Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.
Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Coffee stevenwebb.uk
Steven's courses, podcasts and links: stevenwebb.uk
My teacher Junpo once said a line I have never been able to put down. I have never known an angry person who did not care. Sit with that for a second. Every time you have lost your temper, underneath it was something you cared about.
This one is for the person who snaps at the people they love, then sits in the guilt an hour later. Steven starts with a simple picture. Anger is a hammer. In the right hands it builds, in the wrong hands it breaks, and the answer is never to throw the hammer away. Without anger nothing would ever change. You would not be whole without it.
The trouble starts young. Don't make a fuss. Calm down. So we learn to sit on it, and what we sit on leaks out sideways, a sharp word, a slammed door, a silence that strips paint. Steven calls anger the bodyguard. It is almost always the second feeling, stood in front of something softer, a hurt, a fear, a sense of not being heard. Drawing on Mondo Zen, the teaching of Junpo's lineage, he names what tends to sit underneath. Fear, sadness, and a deep caring.
Then the line that stops you short. No one can make you angry. The reaction is yours. He is honest that even he argues with that one, and uses a real disagreement with his parents the night before to show how little space there can be between the spark and the fire. That space is the whole thing, and it is what meditation quietly widens.
There is a question that takes the heat out of almost any row, for the other person and for yourself. I can see you care. Tell me why it matters. You walk round the bodyguard and speak straight to what it is guarding. Steven takes it all the way into politics, sitting down for a cup of tea with people he disagrees with, and finding the caring underneath every single time.
He closes on another of Junpo's lines. Your angst is your liberation. The tight, angry knot is exactly where the freedom is. So next time the heat rises, before you do anything with it, ask one quiet question. Not who is to blame. Just, what am I really trying to protect.
Why listen
See your anger as honest information and a guard over something softer, not a flaw to be ashamed of
Learn a simple question that defuses an argument, at home or with someone you cannot agree with
Understand why you snap fastest at the people closest to you, and how to find the gap before you react
A kinder way to hold your own temper, drawn from Steven's teacher Junpo and the Mondo Zen tradition
Quotes
"I have never known an angry person who did not care." (Junpo)
"It is not the hammer's fault. You need that tool in your toolbox."
"Anger is always the second feeling. There is always something softer underneath."
"No one can ever really make you angry. The reaction is yours."
"I can see you care. Tell me why it matters so much to you."
"You cannot meet anger with anger and expect everything to be okay."
"Your angst is your liberation." (Junpo)
"Be kind to your anger. Don't throw it out."
Companion meditation
A short meditation goes with this episode, over on Inner Peace Meditations. A few minutes of practising exactly this, finding the gap and meeting the heat before it runs the show. Sit with it once or twice this week. It will do more than any amount of talking about it.
With gratitude to
Alyce, Kim up in the Yukon, Mayer, Ken, Linda and Michael for keeping the show advert free this time, along with a few kind souls who chose to stay nameless, including one wonderfully generous gift. To the regulars who keep it going month after month, Audra, Laura, Laurie and Stuart, and so many more of you. And a warm welcome to Sue, Jude, Jenna, Mia and Rita, who started supporting this month.
Netherlands