Anger and Metta

I am angry most of the day and it really keeps me from being calm in my practice. I'm always angry at the people around me and my parents especially to the point where just being in my family's presence or in the house alters me. Nothing takes it away. I've heard metta can but I haven't had good luck with it. Any specific technique I should use? I really don't want to be carrying this all day with me. It really makes me suffer a lot and I feel it even inhibits my progress in insight.

You'll get through it mate, sorry you're having a rough time of it and hopefully it passes soon.

I saw a really nice metta meditation on Jack Kornfield's site, and there are some guided meditation files over on D.I.Y. Dharma too which might be useful. Here's some links...

www.jackkornfield.com/2011/02/meditation-on-lovingkindness/

diydharma.org/divine-meditations

Hope that helps a bit,
- Tommy

Eddy,
I have very little experience with metta but I recently listened to this talk and found it helpful. There's a short guided metta in there that brought me close to tears. (He also gives way too many beautiful quotes which gave me a chance to work with the judging mind right there.)

dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/86/11984.html

I sincerely hope you find some relief sooner than later.

Pema Chodron's book "Taking the Leap" may be helpful. She writes about the Buddhist concept of shenpa---the charge behind the emotion and how we get hooked. Her writing is clear and direct. The formal practice for learning to stay with the energy of uncomfortable emotions has 3 steps---outlined in her book. Simply, they are:
Step one: See that you are hooked--acknowledge it.
Step two: Pause and take 3 conscious breaths, and lean in to the energy.'
Step three: Relax and move on.

Sounds easy, pretty hard to do, but with perseverence, it's an amazing pratice.

It's a beautiful book with many helpful suggestions.
ml

This isn't metta, but when dealing with emotions that have triggers, I've found that Byron Katie's approach to self-inquiry has been really helpful. I found videos of her working with people on her site: www.thework.com/ and on youtube, and after watching for a while, I got the feel of what she was doing and was able to apply it to myself. It's a slightly different way of dealing with the 'hooks' that desertlizard mentions.

All the best,
John

"Eddy,
I have very little experience with metta but I recently listened to this talk and found it helpful. There's a short guided metta in there that brought me close to tears. (He also gives way too many beautiful quotes which gave me a chance to work with the judging mind right there.)

dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/86/11984.html

I sincerely hope you find some relief sooner than later.

"

Thanks Nadav for the link!

That was very nice talk and came just in time me. Just listening to it really put metta flowing. I hope it will be helpful for you too, Eddy.

Antero.

Thanks guys. The links are great. That talk you sent me Nadav was truly moving. I was definitely able to to connect to the metta a lot more after listening to that. I really liked what he said about imagining what it is like to be one of the people who loves you. Its funny cause I always wonder why people would like me and love me and when I put myself in their place viewing myself its not as hard to see.

I was never a very angry person, but anger and fear are somewhat related, and I was quite the chicken

It is very important to be one's best friend. You have to be with yourself 24 hours a day. Bearing that in mind, realize that although it seems that your angry at other people, you are actually not being very friendly to yourself when you are angry. Regardless of how something annoys you, you can act out of friendship for yourself and decide not to have a bad time being angry.

One somewhat diametrical suggestion to add to the list: instead of using compassion as an antidote to anger, realize compassion would be utterly unnecessary if there was no anger to begin with. Furthermore, compassion, being an emotion, is as fickle and unreliable as the rest of 'em, so it can only really work as a band-aid. Then decide, make up your mind to have the intention to do everything you can do not to be angry. All the while, there is no need to feel guilty for being angry, because you already sincerely decided to do your best.

(contd.)

So just get rid of it: find the physical location in the body where anger is emanating from, and stay with it. Focus on it. Once you get rid of the wound that is excreting the anger, it'll be gone like it was never there. Note that this might take many attempts, and it may be hard to confront the thing fully head-on in the first few attempts. Just go as far as you can without freaking out, then go for a walk, relax, try again tomorrow.

Proceeding this way, the first thing you notice is that it starts being less overwhelming, you can stay with it for longer and go deeper. Then the wound starts feeling somewhat numb, tired of excreting all that anger with no real target (was there ever really a target?). Then it starts dying down. Then it dies down some more, acquiring a sort of sore grasping quality. Then one day, 'pop.' The wound is no more, the anger will simply no longer arise in that way. It'll shift, maybe emanating from another location, which you then proceed to investigate. Eventually it disappears entirely. What a relief!

That was some very good advice. Thanks Bruno!

"I am angry most of the day and it really keeps me from being calm in my practice. "

Similar to what Bruno said, you could "become friends" with anger so that it can liberate itself. This is a very powerful technique:

1) Acknowledge the presence of painful phenomena: I am angry. I am angry at my parents. I am angry at myself. Note the whole "anger system": yourself and the people, situations you're angry at. I am sad. I am angry/sad because "this" is happening. I am angry/sad because "that" is not happening. This is not bad news, we're just recognizing reality.
2) Acknowledge what you can and cannot do: I can raise my arm. I cannot make anger go away right now. I can note breathing. I can note anger. I can go for a walk. I can rest. I cannot change people, I cannot change my parents. I cannot change my age. I cannot stop feeling. This is not good or bad news, realizing our own limitations is liberating.
3) Acknowledge the presence of phenomena as it is: Whenever I note anger, I realize anger is not good or bad, it is just anger. It is just energy. Tears are just tears, breathing is just breathing. Parents are just parents. Myself is just myself. This moment is just this moment. The goal here is to give up our stories, judgements and opinions about people, things and ourselves. This has nothing to do with "good" or "bad" facts. It is reality as it is.
4) Acknowledge the end of painful phenomena: anger is fading. Let it end. The end of anger is not good or bad news. It is just the end of anger.

I hope this helps!

I always have had a hard time coming up with positive feelings from scratch, as in metta and so on. Furthermore, I would definitely say anger/irritation/annoyance has been a central identity for me-- "angry jake", "annoyed jake" and so on have been frequent players on the stage of my life. That all being said, I have no personal experience with metta specifically-- but I will third the general attitude of Bruno and APriori.

I would especially recommend the technique of going straight to the place in the body where anger is, the actual felt-sense of anger, irritation, irritability, and just feel the **** out of it. Just welcome every single bit of that sensation, just open to it, let it in.

Irritation and anger are so tricky because they are aversive, and when you begin to see that your problem isn't all the objects of anger, but rather the fact you are being anger, the natural response is to become averse to the anger. irritated by the anger. frustrated by the anger. So just welcome the actual feeling of it, the sensations of it in the body, open to it-- all the while deciding not to feed the angry narratives, not to buy into the stories which are perpetuating the anger, justifying it. Whenever you catch yourself justifying being angry, just drop it and shift to feeling the actual sensations of anger with an attitude of openness and welcome, befriending yourself indeed.

This has been really challenging for me, since sometimes the "reason" for being angry seems so justified, and it seems really "true" that the other person is worthy of my anger. It's a real test of sincerity to take responsibility for these painful feelings and to learn that one can still be assertive and clear, socially, without the redundant emotion of anger, which only harms oneself and others.

And then you will have understood anger directly, seen it as suffering, taken responsibility for it, and dropped it like a hot potato (after a lot of sincere and painful attention to it) rather than tried to apply an antidote, which is a maneuver that may well be motivated by aversion to the anger anyway. Tricky, huh?

There is a interesting text about Samrambha Yoga, the little known Yoga of Wrath which can be found here: www.mountainrunnerdoc.com/page/page/4909798.htm

The idea is to turn all your anger and hatred against god and not get distracted for even a short moment. If pursued with all strength, according to the scriptures this will lead to you realization because you meditated on God all the time.