Post by Admin on Oct 8, 2018 19:25:24 GMT -5
One of my favorite Thich Nhat Hanh books is about Anger, titled, Anger: Wisdom For Cooling the Flames . It's a short little book but in his almost poetic style Thich Nhat Hanh offers keen insights into how mindfulness approaches Anger (and other powerful emotions). While I'm not sure if it's in this particular book, but somewhere Thich Nhat Hanh asks the question, "What do you do when a baby is crying and suffering?". The answer was along the lines of "Well, you pick it up and embrace it".
This is what came to mind when I read a recent post on the mindful.org(magazine) mail list about mindful handling of anger. Given the prevalence of Anger these days in the public sphere USA, I found it timely so thought I'd introduce it here; Link to the whole article, with links there to various relevant meditation practices as well is at bottom:
How Meditating Helps You with Difficult Emotions
BY MINDFUL.ORG STAFF(Originally published FEBRUARY 29, 2016)
Meditation is not all calm and peace. It opens up a space for you to see what’s going on in your mind, including the vivid and powerful movement of your emotions—up, down, and sideways. You can learn to fight with them less, and make friends with them more.
How are you feeling? Meditation gives us a chance to entertain that question at a deeper level. It can give us the room to fully experience an emotion for what it is...
...(Suppose someone says to you,)"Stop being so emotional!" When you hear something like that, what can you really do? You can try to push down on your insides and get them to change, but that’s like playing inner whack-a-mole. Whatever you push down in one place just pops up somewhere else. You work hard to calm yourself down about a snub at work only to find yourself yelling at your daughter later, for essentially no reason...
Read full article here:
www.mindful.org/how-meditating-helps-you-with-difficult-emotions-anger
BY MINDFUL.ORG STAFF(Originally published FEBRUARY 29, 2016)
Meditation is not all calm and peace. It opens up a space for you to see what’s going on in your mind, including the vivid and powerful movement of your emotions—up, down, and sideways. You can learn to fight with them less, and make friends with them more.
How are you feeling? Meditation gives us a chance to entertain that question at a deeper level. It can give us the room to fully experience an emotion for what it is...
...(Suppose someone says to you,)"Stop being so emotional!" When you hear something like that, what can you really do? You can try to push down on your insides and get them to change, but that’s like playing inner whack-a-mole. Whatever you push down in one place just pops up somewhere else. You work hard to calm yourself down about a snub at work only to find yourself yelling at your daughter later, for essentially no reason...
Read full article here:
www.mindful.org/how-meditating-helps-you-with-difficult-emotions-anger