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We continue to explore the intersection of our more inner practice and our practice with the larger world, including the U.S. post-election world. Our starting point is seeing how widespread and predominant the emotions of anger and fear are in our society, we look particularly at the nature of anger and how to practice with it, both in terms of our own anger and in terms of the anger of others.
Anger, it has been said, is the most confusing emotion in Western civilization, seen often over the last 2500 years sometimes as both entirely as negative and sometimes as a quality that manifests at times in the Jewish prophets, Jesus, and God. There's a confusing also among Western Buddhists, who may have conditioning related to aversion to anger combined with problematic translations of terms like dosa (entirely negative in the Buddhist context) as "anger" (not entirely negative in the contemporary Western context).
With this set of explorations about anger, we look at how to practice with anger individually, especially through mindful investigation of anger and how anger can lead either to reactivity and the formation of reactive views of self and/or other, or to skillful action. We also explore practicing with the anger of others through empathy practice.
The talk is followed by discussion and sharing, including of the experiences of practicing with anger from several people.
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