Working with Anger without Blaming

         As a follow up to the last article, I thought to talk about how to work with anger without blaming.

        Every day we see things that upset us – homeless veterans begging on the street, children being trafficked, animals suffering cruelty, neighbors pouring paint down street drains, which run to creeks.  I just received a notice on my neighborhood blog.  Someone was upset at a man for filling water into two five gallon bottles from a park drinking fountain; the person who posted this notice was clearly outraged because they titled the post “Stealing Water”.  So there are many things in a day that can trigger us.  How do we work with the feelings that arise, and still keep intact our own and the other person’s or peoples’ humanity?

     Anger arises when we witness an injustice.  The awakened face of anger is the ability to clearly see a wrong and to feel the pain of that injustice.  This wisdom aspect of anger also has the insight to see what is right and needed, so as to bring change or undo wrongs.  Throughout history, changes in all arenas of life were brought about by this innate drive for justice, and to end suffering in the world.    

     But anger that arises out of vengeance and the need to harm a perceived “enemy’ is the kind of anger that causes us to assign blame. When we blame, we not only harm the other person, but also ourselves.  Blaming causes us to think the other person is ‘bad’, and makes us believe we are better, different, and separate from another person.  The fact is anger is an inherent part of our nature.

    Our minds can fixate and ruminate on the wrongs we or people we love have experienced and this traps us in a continuing cycle of misery.  A story will better illustrate this point:  two monks were walking through a forest.  They saw a woman trying to cross a fast moving river.  One monk picked up the woman and carried her across the river.  His friend followed.  Later on that day, the monk who had followed said to the other monk, he couldn’t believe he’d broken a vow by touching a woman.  The other monk replied:  “I put her down hours ago but you are still carrying her”.  So our tendency to replay the wrongs we’ve endured or witnessed can bog us down in anguish and unnecessary suffering.

      By changing our perspective, we can start to work on not pointing a finger at ourselves or someone else.  And we always start with ourselves.
    We begin by getting ourselves out of the misery of ruminating the same blame story over and over in our minds.  Even when we can clearly see someone is causing pain, we work on our approach to that person or situation.  This is difficult to do.  But if our priority is to end suffering, then compassion is the wisest approach to ending it.  We remind ourselves that this person is also suffering.  Pointing a finger only increases suffering

      Anger also increases our own suffering.  Suffering exists in life; it’s not a personal failing when we suffer.  Our minds and bodies endure huge stress and damage when we are angry. 

     Change and growth typically occur in difficulty or with struggle.  So right in the intense heat of our fear and rage is when we are most challenged to remember compassion, and the shared suffering of all human beings.  But that is exactly when we need to let our innate kindness and understanding surface.

    To work with our anger and to not blame:

·         We first intend not to cause harm.

·         We don’t ignore or dismiss the fact that a person or people are causing harm.  We pause and then say no to the pain and injustice we witness, and then work to change it. 

·         We act with compassion. We remind ourselves that just as we may injure others when we are hurting, we understand that the other person must also be suffering.  It helps to think that the person doesn't know how to deal with his/her suffering, and therefore causes suffering.  Happy, safe, and peaceful people don’t willfully harm others.

·         We don't repress or act out our anger on others or ourselves, but we mindfully sit with the intense emotions roiling through us.  This means investigating the nature and texture of our anger, becoming familiar with it.  To do this requires courage.
      We pay extra attention to the stories we make up about the other person.  Our thinking causes us to ruminate and justify how we are right and the other person is wrong.  This fuels the flames.

     This entire process requires bravery, and willingness to fully face ourselves, to change, and to recognise we are no longer willing to keep repeating painful patterns.
     In working with anger in such a way we are making a choice.  We are choosing to lift our gaze away from blame and see a bigger picture;  the picture that we aren’t willing to perpetuate our own suffering and increase the misery in the world.  In our small, or maybe not so small, act of kindness and compassion, we can change the energetic pattern of aggression that is reverberating throughout our planet. 

          Our choices affect us and the world we live in.  No matter how small or private or personal we think our decision is it influences us and our interactions in the world.  And as we all live on this one tiny planet, we all experience the consequences of our individual decisions from moment to moment.

    May your choices free you from anger.