Q: Rinpoche – how to control one’s anger?
A: To control the anger, the most important is that you practice compassion.
By meaning that, when you say you “practice compassion”, doesn’t mean that you have to project the idea of compassion upon your reality and to other people. There’s a difference between “practicing compassion” and “projecting the qualities of compassion or understanding about the compassion upon other people.” So, there’s a difference, there’s a distinction between that, you know?
So therefore it is very important, that in order to overcome the anger, one method is to examine the quality of mind. You know, the quality of mind on itself, and also the other thing is to have more and more profound clarity in mind, so that you can make a clear judgment without the self righteousness attitude. So before the projection of thoughts arises, or does the impact on your mind, you can witness, you can dissolve it. That’s one method, you know? Based on the shamatha and vipassana.
The other method is to, based upon compassion practice. So like I said, compassion practice does not mean that you have to project your imagination of compassion upon other people. You don’t do that. That’s not how you define the practice of compassion. The practice of compassion defines you reading the text, you visualizing, you visualizing the sutras and the mantras, and visualizing all the sentient beings and keeping that in a good cycle, again and again, again and again. That is the definition of “practicing compassion”.
“Generating compassion” is basically your quality. Your realization is there, so it is doing it’s work by itself. You are not “trying” so hard, you know?
Many people they make a mistake between “practicing compassion”, means being pacifist, you know? They think “practicing compassion” thinks that, they think “be nice to people”, you know? Of course, socially, we have a responsibility to be nice, to be respectful, to be gentle, to be honest, and so on. But at the same time, that is not really the practice of compassion.
The practice of compassion is to visualize the sentient beings and visualize the importance of loving kindness, we reciting that visualization again and again, again and again, whether it’s based on the Chenrezig, or whether it’s based upon yourself, then repeating that again and again, so that creates some sort of a gap, from the fixation of oneself, and then the reality of genuine compassion, comes all by itself. So that’s how you can, that’s how you “overwhelm” the anger, that’s how you can “overcome” the anger.
The other method is to practice shamatha and vipassana. So these are the two methods. At least the more simplified version, or the method.
Kalu Rinpoche
FB Livestream – 16 January 2022 (27’35”)
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