Unexpected Freedom

Unexpected Freedomare convinced that it is good to indulge in aggression, thenthere is little that we can change. However, if we arecommitted to meditation practice and have some access tothe peaceful heart, we can know how beautiful a heart freefrom anger is. It is because we don’t know about thispossibility that we become caught up. From the perspectiveof identifying with our bodily senses we experience thepassions as who and what we are. On that level it can feelgood to feel this power of anger. When we get passionatelyrighteous and indignant, our rage feels so energising. Oursense of self is potentised and this leads us to conclude thatanger is good. We believe that we are going to getsomething out of following it. So long as we haven’t deeplyinvestigated this aspect of ourselves we can be fooled intothinking that acting out our anger is somehow going tobenefit us.Sitting here now talking about it, it sounds crazy, doesn’tit, but this is what happens. This is why people commit themost awful atrocities that, from the perspective of those ofus who have never been in a war situation, are utterlyincomprehensible. If we were not there in the formerYugoslavia a few years ago, or in Rwanda before that – orwho knows where next – and we hear of all the slaughter,the rape and torture, the unbelievable horror, it is verydifficult to take any of it in and make sense of it. However,the reality of such atrocities becomes at least conceivable ifwe have enquired into our own experience of getting caughtup in passion to the point that that passion possesses us. Wecan see how, when this happens, when we becomepossessed by hatred, when we allow ourselves to beconvinced that acting out this hatred will solve the problem,how then we are capable of absolutely anything.76