Often when I feel angry, I also feel mean. It feels like a small, hard, inward twist. I used to think of anger and meanness as something dark and ugly, something I wanted to be freed from. Then I heard Ken’s exchange with Christy and the way he brought in Rumi’s Guest House. Anger and meanness can be just be visitors, to be met and offered tea rather than having a door slammed in their faces.
The word mean once meant “lowly” or “common,” from the Old English gemǣne, meaning “shared” or “in the middle.” Its roots point not to cruelty but to ordinariness, humility. Over time, the sense shifted toward “ignoble” and finally “unkind.” I find that drift telling—how what was once humble became despised. When I feel mean, perhaps I’m touching that very ground of smallness, the part of being human that wants to defend itself, to contract and push away. And when I can open to it, as Ken invites, something softens.
Christy: What do you do about meanness?
Ken: It’s very interesting you should ask this, Christy, because there’s a wonderful quote from Rumi right on this. And I actually put it in an article that I just submitted to Tricycle. But I haven't memorized the quote, so I have to look it up. [Pause] Here you are:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning, a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness.
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Ken: Do you want me to read it again?
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning, a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness.
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Ken: Now, from the tone of your question, I’m inferring that you regard meanness as an enemy.
Christy: Well, in that it can certainly harm others, yes.
Ken: Okay. So, when’s the last time you can recall being mean? Or feeling mean?
Christy: Yesterday.
Ken: Okay, good. So just recall that right now, and there’s probably a hardening and a tightening in the body a little bit.
Christy: I could work through grief recalling it.
Ken: Because it’s an unpleasant memory?
Christy: Yeah.
Ken: Okay. I want you to do it anyway, please. And I want you to imagine welcoming the meanness with open arms and tell me what happens. [Pause]
Christy: It's a pattern.
Ken: Yes, but what happens? It’s very fast. Everybody can try this. Take anger or meanness or you can take greed too. And just open your heart to it. What happens? [Pause] Christy?
Student: It softens. Oh, I’m sorry.
Ken: I’m inviting you all to do it, but this is Christy’s.
Christy: It feels like a child.
Ken: Okay. And what do you do with that child?
Christy: Embrace it.
Ken: And then what happens?
Christy: [Pitch of voice rises considerably] Well! [Laughter]
Ken: Okay, you get my point. Now, like the hope and fear that we were discussing with Joan, this is a very, very demanding instruction. But it’s a very, very profound one. It’s exactly what Rumi’s talking about. You receive this and it can’t hold the way that it usually does. It holds when you resist it, when you regard it as, "No, this is not me, this is something other." But when you open your heart to it, then, as you described, it’s like a child. It’s something young that is very, very upset. And this is at the heart of Thich Nhat Hanh’s technique, which I’ve named Seeing From the Inside, where you’re holding just those feelings tenderly in attention.
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