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Yes Owen Flanagan made this point on the podcast somewhere. Perhaps he was citing this person. But he had also spent time in Tibetan monasteries in india and so could have seen for himself. He noted that most tibetan monks only meditated for about 5 minutes a day.

Even so, i think it is the case that meditaiton if you are keen to follow the buddha's path is essentialy to being a buddhist.

if you don't meditate, your being a buddhist must be akin to a christian who doesn't pray daily. I think its in these "contemplative" practices where the real impact of religion is felt. the rest is just social.

I was talking my hairdresser about buddhims the other day. She is thai. She doesn't meditate but as a country girl was brought up with values of buddhism. One of them is the suppression of anger. There seems to be a very big emphasis on this in buddhist cultures and this could account for the obvious difference in the peoples of east and west. or buddhist cultures and christian cultures. Because in our culture there anger in some quarters is encouraged but there is certainly no teaching against it in christianity. Indeed all the hellfire and brimstone preachers of the past enjoyed expressing anger.

Therefore i think this take on anger in buddhism is something very useful and warrants more consideration by all western institutions.

Quote from Candol on May 3, 2012, 21:37She doesn't meditate but as a country girl was brought up with values of buddhism. One of them is the suppression of anger. There seems to be a very big emphasis on this in buddhist cultures and this could account for the obvious difference in the peoples of east and west. or buddhist cultures and christian cultures. Because in our culture there anger in some quarters is encouraged but there is certainly no teaching against it in christianity. Indeed all the hellfire and brimstone preachers of the past enjoyed expressing anger.

Therefore i think this take on anger in buddhism is something very useful and warrants more consideration by all western institutions.

That's a very interesting anecdote, Candol. I agree that the extinction of anger is a good thing, and that it seems better understood (e.g. as one of the three poisons) in Buddhism as compared to the west. But suppression is not the proper strategy. While suppressing emotions like anger can be effective for a short period, in the medium or longer term it is ineffective and even can be counterproductive. Emotions suppressed usually find other means of expressing themselves.

What I find fascinating and liberating about meditative practice is that it provides a strategy for acknowledging and understanding anger in a way that it can be properly extinguished. The meditation is itself essential. I don't believe one can really think oneself out of anger any more than one can suppress it effectively. So maybe you should suggest to her some meditation!

I agree suppression of an emotion is never good! Furthermore, I'd be really careful making assumptions about how any part of Buddhism is taught in other cultures.

As from my own experience, in my family I was taught to suppress "negative" emotions, and Buddhism has been the most awesome thing ever in helping me come face to face and be with my emotions, and learn to express them productively.

That said I took a similar tact naturally with my own children by teaching them it's ok to be angry, it's ok to be furious, but take a close look to see what's going on there. I didn't quite have good enough understanding then as I do now, but my parenting hasn't finished even though they are grown:-)

My point is kids can be taught to be with and express their emotions in healthy ways, in what we would call Buddhist ways without suppressing.

Anger never disappears completely. Even Buddha got angry. But it's a fleeting thing. It arises, you see it, then you shift gears into a more productive way of dealing with the situation. That in and of itself dissolves anger.

I think it's either a misunderstanding or a myth that Buddha was without emotion. I've read suttas where his annoyance was apparent, but he calmly goes into make a point without giving into unproductive behaviors such as yelling, swearing, hitting, etc. Though he does call at least one man a fool. lol.

Where I used to avoid my anger and stuff it, now I find it fascinating to work with. Anger arises in a big way, I recognize it, and then I immediately go into, oh what creative ways can I come up with to resolve this problem without giving into yelling, without telling someone they're a blithering idiot. In doing that, trying to find creative ways of expressing my anger, I find the anger soon just dissolves on it's own. But suppressing anger causes it to fester, causes thought stories to build and build until one explodes.

I do find generally irritation harder to work with than anger, as it's more subtle, justifications for it seem more powerful.

Calm people are not without anger and they aren't suppressing it. They've learned to redirect that energy into a new ways of solving problems.

DAna, i don't know any more than you do whether or not the buddha was angry. There can be a difference between feeling anger and expressing it. One could suppose that the buddha was only expressing it and not feeling it. Just as in the case taht i mentioned recently about how when the dalai lama was asked what one should do if faced with hitler before he went ahead and killed lots of people. The point being you can fake anger for effect. Perhaps that's what the buddha did.

re my assumption about suppression of anger in thailand. Well i think its quite sophisticated teaching to for rural bareley educated parents to teach their kids to let go anger rather than suppress so i think its a pretty safe thing to assume that what happens in places like thailand is suppression of anger.

I can't really picture how such people would be able to teach their kids any other way. How do you imagine they could teach their kids any other way. I can easily imagine how if a child is having a tantrum that the parent would soothe it or if a teenager expresses some anger that the mother would indicate that the child should not express it. I can imagine how the children have grown up watching their parents suppress anger. I can't imagine that if they haven't learnt how to meditate and let go of things, that they could come to this insightful behaviour. Can you?

Yes it seems they went to temples to listen to the monks but i understand that the monks in thailand were not actually well educated themselves. (I only learned this recently on the santi monastery website).

The key is expressing it productively, not aggressively. That usually means while you're alone, not with at someone. The important thing is that we allow ourselves to be with the anger, get out of the story our heads create, and allow the anger to move through as it will until it dissipates. This is a fascinating process if you take the time to really sit and be with it.

This is very different than expressing it to someone, yelling, or saying something mean. It stead you see how it feels in the body, what parts it effects, how it moves, while staying out of your head. Thoughts feed anger, and when you see how that process works, you can stop it before it goes too far. Once you get caught up in thoughts, it's like being stuck on a marry go round.

Mufi i think the idea that expressing anger was better than suppressing it came from our western tradition in therapy. I believe it was meant specifically for certain types of people who were too afraid to express anger and so held it in. I particularly think its pertinent when such people were being abused by others more powerful than themselves and were unable to respond effectively. Anger would have been an appropriate response but they were so afraid they could not respond in anyway and so the abuse continued.

A lot of people are too afraid and too insecure to stand up for themselves. Its for these people that the notion of expressing anger is good. It should never have been the notion that it is good for everyone to express anger since so many of us have no trouble at all in letting it out and let it out too often.

Its unfortunate that the message got confused and became expressing anger is better than holding it in.

well know i never spent much time reading the bible but i went to church every sunday and to chapel several times a week and we were never taught anything against anger. And as i said, there have been plenty of preachers who loved to express their anger at their congregation and exact it on children in their care in teh case of church schools and other institutions.

I just found this forum today; great! On the subject of violence and learning how to deal with it, I would like to share a book that I am now reading called Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B Rosenberg, Ph.D. This book is the basis for the theory of nonviolent communication (NVC) otherwise known as Compassionate Communication, and has a helpful section on dealing with anger. To quote Dr. Rosenberg, "We are never angry because of what someone else did.We can identify the other person's behavior as the stimulus, but it is important to establish a clear separation between stimulus and cause" (p.142). HE goes on to explain that in expressing anger (not suppressing it) one should realize that it is not caused by what others do but how we think, and anger is often flamed by our blaming others and formulated in our learned thinking habits. "Rather than going up to our head to make mental analysis of wrongness in somebody, we choose to connect to the life that is within us...Focusing on our needs and feelings, the choice is ours at any moment to shine the light of consciousness on the other person's feelings and needs...we are not repressing the anger; we see how anger is simply absent in each moment that we are fully present with the other person's feelings and needs"(p.143-144). To me, that is compassion!

Thanks for sharing the idea of tuning in to the other persons feelings rather than focussing on our own. I think that's a very helpful idea.

Candol do you remember if it where
Owen Flanagan that in that podcast
revealed that he did not meditate
he himself? Or where do I get this
strong inner conviction that I have
read here on SBA that somebody writing
very positively about Mindfulness
did not practice it only related
on a theoretical level with it as an idea?

Thanks. I did not give precise info
so my question may have misled you.

My memory is too vague but here goes.

I am fairly sure this guys do fMRI
on meditatiors. And maybe have been
on a Podcast or on a Conference reported
on SBA and he is rather or very famous.

Hal Putof or Russell Targ or Dean Radin
or Richard Davidson or Andrew Newberg.

And he revealed somewhere maybe outside
of SBA could be in an interview in TriCycle?
or some other Buddhist Mag or on Huffington Post?

He revealed that he had tried either Mindfulness
or Metta and totally failed due to him could not
concentrate.

Dana or Linda or you Candol told me that it is
a deep misunderstanding that one have to be able
to concentrate. What is required is persistence
at being able to continue to go back to being
mindful? Or go back to listen to breath and then
be mindful?

I forget things too fast sorry.

I did find it kind of cute that this guy
despite him being that well instructed
being friend of Jon Kabat Zinn and all
those highly trained Monks that he meet
during the fMRI sessions could have that
deep misunderstanding for so long and
that nobody cared to tell him what you
guys told me here?

Despite all of them he tested where into
mindfulness and doing Metta none of them
cared enough about him to help him come
out of that misunderstanding?

is that not very odd? The interviewer should
have known Buddhism well enough to tell him
in the interview too and the readers should
have cared to tell him?

I come back to my curiousness. Why where none
of them curious enough to help him out?

Yeah I know he did not ask them and they did
not know. They thought he where good at it?
Or that it where none of their biz to relate to him?

I must be very different. I care about him despite
me being so remote and not knowing almost anything
about Buddhism at all.

Them having meditated for so long. 10 years or more?
They should have a lot of Metta for him? Should they not?