Thanks Chris for your sharing here. My understanding of your saying in first paragraph: 1 - you refrain from anger when you can first see what things will provoke you to be angry. 2- Awareness help you to see the mechanics of something leading you to anger and because of that you can prevent it to happen in some situations. 3- Nonetheless anger arises the same at a certain point.
Question: What about if you were angry already?. In which way the refraining will work out here?. How will you know that you were not repressing that anger? The thread about anger was brought by two of the young people. The young man has recognised to be very angry. He says that anger is his best friend. He thinks that practitioners from the TNH tradition repress anger and that refraining from anger is the the same as repressing. His statement let me very hesitant and thoughtful. Have to say that he might have a very good point in here. My personal experience here is that once I'm angry, the refraining of acting angry has a violent impact on me. It does feel as a way of repression which will be manifested at a later time. Instead when I express out whatever is there in a temperamental manners, then I feel refreshed. I don't hold resentment or any of the other things that come as a result of repression. Before we had temperamental people in the world and that was OK. But it seems that we can't be temperamental any longer because that is taken as a form of anger blow and therefore aggressive and violent. At the same time a blow of temper in the UK leads to physical violence while this was not necessarily the case in Spain. Appreciate a lot your thoughtful sharing Mayka --- On Wed, 4/5/11, Chris Austin-Lane <[email protected]> wrote: From: Chris Austin-Lane <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Zen] Questions To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, 4 May, 2011, 9:57 Seems to me in the instant when I perceive some thing that I would be upset by I can look clearly at and see the mechanics of getting angry and still keep the perspective of everything is fundamentally ok and the flash of upset does not push me into anger but just tweaks my system with a wave of attention and energy and sighing/grinning at life that lets the tweak dissipate. That is refraining. Also, I can get completely angry, so far from seeing from myself that I either don't know it or couldn't bring myself to acknowledge it, and then my tense twisted body angrily does some other thing out of my awareness. That is repressing. Sometimes, my consciousness is dulled and I hang on to some tiny seed of anger that later blooms into a big storm of fury. And of course, there is the conventional seeing the stimulus and myself enough to know I am angry, but loosing the bigger picture and having to deal with the stimulus while all worked up, hopefully by calming myself down or waiting for the storm to pass before counting on sane answers coming from my mouth. On Wednesday, May 4, 2011, Maria Lopez <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Could anyone tell me what is the difference between refraining and repressing > anger?. Don't know the answer to it. Does anyone know?. This question came > up in the "Wake Up" website in Scotland. The "Wake Up" is the group for the > youngster founded by TNH. I didn't do myself subscription as I'm far of > being in teens or twenties but since someone in the group did for me I stayed > with them. I've already clarify the age issue and still they want me with > them. Oh, well!. > > Mayka > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
