The answers are already here

“I will fucking rip your head off” I thought to myself right before I said, “what is coming up for me right now in response to what you said are some feelings of anger.” I don’t want to hurt others with my anger, that’s priority number one, which is partly why I censor my inner dialogue in moments like these, but damn, I really wanted to blow up.

The setting made this moment kind of ridiculous. I was in a class for my chaplaincy training. If you picture six of the kindest people you know who have high EQ’s, exceptional education, and deeply sensitive hearts, who are devoting months of their lives—for free—to train in how to be better listeners to vulnerable people—that is this group. We were sharing our thoughts about our group dynamics, so things were bound to get a little spicy, but when the only other Buddhist in the room started talking about his compassion for the guy I just had a tussle with, something inside me snapped.

It made me hot. I could picture my already-red hair bursting into flames like a wrathful deity…

…but I recognized that it wasn’t him who gave rise to this anger in me, that no good would come from bringing this fire into this particular room right now, so I settled down. Praise to the Buddhas, they’ve taught me something.

I sat on my cushion and invited the anger to return. It came back heavier and more in my belly than in my face, but there it was. And as it moved, it began to reveal its secrets to me. Ugly, unfinished secrets of rage and betrayal. Rage at the dharma teachers who have betrayed me. Betrayal of the rage that has been simmering within me and I have asked again and again to be quiet. Rage at the dharma spaces that have been too weak to hold the truth of the world. Betrayal of the dharma within me as I underestimate its strength. And at the bottom, the loneliness that anger facilitates as it so easily pushes the world away.

I screamed on the car ride home. If you haven’t tried it before, you should. When you’re driving on the highway, no one can hear you. Just scream.

The dharma is in me, this I know. It always has been, every time I’ve gone looking for its answers, they appear. As I walk downtown in the first warm sun I’ve felt in months, I feel my feet on the ground and I try to catch the eye of everyone who drives by. The answers are here. I whisper mantras to myself as I pass dog walkers and stroller pushers. I’m looking for them again.