This is really interesting.
I joined a Buddhist group long ago. I quit when they started chanting and bringing religion in. I was in for the psychology, mind help.
ANYWAY- one thing I learned to do and it was very scary. I learned to look at a feeling and feel only the feeling with NO JUDGMENTS on it. So I could feel this weird vibrating feeling that I called "anger" outside the exercise, but in the exercise it was visualized and looked at. It had a tone, a colour, a consistency, but it meant nothing. Not a thing. I was able to trace it back to a time when people did not know what that feeling was. How did it come to be negative? When we realized we can't work around it? When we realized it interfered with productive thought? Is it as bad as we think it is now? How did we order society to be at a disadvantage when we are angry?
Don't laugh. I know it sounds weird on paper.
So now when I am angry I try to just grasp the feeling.......it does not matter why I am angry because the cause makes no difference as to what I do with it. And because I am a bad Buddha, my feelings always win out and envelope me like everyone else, but it's a really interesting relief when I can tap out of it and see it in a different way.
I joined a Buddhist group long ago. I quit when they started chanting and bringing religion in. I was in for the psychology, mind help.
ANYWAY- one thing I learned to do and it was very scary. I learned to look at a feeling and feel only the feeling with NO JUDGMENTS on it. So I could feel this weird vibrating feeling that I called "anger" outside the exercise, but in the exercise it was visualized and looked at. It had a tone, a colour, a consistency, but it meant nothing. Not a thing. I was able to trace it back to a time when people did not know what that feeling was. How did it come to be negative? When we realized we can't work around it? When we realized it interfered with productive thought? Is it as bad as we think it is now? How did we order society to be at a disadvantage when we are angry?
Don't laugh. I know it sounds weird on paper.
So now when I am angry I try to just grasp the feeling.......it does not matter why I am angry because the cause makes no difference as to what I do with it. And because I am a bad Buddha, my feelings always win out and envelope me like everyone else, but it's a really interesting relief when I can tap out of it and see it in a different way.
