To be fair, I listened to ‘How to Fight’ by the buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh on Audible a little over a week ago – I didn’t read it. It was a short book, with a lot of simple yet profound methods. Primarily for dealing with anger.
It was about learning how to relax the bonds of anger, attachment to your anger, through mindfulness and kindness towards ourselves.
It was yet another source of knowledge that I have consumed recently that refers to our anger as a habit the we fall into. The anger is somehow giving our body the hormones and reactions that it wants. So our angry response is not even proportional or even justified in most cases – but our body is in a habit of getting those hormones, and so you’re almost a victim of your own bodily reactions.
The premise is that we must first become mindful of the anger. Acknowledge it, without judgment and realise that you’re angry. Question it. Thich Nhat Hanh is very much about us being compassionate with ourselves, and finding humour in the ways we respond when we are frustrated or angry.
He provides a number brief mediations, which are designed to acknowledge that those around us are often suffering from uncontrollable emotions, just like us. The one I liked most was:
Inhale and think of your loved on, “you are suffering”, then
Exhale and think of yourself “I am suffering too”.
Through being mindful, and then using breathing and these chants or little meditations, Thich Nhat Hanh instructs us how to transform our cravings for anger and our confusion at our reactions.
He propounds that if we take good care of our own suffering, we can help others do the same.