For much of my life anger arose when I felt cornered. In the passage below Ken makes the point that anger can signal a boundary violation, bringing a clarity I didn’t have when I was young. Anger became the force that said, “This is too much,” when I had no other way to say it.
Growing up, I learned two ways of coping: disappearing by hiding or running away, or escalating bad behaviour even though I knew it would lead to dire consequences. They looked like opposites, but both came from the same place: no safety, no protection, and a profound sense of powerlessness. Hiding delayed the impact. Escalation was the refusal to capitulate. It was the limited agency I had.
Perhaps this is why I feel uncomfortable with so-called “righteous anger.” It often feels a step removed from what is actually happening inside. Ken’s conversation with a student about righteous anger helped me understand that anger is easily justified as clarity or moral certainty when it is really a way of avoiding helplessness or hurt. When someone insists their anger is principled, it feels like a cover for the vulnerability underneath. It’s another way of fighting experience rather than meeting it.
In this passage from Ken's series on the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva he explains that anger often arises when we can’t address what’s happening. This directly echoes my experience. When an adult crossed a line, my childhood anger showed up as “bad” behaviour—a way of asserting that I had no way to stop something intolerable. I can also see now that the reactions of my caregivers came from their own versions of righteous anger.
That old structure has been incredibly persistent in my adult life. Anger arises quickly when something resonates with the crossing of an old line. Now, when a strong sense of “no,” a sense of "enemy"comes up, I ask questions: "What experience am I fighting? What am I not wanting to feel? What feels too much?" When I can meet the anger this way it becomes intel rather than erupting as a reaction.
From 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva 8
Kate: I just want to clarify for myself that what it seems to me is that anger is always caused by opposing experience or fighting experience. So, therefore, anger is always a reactive pattern?
Ken: Yes. Anger is a reactive pattern, because in anger you see the object of anger as something other, and there may be a very, very good reason for it. Now at the Vajrayana level, there’s another way of looking at it, and that is that anger is the intelligence of the universe telling you that a boundary has been violated. And so now you can look: where is the boundary being violated? And then you can seek to address that in the appropriate way. The comparable one for desire is that desire is the intelligence of the universe telling you that a connection has been broken. Suddenly, I want that. When the connection’s there, there isn’t any sense of desire. There’s just a flow of energy and response. But when it’s broken, then there’s that wanting.
Student: Along the lines of what Kate just said, isn’t there such a thing as righteous anger? [Ken laughs] It seems that I’ve read about that in some of my readings, an anger that comes up in response to the mistreatment of other beings, for example.
Ken: Well, you see other beings being mistreated, other people, whatever. What’s the first thing you feel?
Student: Compassion.
Ken: Right. First thing you feel is compassion. Now, when does the anger arise? This is important.
Student: Doesn’t it come up when you find an opportunity to deal with what’s causing the suffering?
Ken: I would say it arises when you realize in your position you can’t do anything about the cause of the suffering, so you now fall out of the compassion into anger. And then you try to defend it by calling it righteous anger.
There was a person down in Orange County back in the early 90s. And he was expressing his anger at the homeless people. And he was training with me in taking and sending at the time. So, he was experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance, shall we say. I said, “Why are you angry with the homeless? They are the products of the system. If you want to help the homeless, why don’t you call the mayor? You’ve got influence here, and put pressure on him.” But moving from anger at the homeless—because they were disturbing his sense of what his community should look like—to actually taking action was way too big a step for him.
And so anger comes up because you feel impotent and you’re trying to control the situation. And then it’s defended as righteous anger, which is used as a justification for violence. It’s not ever. And once you go down that road, you’re going down the road of fundamentalism, terrorism, taking what is essentially compassion, turning it into an ideology where now the ends justify the means. And compassion goes out the window, and you’re just trying to make the world conform to how you think it should be. Does this make sense to you? Is that too strong?
Related posts:
Every Reactive Pattern Has Two Poles
Recognising Reactivity in Real Time – Part 1