Angry Buddha

Does enlightenment eliminate anger?

Head of Buddha, Indonesia; Ivan Herman, 2016

Here’s how to become enlightened in two simple steps:

1. Don’t hold on to anything you experience.

2. Don’t push away anything you experience.

I said the steps were simple. I didn’t say they were easy.

Buddhist teachings provide a framework to move towards, and perhaps attain, enlightenment. An essential teaching within this framework is the “three marks of existence.”

The three marks are:

1. Impermanence. Everything is in a state of change. All physical and mental phenomena come into being and eventually disappear.

2. Suffering. Because all physical and mental phenomena are impermanent, desires for, or attachments to, these phenomena cause suffering.

3. Non-self. There is no permanent essence to people or other things.

Proper understanding of the three marks of existence opens the gates to enlightenment.

Selecting a teacher

Buddhism warns students about teachers who display anger. The advice provided is that “anger and hostility lead to the decline of an aspiring student.”¹ With that advice in mind, how would you evaluate a teacher who publicly chastised a disciple for an incorrect understanding as follows:

“Foolish man! I have never taught that!...But still, you misrepresent me by your wrong grasp, harm yourself, and create much wickedness. This will be for your lasting harm and suffering.

What do you think students? Has this man kindled even a spark of ardor in his teaching and training?”

The students responded: “No sir, absolutely not sir.”

When this was said, the chastised disciple sat silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say. Knowing this, the teacher said: “Foolish man! You will be known by your own harmful misconception.”

Heeding the advice that “anger and hostility lead to the decline of an aspiring student,” I would stay away from such a teacher.

Had I been alive when these words were said to have been uttered, and had I decided to steer clear of this teacher, I would have given up the opportunity to learn from Siddhartha Gautama, the person we now refer to as the Buddha (enlightened one).²

Explaining Buddha’s anger

There are a few ways to understand this story of the Buddha chastising his disciple.

1. You can decide that the record, written down some time after the Buddha’s death, is incorrect. The problem with this approach is that it calls into question all the other teachings and statements ascribed to the Buddha. If this statement is incorrect, perhaps the others are as well.

2. You can decide that the Buddha wasn’t really angry. He was only pretending to be angry to serve a pedagogical purpose. This approach is supported by Buddhist commentators who say that for an enlightened being, anger is impossible.³ Since the Buddha was an enlightened being, he couldn’t have been angry.

   This is the exact approach taken by Biblical commentators to explain away God’s anger in the Bible.⁴

   I find it unsatisfying to explain God’s anger, or Buddha’s anger, as a pedagogical technique. There’s nothing in the texts to suggest that either God, or the Buddha, was pretending. And even if they were, it’s bad pedagogy to verbally beat students into submission. It might be easier to accept that God or the Buddha taught using flawed methods than to accept that they got angry, but it just trades one problem for another. Either way, it’s not a great look.

3. You can decide that even the Buddha sometimes, or at least once, lost his cool. Personally, I think this is the most likely possibility.

Do as I say, not as I do

Other teachings of the Buddha sound very different than the story of the Buddha chastising his disciple.

He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call a real driver; other people are but holding the reins.

Beware of the anger of the tongue, and control thy tongue! Leave the sins of the tongue, and practice virtue with thy tongue!

Beware of the anger of the mind, and control thy mind! Leave the sins of the mind, and practice virtue with thy mind!

Dhammapada, chapter 17, verses 222, 232, 233

Anger, it seems, is something we can expect to occasionally feel arising in us. The teaching tells us to “hold back” rising anger. It doesn’t tell us anger will never arise. The teachings tell us that anger can infect our speech and our thoughts, but with practice, we can control our anger. The teachings don’t suggest anger will disappear.

The approach of these teachings is very similar to the one advised by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Both CBT and Buddhism suggest techniques to help people identify when anger is arising and to avoid being controlled by it.

It’s easier to talk about the right way to behave than it is to behave the right way.

Can we ever be rid of anger?

Whenever you feel anger arise, and even if you occasionally handle your anger poorly, know you’re in good company. When we, and our friends and loved ones, fall short of ideal behaviors, it’s helpful to remember that we’re all in this human adventure together. None of us does this perfectly. Not even good spiritual teachers.

There are Buddhist teachings that insist that along the way to enlightenment, anger will disappear. And perhaps that’s true. But perhaps it’s an illusion.

I like to refer back to the first mark of existence: impermanence. Rather than think of enlightenment as a permanent state that once achieved can never be lost, I prefer to apply Buddhism’s teaching of impermanence to enlightenment itself. Enlightenment is a state of being that, like all other states of being, is subject to impermanence.

Even if a person has completely vanquished anger, the next moment may hold something different.

Holding on to anger, or pushing anger away, will keep us from enlightenment.

Holding on to the idea that the Buddha was incapable of anger, or pushing that idea away, will also keep us from enlightenment.

1. Anguttara Nikaya Sutta 2.200

2. Majjhima Nikaya Sutta 38.5-6. The dates of the Siddhartha’s life is a subject of scholarly debate. All the proposed dates fall within the many hundreds of years that the Hebrew Bible was being composed, sometime between the 9^th and 4^th century BCE.

3. https://studybuddhism.com/en/essentials/what-is/what-is-enlightenment

4. I wrote about this here.