Aggression

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

As a child I was often puzzled by anger, wondering why parents so frequently hurt each other through their nonsensical arguments. Later, I was dismayed to observe this destructive emotion within my own mind. Then, as a medical officer in a psychiatric hospital, I saw depths of anger, both manifest and suppressed, that I had never believed could exist. I remember suggesting to the psychiatrist in charge that we set up a gym with punching bags to allow our patients to give vent to their feelings.

Resentment, grudge-bearing, hostility, hatred, and even fear, all derived from anger, lay behind many of my patients' problems. My scientific view was that, as anger is acquired through evolution, it is necessary and must be allowed to arise and be expressed because suppression of this natural emotion would lead to all manner of psychological problems. Evidence supporting this was right there before me in my patients.

At the end of the sixties, The Territorial Imperative by the biologist Robert Ardrey presented studies of animal behaviour showing that intra-species aggression is present in the animal world as much as it is within human society. Aggression thus gained a scientific status that, at the extreme of materialism, could be taken to justify even war. Another view prevalent at that time was that male aggression matched female submissiveness as an appropriate means for propagating the species. No wonder there was, and remains, debate as to whether the study of human and animal behaviour belongs to the realm of science or not.

By simply observing the behaviour of chemicals and bodies in motion, science can deduce fixed rules for the material world without worrying about the feelings or true motivations of the elements - because they do not have any. For the animal and human kingdoms, however, behaviour is not necessarily an indication of the real reason we do things, and therefore it is impossible to make fixed rules based on the observation of behaviour alone.

The difference between this cold, amoral aspect of scientific thinking and religion is not the difference between faith and knowledge. There is only one reality and correct faith and knowledge are essential components of both systems; it is mistaken knowledge and beliefs that lead to prejudice and human conflict, and these can pollute both science and religion.

Unconstrained by the need to justify behaviour in order to support the theory of evolution, Buddha stripped down our emotions to their bare essentials and showed what was useful and what was useless in terms of satisfying the two fundamental urges that humans and animals equally experience - the desire for happiness and the need to be free from pain. Equal rights, a sanctified political expression today, was presented by Buddha in his teaching that no individual, human or animal, has a greater right to happiness and freedom from suffering than any other individual.

Buddha then explained his observation that in our pursuit of happiness and freedom from suffering we inadvertently push these goals away by assuming that our personal right is greater than anybody else's. Our aversion to pain results in instinctive anger and hostility towards whatever frustrates our selfish desire for happiness, but in acting out our anger we actually destroy any chance of happiness. This observation is truly scientific in that, from it, fixed rules CAN be deduced regarding human and animal behaviour and its results. For example: anger, the agitated, irrational urge to inflict harm upon or destroy things that displease us, never achieves peace, not to mention the happiness it seeks.

We can verify this by observing our own experience in life and seeing the reality of how anger is utterly useless and only brings trouble; then we will want to overcome our anger and achieve the peace and happiness we crave. We will also discover another fixed rule of human and animal behaviour: love - delight in the happiness of others and their freedom from pain - is by nature a happy state of mind and spreads peace and joy wherever it manifests.

Some think that social and personal injustice cannot be opposed without anger, or that not expressing anger is a sign of weakness. This is absurd. Anger is the real sign of weakness, it is the coward's way out. It takes far more courage to resolve a conflict with love than with anger; if we allow the flame of anger in another's mind to ignite our own anger, we and the world are lost.

When anger is stopped by its antidote, patience, and replaced by its opposite, love, there is no danger of suppression of emotions and subsequent psychological imbalance, there is only one result - happiness.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.