Transform Anger Through Compassion

I'd like to discuss working with anger, specifically how to work with anger through compassion, which is one of the main methods I use when anger comes up for me. There's an area here that I think is really needed out there. I see it constantly, whether it's someone struggling with a family member, struggling with a political figure, or anyone else. It's this idea that someone is unredeemable—this strict, black-and-white thinking we adopt around good and evil, believing there's an evil person out there or evil in itself.

I notice that when I get angry, especially with someone else, I can see my mind narrowing. I'm usually feeling like I'm on fire, frustrated, and my mind narrows around the person. I start to see only the areas of them that I don't like, the areas where I think they're not a good person—maybe not evil, but there's some sense of irredeemability, like they're fixed and solid in their negative qualities.

For me, what I've found really helpful when working with anger towards others is to open up that view. The first step, as I said, is often compassion—just recognizing where this person might be struggling or having a hard time. Usually, right away within a few minutes, that shifts my mind. It doesn't necessarily get rid of the anger, which is fine. We don't need to get rid of the anger; we just need to start opening up that narrowness where our mind and body become constricted.

In particular, this works really well for me by just recognizing the humanity of the person—recognizing that they might be struggling in certain areas. I would say even someone who is unkind means they're struggling with kindness. They're struggling with how to see others as redeemable themselves. If we've known times in our life when we were struggling with kindness or struggling with compassion for others, we know that's not a nice place to be. There's a lot of pain in that way of being. Similarly, in anger itself, there's a lot of pain. Whatever we see in the other person that is dislikable, we can also see it as a form of pain, and this will start to melt the ice and soften our heart.

Another area we often reflect on in traditional Buddhism is recognizing that all beings have Buddha nature. Underneath someone's destructive actions, there's confusion in regards to those actions. We don't have to like the destructive action. We don't have to agree with it. We can actively work against it if we feel it's destructive. But underneath, we recognize there is potential for that person to develop compassion, become more loving, more peaceful, and more kind.

One helpful tip here is to never relegate someone to permanent evil. Everyone has the potential to develop their awakened heart, to develop kindness, compassion, and love. Even if we look at history and some of the figures viewed as the worst characters in the world, they most likely loved something. They most likely had something they were close to that they were very kind to, even if it was just a plant. I haven't really found anyone who was so cold and evil they didn't love anything. Even if we could find some examples, I would still say there's this potential—there's a seed.

That really helps me when I'm angry with someone or struggling with them, whether I know them directly or if they're a public figure. I remember they have the potential for warmth and love. They have the potential for kindness, even if they're not actively engaging in it. They are redeemable; they are fundamentally okay, even if they're struggling a lot and creating suffering for others.

Here, I want to address something because I imagine some of you might be thinking this: When we develop this compassionate approach with our aggression towards others, we're not validating someone's destructive behavior. We're not saying, "Go ahead and mess up other people's lives or mess up my life." No—compassion is not weakness; compassion is strength. We're recognizing the root of suffering that we all go through in life and that we're all redeemable—we can all change. We can actively say no, set a boundary, and resist when someone is doing something truly harmful.

There's no universal rule for this; it depends on each situation. I've really come to see that compassion is not weakness. It actually helps us develop poise, openness, and groundedness. When we need to stand our ground, we can do it, but we can do it without anger, without heaping up that burden of constriction and pain that comes with anger and aggression, and for some, rage.

That's also another important point: when I'm typically working with my anger, I'm working with my reaction first. I'm working with how it's showing up in my body, working with the sensation of it, greeting it with kindness and compassion—my own reaction first. Then I can start to open to others. Either approach works—sometimes focusing on the other person first, sometimes on myself first. Eventually, we get to a place where we start to see more of a universality towards suffering, pain, stress, and dissatisfaction. We see we all experience it in different ways, and we start to soften. We start to have compassion towards our own pain and stress, and therefore we can start to see and have compassion towards the pain and stress of others, even when they look irredeemable or extremely difficult.

This loosens things and opens them up. I would venture to say that we can actually come up with better solutions to problems that way. I haven't really seen great solutions come out of aggression in my life personally. When I'm in a bad mood or struggling with annoyance or anger, I don't usually react in the best way, and I don't come up with the best solutions. Often what I do when I need to solve something is leave some space, realize I'm angry, work with my own experience somatically through the dharma, and just wait before making any big decisions.