How to understand annoyance, anger, hostility, intolerance, hate, murderousness

Definitions, Distinctions

I put a lot of words there that I want to analyze and they are somewhat related but not necessarily all in the same basket regarding many things.

Annoyance and Attachment to hate is not zen. But hostility? murderousness? Those might be. - It is important to see clearly and distinguish between things that are different. It is important to discriminate.

Being strong vs. feeling strong

"How can I feel strong?" she said.

"This hate potion would do," the witch said.

"Oh. How can I BE strong?"

"Don't take the hate potion."

This is a tweet from @ASmallFiction

Hate or Aversion is considered one of the poisons or kleshas

Lack of egotism, charity

My late teacher never had any egotism toward others. As his assistant I saw quite a lot, but I never saw him have a single thought of annoyance.

Foyan

Those wise enough to believe and understand this truth are bound to practice according to the Dharma. And since that which is real includes nothing worth begrudging, they give their body, life, and property in charity.

The Zen Teaching of Boddhidarma

I think having no sense of self in a denial of this self, in thinking this self, and all selfishness is meaningless is definitely not a feeling of power or strength. If you deny your “small self”, and affirm a brotherhood with all things, if you have equanimity, does that not mean NOT feeling strong - even while in this larger sense BEING a very powerful greater “self”?

Passionate intensity

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

This is from a poem by Yeats

What are you intense about? What do you care profoundly about? What are you serious about?
Maybe a similar line of reasoning: what will you refuse to joke about? to troll about? to clown about?
What makes you angry? What is your anger serving? What is it protecting?

Telling good from evil, distinguishing, making distinctions

People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are liars and fools. They fall into endless space. They're like drunks. They can't tell good from evil.

When is it important to tell and to state clearly and ambiguously right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, holy and unholy, Zen and not zen?

I’d say even the phrase “nothing holy” is distinguishing first the definition of holiness, and distinguishing each and every thing as not fitting that definition.

Dongshan questioning the head monk to death

I’d like not to post the passage here of Dongshan questioning the head monk but I would like to link to previous incarnations of that being posted in r/zen or r/koans or r/zenbuddhism

For some mysterious reason Ewk has been one of the people who has posted about this many times. This of course has to do with his own manner of participating in this forum being somewhat harsh. But I want to abstract the personalism - to the extent that it’s possible.

2017

2018

Ewk’s post from January 17, 2018

2020

One disagreement

In one u/exitiumetsapientia commented

"Zen teachers should be compassionate, gentle, and skilled at adaptation, dealing with people impartially, minding their own business and not contending with anyone."

Yuanwu

What is dignified in zen?

In another post also by ewk he says something I’d like to add to the discussion of the case

the lack of dignity in Zen is frickin' everywhere [...] Dongshan humiliating some old guy to death in public, an old guy who had lived a life of service to his community?

Murderousness: killer Joshu

redditsearch.io

Murderousness relates to Joshu’s “I like to kill."

What is peace in zen?

Regarding past post of relevance is a ewk post called “What is peace in zen?”

Where u/Kyuu-bi posted

Boddhidarma killed the kids

How about hating evil?

u/NegativeGPA answers a question from a post

Hating malice is malicious

I have a little algorithm as a meta cognitive tool for tricky decisions, but after about 6 months of using it, I realized it nearly always simplified to 2 rules:

Do not be dishonest

Do not be malicious

It’s pretty hard to be evil if you follow those. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard

But yeah - hating malice goes against itself

One cool guy on Reddit said something like:

“If the cure for ignorance is education and the cure for disease is medicine, then the cure for hate is care.”

Is altruism a kind of masochism?

“I'd like to believe that you're aware enough, even now, to know that there's nothing sadistic in my actions. This moment, this is me at my most masochistic.” says Bill in Kill Bill

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Tuesday, 16 March 2021