Fed Up With Anger

Fed Up With Anger

Date Posted:
October 2005

An old student who was directing a new Dharma center received a timely phone call from Rinpoche one morning. She said, “I had become angry the previous evening, and was thinking about my anger, how happy I would be if I could never be angry again. There has never been a real reason for being angry at all, and the moments of anger keep returning. The next morning during my morning prayers, I was thinking about this and got very sad. I was praying to Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche as I was crying, and asking them for help. The phone rang as I was starting my morning in the office. It was Rinpoche wanting to talk with me! His first question was: 'How was your night?' and I replied that I had had a bad night. I told him that I’d been thinking about my anger, and wanted to get rid of it. This seemed to please Rinpoche."

Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Chenrezig Institute, Australia, 1991. Photo: Thubten Yeshe.

Very good. That’s very good. It’s very good if you get some aversion to your anger. It helps you to get free from samsara. If you develop aversion toward anger and toward all the delusions, it helps you to reach enlightenment quickly.

Without aversion toward delusions, nothing happens. In the West, the way of thinking is just the opposite to this. You think you have to have desire, you have to have anger, you have to have a strong ego, and so you build up a strong ego. You think it’s not possible to live without a strong ego. You think you need desire, anger, and all those delusions. This is how they talk in Western psychology, but it’s exactly the opposite.

By following the delusions, you only create negative karma. You are looking for happiness, but by following desire, anger, and all the other delusions, you will only experience suffering. And, it’s leading to rebirths in lower realms, as hell beings, hungry ghosts, or animals—or even as a human being, you experience much suffering, and you will be creating negative karma again and again by following the anger, the desire, and all the delusions all over again. That’s what they teach you in the West.

That’s why I say it’s good if you develop aversion to your anger. By having aversion toward anger, by having aversion toward desire, attachment, toward all the delusions, you will start to give up these delusions. You realize their harmfulness, and develop some aversion. The aversion toward the delusions is the only way to get free from them. When you realize their harmfulness, you do the practices to get free of them. And like this, you will get closer to higher rebirth, to liberation and to enlightenment. The aversion toward the delusions is leading you to enlightenment. Buddha Shakyamuni saw the harmfulness of delusions, developed aversion toward them, and reached enlightenment.

You can understand from this how good it is to realize the harmfulness of the delusions, and to develop aversion toward them. It’s a good sign. It means you are getting closer to enlightenment, and to becoming beneficial for all sentient beings.

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