Zen precept #15: "Not being angry" -- letting go of anger so all buddhas (that being us) are free

Zen precept #15: Not being angry.
One way of characterizing this precept is not to harbor ill will. Reb Anderson talks about the dangers of becoming inappropriately angry and holding such anger in your heart. The Zenkaisho goes even further, instructing us to not becoming angry at all...which is a pretty tall order, ranking up there with realizing enlightenment.

Having no anger is an inspiring aspiration. To gradually move in that direction, I continue to practice, noticing and having compassion for my ego hooks, habitual mind patterns, and judgments about how I and others should be. I am learning to deal with anger in a way that is beneficial rather than harmful, and am slowly becoming less reactive to the invariable challenges of life -- business problems, relationships issues, and parking in SF:). But I have a long way to go given that I can only take about 5 minutes of watching fear-mongering Glenn Beck before getting all agitated. Maybe I can stretch that to six minutes...which I think is exactly the point that the Zenkaisho is making: continuing to do our best.

Reb makes a distinction between appropriate and inappropriate anger, so what does he mean by these terms since anger is regular part of human life? For him, it is appropriate to be angry, for example, when you see someone being attacked or a deception is hurting another person. And he encourages us to examine our anger when we are merely inconvenienced by someone or have our egos challenged. To this point, one of my spiritual teachers said it was appropriate to be angry when it became clear that the Bush Administration had manipulated the evidence on WMDs in Iraq in order to justify the war. And it was inappropriate to be angry at what I perceived as Bush's disdain for critical thinking and facts.

Let me conclude this precept with this reminder from Reb: "For bodhisattvas the passions are the real field of blessings, and walking the middle path through this field is the way of awakening." We don't deny our anger or feed it, but by letting it go, we realize the greatest welfare for all beings.

P.S. The photo above is from the Iranian protests in 2009, not Egypt. The young man in the green shirt is guarding a police agent from the angry crowd, minutes after the policeman had attacked the peaceful protesters. That's the bodhisattva vow!