Do Taoists get angry?

[thelerner]

What about hatred?

 

If anger is natural, and should (when necessary) be expressed healthily in order to control it healthily, should we also allow ourselves to hate?

I don't know. Anger can be momentary, a flash. Hate tends to stick, brood and fester.

 

Certainly neither should be 'fed'. Once anger passes, let it go but hatred it seems to me is more poisonous. It needs to be understood. Instead of just walking away, antidotes and skillful means should be employed to weed it out.

[Marblehead]

a real taoist would never get angry, ever. if you are angry that makes you not a taoist

Indeed, Taoists don't get angry; they get even.

[3bob]

Tao gets things "even", as no one else can.

[mYTHmAKER]

Sometimes it is good for one to pretend to be angry whether one is a card carrying taoist or not.

[Jetsun]

As Bruce Frantzis says if you have a liver you will sometimes get angry. Hatred though is usually when anger has been repressed or never been given allowance to exist.

 

Anger can be a wonderful thing to cut through all the bulshit, also it can arise where there is a void of love to restore the situation. Anger generally gets a bad rep in the spiritual and religious circles but the ironic thing is that the more you deny it or try to get rid of it the stronger it will become in your life, which you could call a lesson from the Tao I suppose.

[sifuaminjani]

We are all human, and all of us are connected to one other, therefore we will be bound to feel emotions as long as we exist in this world. Our own bodies will create emotions that we have to clear out by becoming healthy in mind and body, then spirit will be healthy too. Also our enviroment effects us, we have to learn to stay cool in stituations that test our emotions, and people or things will do that, so it is good to focus on having a good surrounding and people in your life to keep it positve and healthy. I personaly believe that a good diet and doing things to maintain your organ health are key overcoming emotions and dealing with them over all. Meditation on Compassion will also clear the mind. A clear mind and clean body will enabe a cultivator to have the self control they need to maintain there Virtue as emotions and sentement do stress us out unless kept positve.

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Hatred needs nurturing i think, or at least some form of active conditioning. Intense dislike of someone might be prejudice, interpersonal chemistry or in some cases experience. Might be something else of course.

 

I think also hatred needs studying, both to build it and to dismantle it.

Edited December 10, 2014 by Rocky Lionmouth

[ChiDragon]

If there was no anger, then there was no hatred to begin with.

[ChiDragon]

stop smiling chidragon, real taoists don't smile either

[nestentrie]

Across more than a couple of people's posts lies the answer to this i think. It's one of times I wish that a thread could be editorially 'taken over' and summarised for all the best points before everything just starts repeating itself.

 

All I think I could add is that anger is need of relief, where hatred needs to be satisfied. Not only satisfied but measured against one's pride. Natural pride is effortless and smooth. Hatred co-opting it is coarse and often nasty with sharp points of punctuation.

 

4

The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our
employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How
deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of
all things!

We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of
things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into
agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao
is, as if it would ever so continue!

I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before
God.

 

J.Legge

[ChiDragon]

Who said a real Taoist doesn't smile.......

Edited December 10, 2014 by ChiDragon

[Taomeow]

Right

 

Personally I'd choose a different word than 'invent' but basically, yes

 

Yes. My parents have always been wonderful, but teachers and social custom generally have been a hindrance

 

 

 

So I have a related question, which I was wondering about a creating a topic for, but now this topic is here:

 

What about hatred?

 

If anger is natural, and should (when necessary) be expressed healthily in order to control it healthily, should we also allow ourselves to hate?

 

Hatred -- what is it? Sort of like anger plus an intellectual rationale for feeling it? Or anger embodied, included into one's physiology? A snake has venom -- at all times. Anger a poisonous snake and it will bite. Is hatred something like this?

 

I think it is a cleaner, more energy-efficient (let alone kinder and gentler) system that is not storing hatred. But I don't think hatred is un-taoist either. I hate cruelty. This does not make ME cruel, this may propel me to action -- to help, save, protect someone weaker from cruelty. If I don't hate cruelty, I am all right, the weaker suffer and die at the hands of the cruel, in most cruel ways -- and I don't care. I remain oh so peaceful. Bleech.

 

So, I think no one can cancel any one "bad" emotion humans are capable of experiencing without canceling them all in everybody for all purposes. Which is unrealistic. And while this is not an option, to feel the human way means to be fully human, and to hate may mean to love, paradoxically enough. Taoists embrace such paradoxes -- at least the genuine ones do -- and handle them with great care, "like one frying a small fish."

 

Now cruelty -- that's unnatural, wrong, and un-taoist. Its prerequisite is loss of sensitivity resulting in one's inability to relate to the pain and suffering of another. This is a damaged, dislocated state. Do we embrace it in someone affected? Nope. There's a grey zone where you would have to try to figure out how to be kind to someone who is cruel, considering she is cruel because someone was unkind to her in the past -- that's how she lost her sensitivity. I think one could find a way to justify anyone and anything this way -- but I choose not to.

 

It IS a free choice after all, to decide where you draw the line, where you demand responsibility to take the place of the lost sensitivity, where you demand that someone unable to relate to the other's pain compensate by using his or her brain, education, input from humanity's best thinkers, better role models -- something, anything -- to at least treat the symptoms if one can't be healed, to at least consciously put an end to the propagation of cruelty he or she has internalized. I hold cruel people accountable, and I don't care that they have a "reason" to have turned this way. And I hate what they do, always did and always will, no matter how taoist I get.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Regardless of the wayward views about wu wei, Taoists seek to better their environment, their bodies, their minds, and even the minds and bodies of others by using their skills of restoring harmony. To do so sometimes requires decisive action, intolerant of failure. This might be characterized as anger, and perhaps rightfully so, but the motivation is more the point of import.

 

If the motivation is selfish, this is not wu wei; while selfless action is what might be called wei wu wei, or wu wei in action.

 

 

If I'm confusing you a bit, you might want to read about wu wei meaning non-selfish action.

[Yasjua]

When I'm angry with someone I realize I'm cultivating a negative state. I take something I unnecessarily value (like money) and buy something for the person I'm angry with to simultaneously counteract anger, greed, and delusion.

[ChiDragon]

Reacting to in a negative way shouldn't be thinking as a way of cultivation. By definition, cultivation is always working toward the positive. The purpose of cultivation is to change something from negative to absolute positive.

[woodcarver]

I get angry sometimes, I just stopped sharing it.

Edited December 10, 2014 by woodcarver

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

one thing that has happened to me since beginning to practice nei dan is that when i get really tired, or energetically frazzled, angry, pissed, crazy mad, or upset, I tend to be more aware of its effect on my body.

This is good and bad: good because I can follow the appropriate steps for dealing with it (sleep a couple hours or whatever). It is bad because it is very energetically taxing.

It is less nasty than spending a whole day messed up and then having to come down from it all at night (by messed up I mean holding unfortunate emotions too long and letting them fester), but it still kind of sucks

anger isn't meant to be enjoyable (not that anything is meant to be anything, but you get my drift)

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Reacting to in a negative way shouldn't be thinking as a way of cultivation. By definition, cultivation is always working toward the positive. The purpose of cultivation is to change something from negative to absolute positive.

 

Wheres the point in that? If true i must immediately stop cultivating.

[ChiDragon]

Wheres the point in that? If true i must immediately stop cultivating.

 

You mean you would like to keep hatred with anger within your system permanently.....???

[Marblehead]

Sometimes it is good for one to pretend to be angry whether one is a card carrying taoist or not.

There is more truth in that than one would expect to find.

[Marblehead]

If there was no anger, then there was no hatred to begin with.

Please never expect perfection from me.

[Marblehead]

Hatred -- what is it?

Although I "Like"ed your post I sure wish you could find a better word than "hate" to express those emotions you spoke to. (Yes, hatred was in there but I feel hate inhibits advancement.)

[gatito]

Please never expect perfection from me.

Perhaps you're perfectly imperfect?

 

Or imperfectly perfect?

 

Like all of us..

 

[Marblehead]

Perhaps you're perfectly imperfect?

 

Or imperfectly perfect?

 

Like all of us..

 

Yeah, I'm just like Y'all, only different.

[gatito]

Exactly...