I asked everyone to think of a situation where they acted thoughtlessly and one student volunteered that she got into an argument with her sister on the phone. It seems her sister moved into her room when she left for college and moved all her things into the attic. The student said, "I just got really mad for some reason." I think the language here is interesting - "for some reason". When I asked about it, she said, "I just got mad." Hmmm...we all say this as a reason for our actions, but is "I got mad" a good explanation for why we did something? If you want to be rational (and who doesn't?) you should not act without good reason. I think what we typically mean is something like this, "When I am mad, I act irrationally, so there is no good reason for my actions, all I can say is that I was mad." It seems analogous to giving the excuse, "I was drunk" since here too we are offering a state of irrationality rather than a reason as an explanation for our actions.
You might think, "Well, being drunk is different, because we can control whether we get drunk and we can't control our anger." Here is where a Buddhist will disagree - "Of course you can control your anger," he will say. True, it's not easy and some people have more of a challenge here than others, but it is certainly possible. And it's important enough that its well worth the effort of learning how. One of the most important benefits of meditation is to learn to control emotional states like anger so they don't cause you to do irrational things. Indeed, later on we will see that you can use meditation techniques not just to control negative emotions like anger, but to actually cultivate positive ones like love and compassion.
And it's not just that getting angry doesn't meet some academic criterion of rationality. It's actually harmful, both to myself and others. If I get mad at my brother, I am likely to say hurtful things I wouldn't normally say. These can cause him to get mad as well and perhaps say hurtful things back to me. Now we are both upset and having a really bad day, which can cause us to treat the next person we meet unfairly, etc., etc. In the end, my allowing myself to be overcome with anger will cause me to 1) harm other people, some of whom I don't even know and 2) make myself unhappy. The next time someone you don't really know treats you badly, consider that the reason they are doing this may well be that they were recently treated badly themselves and are upset and angry at that, not you. The consequences of one person's lack of control thus spreads outward through society like ripples on a pond...
If you don't want to make yourself unhappy and cause needless suffering to other people, then you have to find some way to avoid that happening. If you could be more rational and avoid acting on autopilot so often, you wouldn't do this kind of thing. Our mental autopilot is useful, but it gets us into trouble on a regular basis. This kind of dynamic is especially common when we are dealing with family members, because we are so used to interacting with them that we often do so on autopilot. This can result in having the same argument with your mother every single time you talk to her, for example. But in the end, treating your family so carelessly causes harm to the people we love the most (including ourselves). That's just crazy!
An analogy I like to use, both for mediation and emotional control, is that of balancing (say on a balance beam or something). If you are trying to balance, it helps to know a bit about the proper posture and all that. But ultimately it's a mental discipline as much as a physical one. Someone new to balancing will typically have a hard time detecting initial small imperfections and then will overcorrect to try to stay upright. The result is a waving of arms followed by collapse. If you keep practicing, though, you eventually get a "feel" for what it is like to be in the right position. When your body begins to move very slightly, you can detect this change immediately and make very small corrections to stay upright. The result is someone who seems to be expending no effort at all, yet balances indefinitely.
Concentrative meditation works much the same way. You need to know a few things about posture and what you are trying to do to avoid common errors at first. But then you really need to just put in time practicing. At first, when monkey mind appears, you overcorrect and allow this to start a whole chain of thoughts, which defeats the purpose. But after a while, you can "feel" how your mind works in such a way that you detect early on when monkey mind is about to intrude. This allows you to redirect the mind before it begins a train of thoughts that build up momentum and become hard to stop. The result is that, eventually, this sort of concentration becomes second nature to you and involves little effort.
Now put these two threads of the discussion together. If you can learn to observe your mind and redirect it while meditating, then you can eventually extend this ability to your everyday mind. You will be able to see when you are starting to get angry and can say to yourself, "Self, I am getting angry and this is always counterproductive. I need to take a deep breath and calm down or leave the room or something to avoid the consequences of losing control." Learning to truly control your emotions will take some time, but right now you should have all the tools you need to begin to make positive changes. So I want you to start trying to detect negative emotions like anger and then redirect your mind into a more rational course. At first, you will only succeed occasionally, but every time you do it is a victory. If you make the effort and cherish the times you succeed, you will benefit enormously from the experience.
Right, so the assignment for today. We will do another 15 minute session just like last time. 'Nuf said...
Now, between classes I want everyone to do three things for me: 1) meditate at least once on your own, 2) try to see if you can "catch" your mind becoming irrational about some little thing and intervene positively and 3) smile the next time a negative thoughts occurs to you...:) I know this seems a little weird at first, but try it when no one is looking and just see if it makes a difference.