Thich Nhat Hahn and the Energy of Anger
In 1995, one of America’s respected spiritual leaders, Ram Dass, interviewed Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh about anger, about violence, and about the simple ways (not easy, but simple) in which each of us may live better, supporting a peaceful home, peaceful neighborhood, and peaceful nation. While it lasts, the interview from YouTube is linked below. I have transcribed the text, which can be found after the video.
RD You spoke the other day about holding anger, and emotions like that, in a tender way. Could you speak a little bit more about that?
TNH Holding anger like a mother holding a baby. Because lovingkindness is us, but anger is also us. So one part of us is taking good care of another part. Anger is a kind of energy that comes from ourselves, and lovingkindness or mindfulness is another kind of energy. That is why we should know that every time the energy of anger is there, we should invite the energy of mindfulness to be there, in order to take care of anger.
RD And the vehicle to do that could be just three breaths.
TNH Yes. Mindful breathing. It is better that we nourish mindfulness by continuously breathing mindfully.
RD If you are continuously breathing mindfully, then you wouldn’t experience that other energy as solid, like anger.
TNH When you breathe mindfully, you are not ignoring anger. In fact, you are mindful also of your anger, you are practically taking care of your anger: “Breathing in, I know I am angry; breathing out, I am taking good care of my anger.” Therefore the practice is called Mindfulness of Anger. Mindfulness of breathing, and breathing in order to be aware of your anger, and to embrace your anger with the Energy of Mindfulness. If we continue like that for some time, there will be a transformation in the heart of the anger. It’s like sunshine with the flower: in the morning the flowers are not open yet, but the sunshine continues to visit, to shine upon the flower. And the sunshine is not only circulating around the flower, it is penetrating deeply into the flower. If the sunshine continues like that for a few hours, then the flower opens itself to the sunshine. Our anger is a kind of flower… that needs the care of the sunshine, namely mindfulness.
RD Many people who are activists, whose heart hurts because of the pain of injustice or pain to the environment, often say to me that the attempt to be mindful of one’s anger and hold it tenderly will dissipate the energy of the anger that they use for social action. Will you talk about that issue?
TNH The Energy of Anger may be a source of energy, but when you use anger as energy there may be danger. Because when you are angry, you are not lucid, and you may say things or you may do things that can be very destructive. That is why it is better to use other forms of energy, like the Energy of Compassion, the Energy of Understanding. But the Energy of Anger can be transformed into the Energy of Understanding and of Compassion. We don’t have to throw away anything. We need only to know how to transform one form of energy into another.
We don’t have to throw away anything. We need only to know how to transform one form of energy into another.
RD There is such an overriding use of the energy of the intellect in this culture among political people or business people; and so little appreciation, or respect… but appreciation for mindfulness for the reflective mind. What are the vehicles for awakening that kind of valuing of mindfulness into a culture?
TNH The intellect is not everything of our being. Sometime people understand what is going on and what should be done, and yet they don’t act as if they have understood. Therefore, we have to practice, so that kind of understanding becomes a reality and not just a few notions in our mind. For instance, the reality of impermanence. It’s easy to get people to agree that things are impermanent; they may understand it completely, but they act as if things are permanent.
RD Including themselves…
TNH Yes. And if they are able to keep alive the insight of impermanence within them, then they would not do the things that will destroy themselves and destroy the other people. They would do whatever they can do in order to make happiness in themselves and in the other person. Like many people cry and suffer when the person that they love disappears or leaves them; but when they were still alive, still alive and lived close to them, they did not treasure, they did not do what should have been done in order to make that person happy. So the insight of impermanence should be nourished in our daily life. And that is why we do not need impermanence as a notion, but as a samadhi, a concentration: you live your daily life in such a way that the insight of impermanence is there always with you.
Many people cry and suffer when the person that they love disappears or leaves them; but when they were still alive, still alive and lived close to them, they did not treasure, they did not do what should have been done in order to make that person happy…
RD That’s partly because of being in the present moment.
TNH Yes.
RD In which each thing then is a new moment, and a new moment, and a new moment.
TNH Yes. When you are mindful, you touch deeply that which is there and who is there; because mindfulness is the capacity of being there, being in the present moment. And once you are there, you live deeply in that moment of your life, and you can see deeply into the heart of the reality of what is there, including the nature of impermanence, the nature of interbeing, the nature non-self.
RD That’s interesting about Annata… because non-self, that feels to me to be a very rarefied experience, for it gets at the mystic end of the continuum. I mean, interbeing still allows for entities, it doesn’t require the surrender of separateness. I wonder whether you gear the way in which you communicate… I mean, Anicca is much easier to communicate, I think, than Annata, it seems to me.
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