As soon as the mother discovers the cause, she can transform the situation right away. It is important to get at the root of the problem. This is the practice of looking deeply. Breathing out, I know that the anger is in me.
The other person is only a secondary cause. The next thing you will see is that the other person is also suffering. You may have thought you were the only one suffering, but that is not correct. When someone spills that kind of suffering onto you, you know that he is suffering. When you understand this, love will well up in you, and you will want to help. Understanding is the key. Thanks to the practice of mindfulness, your anger will return to your store consciousness. The next time it arises, practice the same way, and eventually that seed of anger in you will weaken.
This is the practice of facing your anger, and, thanks to mindfulness, transforming it into the energies of love and understanding. The moment you begin to practice breathing mindfully in and out, you have the energy of a mother, to cradle and embrace the baby. Just embracing your anger, just breathing in and breathing out, that is good enough. The baby will feel relief right away. The wind can break the smaller branches at any time.
But when you look down to the trunk of the tree, you have a different impression. You see that the tree is very solid and still, and you know that it will be able to withstand the storm. We are also like a tree. Our head is like the top of the tree during a tempest of a strong emotion, so we have to bring our attention down to the level of our navel.
We begin to practice mindful breathing. We concentrate just on our breathing and on the rise and fall of our abdomen. It is a very important practice because it helps us to see that, although an emotion may be very strong, it will stay only for a while and then go; it cannot last forever.
If you train yourself to practice like this during difficult times, you will survive these storms. You have to be aware that your emotion is just an emotion. It comes, stays for some time, and then goes away. Why should someone die because of an emotion? You are more than your emotions. It is important to remember this. During a crisis, when you breathe in and out, maintain the awareness that your emotion will go away if you continue to practice.
After you have succeeded a few times, you will have confidence in yourself and in the practice. Let us not get caught by our thoughts and feelings. Let us bring our attention down to our belly and breathe in and out. Here we do not mean political freedom, but freedom from the mental formations of anger, despair, jealousy, and delusion. These mental formations are described by the Buddha as poisons. We treat our afflictions, our anger, our jealousy with a lot of tenderness.
Breathing out, I am taking good care of my anger. Breathing out, I will take good care of my child. When anger arises, continue to practice mindful breathing and mindful walking to generate the energy of mindfulness. Continue to embrace tenderly the energy of anger within you. Anger may continue to be there for sometime, but you are safe, because the Buddha is in you, helping you to take good care of your anger.
The energy of mindfulness is the energy of the Buddha. When you practice mindful breathing and embrace your anger, you are under the protection of the Buddha. There is no doubt about it: the Buddha is embracing you and your anger with a lot of compassion.
When you are angry, when you feel despair, you practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, to generate the energy of mindfulness. This energy allows you to recognize and embrace your painful feelings.
And if your mindfulness is not strong enough, you ask a brother or a sister in the practice to sit close to you, to breathe with you, to walk with you in order to support you with his or her mindfulness energy.
Practicing mindfulness does not mean that you have to do everything on your own. You can practice with the support of your friends. They can generate enough mindfulness energy to help you take care of your strong emotions. We can also support others with our mindfulness when they are in difficulty. Breathe in and out with mommy, with daddy. When you give your child some of your mindfulness energy, she will be able to calm down very quickly and embrace her emotions.
The first function of mindfulness is to recognize, not to fight. Hello, my little anger. Once we have recognized our anger, we embrace it.
This is the second function of mindfulness and it is a very pleasant practice. Instead of fighting, we are taking good care of our emotion. If you know how to embrace your anger, something will change. It is like cooking potatoes.
You cover the pot and then the water will begin to boil. You must keep the stove on for at least twenty minutes for the potatoes to cook. Your anger is a kind of potato and you cannot eat a raw potato. Mindfulness is like the fire cooking the potatoes of anger. The first few minutes of recognizing and embracing your anger with tenderness can bring results. You get some relief. Anger is still there, but you do not suffer so much anymore, because you know how to take care of your baby.
So the third function of mindfulness is soothing, relieving. Anger is there, but it is being taken care of. The situation is no longer in chaos, with the crying baby left all alone. The mother is there to take care of the baby and the situation is under control. And who is this mother?
The mother is the living Buddha. Teaches the Zen practice of mindfulness, the act of keeping one's consciousness alive to one's experiences, and offers methods for continuing the quest for spir. Call Me by My True Names. A collection of poetry by the renowned Zen meditation teacher, peace activist, and author of The Miracle of Mindfulness Though he is best known for his groundbr.
Thich Nhat Hanh is one of th. Love Letter to the Earth.
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