Taming the Tiger Within

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1.

Recognition

One of the main causes of our suffering is the seed of anger inside of us.

Recognize and embrace your anger when it manifests itself. Care for it with

tenderness rather than suppressing it.

We are more than our anger, we are more than our suffering.

Why do you get angry so easily? Is it because your seed of anger is too strong?

If you get angry easily, it may be because the seed of anger in you has been

watered frequently over many years, and unfortunately you have allowed it or

even encouraged it to be watered.

Many other people, confronted with the same situation, would not get angry like

you. They hear the same words, they see the same situation, and yet they are

able to stay calm and not get carried away.

Anger has roots in nonanger elements. It has roots in the way we live our daily

life. If we take good care of everything in us, without discrimination, we

prevent our negative energies from dominating. We reduce the strength of our

negative seeds so that they won't overwhelm us.

Before we can make deep changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our

way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the

things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then, we will have the strength to

allow the best in us to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger, of

frustration.

Look at someone who is angry. When you see the tension in her, you become

frightened, because the bomb in her may explode any minute.

Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are

angry, you are not very beautiful, you are not presentable. Hundreds of muscles

on your face become very tense. Your face looks like a bomb ready to explode.

When you see your face looking like a bomb ready to explode, you are motivated

to do something to change it. You know in your heart what you can do to look

more beautiful. You don't need cosmetics. You need only to breathe peacefully,

calmly, and to smile mindfully. If you can do that one or two times, you will

look much better. Just look in the mirror, breathing in calmly, breathing out

smiling, and you will feel relief.

It is very helpful to see yourself in moments when you are angry. It is a bell

of mindfulness.

Anger always goes together with confusion, with ignorance.

Anger is born from ignorance and wrong perceptions. You may be the victim of a

wrong perception. You may have misunderstood what you heard and what you saw.

You may have a wrong idea of what has been said, what has been done.

Every one of us must practice looking deeply into our perceptions, whether we

are a father, mother, child, partner, or friend.

Our body is impermanent, our emotions are impermanent, and our perceptions are

impermanent. Our anger, our sadness, our love, our hatred, and our consciousness

are also impermanent.

Anger and love are both of an organic nature, and thus they both can change.

Hate can always be transformed into love. And unfortunately, many times love is

transformed into hate.

Many of us begin a relationship with great love, very intense love. So intense

that we believe that, without our partner, we cannot survive. Yet if we do not

practice mindfulness, it takes only one or two years for our love to be

transformed into hatred. Then, in our partner's presence we have the opposite

feeling, we feel terrible. It becomes impossible to live together anymore, so

divorce is the only way. Love has been transformed into hatred; our flower has

become garbage.

Copyright © 2004 by Unified Buddhist Church

Taming the Tiger Within

Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions

by Thich Nhat Hanh

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