"Don't Hold On To Anger"

Why We Have To Train With Anger To Let It Go

Training in Kendo (The Way of the Sword)

For my last guest lecture as part of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care’s Foundations program, Koshin and Chodo Senseis asked me to speak on the 9th Zen precept, which they translated as "Don't hold on to anger." I could only assume they wanted to hear what I had to say as someone who lives at a Zen temple where our samurai, or warrior, lineage is as important as our Buddhist lineage, and where we train in martial arts—i.e., activities often misunderstood as being motivated by violence and anger.

I like this translation, "Don't hold on to anger". It's much better, I think, than another I found, "Refrain from anger." Anger can be a useful emotion—for example, when someone or something we care about is being attacked or harmed. But whether or not it's justified, we should let it go, clearing it from our systems once the threat is gone. If we don't, it can burn us up, affecting both our minds and our bodies. Anger raises our blood pressure, strains our organs, and can trigger irregularity in our nervous systems, contributing to higher anxiety, depression, and autoimmune ailments. At the same time, it's a natural emotion. To think we can refrain from ever becoming angry is, for most of us, unnatural, unrealistic, and thus, quite impractical.

Anger can be a useful emotion—for example, when someone or something we care about is being attacked or harmed. But whether or not it's justified, we should let it go, clearing it from our systems once the threat is gone.

I also like the translation of the precept, "Do not indulge in anger". Sometimes for me, being angry is the easier thing to do. Sometimes, I want to be angry. Getting angry feels righteous and can promise a sense of drama and fulfillment. It's hard work to implement wiser skills like validating my own experience, self soothing, and heading off a blowup. They are certainly much harder than getting angry, since that's what's more familiar.

I have also been guilty of stewing in anger, carrying it around with me so that I blow up later at some innocent bystander who has nothing to do with the original reason for my being angry. Then, in addition to having to repair the ways in which I've hurt others, I also feel angry at myself for not living up to my own standards. That self manufactured "anger whiplash" feels like another kind of indulgence.

Sometimes, though, I meet people who have the opposite problem: they're afraid of getting angry or feel they 'cannot' get angry. A friend of mine started training in Zen just one or two weeks after me. Unlike me, he was hesitant and suspicious about the training, especially the martial arts. They just felt really aggressive to him and for multiple, complicated reasons, he didn't feel capable of meeting that.

"If I let myself become angry," he said to me, "like even a smidge, just let it out at all—I'm convinced that my anger will take over and I'll lose control. And someone will get hurt." Several of the participants in the New York Zen Center program also shared that they feel afraid of letting themselves become angry and that repressing their anger has led to suffering in their lives.

The response to this at Chozen-ji is to face this fear of getting angry head on. So, it wasn't long before the teachers had me and my friend put on the armor in Kendo (The Way of the Sword, or Japanese fencing) so that we could experience what it is that Kendo offers so well: the feeling of being in a real fight and of actually being attacked—a.k.a., the perfect conditions for provoking anger (or fear, freezing, or flight— whatever your habit may be).

The thing about Kendo is that you can go pretty much all out against an opponent without either of you really getting hurt. You wear armor, there's padding. There are also forms, or rules, that keep the fight focused. Kendo can still feel brutal, though. Don't get me wrong. The whole thing is very loud and fast. You're yelling the whole time. When keiko, or sparring, is finally over, you come out the other side drenched in sweat, breathless and red in the face—but not before you bow, leaving whatever just happened between you and your opponent behind. 

Kendo at Chozen-ji also follows a required 45-90 minutes of zazen (seated meditation), and the same principles of using your breath, concentration, and posture are emphasized in Kendo as in zazen. This is just one way in which Kendo becomes more than just Kendo, and becomes a Way of training in Zen through the body.

Everyone we train with is pretty nice, so I actually get angry very rarely now in Kendo. But even if I don't feel the emotion, I experience all of its physiological symptoms: blood rushing, red in the face, yelling, high adrenalin, and aggression. Over time, I've become familiar with how to turn the dial up and down on these as needed. 

Even if I don't feel the emotion, anger, in Kendo, I experience all of its physiological symptoms: blood rushing, red in the face, yelling, high adrenalin, and aggression. Over time, this has helped me become familiar with how to turn the dial up and down on these as needed. 

Certainly, my friend is a lot less scared now about letting himself get angry. He had never done martial arts before, so now that he's a little more familiar with fighting, he knows he's not really that deadly; there is a limit to the harm he can cause. Therefore, he's more confident that he can be angry without it leading to catastrophe and without people getting hurt. He also knows that he has options. By regularly releasing some of the pressure he feels inside in a controlled but intense training environment, he is better able to control his emotions and energy overall.

For both my friend and I, training in Zen and the martial arts has provided a multifaceted arena in which to explore and get familiar with anger. As seven-time world champion boxer Michele Aboro says, the essence of martial arts is about learning to control yourself and the violent aspects of yourself. Maybe your sparring opponent does something that makes you angry. You have to respond without thinking, in a split second. Facing these situations, one quickly figures out that getting angry is almost always an indulgence, rather than sound martial strategy. Then, the question is how to entrain a different response. That's where zazen and Zen training come in, honing the use of basic and universal tools like our breathing, our physical posture, and our concentration. 

As seven-time world champion boxer Michele Aboro says, the essence of martial arts is about learning to control yourself and the violent aspects of yourself.

I've heard that, in Post-War Japan, riot police were paid to train in martial arts dojos full time for three years before they even began their police training. It's been described to me this way, that the Tokyo Riot Police realized that the only riot they had to learn how to put down was the riot inside. That feels like the most practical way to approach not just anger, but all of our habits—to accept that they live within us but can be pacified through serious training. 

The degree of training we put in, though, needs to match the extent to which we want to master ourselves. And this is perhaps why people don't think of the martial arts and hard Zen training today as means to address anger, gravitating instead to just a few minutes of mindfulness a day and reading books. 

My own feeling is that the world we live in requires more of us than that. Gun violence, the climate crisis, racism, and a rapidly changing technological landscape all behoove us to not just cope and practice, but to train—and train hard. We really don't know what lies ahead, either for ourselves or for the world. But we know we have this moment, right now, and we can use it to prepare ourselves for what's to come, whether that is the best or the worst moment of our lives. As life unfolds before us, we don't want to waste it indulging in something as impractical and dangerous as uncontrolled, misplaced anger.