The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield

Author:Jack Kornfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553905052
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

DEVELOPING A HEALTHY RESPONSE

In a healthy response to pain and fear, we establish awareness before it becomes anger. We can train ourselves to notice the gap between the moments of sense experience and the subsequent response. Because of the particle-like nature of consciousness, we can enter the space between instinct and action, between impulse and reaction. To do so we must learn to tolerate our pain and fear. This is not easy. As James Baldwin put it, “Most people discover that when hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their own pain.” That’s why we start by paying attention to small things, small pains and disappointments. When I start to get into an argument with my wife, if I pay attention I notice that I usually feel hurt or afraid. If I speak to her angrily, she will become defensive and the argument will grow. But if I’m mindful, I can talk about the hurt or fears instead of being lost in anger and blame. Then my wife becomes interested and concerned. Out of this a different and more honest conversation occurs.

This is the first step. But to work honorably with anger, we must acknowledge the depth of the Buddha’s First Noble Truth—the truth of suffering. There is pain in our lives, in the world—disappointments, injustice, betrayal, racism, loneliness, loss. As blues masters Buddy Guy and Junior Wells say, “The blues is the truth.” No strategy can keep us exempt from loss and sorrow, sickness and death. This is human life. Even if we try to avoid this truth, it is still true. A Zen saying reminds us, “If you understand—things are just as they are. If you do not understand—things are just as they are.”

When I first came to Ajahn Chah’s monastery, I didn’t think of myself as an angry person. My response to the violence in my family had been to try to become the family peacemaker. As the eldest son, I had tried to make myself calm, and now in the monastery, at age twenty-three, I believed I was the antithesis of my father. It shocked me to discover that my anger at being slightly mistreated in the monastery was enormous, far beyond what the situation called for. Meditation opened the door to the accumulated rage in me that had been too dangerous to feel as a child. When I let myself open to these energies, I found a volcano of anger and grief, images of nuclear explosions, a vast universe of hurt and rage. Inwardly, I was not different from my father.

Fortunately, as William Blake said, “The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” I learned a lot observing my frustration and judgment, sitting with my anger, feeling the force of my rage. I began to notice how any painful or frightening experience in the monastery could tap into the stored anger of my past, and my reaction would be all out of proportion. I began to notice how much self-judgment I carried, how hard it was to simply feel the hurt and vulnerability.

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