Listen or subscribe in your favorite player:

This episode turns to one of the most universal human struggles: anger. Scott Snibbe explores how Buddhist psychology defines anger as a delusion: an exaggeration of the negative that blinds us to the good and fuels the wish to harm. Drawing on timeless wisdom, this meditation offers parents (and anyone else who wrestles with anger) practical antidotes rooted in curiosity and compassion.

Scott Snibbe: Samaya, I’m recording. I need you to be silent. I’m recording.

Samaya: Okay, I’ll be quiet.

Scott: No, get out. I’m recording a meditation about angry parents.

Seriously, I am!

Ironically, while I was recording this meditation, my daughter barged in and we had a little angry exchange. We resolved it with a bit of humor. Today’s episode is called A Meditation for Angry Parents. Even if you’re not a parent, it could probably help you deal with anger in general. It pairs with the episode we aired just before this one, about loving our parents and loving our children—because sometimes we don’t.

What is anger from a Buddhist perspective?

Anger is one of the delusions in Buddhism. Delusions are those states of mind that agitate us—sometimes drawing us toward things, like craving, and sometimes pushing us away, like anger. In Buddhism, delusions are seen as the root of suffering, the root of our mental anguish. They’re what we try to recognize and apply antidotes to.

What I like about Buddhism’s approach to the mind is the precision of its definitions. What is anger from a Buddhist perspective? Anger is exaggerating the negative—seeing the negative more than the positive, usually exclusively—and also wishing to harm. Think of someone you’ve been angry with: it probably rings true that in that state you exaggerate so much that you can’t even see the good in the person or the situation. Exaggerating the negative and wishing to harm.

Anger, from a Buddhist perspective, is exaggerating the negative—seeing the negative more than the positive, usually exclusively—and also wishing to harm.

Anger in the real world

Today I’m talking specifically about anger toward kids, but also toward our partner. And even if you don’t have a partner or kids, you probably get angry too. Most of us do. Today more than 50% of marriages end in divorce, and those that do usually end because of anger. Sometimes people just grow apart, but most often anger is the poison in the relationship.

Today more than 50% of marriages end in divorce, and those that do usually end because of anger. Sometimes people just grow apart, but most often anger is the poison in the relationship.

We get many messages that anger is good in our society, including in movies. I like to mention this because movies can be quite frustrating: the people who write and direct them can create any kind of logic they want. So things that don’t work in real life can work in movies. Sometimes that’s superpowers and things like that. But even more insidious is the climactic scene where someone gets angry at another person—throws a fit, tells them what’s wrong—and it works. In the movie, it fixes their problem.

I want to ask you: has that ever worked for you in real life? It’s never worked for me, not once. Many people have encouraged me to be angry—partners, friends, parents. My mother would encourage me to get angry when things didn’t go the way I wanted, or when I felt there was some injustice.

But in our relationships, has it ever really worked? Or if it did, were there bad side effects? Because anger is scary. It’s scary when you have it, and it’s particularly scary for the people who are the object of it. In real life, as opposed to movies, if you get angry at someone even once, it can harm your relationship for the rest of your life.

It can cause lifelong resentment, wounds, and protectiveness. I’ve seen that happen in my own relationships. Or a person may simply leave—especially in a new relationship, where you’ve only been together a few weeks or months. Finally you show them your anger, and that might be it. One moment of anger can destroy a growing partnership. It’s worth working on anger and applying its antidotes.

One moment of anger can destroy a growing partnership.

Advice on how to handle anger from Buddhist teachers

I asked my closest teacher, Venerable René Feusi, about this a couple of years ago when I was having trouble with anger. I asked him to remind me how you deal with it. He said, “Anger’s the easy one, isn’t it?” I sheepishly nodded, not quite agreeing, and he said, “Because anger doesn’t feel good.” That really rang true for me. Anger doesn’t feel good. When we recognize that anger doesn’t feel good—along with the fact that it harms the person we’re angry at and other people—we can see how important it is not to let it take hold.

When we recognize that anger doesn’t feel good—along with the fact that it harms the person we’re angry at and other people—we can see how important it is not to let it take hold.

Anger also tends to bleed out. It’s hard to contain. Even if you feel righteous anger at certain injustices in the world, you usually can’t contain it. The anger spills over onto your fellow activists—often they’re the ones arguing the most, even while working for a good cause together. Or it spills into your family. You come home angry and agitated, lash out at your partner and kids, and eventually it leads to serious problems: divorce, losing time with your children. Recognizing that anger doesn’t feel good and damages relationships—we don’t want it to take over our minds.

At the very least, walk away when you feel it. Come back only when you can act from patience, wisdom, and love. One of the best pieces of advice is simply this: don’t allow yourself to speak or act when you’re under the control of delusion—especially anger. Something I learned from Elaine Jackson, who we had on the podcast in an episode about relationships—she’s been married twice, like myself—is this: when I asked her how she deals with anger, frustration, or just annoyance, she said, “Oh, I always paste on the opposite.”

One of the best pieces of advice is simply this: don’t allow yourself to speak or act when you’re under the control of delusion—especially anger.

She explained it’s a very old Buddhist technique—at least a thousand years old, maybe close to two thousand. Now, as soon as I feel annoyed with my wife for something small, I remind myself: Wait, she’s my best friend. She loves me more than anyone in the world. That reminder shows you how exaggerated anger is, because in that moment you aren’t thinking about your partner’s love, their many good qualities, or all the things they does for you and for the world.

Anger exaggerates the negative, so you have to remind yourself of that if you can. These are the antidotes to anger. Patience is one. People say, “If you’re angry, be patient.” In Buddhism, patience means not returning harm. It doesn’t mean just sitting there and allowing people to harm you or others. It means not shooting harm back. And that’s true—it’s worked for millennia.

But Tara Brach, one of the great living Buddhist teachers who has the number-one Buddhist podcast, says the antidote to anger isn’t patience or the other things I mentioned, though those work too. She says what’s really powerful—the most powerful—is curiosity. I really like that. She said when your mind is curious, it’s open. Curiosity is compassion, isn’t it? Because you want to know—you care about what someone else is thinking, what they’re doing, and why.

I try to apply that too. When I’m angry at my wife or at my child, I think: Why are they doing that? There’s something underneath it. Tara says anger has a purpose. Underneath anger is an urgent truth—some need, some truth, something that needs to change. Our job is to let go of the deluded aspect of anger and instead be curious about what it’s trying to tell us—about ourselves, about others, or about the world.

Underneath anger is an urgent truth—some need, some truth, something that needs to change.

Another thing I learned came from Richard Prinz, a long-time Buddhist practitioner who has worked with kids most of his life as a high school counselor, and also with parents. He said when you’re feeling angry or frustrated with your child, try to tease apart: What’s your agenda? And what’s theirs? What are they trying to accomplish with their behavior? And what’s your agenda in trying to change them, or get them to do or stop doing something? It might be a healthy agenda, or it might be manipulative or even selfish.

Openly think: when you’re angry at your kids, what’s the truth underlying their behavior? What’s their need? Be curious. Activate curiosity. That practice has helped me a lot in everyday life. Why is she saying that? If we can tame this delusion—if you suffer from it, and I’ve suffered from it—it really can save your marriage.

It’s made my relationship with my wife grow much closer, because she knows she can trust me not to get angry, to speak gently, to speak in ways that bring us together rather than split us apart. It can also keep you from having kids who resent you into adulthood. I think some of us are kids like that—we grew up resenting our parents because of moments of anger they expressed toward us, or worse.

Most of all, these practices can make you feel happy about yourself. They give you self-respect. Taming this delusion really can save your marriage. It certainly improved mine when I was able to tame my anger and express myself gently, using words that bring us together instead of pulling us apart.

In Buddhism, there are two vows: not to speak divisively and not to speak harshly. I think about their opposites a lot when I’m getting frustrated: I want to speak gently. I want to speak in ways that bring us together. If you practice these techniques—which we’ll do in meditation in just a moment—it really can save your marriage. It can also keep you from having kids who resent you into adulthood.

I want to speak gently. I want to speak in ways that bring us together.

Maybe you’re a child like that. Maybe you resent your parents for the anger they expressed toward you, or worse—violence, abuse. Hopefully you’re not on that track, but just an ordinary parent who sometimes gets angry. Most of all, not getting angry makes you feel happy about yourself—self-respect, dignity. Having a sense of humor helps too. So… let’s do the meditation.

Guided meditation for angry parents

Get yourself into meditation posture. Place your hands in your lap with your thumbs touching—right palm over the left, palms up. Straighten your spine. Tilt your head slightly down. Relax the muscles in your shoulders and face. Mostly close your eyes if that suits you. Touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

Then set a motivation for your meditation: to be a patient parent, a curious parent, partner, friend. Especially for parents, with respect to our children, the motivation is to speak gently, to speak in ways that bring us together. My motivation is to be a good person who can guide my child, help them grow without hurting them, and be a good example—so they grow up to be someone who can resolve conflicts without anger, without violence, without resentment.

Now bring to mind someone you really admire and respect. If you had a parent you admired, someone patient, kind, loving, wise—that can be very helpful. Or think of a great person in the world, like His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Maybe even your own parents, if they were kind and loving to you.

Think of somebody who’s an example of patience, curiosity, kindness, and remember: they worked at that. They didn’t just pop out that way. They had anger, they had impatience, and they recognized they wanted to be a person who was kind, patient, curious—and they worked at it. They’re still working at it.

And we can be like them too.

In fact, we’re getting there right now by doing this practice.

Now bring your mind to your breath. Focus on your breath for about half a minute to stabilize, calm, and relax the mind.

You can focus at your nostrils, and when you get distracted, just gently steer your mind back to your breath for half a minute.

Now let thoughts pass through your mind without trying to push them away. In fact, steer your mind toward them, but try not to react. This is very good practice. The first step to taming anger is simply seeing our thoughts and emotions pass by. Acknowledge them, allow them to show you what they might want to tell you, but let them pass.

Especially don’t let the deluded aspects of your thoughts take hold of your mind.

For a few moments, just look at your mind. Let anything at all come into it, and watch it pass without grabbing onto it, without pushing it away.

And then we move into working with our anger.

Think of a time you got angry at your child. It might have been very recent. Maybe you even found this meditation by searching online: What do I do when I get angry at my child?

Now let’s look at that feeling through the lens of Buddhism.

There’s something urgent, important, and true in that feeling. And there’s also something exaggerated. So start with what’s exaggerated.

When we’re angry, can we see how we only notice the negative in our child’s actions? Do we recognize some element of wishing to harm, to punish, to teach them a lesson?

Now, when your mind is at peace and you simply have the wisdom to help your child grow, that’s not a delusion. But you can recognize the delusion of anger because anger doesn’t feel good. So notice: how does it feel when you’re angry at your child?

Recognizing that anger doesn’t feel good, we can then ask: what’s true in our state? There’s a reason we got angry. It wasn’t for nothing.

There’s a mirror-like clarity in anger. Something is wrong. Something needs to change. You have a need that isn’t being met, or your child may need to grow in some way. What is that?

Try to ask with curiosity. Like Tara Brach says, the opposite of anger isn’t patience—it’s curiosity.

What needs to change?

Everything that arises in the mind passes through it, unless we actively hold onto it. So let the exaggerated part of anger fade away completely as you focus on your healthy needs.

Now ask yourself: is your need something you need your child to do, or something you need to do yourself?

Nothing good comes from acting out of anger. Honestly, has it ever worked? Whether you’re giving anger or receiving anger, has it ever worked?

Everything good comes from acting out of love and compassion. Generate a strong feeling of love now for your child.

Think of everything they do that delights you. Think of their good qualities, their joy, their energy—even their independence, which may be frustrating at times but is also what you want for them: to think for themselves, to protect themselves, to make healthy decisions.

Feel love for everything your child already is.

Then ask yourself: What’s my agenda here? Is what I want for my child based on my own fears or cravings? Or is it something that really needs to grow in them? If it’s my agenda, can I let it go? Can I work on understanding myself, having compassion for myself and how I was raised?

Maybe I was raised with anger—my parents projecting their desires and fears onto me. Are these agendas from my parents, ones I’m now repeating with my own child in unhealthy ways? And if what I want from my child is coming from love, how could I help it come about gently, compassionately?

Now imagine that happening right now. Imagine coming to your child with your needs and feelings. Imagine even asking for their advice: How can I get my needs met for cleanliness, for calm, for working hard, or for spending time in healthy ways?

Whatever your need is, imagine coming to your child collaboratively. Ask them: How can we do this together? How can I get my need met? How can we work together?

Imagine coming to your child collaboratively instead of with power—certainly without anger.

And now imagine that working. Notice how good that feels.

Remember: good things happen slowly; bad things happen fast.

We’ve signed up for a lifetime job as parents. What we want from our children may be important and necessary, and it may take another five or ten years to accomplish.

Commit to being patient and loving through that time. It’s worth it to let go of anger, to deepen the trust and connection with your child, and to feel good about yourself—because anger doesn’t feel good. Love does.

If you’d like to deepen your meditation practice and connect with a community, exploring the ideas we talk about in this podcast visit our website. There you can sign up for our newsletter and join our Train A Happy Mind community, which offers weekly lectures, meditations, classes, and discussions.

You can also purchase my book, How to Train a Happy Mind: A Modern Non-Religious Approach to Buddhist Wisdom with a Forward by the Dalai Lama. It’s available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

If this podcast has been a benefit to you, please consider supporting our nonprofit mission. How to Train a Happy Mind is a project of a Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment, and we rely entirely on the generosity of our donors to keep our podcast and programs free and ad free. To contribute, click here! We accept cash, credit, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies, and your donations are tax deductible in the us.

Credits