Hi Thanisaro,
I am not sure if what i am facing is due to aging and bad health, or something else.
Is it heart or lung issue, or andropause 🤣? No i have not went for annual check up for past 2 years.
If there could be a physical manifestation then it seems wise to get a check up: medicine and meditate come from the same Latin root, and it is not the wisest attitude to believe meditation can heal everything. Better to know and get help for medical problems if they are there no?
Having said that, though yes - it is common sense to get a regular check up, I don't suspect the problem you are facing now comes from a medical/physical problem.
I was in a angry+ anxiety mood yesterday due to some trivial things.It took me quite some effort using meditation to calm down but that is not the point.
With yesterday experience. I realised these few years, when i get angry and frustrated, the mood stay for a long time. It was "so focused" that it just can't go away. There is an burning sensation in my chest.
I remember before stepping over age of 40. I do get angry but it goes away very fast by its own, but now, the feels/ sensation are like stucked in my chest for some of the issues. Making me almost impossible to carry out other things. As i said, it is really trivial thing and it not even my business for some of the cases.🤣
So to summarise:
- You are experiencing anger and/or anxiety about things.
- This has been more common in recent years and more persistent.
- When you were younger the anger would "go away very fast" on it's own.
- Often the cause of the anger or anxiety may be trivial, and sometimes not even your 'business'.
- You find it difficult to let go of these moods, though you have found that you can, through meditation (though less easily than you would wish).
Anyone else has this issue?
I think many of us have had this issue or similar at different times in our journey. I certainly have: I got the T-shirt, the tote bag, the mouse-mat, coffee mug and a bunch of other useless shit from the
Clinging Is Us shop. It was a long-standing addiction.
It seems that you are simply clinging to things you identify with inappropriately Thanisaro ... simply clinging to the way you think some things
should be. You are self-identifying with the perceived wrongs towards your view of how things should be, even to the point of clinging to how things should be about stuff you know isn't your business. In reaction to identifying with a view of
how things should be and seeing things that do not fit with your view, the result is that anger and/or anxiety are arising.
Maybe that the anger used to subside on it's own when you were younger, without examination, without understanding, was because you buried those feelings before seeing where they came from? So, perhaps you built a
bit of a habit of hiding from uncomfortable feelings?
Now you are older and naturally more reflective, it is harder to hide from negative feelings arising from your clinging .. the habit doesn't work so well. Yet if the habit of hiding was one you built and relied upon earlier in life, then that habit could be in contradiction to the naturally more reflective mind that comes with age.
Dhamma sums up what is the probable antidote in one sentence:
Don't run from them.
It does sound as though the younger you built a habit of running from negative feelings, of burying them. This could be why they seemed to go away on their own. But in truth they didn't go away .. they got buried inside you, became internalised, habituated and clung to. Older you is now fighting a battle between this habit and the wisdom of knowing you can't run .. because however far you run you will find yourself right there.
Turning your mind away from these feelings is a form of running away. So the advice below is not in line with my understanding or experience of what cures such issues:
Once you become aware that your mind is focusing on something which you shouldn't, try to do something else, move your attention onwards to something that could open your heart, something that could make you feel happy and joy. If you don't get out of that trace of mind, the trend may continue in your daily life. It is a good thing that you have been aware of it, so try to get rid of it.
In my experience, the only way to get rid of old habits of aversion (i.e. clinging to negatives) is to see them clearly; to understand them; to gain insight (vipassana) into them. So, as you have been doing in meditation, when such feelings arise, perhaps you must continue to develop the ability to
watch without identifying with them; to examine the arising and falling with a mind of open inquiry and equanimity/non-clinging or "acceptance", as Dhamma writes.
Acceptance doesn't mean to accept such arisings as valid/true/accurate. It just means to be aware of them with an accepting mind; an open and inquiring mind; a non-judgemental mind; a "befriending" mind; a mind which inquires of such arisings: "Where do you come from? What purpose do you (or did you) serve? How and why did I learn to run from you? What do you need from me to heal now? What attitude/mind must I cultivate to let go of you now?".
Only by feeling your feelings, then seeing they are not "your feelings", but habituated reactions to things not being as they *should be* can you let go of clinging to them.
It is true that different mood connects with different organs, I think they are well explained in different discipline systems. In our ancient China theories, anger connects with liver.
This is a truth of Chinese medicine systems. They are ancient and contain much wisdom, yet also have not been updated with modern knowledge. Generally I would advise against taking anything resembling medical advice from an internet forum.
