What we have highlighted in the beginning part of this booklet is body awareness. But there is also lot to observe with regard to the mind which, when uncontrolled, is a great cause of suffering. As the saying goes, the mind can be our best friend or worst enemy. When tamed it can be a friend and bring about happiness, but when wild and unrestrained, it can wreak great havoc and suffering. It is not within the scope of this booklet to go into an in-depth analysis of the nature of mind and how it gives rise to suffering via craving, attachment and delusion. For that one has to read other good books on the subject.

But here we can briefly examine two particular mind states which cause suffering to most people and they are anger and sorrow. As a monk I have often been asked as to how we can control anger. Many people want to control anger, they don’t want to get angry, they know that their inability to control anger is a cause of much suffering both to themselves and others, but they just can’t help it, just can’t help losing their cool. So they want to know how to control their anger.

Of course, mindfulness helps. Whenever you are angry you should quickly be mindful of your anger. Try and see whether you can be aware of your anger at the incipient stage, that is, at the stage when it is just about to begin. Observe that tightening in the chest and various other bodily sensations that may arise together with the anger. Observe also that angry state of mind – how does it feel like? – the feeling of rage, of wanting to crush or snuff out somebody. As you turn your attention away from the person you are angry with to the emotion of anger itself together with its attendant bodily tension, you’ll find that your anger instead of increasing will decrease. It will dissipate and subside. On the other hand, if you were to continue to focus your attention on the person who had angered you, your anger is liable to increase than decrease.

To give a simile, when your house is on fire, is your immediate priority to put out the fire, or to go after the person who set it ablaze? So turning your intention inward is like putting out the fire in your house. Going after the provocateur is like chasing after the arsonist. By the time you catch him, your house would have burnt down! In this case, your mind would have been burnt up or consumed by your anger. In which case you have actually become the victim!

Thus the thing to do is to try to get a hold of yourself, to calm down. Besides observing your anger and the body sensations, you can also be mindful of your breathing. Mindfulness of the breath can produce a calming effect on both the mind and body. So you can come back to your breath and be aware as you breath in and out. Taking a few deep breaths and exhaling mindfully can also help. Or you can use auto suggestions, words like “Breathing in I calm myself, breathing out I relax.”

When you are angry, try not to say or do anything because whatever you say or do in that frame of mind is liable to be harsh and counter-productive. Better then to hold your tongue and not say or do anything until your anger has passed. Otherwise you might say or do something which will hurt and which you might regret later. Another option, if you still find it difficult to contain your anger, is to walk away. Take a walk somewhere, especially in a garden or a park if there is one nearby. Looking at plants, flowers, trees, and hills can be soothing. Nature has a healing effect on the mind and body.

Besides mindfulness, you can also use wise reflection to calm down the mind. Think about the many disadvantages of anger and the advantage of self-control and your anger will subside. For example, consider: “What good does getting angry do? Am I not hurting both myself and others? Is anger the only response? Is anger the response of a mature or wise person? Is there no other skilful way of responding to this situation?

“Why should I allow another person to upset my mind? By getting angry, won’t I be allowing him to penetrate my mind which by right should be my own domain over which I should exercise the fullest control? Won’t I, by becoming angry, be allowing him to (if one may put it in a crude way) enter and shit in my mind? And won’t I be the one who is a fool to allow this to happen? And further, if it has been his intention to provoke me, won’t I by becoming angry, fall into his trap?”

And if you are thinking along the line of overcoming and defeating him, you could check yourself and consider: “Won't it be better to tame and conquer my own mind than to conquer that of another? Did not the Buddha say that self-conquest is the highest conquest – that though one may conquer a thousand men a thousand times in a battlefield, yet he who conquers himself is a greater conqueror?” And was it not Santideva who said: “How many evil men could I kill? There number is as boundless as the sky. But if the thought of anger is killed, all enemies are killed.”

You can consider also how your anger might be perceived by the other person. “Will she not lose respect for me or think less of me for losing my temper? And even if I were to apologise to her later, what if she cannot forgive me or, if she does, what if she cannot forget? Will our relationship be irreparably damaged because of these few moments of anger, because of my not being able to control myself at this moment, because of my losing my temper?”

Or you could try another tact: Think about the good qualities of the other person, how he may have helped you before. Or even if he may not have helped you much, you could think about his kindness to others – perhaps he has helped a lot of other people, too. When you consider his goodness, you might think less badly of him and you might then cool down. To give an example, if a person is annoyed with his parents, if he were to think of all his parents’ love and kindness for him, all the sacrifices they have made for him, he would surely want to overcome his anger and cultivate love for his folks.

There are other wise ways of reflecting. Consider what you look like when you are angry. If you were to whip out a mirror and look at your face when you are angry, you will be horrified to see how wild and terrible you look! Consider that according to the law of kamma, anger is a cause for ugliness in future rebirths. And why should this be surprising when you consider that even in this very life, anger has the immediate result of distorting one’s features.

Thinking about death, too, can be very effective. Consider: Life is too short for us to get upset in this way. If we know that we are going to die tomorrow or in a few hours’ or few minutes’ time, would we still want to get mad in this way? Is it not better to live at peace with oneself and others?

Consider why anger arises? Is it not because of our identification with a self or an ego? Is it not pride that makes us think we are somebody, so how come this person does not respect us/how dare he insult us? Realizing that conceit, pride and ego are the roots of our anger, we might learn to let go of our attachment to the ego and learn not to get so upset when we are offended. Really, sometimes it is good to be insensitive in certain ways, such as not being able to be angry, no matter what.

Consider the virtue of patience. Patience means not getting angry. Whenever we are provoked or tested, we can tell ourselves this is the time for us to practise patience. The person taunting us is our tester. Will we pass the test or not? If we lose our temper, then we have failed. If we don’t, we have passed the test of patience. Make non-anger your priority, such that you rather not succeed in something and keep your cool, than accomplished something but vented your anger in the process.

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Sorrow
Nobody’s life is free of sorrow. As human beings we do get sorrowful and depressed at times – for all and various kinds of reasons. How can mindfulness help?

First, we can be aware of this sorrow, this pain or feeling of unhappiness in our heart. How is it like? How do you feel it as a sensation in the body? Does it feel like a sharp or searing pain in the heart? Or is it more like what they call a heartache, that is, a sort of aching pain varying from dull to acute in the heart? Or would you describe it as a feeling of heaviness, a feeling of dis-ease in the heart, a tension, a knot, a disquietness? Or does it feel like something gnawing or biting away in the heart? Or whatever? You’d find that ten people would have ten different ways of describing their pain, each using different metaphors and imagery.

And as for that state of mind itself, how would you describe it? How is that mental feeling like? Which word might best characterize it – sorrow, sadness, grief, pain, woe, lamentation, mourning, regret, remorse, melancholy, depression, malaise, dis-ease, a feeling of emptiness, hollowness, meaninglessness, gloom, desolation, despair, agony, vexation, anxiety, anguish?

Observing the pain helps because as you do so you’d find that it is not something impregnable. It is not something as solid, permanent or lasting as you might have thought it to be. Both the physical sensations and the mental state can be found to be impermanent, as phenomena that are arising and passing away. This ability to observe in an objective or detached manner can help alleviate the pain. It is a little like in the case of observing the anger where instead of focusing on the person you were angry with, you turn your attention inwards onto the anger itself. And as you do so, you may find the anger lessening rather than increasing. Similarly, the pain too may lessen as you observe it. Initially, however, you may feel it is becoming stronger, but as you observe you’d find that it subsides. It is like a wave which has its ebb and flow, rise and fall.

On the other hand, if you do not acknowledge or observe the pain, you might get more and more sucked into that vortex of sorrow. It might just overwhelm or smother you. It may totally pin or weigh you down.

Acknowledging the pain can also help you to see things in a proper perspective. As you observe it, you can also reflect on how the pain has arisen. For example, you can remind yourself that pain normally arises because of craving and attachment. So you can ask yourself, how or in what way have I craved or become attached so as to now feel this pain? There are many forms of attachment – attachment to persons, to possessions, to the status quo, that is, to things remaining as they are, not wanting any change, but how can that be possible when it is in the nature of things to change and transform into something or other, which could be better or worse. There is attachment to name, to one’s status, ego; to one’s job or career; to sensual pleasures and pleasant sensations, to a thousand and one other things. Attachment is insidious and furtive: it develops without our realizing and before we know it we have become deeply attached.

Attachment leads to aversion. When we lose something we have become attached to, there is anger, pain and grief. Because we can’t get something, we get upset and depressed. Expectation, too, leads to disappointment. So we can consider how the pain had arisen because of our grasping or clinging. In understanding the causes, we can be liberated; for once we understand, we can begin to let go since we know it is the clinging that is the cause of suffering. Also, adopting various wise and skillful attitudes can help to greatly reduce our suffering, for most of the time the pain is ultimately of our own making and it is better not to blame others or external conditions so much, for finally it is how we respond that counts.