are being received, evaluated by others, etc. The most interestingthing about them is they are all non-existent. That isto say, they are in the past, mere momories, yet when we store them away, use them, as filters to understasnd the present moment, we are offering them a new and undeserved life.
Perceptions, memories and our assumptions, thoughts, feelings are all unstable. They are easily manipulated, reframed, if you will, and thus are not at all trust worthy, Like the snow, they give the illusion of stability, yet melt away with a clear eye to reveal the ground underneath them..
It is important for us to keep our eye on that ground. The ground of our being is discovered by simply stopping and sitting still. When we turn our eye inward it reveals the truth about our existence. We are the snow, the trees, the air, the earth. We rise up and we fall away. Nothing special.
Sodaiho