Hi all,
A few years ago I took psychology at the Uni and I remember I was mesmerized by anger. As a Gen X-er, I grew with anger and fury as means to get whatever one desires. Want to win a fight? Get angrier than the other one and destroy! We can see traces of that in current entertainment.
In this course we learned how most of our emotions are relevant from an evolutionary point of view. We developed emotions in order to survive, to better relate to the universe and to have right responses when threatened or in danger.
The thing is, we also have developed an ego, which loves to tell stories that revolve around primal emotions.
So anger is fine as long as we just reckon we are feeling it, but not create stories about it. It's better to see if anger isn't advising us we are in danger so we can act accordingly. Same goes with sadness.
Now, Buddhist practice allows is to be at peace with emotions. We don't run from them, we don't block them. We are at peace with them and live them fully. If we need to cry, we cry. If we need to feel angry towards a political issue, we do it because that will spring us into right action, instead of destructions.
When we are aware of thoughts surrounding emotions it gets easier to see options that we were blind to. I have tried that an in my own experience, it helps a lot because now I don't cling to emotions most of the time. Of course, sometimes it just happens, but emotions tend to stay less time than what they used to.
My English feels quite rusty today, so I apologize if all that didn't make any sense
Gassho,
Kyonin
Sat/LAH