During her conversation with Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman in Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering, Krista Tippett said something about halfway in that caught my attention: We instinctively recoil from the reality of feeling vulnerable or afraid, right? And so, anger gets layered on top of that because it feels like a more powerful response. But then we stop being able to tell the difference ourselves, right? You stop knowing ‘Im scared’; you say ‘Im angry.’ And this sense of deep sadness, of loss and longing, washed over me. I remembered all the moments I said “I’m angry” instead of “I’m scared,” moments I chose anger over vulnerability. And how even when anger shielded me from pain, it did not stay and sit with me in the ashes. It left me, cold and alone and more afraid, more disconnected than before. There is a saying of the Buddha’s in Love Your Enemies: “Anger, like forest fire, burns up its own support.” Anger is masterful at painting the illusion of separateness, the tunnel vision that severs and frays the bonds of relationship and distorts our memory for joy. Perhaps this is why the command “love your enemies” is so magnetic — because I know that anger reduces my world to a single color, and I long for the many-hued brilliance of the full picture.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 20:00:15 +0000
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