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Anger and Forgiveness

This week, I think the most deceptive message hidden in anger is the idea that something must be fixed, corrected, addressed -- and that fixing this error is more important than anything else I could be doing with my life.  I want to leap into action, to start turning away the bad feelings right away.  But over the last few weeks, I've been experimenting with being a better friend, a better host (to borrow Tenzin Wangyal's term) to my anger.  It has to do with a bit of kindness toward my feelings, a willingness to drop the barrier between good and bad, spiritual and profane, so that stillness can be recognized in those same bad feelings, so that the bad feelings themselves become a pointer back to the fact of this dream.  

Actually, the importance I attach to anxiety, anger, and so forth is a covering to the real value of life, of each moment.  When I let myself experience my own anger rather than fight it off, this value can be directly appreciated.

This is a nice little quote that arrived in my email:

To be angry is to let others' mistakes punish yourself.
To forgive others is to be good to yourself.
--Master ChengYen