Anger: Buddhist Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

In old times, servants of kings and queens always had to have a mirror, because whenever anyone was presented to the emperor, they had to be perfect in their appearance. So for the sake of formal etiquette, people would carry a pouch with a small mirror inside. Try it. Carry a mirror with you and look at it to see what state you are in. After you h

From time to time, we stop chewing and get in touch with the friends, family, or sangha—community of practitioners—around us. We appreciate that it is wonderful to be sitting here chewing like this, not worrying about anything. When we eat mindfully, we are not eating or chewing our anger, our anxiety, or our projects. We are chewing the food, prep

You will say and do mean and cruel things when you believe that you are the only one who suffers and that the other person does not suffer at all.

After ten or twenty minutes your anger will have to open herself to you, and suddenly, you will see the true nature of your anger. It may have arisen just because of a wrong perception or the lack of skillfulness.

Your capacity for loving another person depends entirely on your capacity for loving yourself, for taking care of yourself.

Embrace your anger with a lot of tenderness. Your anger is not your enemy, your anger is your baby. It’s like your stomach or your lungs. Every time you have some trouble in your lungs or your stomach, you don’t think of throwing them away. The same is true with your anger. You accept your anger because you know you can take care of it; you can tra

The baby feels some relief because he is being held tenderly by his mother, like the flower embraced by the sunshine.

Non-violence can be born only from the insight of non-duality, of inter-being. This is the insight that everything is interconnected and nothing can exist by itself alone.

The dharma is in you, but it also needs to be watered, in order to manifest and become a reality.