Anger

Last Sunday, I went to church that has church services in English. It is a Christian one and I am not but they know that and don't mind. I don't believe in many of the things they believe in and have trouble with those things such as not accepting everyone for who they are. Several times, I almost walked out of the their talks because of it.

At a visit to one of their printing plants, one of the employees gave me a blank book with the cover in Armenian that has a picture of a constellation. I take notes in there so that I can better understand my reaction to what I hear and learn what is in the Bible. I do meet some very interesting people in church and looking at that book, I see I met some Hindus and Muslims. They want to go to church services that have teachers and professors that speak English. It was a Hindu professor of Chemistry from India who talked about anger that got me thinking about the emotion of anger. In the talk that day, an elder said God got mad when people did not follow his laws. That was from some scripture in the Old Testament. I told the chemistry professor that I did not understand it either because I am a Buddhist. Since then, I have been writing about anger in my journal and on my other blogs.

I knew I had anger issues. That was not new to me. In meditation, it came up time and time again. The more I wrote about it, the more it became apparent that I had more of a problem with it than I realized. I am writing a short story about someone who has trouble dealing with people. I don't model characters on myself, but she likes people but they don't like her. She does not understand why.

I have strong religious beliefs, but I don't believe that there is this god up there that gets mad at people all of the time especially when they don't obey certain laws or rules. Yes, Buddhists have precepts to guide their lives. We break them and create karma which I believe is a cause and effect force that is there to teach us what we need to know. We as human beings control karma to some extent by our own actions.

I had a hard life in some ways, not as bad as some and certainly worse than others. Some people have been mean to me and made my life a living Hell. On the other hand, many of the things that happened to me that was bad, turned out to be good. I did not realize that I was very angry at the world and showed it. I realized it because the character in my story slowly began to realize that she put up a wall to keep people away from her. That was my wall too. I was convinced there was something wrong with me when in reality there wasn't. I stored that anger in Bubbles of memories that I did not let go. I formed strong attachments to them and remained very angry at those people whose names I had long forgotten and I remained angry at people who have long since passed away.

Talk about a total waste of time. I wrote on another blog that I was getting tired of being angry. It serves no useful purpose other than making the self aware of what sorts of people one should avoid. Living in Korea has had its benefits. Often when people piss me off, I can't tell them off. I can sit and watch others handle situations and know that there isn't a darn thing I can do to help such as drunk and stoned bus drivers, angry car drivers, kids on the bus who try to steal fire extinguishers, men who walk in front of me in line and so forth. Now, I just let it go.

I am now aware of things having to do with anger. They are in the sunshine of my consciousness. Meditation is good in doing this. I use writing meditation most often in uncovering this. I don't overeat when something comes to the surface from the unconscious.

I have one month to go before I leave. I have so much to do so I won't return to that other life. I am so much happier, healthier and well on my way of doing what I want to do in my life. This was my quest to be healthier and what started this blog in the first place.