Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In Buddhist teaching, among three poisons (tam độc) – greed, anger, ignorance (tham, sân, si) – anger is probably the least heeded. People, including the preachers, tend to talk more about greed and ignorance than anger. And we can see that the “teachers” tend to get angry often too.

But, anger is one of the three poisons, folks.

Actually, when talking or preaching about anger, teachers tend to focus on hatred, vengeance, revenge, retaliation, payback, counterblow… generally, acts of violence and war. They are the results, heavy or extreme, of anger, but they are anger’s children and not anger itself.

So, let’s talk about anger itself, as it is.

What is anger?

Anger is a feeling of being angry in our heart. Everyone of us knows exactly what anger is because we have been angry zillions of times already. Some familiar symptoms of anger are: tightness in the chest, rapid heartbeat, hard breathing, tense muscles, sometimes: feeling hot, sweating, face turning blue… We all know what anger is and what are the usual symptoms of anger.

But some people may train themselves to hide their anger by having a face cool like cucumber and smiling. Those people are usually killers: “Wait for me, idiot. You will be dead soon enough.” They can keep a cool face because that is more than an angry face – a coldblooded killer’s face.

For most people, you know exactly when they are angry – they act angrily: loud voice, tightened jaws, hands and arms may dance like a drunk martial arts master, sometimes threatening.

That is the anger we want to avoid.

We want to avoid anger. Not the usual “It’s OK to be angry, but try not to do anything stupid.” This is a half-good advice, but the real lesson is “You never get angry to begin with,” so that you don’t have, and don’t worry about, any consequences from anger.

Who to avoid being angry in the first place?

1. Practice a quiet heart. If you are not jumping up and down when you’re happy, then you will not lie half-dead in bed when depressed, and will not be on fire and “bear and tiger” when anger knocks on your door. (“bear and tiger” is my word-for-word translation of “hùng hổ” 🙂 ). A quiet heart is quiet under any circumstances.

2. The truth is that most people of the world are ignorant – poisoned by the third poison in the three-poison package: greed, anger, ignorance. Ignorance usually means stupidity, but in Buddhist philosophy, ignorance means both stupidity and insanity. The Heart Sutra said the ignorant are “insane” (điên), “turning everything upside down” (đảo), “thinking like they are in dreams” (mộng tưởng) – điên đảo mộng tưởng.

Most people are ignorant (insane and stupid); therefore, most people act insanely and stupidly all days, be that badmouthing you, scorning you, grabbing things from you, fighting for 3cm of the road when driving next to you… you name it. If you think back about things people have been doing to you to make you angry, you must agree that 99% of those behaviours are simply insane and stupid.

So, ignorant people really don’t know that they are sick in the head and what is right and what is wrong.

People’s ignorance – insanity and stupidity – is the cardinal reason for you not to be angry with their ignorant behaviours. Ignorant people simply don’t know that they are insane and stupid. If you are upset at them, probably you should be worried about your head too.

That is the life Truth, brothers and sisters. Most people of the world are ignorant (insane and stupid) and act ignorantly. If you think back about what people have done to you, you will understand this Truth wholly. It is not just in the sacred sutras, it is in our own living experiences.

So, don’t sweat about what the ignorant sick do to you.

if you are upset at ignorant people, you yourself are ignorant too.

Stay cool.

In summary, (1) you want to practice calmness at all time, under all circumstances – happy or sad, good or bad, and (2) most people of the world are ignorant (insane and stupid); therefore, they don’t know that they are ignorant. So, smile at them when they do insane and stupid things to you.

Wish all of us keep anger outside our door.

With compassion,

Hoành

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