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Venerable Thubten Chodron offers a Buddhist meditation to help work through anger in a compassionate and loving manner.

Ven. Thubten Chodron: Let’s start with watching our breath for a couple of minutes. Let the mind settle down.

Letting go of the ego

Let’s generate our motivation for the meditation and imagine how you would feel if you weren’t ego-sensitive. If people could praise you and you didn’t get attached and arrogant, people could criticize you, you don’t get offended or angry.

What would it feel like to have a peaceful mind that is not bashed around by always taking everything personally?

Imagine what that would feel like. You would be able to listen to anything and everything without getting ruffled one way or the other. You’d be able to take to heart what the other person said and respect them.

Then wish that that could happen to everybody, that everybody could have an open mind that is not ego-sensitive and that cares about all others, a mind of compassion.

Let’s think that as we feel that compassion, we wish it for all other living beings. Let’s take that as our motivation for doing the meditation, to develop our own compassion so we can share that with others.

Who are you angry at?

Begin by thinking of somebody or a group that you are angry at, that you don’t like. You want them to go away. You want them to change. Whenever you think of them, you have just an ugh feeling.

Think of somebody or a group specifically. Then think about what it must be like to be that person. How did they grow up? What did they experience? What was going on in the world when they were young? How did that influence them? What was happening in their family? How did they grow up? What did they experience in their country, to whatever racial, ethnic, or religious group they belong to?

In other words, look at the various factors that conditioned who that person developed into, what they thought, and how they felt.

Take a few minutes to really go into this, regarding the person that you’re upset with or the group you’re upset with. Then think, if I grew up like that person, if I had those kinds of situations and circumstances surrounding me for the first part of my life, up until this moment, there’s a strong possibility that I would feel very much like that person who I don’t like.

If I heard the same things as a young person or lived in that same society, I would probably be a lot like them and think like them. Consider that.

Compassion for those who are unhappy

Then ask yourself, that person or that group of people, are they happy? See that they are not happy.

When people are unhappy, they take it out on others.

It’s not saying that what they did was right, but it is a bad habit of human beings that when we’re unhappy we lash out or do things in our search for happiness that harm others because we don’t realize that the real cause of happiness is kindness, not revenge.

Consider that the person harming you is somebody unhappy. Have compassion for their unhappiness. Because you also see that if you had grown up or lived their life experience, you might very well feel and think like they do.

Rest your mind in that sense of compassion for yourself and for the other person because we all have very similar ways of functioning. Compassion is simply the wish for someone not to suffer, to be free of suffering and its causes. Wish that for the other party, wish that for yourself.

You and others here are equal.

Let’s rejoice that we did the meditation and imagine sharing the beneficial energy that we created. Imagine that as a ball of light in the center of your chest. Send that positive potential, that good energy from doing the meditation, and send it out into the world as a bright white light.

Imagine it touching all living beings and calming their minds, purifying their minds, and enriching their minds with good qualities.

Open your eyes and slowly come out of the meditation.

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