You have
come before me
Full of
anger
You have
come to give me your gift
Full of
anger
You have
come to release all that is there
Full of
anger
You have
come to create in me what is in you
Full of
anger
You have
come to attack me so that I will feel what is in you
Full of
anger
In your
coming to me I meet you
Absent of
anger
In your
coming to me I feel compassion
Absent of
anger
In your
coming to me I want to understand
Absent of
anger
In your
coming to me I seek to share
Absent of
anger
In your
coming to me I can only own what I have
Absent of
anger
In your
leaving me
I can
only feel what I have
In your
leaving me
You can
only take what you have
In your
leaving me
I cannot
take your anger
In your
leaving me
I can
understand your pain
In your leaving
me
Where you
go your anger goes
A Buddhist monk, whose name escapes me, tells the story of a person arriving with a cake they offer as a gift. The offer is declined. Who then has the cake? It is the person arriving with the cake. So too when a person arrives with anger which they seek to thrust upon you. You have to reach out and accept it. It is like the droplet of water in the picture - will we reach out and catch it or let it fall?
This is, of course, not easy. This is particularly true when the anger is directed at you as a person - questioning in some way your worth, value, morals. In other words, it is anger that is targeted with the purpose of hurting you. This is very difficult to feel separate from.
The meditation is to begin seeing the anger as not your possession; to begin to see it as an object that does not need to be picked up. Visualize leaving the cake behind. While we will fail sometimes and pick the cake up, there will be other times when we can leave it behind. Each time we manage that we build the mindfulness to make choices about emotions available from others for us to pick up. Some we will want to such as reciprocal love. But others we will not want to.
© Peter
Choate, 2016
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