Revd Chris McDermott, Lead Chaplain for the University of Sussex
This month we examine the nineth precept in the series focusing on those pithy descriptions from the traditional list Buddhist precepts. As noted in earlier articles, these descriptions transcend a particular religious context to have a wide application to one’s life, whether we are religious or not.
The more observant among you will realise that I have skipped the eighth. I will return to that one next month but for reasons of thematic relevance, I will address the nineth:
‘Actualise harmony – do not be angry’
This particular precept follows nicely from the sixth and seventh, in which we regarded our relationship to ‘the other’ by way of focusing on virtues more than flaws and recognising our deep interconnection with other human beings – whether we instinctively like them, or not. There is something in this precept that flows from the last two we have explored.
But first of all, let’s set one thing that may be obscured by language here: anger is important. Without a capacity for anger, we would have little energy for the pursuit of justice, either in the world or in our personal lives. In fact, real harmony in our relationships is not feasible without the experience of anger at times. Many of us are familiar with the New Testament beatitude: ‘Blessed are the meek….’ I think that William Barclay’s translation of this beatitude, taking its point of departure from Aristotle’s notion of ‘the mean’ in the field of ethics, can be paraphrased so:
‘Blessed are those who know how to be angry with the right people, at the right moment, for the right reason and for the right length of time.’
Meekness, like harmony, does not imply the lack of anger but rather its proportionate relationship. When anger is out of sync and balance with meekness and those propensities to seek harmony, the effects are harmful to us and others. Perhaps some of us may resonate with that experience at different times over the years: anger has gotten the better of us and poisoned the well, so to speak, creating much discomfort and not a little dysfunction in our lives. For a few, this may have come about by way of unresolved conflicts or experiences of abuse and we need support from skilled professionals and those we trust in order to process such experiences before we can move on. For many of us it may come about due to the intensity of experiences of conflict and rejection. I will not go into detail, but I have a friend from my youth with whom I am still in regular contact via social media and occasional video chats over a glass of wine.
By and large, kindness and compassion are the habit for my friend. Like me (in a former incarnation, as it were), he had a connection to an evangelical church in our local community in western New York. In his case this persisted over 40 years. In recent years he has experienced rejection by people from this community with whom he had been friends for decades after publicly coming out as gay. This has caused immense hurt and left a deep wound for him. His parents and family never wavered in love and acceptance of my friend and had known about his sexuality long before he decided to make this generally known. While still retaining much of his habitual warmth, he has nonetheless fallen into the habit of regular social media outbursts of mockery and repetitious denunciations toward his former community with a generous sprinkling of ‘f-bombs’ thrown in for good measure. I must admit, I titter at the latter as only a few years ago he was scandalised that I used a rude word in a poem that I shared with him. But I can see that he is also alienating many of those who support him in the process.
My friend’s adventures on social media are completely understandable and I share much of his anger at the way longstanding friends have rejected him. And it may be that he is still going through an experience of processing all of this, and needs to do so. We do talk about it on those occasions when we chat via video. But at the moment, while anger still dominates his story the fallout for him and others is toxic.
Harmony, per the precept we are examining, is at times the product of getting our anger right. Doing this at times requires the support of friends – and even, on occasion, skilled help. Communication, finding the appropriate support among friends and relevant professionals, and mindfully nurturing the inner dispositions that enable harmonious relationships amid the rough and tumble of our human foibles. These are all parts of the art of doing anger in way that ensures we are angry with the right people, at the right moment, for the right reason and for the right length of time.