This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. So today I'd like to speak about the challenge of anger. and the power of what we call the perfections in practice. But I'd like to start by orienting ourselves to who we're practicing for. And I'm wondering if there's anyone or anything for which you would like to dedicate your practice today. And I'll start out by just saying to our teachers, the original teachers, Shakyamuni Buddha, transmission from Bodhidharma to China, and Ehe Dogen Zenji and Keizan Zenji to Japan, and Shogaku Shinryu, Suzuki Roshi, and other teachers from Japan.

[01:28]

to the U.S. And so how it came to us through time and also to everyone, including people suffering from war and calamities of all kinds. Anyone else who needs to be included in this dedication, which I'd like to give at the beginning of lecture instead of the end, you can say the name out loud or you can think it yourself. You don't have to expose yourself by speaking in public if you don't want. But what I'm going to do is say one, two, three, and then we can each say a name, and then no one will be able to tell it's you. Okay, and even people online are completely welcome to join, either by saying it or by the chat. Okay? Get ready. One, two, three.

[02:35]

Sangha. Thank you. So as I said, today I'd like to speak about the challenge of anger. And the central question which Dave and I are teaching about today and which I'm lecturing about from the point of view of the tradition, the central question is, how does Zen practice train us to let go of our relational barriers between us and the world? and whatever is happening between others or the world and us. It's kind of a central question for us right now.

[03:37]

How do we transform barriers or work through barriers to find intimacy, peace, health? And what of these practices, these traditional Zen practices, directly help us to live in ways that are founded on connection, altruism, loving-kindness, particularly in times of conflict or change. So I want to start with the traditional Buddhist understanding of anger because anger is an emotion that's difficult for us to practice with. many times because it gives rise to adrenaline which gives rise to quick action and so it's hard to kind of catch up with anger when we feel it because it tends to separate us from what's happening and how we can respond and push us into the realm of protection avoidance or rejection so that's why I chose anger

[04:52]

So the traditional Buddhist understanding is that there's three poisons, greed, hatred, and delusion. So desire, aversion, and confusion, and our reactions, getting, pushing, or paralysis, delusion. Okay, and so of the three, anger is considered to be the most dangerous. in that one moment of anger is traditionally understood to destroy a lifetime of intimacy or a lifetime of practice I don't know if you've experienced this in your own life where someone starts with you always you always or you never and it explodes and then something happens and then suddenly the relationship is very much hurt.

[05:56]

And that's explosive nature of anger is what the Buddha was talking about. And in the early teaching of the Buddha he gave some advice which I had been reciting for over 50 years but which I had personally found difficult to really understand or work with until I studied it more and studied the teachings across the years, which helped me understand the teaching of the Buddha. So I'll tell you about this teaching, which is from some of the Buddha's earliest teachings. And this translation of this work, the Dhammapada, is by my ordination brother, Gil Fronstal. It's fresh and easy to understand.

[06:59]

So you can find this in the chapter in the Dhammapada, Buddha's earliest teachings on anger. He says, The one who keeps anger in check as it arises, as one would a careening chariot, I call a charioteer, Others are merely rain holders, holders of the rains. Conquer anger with non-anger. Conquer wickedness with goodness. Conquer stinginess with giving. And a liar with truth. So again, it says, the one who keeps anger in check as it arises... as one with a careening chariot, I call a charioteer, while others are merely rain holders. Conquer anger with non-anger.

[08:02]

Conquer wickedness with goodness. Conquer stinginess with giving and a liar with truth. So to conquer anger, the Buddha continues, restrain ourselves when it arises. Restrain the arising of... the demonstration of anger in body, speech, and mind. So we let go of our misconducts and practice good conduct instead. But in actual fact, when someone is telling me that I always or that I never, I couldn't understand how to apply this teaching because as soon as they said, you always or you never, the tiger would arise really fast and start attacking before I knew what I was doing. So it seemed impossible to be able to restrain that, and I couldn't understand what that meant in actual life.

[09:07]

I couldn't understand because I wasn't quick enough to, you know, there was no time. in between the arising of anger and acting it out. Especially since I was one of the early feminists and I marched. And we used our anger in those marches for chanting and for what we thought was justice. And there were other causes that I marched for at that time. And I started marching when I was about 15 years old. But then by the time I was 16 years old, I was really, really tired. And I thought, oh, no, I can't do this anymore. I have to stop working for justice. I can't do this. It's going to kill me. It took a long time for me to have that thought, maybe about another five years.

[10:10]

But that's when that thought started, really soon. And then someone handed me once a Xerox. I looked at the Xerox. It was called The Miracle of Being Awake. And it was by Thich Nhat Hanh. And The Miracle of Being Awake consisted of two of Buddha's sutras. One was the Mahasatipatthana Sutta. And the other one was the Anapanasati Sutta. So the four foundations of mindfulness and the sutra on exploring and understanding the breath. And so then that was the start of an exploration into what anger is, how it arises, what can I do with it, body, speech, and mind. But then... Shortly after I discovered those sutras and the teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh, who, by the way, went on to help young people have a voice in Washington, D.C., and to end the American War in Vietnam.

[11:24]

That's how he happened to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and become a world-honored poet and teacher. And... You know, when I was studying him and how he came off, he did seem to put the Buddha's teachings into action. So when anger arose in him, he would speak softly and smile. And I thought, I could never do that. It's too sweet for me. And I didn't realize that that sweetness that he had and demonstrated came forth from tremendous personal and group suffering. I didn't see how that could happen. And I could go into that more about what happened with me and why I couldn't, but I'm not going to. Just imagine seeing an example like Thich Nhat Hanh and thinking, oh, that's too sweet for me. I can't do that.

[12:24]

So rejecting it. So basically, if you go back into that feeling, there's a kind of an anger that this is a standard I could never achieve. And there's a kind of rejection of the teaching behind that feeling of I could never do that. It's too sweet for me. But then came ordination. So some of us in this room were ordained in 1981 and 1982. And that was a pretty long time ago. And the precept that we received at that time about anger... was not harboring ill will, not harboring ill will. So that's interesting because it doesn't say don't get angry. It says don't harbor ill will. Once you have the feeling of anger, what do you do or what don't you do with it? And so fast forward to years and years and years of study after ordination, and I came across...

[13:32]

some of the teachings in the Heroic March scripture, which is, it's a text that's mentioned in some of our koan collections, some of our public cases on how people behave when they're practicing. And so the training modes from this sutra, the Heroic March scripture, the Samdhi Nirmachana Mahayana Sutra, talks about perfection. And perfection doesn't mean like perfectionism. Perfection means finding a bigger way to respond instead of react. That's based on our basic feeling of wanting to be awake for the benefit of all beings. So if we act that way and not the way that's just we're being pushed and bullied by our emotions and our habits.

[14:38]

So when we have habitual reactions to our emotions, it's a form of kind of bullying from our past to make us react in particular ways. But when we find out that there's more options of how to behave in situations such as anger, we transcend those habits and preconceptions about how to behave. And we are free to behave in ways that benefit ourselves and others. And that's why they're called perfections. Not perfectionism, not am I right, but is my action necessary? Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? Is it beneficial? So the Samdhi Nirmocana Sutra, this sutra called the Heroic March.

[15:40]

Here I come to save the day. Mighty Mouse is on the way. So it's like I felt like Mighty Mouse. You know, it's a very, very small creature that's being asked to save the day somehow. to lift a building with a finger or to, you know, face a bunch of wolves or whatever. I felt like that when I first started to practice, and sometimes I still do. But what freed me up from that feeling of inadequacy in responding instead of reacting was this description in the heroic Mark scripture of what this kind of courage or heroism actually is, talking about the perfections as a basis of training, a basis of training. So a way to train ourselves to live from our deepest intention instead of out of habit or autopilot.

[16:53]

So it's in a chapter of the Heroic March scripture that is devoted to Avalokiteshvara. In other words, devoted to the personification of compassion or kindness, generosity, altruism. And so the chapter is set up as a series of questions... from the embodiment of compassion to the Buddha, whose awakeness personified or embodied. And so this sutra teaches us a way to train in not harboring ill will. And it's simple. It's not easy. It's simple. When anger arises, we practice. When anger arises, we practice.

[17:56]

It doesn't mean that we have to attain complete renunciation, which was my assumption, not the truth about what the Buddha taught. So when anger arises, we practice benefiting ourselves, the subject of our anger, and the space between and around ourself and the other. or the perceived other. So that we, the one or the thing that we're angry at, and the space in between and all around becomes the field of practice. And we practice. We vow, we decide, we determine, we resolve, and we resource ourselves to practice. So the paramitas, I'll just list them and say which ones I want to focus on about anger.

[19:04]

That's okay. The paramitas or the perfections, here's the list. Get ready. The first one is generosity or giving. Generosity or giving. A feeling of giving. So... whether it's material goods or donations, whether it's a gift of the truth or the teaching, or a gift of support and fearlessness, whether it's any of those kinds of gifts, it adds a drop of goodness to the ocean of goodness, the ocean of resources that is the world. So it overcomes non-goodness by putting goodness out there. Giving builds virtue. It builds a capacity for virtue because we have somebody else's welfare in mind.

[20:09]

And one act of giving, no matter how small, benefits everyone by enriching and nourishing. the space in which we all live by allowing for the possibility of trust in the space in which we all live. Generosity is the first one. Ethics or discipline is the second one. So basically ethics in the field of anger means that we practice not impoverishing someone or the space between us. We practice not harming someone who's the subject of our anger or the space between us. We practice not scorning or ignoring someone we're angry with or the space between us. All of those things become fields for practice and that is ethics for the purpose of non-anger.

[21:20]

And we practice tolerance. Online, you can look up anger and it says visualize them as a baby or as a toddler. Have you ever seen that online? Or it says, take three breaths, walk around the block. Those are things that you can see online to do when you're angry. But the point is, That with tolerance, we can develop some space between the impulse to act out of fear or rejection and the actual action that we do. And in the space, we can consider what is our real priority. The space gives us time to consider what's our real priority? What kind of person do I want to be? and then act from there.

[22:25]

So basically what it does, what that space of tolerance does is to help us prioritize, it's a tool, to help us prioritize practice over small-minded or selfish habits that come from fear, or especially fear of one's own impoverishment, harm, or scorn. And so it has the function of allowing us to be steady when we're insulted or hurt. Doesn't mean that we have to ignore being insulted or hurt. We still have our boundaries. But it helps us stay in that space to consider our best response, and that is patience. So it helps us build a wider view because as we're steady, as we breathe, as the adrenaline begins to cool down, we can admit other possibilities besides the ones that habit reveals to us.

[23:36]

So, so far we've looked at generosity, ethics, and patience as practices to do with anger. And what those three hold in common is that there's a certain amount of effort that we have to put forward, especially at the beginning, especially when we're first trying to study how to change a habit of reactivity. It takes effort to... I don't know if you've ever seen a cartoon where someone gets angry and their head blows up. So it takes... It takes effort at first to tamp that down and to go, no, I'm just going to do three breaths, or I'm just going to walk around the block, or I'm just going to try to see a slightly wider view. It takes effort. And as we sustain a long, steady, uninterrupted practice,

[24:47]

the level of effort decreases and it becomes more who we are and how we really are tending to respond. We can change our life and the life of those of others around us. So generosity, ethics, and patience allow us to absorb the teaching of the Buddha. It takes effort to do that. But again, the teaching of the Buddha is... The one who keeps anger in check as it arises, as one would a careening chariot, I call a charioteer. Others are merely rain holders, conquer anger with non-anger. Okay, Shakespeare talks about this. They who have the power to hurt and would do none, who do not do the thing they most do show, who moving others are themselves as stone, unmoved, cold and to temptation slow.

[25:49]

They are the lords and owners of their faces. They harbor nature's riches from expense. They rightly do inherit heaven's graces. Others are stewards of their excellence. Okay, so anyway, this is known by humans. Okay, so I just want to talk about, you know, I just want to do a little add for the impact of practicing generosity, ethics, and patience, and why it pays to spend that effort, especially at the beginning, and to sustain it for a long time. So this is the add, okay? I haven't taken time to... make a video out of it or write a fancy script, but I'll just read a list of the immediate advantages that are part of developing the habit of practicing instead of the habit of reacting.

[27:06]

Situations in which one would normally be angry, sad, or scared begin to develop some sense of texture as spaces of great resource. Okay? And there are actually chants to help us do this, like the Enmei Juku Kanon Gyo, the Shosai Myo Kichijo Jurani, help us resources ourselves by calling on compassion or by burning through. the hindrances that would otherwise push us around. So situations in which we would normally be angry, sad, or scared begin to have texture so that we can have a wider view of them. And they give space for intimacy because it's not constantly being undercut with pointed barbs or screaming and that kind of thing.

[28:08]

So It means that our future improves with practice. There's good selfish reasons to practice instead of being pushed around by anger. And also we can skillfully reduce the number and power that the place that enemies hold in our life by not creating enemies or by understanding more about our enemies. So His Holiness the Dalai Lama had this wonderful phrase called My Friend the Enemy. Okay? So let's check that out. We lose the tendency to disagree or express dissent because it's exciting to do so. We can enjoy our inner and outer relationships. We can develop more intimacy if we're not... mad at ourself or other people in ways that act it out and reinforce it.

[29:14]

We can experience our own sense of joyfulness, peace and power by practicing it without becoming attached to it. We reduce harm to ourselves, the harm we do ourselves when we think those thoughts and act on them. as well as the harm to others. And our actions become examples of practice for ourself and others. So the Yoga Sutras talks about it. It says that people who practice friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, that in their presence, enmity drops. Aggression drops. So... Let's see, before I close with a quote by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, I'd like to suggest that you kind of get yourself comfortable so that you can hear it instead of focusing on pain.

[30:20]

Okay, so bring yourself into some connection with the earth through your chair, through your sit bones and feet, or through the... sit bones and the action away from the earth in the cross-legged posture so develop a posture right now in which your the words touch your body and your mind okay you're breathing So what has Holiness the Dalai Lama said in this book called Kindness, Clarity, and Insight? There's a chapter called Altruism and the Six Perfections, which is about how kindness, which results in non-anger, is expressed through these perfections, particularly generosity, patience, ethics, and patience that we're focusing on today.

[31:35]

and the effort that underlies them. So what he says is, altruism is transformed to action. Altruism, our basic intention to be kind, to help people, is transformed into action. We engage in practicing the six perfections, giving, ethics, patience, effort, concentration, and wisdom. There are three types of giving. The giving of resources, of one's own body, and of the roots of virtue. It is the most difficult to give away your own roots of virtue.

[32:35]

And it is also the most important. When you have a strong sense of giving and dedicating to others your roots of virtue, you no longer seek reward for yourself. Even though mere giving can be done by those seeking their own benefit, a bodhisattva's giving and awakening being's giving is not involved in selfishness at all. Altruism is transformed into action. You engage in practicing the perfections. Giving is the root of the perfections. Giving resources, giving one's own body, one's own self, giving the roots of virtue, directly or through example. It's the most difficult to give away our own roots of virtue.

[33:38]

not to hold on to our own attainments. It's also the most important. When you have a strong sense of giving and dedicating to others your roots of virtue, you no longer seek for any reward for yourself. Even though mere giving can be done by those seeking their own benefit, a bodhisattva's giving is not involved in selfishness at all. So paramitas are often seen as stages of Buddhist practice. But when we work with the anger in this wider way, it's heart practice or nourishment. It's effort as mind practice or bravery that build interpersonal spaces of nourishment and bravery, nourishment and courage, that even stronger, than the discomfort of conflict and change.

[34:40]

Is it enough? Can we focus on our own questions, what we need to know or to study about the space of nourishment and courage in the midst of conflict and change? Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:26]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.39