One of the greatest obstacles to happiness that I see increasingly often is anger. This saddens me so much. There is the obvious, extremely dangerous anger that creates the mind of a terrorist or someone who harms another person. And then there is the anger that I see on the streets on a regular basis. People today seem to become angry with hardly any provocation—you can feel it bubbling up even as they sit there, or walk, or drive. A man crosses your path suddenly, you get startled and then get angry. A car overtakes another car at a red light, or honks loudly and that is enough for a car chase and an ego rush that could even be fatal. People are arguing and fighting and coming to blows over who overtakes who! What has the world come to!
But are we surprised? It can sometimes seem as though the accepted norms of social behaviour feed this type of anger and give people the sense that it is their right to be angry. And this attitude is not just to blame in one place, or country, it is endemic across the world. I met a woman from England who told me that they have carriages with signs marked “Silent” on the trains there.
Now this is a nice idea in principle, but when people don’t see the signs and are chatting on the phone, others around them will begin to simmer and then boil over in their rage, throwing the culprit disapproving glares and pointing at the signs. Of course, I understand that we are all trying to act according to a good set of ethics, but we have become too quick to get upset when other people don’t know the rules or have a different set of ideas altogether. I must admit I can be quite a chatterbox and so I’m sure I would get told off on one of these trains—but it is the anger in the reaction that worries me; all it does is cause suffering, and mainly to the person who is holding on to it.
Anger is not the only emotion on show here. Greed, pride, or pessimistic views are all emotions that entangle your ego in a complex web of deceitful, often hurtful actions. It is a plain to see that these emotions are patently negative—and we are aware of it—but we also continue to be their victim. How can we stop this? How do we stop our emotions from getting the better of us? There is an interesting strategy to solve this problem. It is a bit like vaccination, you know; like to make your bodies able to fight off a disease, a very small germ of the disease is introduced into your system so that your body can build its defence to it.
The vaccine in this case is, accepting your emotions. Negative emotions such as anger, greed and pride are corrosive to one’s balanced and happy state of mind, but rather than try to suppress or ignore them, it is better to become more aware of when they come and where they come from. By acknowledging negative emotions and understanding why you are experiencing them, it will be easier to let them go. It looks like a contradictory thing but it isn’t. It is actually an exercise in enlarging our sphere of awareness to encompass our shortcomings. Rather than being judgmental, which causes even more anger—in this case anger against ourselves—we must follow a doctrine of kindly acceptance and friendly disposition towards our own failings. In this way, when you are kinder to your own faults, you learn to be kind to the faults of others thereby expanding your limits of tolerance and brotherhood and amiability. It is like making your enemy your friend.
Without ‘friendliness’, there cannot be happiness in our minds. If we are not friendly towards others, towards nature or towards ourselves, then we don’t give happiness a chance. You are wasting all of your amazing potential by concentrating on feeling bad about the things you don’t like about yourself and others.
So even when you are taking a very honest look at yourself in the mirror and you don’t like what you see at first, be gentle with yourself and always be friendly with all your emotions. If you can’t be compassionate to yourself, how will you be compassionate towards others and then how can you help to make the world a happier place? If you can befriend your weaknesses, imagine what you can do with your strengths!
The author is the spiritual head of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa Order based in the Himalayas