Unexpected Freedom

Unexpected Freedomtime around find other ways of channelling it. Go jogging –jog until you are exhausted. Take a cold shower; do someyoga; do walking meditation – quickly if necessary; doanything rather than acting on the anger, letting it controlyou, letting it drive you into making more unskilful kamma.If we try to contemplate what is happening before we havecooled down properly, then we might become caught upagain and continue to dwell on the event, thinking, ‘I was inthe right, I was perfectly justified!’ and so on. But even thatis something we can learn from, if we are willing. Somephysical activity might be necessary initially as a way ofdissipating the energy so that we can be in a suitable state toconsider what happened.The Benefits of Consistent EffortAnother useful way of viewing anger is to see it simply asenergy. This is energy that is to be purified and transformed.It is not something just to get rid of or to vent. This issomething to be understood, and in order to do this ourrelationship with it also needs to be purified.The first level of purification is containment or restraint.We restrain ourselves from acting out the motive forces thatare gaining momentum within us, no matter howuncomfortable that experience is for us. There is power insuch mindful restraint and this leads us to being able toengage the energy intelligently and creatively.A good friend once suggested to me that home visitswere the best barometer for practice in this area. I think hewas right. I know that whenever I used to go back to NewZealand to see my family there couldn’t be a more fertilesource of opportunity for restraining my emotionalreactions. There were seemingly endless opportunities for78