The Raging Heart

(part two)


Some years ago, in the process of dealing with my anger, I have discovered that anger was my easiest way to react to any situation I encountered that primarily defied my own notions of order and harmony. Anger was my attempt to gain attention from people who seemed not to submit to my control, which allowed me to harness a kind of power where people around me tend to bend on their knees in fear. With anger, I felt an immense force that later transmuted into an appalling helplessness. After throwing thunderbolts of insults and curses, I was left drained and disempowered, let alone stupid of making a lot of mess out of shattered bottles and chairs I hurled in the height of my reactiveness. I felt I had done a nonsense act, which carved within me a huge void filled with remorse of wishing nothing had really happened.

What used to be my deep-seated anger is an ingrained experience of the first universal form of attachment: hating and rejecting negative emotions. It is so universal that no human being can possibly describe oneself free from this attachment. All of us experience this dark and vile force of anger that can consume us uncontrollably. Like the young monk, we hate that we hate; this is the irony that enslaves us in moments of grappling with our unruly emotional monsters.

Long before running amok, an individual who says "nagdilim ang paningin" (Filipino: the sight has darken) has harmed someone not from sound reasoning but from an overwhelming wave of anger. This is the darkness one experiences that makes him or her a dangerous offender. Whatever degree of offense, from verbal to physical violence, it is the pitch black anger that often pushes us to injure others without seeing the consequence of our actions. In the end, the same anger is not anymore directed to others but to ourselves.

"To understand that you are angry in the moment of anger and fearful in the moment of fear is an automatic enlightenment."

We cannot just sever anger from us. It is impossible. Anger is darkness in its full force, coming from this vast fear. While anger is the gravity, fear is the black hole from where it comes. To find ourselves gripped with anger is basically an expression of our fears. We have tried to refuse the existence of fear by trying to wield external power of anger. Angry people are people filled with fear, and they are seeking connections with others and with themselves. Seeing both anger and fear as a call to vulnerability and openness to Love is a unanimous teaching among all spiritual teachers and ancient sages. They are both manifestation of the same dark energy within us, the energy in which both our uncertainties and potentialities aggregate and arise.

The idea that anger and fear should not be present in our lives is illusion at its best. This illusion is our most common attachment. It locks us inside the cycle of anger towards others, then anger towards our anger, and anger towards ourselves. Our target is not to eliminate them, since they would be as pitch black as ever. The darkness they bring needs the light of our understanding. This reduces them from abysmal darkness to a mere shadow we cast. Like Peter Pan, we must begin to stitch up again our wild shadow with us so we can be at peace and return to the state where our hearts remain young and alive.

The paradox of this is to accept our anger and fear in their pure state, letting them adrift in our thoughts and feelings. To understand that you are angry in the moment of anger and fearful in the moment of fear is an automatic enlightenment. You have already cut the cords of their unwanted consequences. It is the very moment when instead of wallowing on the turbulent edges of the storm, you seek the very eye where there is peace and serenity. The first form of our universal attachment has finally been detached. And it is quite interesting that as we detach from this form, we have also successfully detached from the other 3 forms. This is the mystery of their interconnection that we are yet to discover.

(to be continued)





above photo  from PicApp

Understanding Attachment

photo by juan de sant

There is a Zen story, which is told in many versions, about two monks, an old and a young one. It was a rainy day, and they were traveling together down a muddy road, when they came across with a beautiful woman in kimono dress. She wanted to cross the road (or the river), but unable to do so. So the old monk helped her by carrying her on his back. Then both of them left her and walked several distance ahead. On their way to the temple, the young monk felt so uneasy and angered that he burst out and blamed the old monk for carrying the woman, which, to his knowledge, is a grave mistake; for monks do not go near women, let alone carry one. He thought that such an act is dangerous for them as monks, particularly in following their rules of conduct. The old monk calmly responded, "I have left the woman, but why do you still carry her?"

The story is among the well-known koans, or Zen riddles, which provoke both humor and wisdom. In its simplicity and directness, the story has encapsulated what is so called attachment, and how understanding this will allow us to understand detachment (which I discussed in four parts last year). When a friend asked me how to release one's attachment, it would simply be achieved by understanding it. Yet, the way to understand it is quite vague for most of us, since our attachments are blind spots that we rarely identify in our everyday experiences.

The story of two monks captures our 4 most common attachments. These attachments are perhaps universal in nature, for they are all manifesting in many ways in which we feel negative and pessimistic, both sabotage our precious opportunities to become happy and Loving. Identifying them is an arduous task, and calls for one's vigilance and equanimity. Learning our attachments can lead us enough to master the art of detachment, for both are sides of the same coin.

In the following articles, we will explore these 4 attachments, how they grip us and how we can let them go.