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General Buddhism => General Buddhism => Topic started by: sonamdhargey on July 08, 2012, 08:32:00 AM
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I would like to share this video about how we created the perception about someone else and we are the creator of what we perceived that person is. Many times we are faced with people we dislike and we have no choice but to face them everyday. Because we face that person we experience stress. This can happen with our colleagues, our siblings, our peers, superiors and etc. Whoever they are the experience is the same. It is not about that person, it is about how we want to see them as. We can decide.
Please enjoy this video and hope this can help you :)
http://youtu.be/BJCKNVA1x0I (http://youtu.be/BJCKNVA1x0I)
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Thanks for the sharing, it's really good and beneficial.
Anger! Rage! Fury! Wrath!
Whatever you call it, it happens to all of us, including Buddhists. However much we value loving kindness, we Buddhists are still human beings, and sometimes we get angry. What does Buddhism teach about anger?
Personally anger is one of the three poisons, the other two are greed and ignorance. That are the primary causes of the cycle of samsara and rebirth. Purifying ourselves of anger is essential to Buddhist practice. Further, in Buddhism there is no such thing as “righteous” or “justifiable” anger. All anger is a fetter to realization.
Yet even highly realized masters admit they sometimes get angry. This means that for most of us, not getting angry is not a realistic option. We will get angry. What then do we do with our anger?
First, Admit You Are Angry
This may sound silly, but how many times have you met someone who clearly was angry, but who insisted he was not? For some reason, some people resist admitting to themselves that they are angry. This is not skillful. You can’t very well deal with something that you won’t admit is there.
Buddhism teaches mindfulness. Being mindful of ourselves is part of that. When an unpleasant emotion or thought arises, do not suppress it, run away from it, or deny it. Instead, observe it and fully acknowledge it. Being deeply honest with yourself about yourself is essential to Buddhism.
What Makes You Angry?
It’s important to understand that anger is something created by our self. It didn’t come swooping out of the ether to infect you. We tend to think that anger is caused by something outside ourselves, such as other people or frustrating events. But my first Zen teacher used to say, “No one makes you angry. You make yourself angry.”
Buddhism teaches us that anger is created by mind. However, when you are dealing with your own anger, you should be more specific. Anger challenges us to look deeply into ourselves. Most of the time, anger is self-defensive. It arises from unresolved fears or when our ego-buttons are pushed.
As Buddhists we recognize that ego, fear and anger are insubstantial and ephemeral, not “real.” They’re ghosts, in a sense. Allowing anger to control our actions amounts to being bossed around by ghosts.
Anger Is Self-Indulgent
Anger is unpleasant but seductive. In this interview with Bill Moyer, Pema Chodron says that anger has a hook. “There's something delicious about finding fault with something,” she said. Especially when our egos are involved (which is nearly always the case), we may protect our anger. We justify it and even feed it.
Buddhism teaches that anger is never justified, however. Our practice is to cultivate metta, a loving kindness toward all beings that is free of selfish attachment. “All beings” includes the guy who just cut you off at the exit ramp, the co-worker who takes credit for your ideas, and even someone close and trusted who betrays you.
For this reason, when we become angry we must take great care not to act on our anger to hurt others. We must also take care not to hang on to our anger and give it a place to live and grow.
How to Let It Go
You have acknowledged your anger, and you have examined yourself to understand what caused the anger to arise. Yet you are still angry. What’s next?
Pema Chodron counsels patience. Patience means waiting to act or speak until you can do so without causing harm. “Patience has a quality of enormous honesty in it,” she said. “It also has a quality of not escalating things, allowing a lot of space for the other person to speak, for the other person to express themselves, while you don’t react, even though inside you are reacting.”
If you have a meditation practice, this is the time to put it to work. Sit still with the heat and tension of anger. Quiet the internal chatter of other-blame and self-blame. Acknowledge the anger and enter into it entirely. Embrace your anger with patience and compassion for all beings, including yourself.
Don’t Feed Anger
It’s hard not to act, to remain still and silent while our emotions are screaming at us. Anger fills us with edgy energy and makes us want to do something. Pop psychology tells us to pound our fists into pillows or to scream at the walls to “work out” our anger. Thich Nhat Hanh disagrees.
“When you express your anger you think that you are getting anger out of your system, but that's not true,” he said. “When you express your anger, either verbally or with physical violence, you are feeding the seed of anger, and it becomes stronger in you.” Only understanding and compassion can neutralize anger.
Compassion Takes Courage
Sometimes we confuse aggression with strength and non-action with weakness. Buddhism teaches that just the opposite is true.
Giving in to the impulses of anger, allowing anger to hook us and jerk us around, is weakness. On the other hand, it takes strength to acknowledge the fear and selfishness in which our anger usually is rooted. It also takes discipline to meditate in the flames of anger.
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I once heard a Lama talking about the karmic cause of stress.
Stress = Emotional pressure suffered by someone over a perceived lack of time, skill, support, communication, freedom or resources.
Karmic cause = never taking time for others, never taking time to offer help or assistance to others.
Karmic result = never having the feeling of having enough time, nor emotional stability for much anything. and therefore always being stressed out about much anything.
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We all have feelings, that's the truth. But, the question would be, are your actions controlled by your feelings? Or can we control our feelings so that we will not feel stressed. My way of controlling my stress level is always acknowledge my feelings. If I feel angry or sad, experience that feeling. It is not good to avoid feeling it because you will feel suppressed and one day you will blow up when it becomes too much. By acknowledging your feelings, you will be able to let go of it and hen focus on the goal again. Ultimately, your goal is more important that anything else.
SO, If you work with difficult people who makes you angry all the time, then maybe you should shift your focus from the people to the reason why you are working there in the first place. By focusing on your goal, then the people becomes a minimal that it does not affect you.
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Externals are supportive factors that trigger the seeds or imprints in our mind. If we had deposited negative seeds in the past due to engaging in non virtuous actions, when they ripen , we will have to experience misery . What we call stress or mental tension /push and pull is all part of the suffering we have to endure. Hence the substantial cause for all our suffering comes from our unskilful actions in the past and in the present.The root cause is our self cherishing mind from which all the other negative emotions such as anger, attachment, jealousy etc arise. If we have not trained our mind to control or overcome ,they influence our thoughts, speech and actions to cause harm to ourselves and others. After the initial action and harm had been caused, the seeds left behind in our mindstream continue to cause damage as soon as the right conditions are assembled.
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Thank you for sharing!
In these degenerated age and time, we all need teachings that will help us remove the stress we feel in our daily lives!
Buddhism has acknowledged the existence of stress in sentient beings from the moment Buddha taught the 4 noble truths. Suffering - stress, anxiety, problems etc.
The mind is a creator - that is the fact. Good and bad is perceived by our own mind... and most of the time, it is affected by our delusions. The Buddhist way of dealing with stress is through changing our perspective, how we perceive things on a regular level. There is no need for anti-anxiety medications, but to cultivate the mind to perceive things in it's actual state... unless of course if the person's mind has been damaged beyond reasoning...
Taming the mind is important. We all have been in 'stressful' situations and if we had looked at it properly, it is due to our mental instability. Acceptance of the situation as it is rather than as what we want it to be, is one of the first step to conquering stress. Through such reflection, every time we conquer the mental stress that we face, we grow spiritually.
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Stress is a complicated matter. For the modern individual, stress is usually about work, relationship and family. It is usually about the dissatisfaction associated with these aspects. The dissatisfaction may usually seem like it originated from an external source but upon closer reflection, the real source of dissatisfaction is really from ourselves.
The world around us is always a changing one and whatever occurs with our work, relationship, family and so forth shouldn't be affecting our minds unless we allow it. Sometimes, we think we can change our jobs, our relationships and in some cases, our whole families but we just realize that it doesn't work that way because the problem wasn't them in the first place. For some, it takes a whole lifetime to realize this but the Dharma already forewarns us of how we unload our stress upon our close ones will eventually find its way back to us in full force.
Some people can handle stress well and people who take stress well are those that are kinder, more compassionate, considerate and will actually do more for others. Hence, the more compassionate we are, the more we can take for others. If our stress tolerance level is short, it only means more reflection is necessary or we risk being overwhelmed by the problems of self-absorption.
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The world around us is always a changing one and whatever occurs with our work, relationship, family and so forth shouldn't be affecting our minds unless we allow it. Sometimes, we think we can change our jobs, our relationships and in some cases, our whole families but we just realize that it doesn't work that way because the problem wasn't them in the first place. For some, it takes a whole lifetime to realize this but the Dharma already forewarns us of how we unload our stress upon our close ones will eventually find its way back to us in full force.
Some people can handle stress well and people who take stress well are those that are kinder, more compassionate, considerate and will actually do more for others. Hence, the more compassionate we are, the more we can take for others. If our stress tolerance level is short, it only means more reflection is necessary or we risk being overwhelmed by the problems of self-absorption.
Dear Big Uncle, I read your post and kinda agree to what you wrote. I was thinking back and realize that often, we are the source of our own stress. Before knowing the Dharma, I would choose to remove the stressor (person/situation) by choosing not to care or think about it. OR, I would remove myself from the stressor by going around it. It may be good for awhile, but it is temporary; I will not feel so stress for awhile, until the stressor reappears in my life (different person/situation) which causes the same kind of feeling. And I realize we can run away from all this problems but for how long until the same problem arises again in a different form?
I feel that the correct way to handle stress is to know why it is bugging us, and ask ourselves what actually causes the stress. Maybe it is something we do or didn’t do? Maybe it’s due to our own negativity hence the other people who seem to be causing stress to us are actually reflecting to us our own negativity. Because, for us to identify any kind of negativity about other people, we ourselves must have it, that’s why we can recognize it in others. I think to deal with stress, we must first check deeply into ourselves what negativity about other that we don’t like, but have it in ourselves, identify them and then, if not able to remove, at least we can improve on it from time to time.
I think by contemplating on the “Eight Verses of Mind Transformation”, one is able to reduce his/her stress significantly. For stress we feel caused by others by contemplating this particular verse will help us very much.
4. Whenever I see beings that are wicked in nature and overwhelmed by violent negative actions and suffering, I shall hold such rare ones dear, as if I had found a precious treasure.
If we run into somebody who is by nature very cruel, rough, nasty and unpleasant, our usual reaction is to avoid him. In such situations our loving concern for others is liable to decrease. Instead of allowing our love for others to weaken by thinking what an evil person he is, we should see him as a special object of love and compassion and cherish that person as though we had come across a precious treasure, difficult to find.
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Thanks for the video. Stress is self created as stated in the video. We always have a choice to react negatively to situations and or a person. I guess the challenge is this point. Hence it makes sense to practice verse 4 of the 8 Verses of Mind Transformation as stated by Dorje Pakmo.
"Whenever I see beings that are wicked in nature and overwhelmed by violent negative actions and suffering, I shall hold such rare ones dear, as if I had found a precious treasure."
Why a precious treasure? It's because without this person or situation, we will never be able to know our mind better. We will never be able to practise compassion by forgiving and letting go of the person. In situations, we will never be able to surrender to the fact that whatever is happening to us is due to our karma. We have nobody to blame except ourselves. So we begin to take responsibility our of life by understanding karma and making the right choices to create positive karma.
In addition, we will never be able to practise equanimity. All of us are independently dependent. We learn to appreciate each other more, for without each other, we won't be able to enjoy what we have right now in our community.
Ultimately, if we know that we are to die tomorrow, would we let people or situations stress us? I don't think so. We will realise that it's no longer important. As my Lama says, if we meditate on death daily, we will have many realisations such as the latter and we will make better choices in our lives. We will be happier.
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As it mentioned above that we created our own stress and Klein suggested to practice 8 verses of Mind Transformation which ultimately will help us to overcome the stressful from the situation arisen.
Here is the ways i find it petty useful to help me overcome when i feel stress. First to understand how things exist in this world, everything is impermanent so there is nothing that to be fixed in that way forever so we just need to accept it and change the thoughts from negative to positive for example instead of thinking of how hard to go through in the very difficult situation but thinking of the solution to make it work. And also take responsibility of our life as we created it, don't wait to become a victim so however the bad situation is it, there will always have a way out, we choose a choice and take responsibility to make it happen. Be thoughtful of our choice before we choose and be happy with it results..
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We are the owner of our feelings. We choose how we want to feel. No one else can.
Do we want to be the victim of our circumstances, the people around us, or the things we can’t control? Some things may hurt us, and we’ll have feelings to deal with. But whenever we’re ready, we can choose to move on.
To be happy do something you enjoy. Want to feel peaceful? do something peaceful like meditate. Don’t worry about the things you think you should be dwelling on, you can think about them again when you’re done.
We all have choices.
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Most people don't realized it,but they create their own stress.Much related stress is related to our own attitudes,and whether we are willing to grow and learn,and become more productive,because these experiences.The greatest and most effective leaders have always become more productive,more recilient and better leaders because of how they adjusted and handled adversities.The wise individual,understanding that
stress can be productive uses positive affirmations to strenghten his attitude and improve his point of view.
Do you want stress to control you,or do you want to be the stress master?
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In this modern world, stress has become very common for most people. I agreed with Big Uncle that it usually arises due to the dissatisfaction about a certain aspect of our life, such as work, relationship, family, etc. Most of the time, we ourselves are the cause of the stress, eg on how we look at things, how our perception on things should be and want the things to happen at the rate and the way that we want. I think it would be good that we always check out what exactly is the cause of our stress and does it associates with the three poisons – greed, hatred and delusion. If yes, then we should handle it from the root and accept things as what it’s should be.
While thinking about stress, I have a question in my mind. For high lama or Buddhist practitioners or head of big Buddhist organization such as Tzu Chi, would they have stress especially when they tried to spread the Dharma far but faced with obstacles? I think from layman point of view, we may think that they are stressed. However, I think they may just view all the obstacles as pure obstacles, that they are looking for solutions to solve it and do not really affected they mind. So, Stressful or not, it is all upto us on how we want to view things as it is naturally and accepting it as its true nature.
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We generally use the word "stress" when we feel that everything seems to have become too much - we are overloaded and wonder whether we really can cope with the pressures placed upon us. Anything that poses a challenge or a threat to our well-being is a stress. Some stresses get you going and they are good for you - without any stress at all many say our lives would be boring and would probably feel pointless. However, when the stresses undermine both our mental and physical health they are bad. In this text we shall be focusing on stress that is bad for you.
Fight or flight response
The way you respond to a challenge may also be a type of stress. Part of your response to a challenge is physiological and affects your physical state. When faced with a challenge or a threat, your body activates resources to protect you - to either get away as fast as you can, or fight. If you are upstairs at home and an earthquake starts, the faster you can get yourself and your family out the more likely you are all to survive. If you need to save somebody's life during that earthquake, by lifting a heavy weight that has fallen on them during the earthquake, you will need components in your body to be activated to give you that extra strength - that extra push.
Our fight-or-flight response is our body's sympathetic nervous system reacting to a stressful event. Our body produces larger quantities of the chemicals cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline, which trigger a higher heart rate, heightened muscle preparedness, sweating, and alertness - all these factors help us protect ourselves in a dangerous or challenging situation.
Non-essential body functions slow down, such as our digestive and immune systems when we are in fight-or flight response mode. All resources can then be concentrated on rapid breathing, blood flow, alertness and muscle use.
So, let's recap, when we are stressed the following happens:
Blood pressure rises
Breathing becomes more rapid
Digestive system slows down
Heart rate (pulse) rises
Immune system goes down
Muscles become tense
We do not sleep (heightened state of alertness)
Most of us have varying interpretations of what stress is about and what matters. Some of us focus on what happens to us, such as breaking a bone or getting a promotion, while others think more about the event itself. What really matters are our thoughts about the situations in which we find ourselves.
We are continually sizing up situations that confront us in life. We assess each situation, deciding whether something is a threat, how we can deal with it and what resources we can use. If we conclude that the required resources needed to effectively deal with a situation are beyond what we have available, we say that that situation is stressful - and we react with a classical stress response. On the other hand, if we decide our available resources and skills are more than enough to deal with a situation, it is not seen as stressful to us.
Hence it is all in the mind isn't it?
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Stress is the reason for two thirds of the total visits to the Physician. It is also the leading cause of the coronary artery diseases, cancer, accidents and respiratory diseases besides some others.
Stress aggravates following illnesses: Hypertension, insomnia, diabetes, herpes, multiple sclerosis, etc. Besides, stress that continues for long periods of time can lead to: poor concentration, irritability, anger, and poor judgment.
Stress leads to marriage breakups, family fights, road rage, suicides and violence.
What are the biggest causes of present day stress, and how do these lead to such high levels of tension?
The main causes of stress that arise due to the external environment were studied by Thomas H. Holmes and Richard H. Rahe, from the University of Washington. In 1967 they conducted a study on the connection between certain important life events and the illnesses. As a part of that study they also compiled a list of main reasons of stress in the society.
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Stress is unavoidable and the point of stress reduction and stress management programs is not to eliminate stress from our lives entirely as life is always full of challenges. One of the most common reasons for people wanting to learn meditation is to reduce stress. A considerable amount of research has shown that meditation has benefits on mental health, including a reduction in proneness to depression, an increase in emotional positivity, and an increased ability to deal with life’s inevitable stresses.
Meditation, however, not only involves relaxation but also promotes mindfulness, which helps the stress-sufferer to recognize unhelpful patterns of thought that give rise to the stress response, and also involves the active cultivation of positive mental states such as loving-kindness, compassion, patience, and energy.
The most effective coping strategies are therefore cultivating loving-kindness, or being nonjudgmental, compassionate, kind to oneself and others; right understanding, or trying to see the world as it truly is; and reflecting on impermanence, or the notion that all things (including our problems) pass. When we reflect on all these and detached the things that worry us, we will understand that stress is created by us.
f there is a remedy, then what is the use of frustration?
If there is no remedy, then what benefit is frustration?
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I found this internet link on beliefnet.com, written by a "buddhist therapist": http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/Articles/Destress-the-Buddhist-Way.aspx (http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Buddhism/Articles/Destress-the-Buddhist-Way.aspx)
"Once you become accustomed to inner and outer space you will become more comfortable with it. And then you can drop some of your daily activities and allow the possibility of empty time in your daily schedule. As you do this your feeling of being stressed and hurried will disappear."
Stress seems to always come back to the fact that we feel there is not enough time to act upon reality.
No time to fix things, nor communicate, etc... with a feeling of experiencing a worsening as time goes resulting in more... stress!
How can we get experiences of life in which we feel that we have no time for nothing?
If not as a result of not having made time for others in the past!
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Thank you for sharing, I love the way the speaker say about turning an 'obstacle' into something positive.
I life we always meet people whom we cannot or unwilling to work with or be with. I can definitely relate to the situation where the mere SIGHT of some imposing individuals can cause me hyper ventilating and take an immediate beeline to avoid direct contact!!
I have family member who are not very nice n extremely bad tempered. I used to think it is my bad karma that I have to stay under the same roof with this individual, but after learning dharma, I know how to turn the situation around. I no longer view that family member as someone who is extremely not friendly, instead I am glad she is giving the golden opportunities to practise being patience and compassionate. In fact she had become the "object" for me to learn how to be patience and put down my ego to talkmtpmher etc etc... Infact, She has become my teacher!
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We can see that there are many ways in which we actively contribute to our own experience of mental unrest and suffering. Although, in general, mental and emotional afflictions themselves can come naturally, often it is our own reinforcement of those negative emotions that makes them so much worse. For instance when we have anger or hatred towards a person, there is less likelihood of its developing to a very intense degree if we leave it unattended. However, if we think about the projected injustices done to us, the ways in which we have been unfairly treated, and we keep on thinking about them over and over, then that feeds the hatred. It makes the hatred very powerful and intense. Of course, the same can apply to when we have an attachment towards a particular person; we can feed that by thinking about how beautiful he or she is, and as we keep thinking about the projected qualities that we see in the person, the attachment becomes more and more intense. But this shows how through constant familiarity and thinking, we ourselves can make our emotions more intense and powerful.
We also often add to our pain and suffering by being overly sensitive, overreacting to minor things, and sometimes taking things too personally. We tend to take small things too seriously and blow them up out of proportion, while at the same time we often remain indifferent to the really important things, those things which have profound effects on our lives and long-term consequences and implications.
So I think that to a large extent, whether you suffer depends on how you respond to a given situation.