Anger and ill-will

Battaramulla Siri Sudassanarama
sadaham senasuna
Ven. Dr. Mirisse Dhammika thero

When the student focuses his awareness fully and honestly inward towards his mind, he may see that the most direct and immediate cause of his anger is in his mind.

Ill will or anger is the most common causative factor in students or any person. I will discuss anger and how to use mindfulness to cope with angry feelings.

Anger is often the result of having one’s strong desires thwarted. As a result of these angry feelings, the student may start to blame others, such as their parents, teachers, friends, or even society in general, for the student’s unhappiness. Therefore, in the meditation, they should reflect on their anger and try to be intimately acquainted with anger and its characteristics: what is anger? How does it feel in the body, and in the mind? With awareness and wisdom, they should perceive anger as the root of stress. When the student focuses his awareness fully and honestly inward towards his mind, he may see that the most direct and immediate cause of his anger is in his mind. The external environment is merely the trigger that activates the seed of anger in the mind. After some period of meditation practice, they may learn to gently let go of their hostility. As Weissman and Weissman state, “Forgiving ourselves, letting go of the wish to manipulate others, is bending the strong energy of aversion and transforming it into the energy of compassionate understanding”.

Here I should point out that the meditator should build awareness gradually and maintain it at every moment. Impatience for a better result is counterproductive. What is important to making progress is growth of understanding. Through understanding the unsatisfactory and painful nature of anger, hatred and aversion, people can cultivate the ability to see into themselves more clearly. They can make their minds healthier by channeling their mental energy into feelings of compassion and forgiveness towards themselves. By practicing meditation in this way, anger and its related feelings such as hatred will lose its power over the mediator. I will discuss compassion towards self and others in more detail in Chapter 4 when I describe the Metta Sutta, or Loving-Kindness meditation.