Managing Anger
When you get to tell someone off, you might feel pretty good for a while, but somehow the sense of righteous indignation and hatred grows, and it hurts you. It’s as if you pick up hot coals with your bare hands and throw them at your enemy. If the coals happen to hit him, he will be hurt. But in the meantime, you are guaranteed to be burned.
Contacting Pain
When you contact the all-worked-up feeling of shenpa [getting hooked on a negative emotion], the basic instruction is the same as in dealing with physical pain. Whether it’s a feeling of I like or I don’t like, or an emotional state like loneliness, depression, or anxiety, you open yourself fully to the sensation, free of interpretation. If you’ve tried this approach with physical pain, you know that the result can be quite miraculous. When you give your full attention to your knee, your back, or your head—whatever hurts—and drop the good/bad, right/wrong storyline and experience the pain directly, even for a short time, your ideas about the pain —and often the pain itself —will dissolve.
-Pema Chodron, based on Buddhist teachings;
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible”. Dalai Lama
