Quote:
Originally Posted by Bliss Sage  I guess it's nice and unexpected to know that people were not saying I was to blame for my brother's anger |
The crucial thing is that the MISERY that you feel, is only indirectly due to your brother's anger. The MISERY of the situation is, in truth, due to mental defilements that you have been put on this earth specifically to solve.
Is your brother objectively acting like a douche? Yes.
Does his acting this way directly cause the misery? No.
Let's say some guy insults me (just an example)
We can trace the behavior of my mind..
1. First I hear the sound (Sensory contact is made)
2. Then I recognize the sound as an insult (Perception)
3. Then I have an emotional reaction, loosely described as negative (I get a positive, negative or neutral feeling, in this case negative)
4. Then, because of this feeling, I crave solitude so I can avoid further insults. (Craving and aversion!)
5. Once I achieve solitude, I then cling to that solitude because I think solitude is protecting me from misery (Attachment)
This is actually what happens in my mind, within a few seconds, and with regular meditation I slowly become aware of the process as it happens.
Now the million dollar question is, where is the misery? We want to end the misery, the suffering.
My answer, that I've discovered with awareness through meditation, is that the misery is primarily in the craving. Every once in awhile, I'm insulted in the same way I've been insulted before, but there is no craving. Those times, there is still a small amount of misery, but it is FAR weaker than the misery I experience when I do crave. When the craving is present, I want to kill myself (
) but when there is no craving, the pain is so much weaker that I can continue to go about my previous business unaffected.
If I give in to the craving and go find my solitude, then I cling to that solitude. From this clinging new misery is also created because inevitably there is a time later on where I have to consider the abandonment of that solitude. This immediately triggers anxiety and the misery is multiplied - it is STRONGER than the original misery from the craving. So if I have to choose, it's usually better to endure the misery of the original craving than to later on endure the misery of the clinging.
By giving in to my craving, I don't really end the misery. I end it temporarily - and there is something to be said for ending it temporarily - but eventually the misery finds me again in the form of clinging and it has just been multiplied. This is the law of karma in action.
The big question then is how to avoid the original craving, the original misery. If we can totally kill this main source of original misery, then the chain will be broken and the misery in my life will decrease by a substantial amount. The answer, for me, is:
Step 1. Attaining objective awareness of the craving & clinging & associated misery (through meditation and mindfulness)
Step 2. Having some compassion for myself, who is suffering
Step 3. Acknowledging to myself that this craving is not productive or necessary, since it just causes me misery, and that acting on this craving will just cause me future amplified misery, so it's pointless to act on it. I've been delivered this misery and I can't fix that
now, so my lot in life at this moment is to nip it in the bud however painful it may be. Any other action will just make it worse for myself anyway.
Once I've repeated the above on multiple, separate occasions, the craving starts to come up less often in the first place. When the craving doesn't come up at all, that rocks because the misery is not nearly as painful. This is how I know I'm making progress, because the same kind of thing can happen to me that has happened before, but this time, there is no craving, so there is far less misery. So I'm decreasing the amount of misery in my life - sweet!
Also, a really strong motivation for me to do this kind of work on myself, is that as I decrease my own misery, it frees me up to actually have a positive impact on the world around me.
In my opinion, the above kind of work is literally the entire reason we were born. It seems like a cruel universe doesn't it? But I guess I'll leave the inherent evil (
) of the world to another discussion.