And if you are a good practitioner,
you have enough mindfulness in order to
handle
whatever need to be handled.
Suppose anger is coming up in you
as an energy.
As a practitioner, you don't allow anger to be alone in you.
Because if you let anger to be alone in you, anger will cause a lot of damage
in your body, in your mind
and maybe around you.
That is why we practice mindfulness of anger:
breathing in I know
anger is in me,
breathing out
I smile to my anger,
I embrace my anger.
You have a seed of anger
deep in yourself.
But you also have a seed of mindfulness deep in yourself,
you have a seed of compassion in yourself.
When anger is touched, when the seed of anger is touched,
it manifests into...
a kind of energy called anger.
Suppose this is your consciousness.
It has two layers.
The lower layer is called store consciousness.
And the upper layer is called mind consciousness.
You have a seed of anger here.
You also have a seed of joy,
of mindfulness,
of compassion, of non-discrimination.
You have a seed of anger, of despair, of jealousy, of discrimination
in the depth of your consciousness.
But when the seed of anger
is left alone there,
in the store consciousness,
you don't water it, no one come and touch it, you're okay.
You can laugh, you may have a good time,
but that does not mean that you don't have the seed of anger in you.
As soon as you hear someone saying something
or doing something the seed of anger in you is touched.
And it becomes a zone of energy
in the realm of mind consciousness.
In Buddhism
we call it a mental formation.
Anger is a mental formation.
In my tradition we speak of 51 categories of mental formations,
We have a seed of discrimination in us.
We have a seed of non-discrimination in us.
That is true.
If the seed of discrimination is watered every day, it becomes very significant.
And it doesn't allow the seed of non-discrimination to manifest.
If the seed of anger becomes stronger and stronger every day,
the seed of compassion has less chance.
And that is why
every time a negative seed is touched
and manifest
we have to take care of it.
That is why
I spoke about mindfulness of anger.
Mindfulness is the capacity of knowing what is happening.
What is happening is anger has manifested.
So as a practitioner
you ask the seed of mindfulness to manifest at the same time.
And if you are a diligent practitioner
the seed of mindfulness in you is strong enough
and it's very easy for you to touch and invite it to come up
and it comes up and becomes a zone of energy.
Suppose anger is energy 1.
Mindfulness is energy 2.
Mindfulness is mindfulness of something.
And here
mindfulness of anger.
Mindfulness here has
the following function: recognizing
anger as anger.
Mindfulness of breathing: breathing in, I know this is my in-breath.
Breathing out, I know this is my out-breath.
Recognizing in-breath as in-breath,
recognizing out-breath as out-breath.
Recognizing drinking as drinking,
recognizing walking as walking.
That's the function of mindfulness.
So, the energy of mindfulness generated by your breathing, your walking
has the capacity of recognizing anger as anger.
Breathing in
I know
anger is in me.
Breathing out
I take good care of my anger.
Recognising anger
and embracing anger.
This is an art.
This is a practice.
There's no fighting.
Mindfulness is generated not to fight anger
but to recognize anger and to hold anger
very tenderly.
That is Buddhist practice.
You do not transform yourself into a battlefield:
the good fighting the evil... That's not Buddhism.
Because you are mindfulness but you are also anger
and mindfulness plays the role of a big sister,
holding the angry, suffering younger sister
and helps her to transform.
A mother
is working in the kitchen
and she hears the baby crying.
She very much cares for her baby.
So she stops,
walks in the kitchen. She puts down...
whatever she's holding and she goes to the room of the baby.
The first thing she does is to pick her up and hold her tenderly into her arms.
That's the mother.
She doesn't know what's wrong with the baby yet
but the first thing she does is to pick up the baby and hold her
mindfully.
We do the same thing as a practitioner.
Every time anger or despair comes up,
we generate
the energy of mindfulness
in order to recognize
and to embrace it tenderly.
Tenderly.
And if we know how to practice mindful walking or mindful breathing
we continue to generate mindfulness.
And we
hand that energy in order to recognize and to embrace.
And
we can bring relief
because
mindfulness as an energy
embracing anger as another source of energy tenderly.
Big brother, younger brother.
Although the mother has not
realized what's wrong, but the fact that she's holding the baby tenderly
can already bring a relief to the baby and the baby may stop crying.
If the mother continue to hold the baby tenderly with mindfulness
she'll find out what's wrong.
The baby may be hungry,
the baby may have
fever,
or the diaper may be too tight.
As a mother
she can find it out very quickly.
As a practitioner
you can find out very easily
why this anger.
And you can see the roots of that anger.
You find out the nature, the root of that anger.
If the mother found out what is wrong with the baby
she can fix the situation
very quickly.
If the baby is hungry, she gives her some milk,
if the diaper is too tight, she just
undo it and do it again.
So, after having embraced tenderly
your anger,
you might like to continue
the practice of mindful breathing, the practice of mindful walking
and look deeply
into the nature of your anger
and find out what is the root of your anger.
Recognizing, embracing and looking deeply.
Because mindfulness
is the kind of energy
carrying with her
the energy of concentration.
Wherever mindfulness is, concentration is also.
When you are mindful of your in-breath,
you are concentrated in your in-breath.
When you are mindful of your tea, you concentrate on the tea.
That is why
the more powerful mindfulness is,
the more concentration you get.
With that mindfulness and concentration, you practice looking deeply
and you get insight.
And that insight is going to liberate you
transform your anger.
There is a story
of a young boy
who used to come to Plum Village every summer
with his younger sister.
And they practiced mindfulness as children.
The boy had difficulty with his father.
He blamed his father.
Every time he fell down and got hurt his father always shouted at him
instead of coming and helping him.
So, his relationship with his father was difficult.
And he vowed that when he grew up he would not be like his father.
If he has children and then if
his child falls down and gets hurt he will not shout at him,
instead he'll come and try to help.
That was his determination.
One day, he was playing
in the Lower Hamlet of Plum Village
and her sister, while playing with another little girl on a hammock,
fell down and got hurt
and the blood was
coming down .
Suddenly, he found himself very angry
He wanted to shout: "Stupid! How could you do something like that?"
And because he had been practicing mindfulness, he was able
to refrain from shouting
and he recognized
that he was exactly like his father.
Instead of trying
to come and help his sister
he had the tendency to shout at her.
He hated
what he had within himself.
So when he practiced
mindful breathing, he knew
that this was the continuation of his father inside of him.
He's not different from his father.
And with that insight
he turned around and practiced slow walking
when he had seen someone coming to help his sister.
And during slow walking he recognized that
he's a continuation of his father.
The energy of anger has been transmitted by his father.
And if he does not practice
he's going to become exactly like his father.
And he will treat
his children
in the future in the same way.
That is called Samsara:
continuation.
And suddenly he had a desire
to go home and tell his father that he has the same kind of energy
and he would invite his father to practice with him.
And when that intention was born in him
his anger, resentment towards his father began to dissolve.
What kind of insight did he get?
He got the insight that
he is exactly like his father. He has the same kind of habit energy.
That is why he wanted to practice and he saw himself as a victim of that energy,
victim of the transmission
of that habit energy.
And he saw that his father also was a victim of that
transmission.
His father may have got it from
his own father.
And when he had that insight, his anger...
vis-a-vis father just...
stopped.
He got a transformation.
I think for...
a young man of 12 that is a remarkable
achievement.
It is insight that transforms our afflictions.
And mindfulness has the power
of recognizing, embracing, looking deeply
getting the insight that transforms you,
that gets you free.
Transformation
and healing and freedom.
And when a young man was liberated, the father in him was also liberated,
and the ancestors in him were liberated.
He ended the circle of samsara.