The Trappist monk Thomas Merton once said of the Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh “[he] is more my brother than many who are nearer to me in race and nationality, because he and I see things the exact same way.” Martin Luther King Jr. described the monk as “a holy man, for he is humble and devout…a scholar of immense intellectual capacity.” So strongly did King believe in Hanh’s program for peace that he nominated Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. Hanh died in 2022, but his teachings continue to captivate and challenge people around the world. In Anger, Hanh explores the nature of anger and offers practical suggestions for how to tend to our anger and the anger of others. He submits that an angry person is a suffering person, in need of compassion.

If someone sets your house on fire, do you put the fire out or chase after the person who started it? If you chase after the culprit, your house will burn to the ground, but if you tend to the flames quickly, you can save your house. So often we are out for blood, looking for the people who have wronged us, but we neglect the fire in our hearts.

With no home to return to, we live an emotionally homeless existence and set fire to other people’s homes. When someone wrongs us, we seem to believe that punishing them and watching them suffer will alleviate our own suffering, but all we do is create more suffering for ourselves and others. Think about it: When we take it upon ourselves to punish someone, that person will then look for an opportunity to create suffering for us. These vicious circles of suffering only end when people decide to tend to the flames inside them rather than inciting flames in others.

Always remember that another person is only the secondary cause of your anger. They did not put anger into your heart. To one degree or another, the seeds of anger are already in each of us. It is unpleasant when someone waters those seeds and makes them grow, but we must ultimately release that person from primary responsibility for our anger. It is up to us to assume responsibility for our own anger, and to pay attention to anger’s seeds and roots in our life.

Nothing will change in ourselves, in others, or in our relationships if we insist on punishing each other. We must learn to deal with the fire before it destroys everything in our lives and in the lives of those we touch.

If you are a parent and you hear your baby crying, do you wait till your show is over to find out what is wrong? Do you finish cooking dinner before checking in? No, you find your child and find out what she needs, whether that’s a diaper change, to be fed, to be held, or something else entirely.

Think of your anger as this crying baby that needs a parent to soothe it. Give that anger the same priority and tenderness that a distressed infant deserves.

Mindfulness is the key to soothing that angry baby in you. Anger locks us up, but mindfulness opens us back up to life, much like sunshine gently coaxes flowers to open their petals to the sun after night closes them. Mindful energy is emotional sunshine.

So how do we become more mindful and start putting out the fires in our lives? There are a number of practices from the Buddha himself that help us cool the flames. Two of Thich Nhat Hahn’s favorites are mindful breathing and mindful walking. He describes these practices as two friends who are always with him, who water the seeds of positivity in his life.

Mindful breathing is tracing the flow of air moving in and out of your body. As you attend to your breath, your body will be in touch with your mind. Having mind and body connected keeps us in the present moment and will help us stay connected to ourselves, to others, and to what surrounds us. It only takes one deep conscious breath to reconnect with yourself, and just three to hold that connection.

Mindful walking adds a locomotive dimension to mindfulness practice. Whether you’re walking across the street, across a field, or across a room, pay attention to each footfall and to the earth underfoot. As you walk, say “in” on the inhale and “out” on the exhale. Feel the air entering and exiting your lungs. This might sound insignificant because walking is something simple that we do every day, but this is precisely what makes these practices so powerful. We always have opportunities to practice as long as we can walk and breathe. Every mindful step will bring you closer to the present moment. It is when we inhabit the present moment that we come into “the Pure Land” or “the Kingdom of God.”

Be patient with your anger. Patience is the sign of authentic love. Love is impossible without patience, and without patience, you will not be able to bring yourself or anyone else relief. Learning how to embrace your anger is not a once-and-for-all act. It takes repetition to become skillful. Start with just five minutes of breathing, walking, and embracing. If you need 10 minutes, that’s fine. If you need more than that to cool the flames, there’s nothing wrong with that. But whatever you do, and however long you need, dedicate yourself to that task of caring for your anger. Don’t divide your attention by turning on music, grabbing a book, or starting a show.

Our emotional states impact others, especially when we are in an intimate relationship. In moments of anger, practice using these three lines:

1. “Darling, I am angry. I suffer.”

2. “I’m doing my best.”

3. “Please help me.”

When your beloved sets off your anger, you might be tempted to hide or deny your feelings. But it is your responsibility to tell your beloved. When you tell your beloved, “I am angry at you, I suffer, and it’s important that you know that,” you are finding a middle way between frosty silence and fiery rage. Try not to wait more than 24 hours if you can help it, and tell your partner as peacefully as you can. If sadness surfaces, that’s fine, but rage can’t enter the conversation. It will only cause more damage. The goal is not to punish or score points.

Letting your partner know, “I am doing my best” communicates that you are taking the practices of mindful breathing and mindful walking seriously, that you are earnestly tending to the inner flames. Don’t say “I’m doing my best” unless you are really practicing it. Saying that you’re doing your best means you are embracing your anger like you would a wounded child, and that you are not rejecting your emotions. It’s a part of you whether you like it or not. Saying “Get away from me, anger!” when you feel your rage rising is like saying “Get away from me, stomach!” when you feel nauseous. Your anger belongs to you as much as your organs.

“Please help me” is the third and vital piece of working through anger. When we are angry, we tend to tell those around us, “Get away from me!” or “I’ll be just fine without you.” But speaking the language of true love means acknowledging your neediness even when you are upset—your need for help—even from the very person who has made you angry.

Peace begins with you. These three sentences will grow trust and respect in the relationship, and in yourself.

Compassion is the antidote to anger, but it’s hard to access that compassion in moments of frustration. When you turn off a fan, the fan continues to rotate for a few minutes before it stops altogether. Make sure you give yourself or your partner that cool-down time when either of you is angry. And when your partner expresses frustration, compassionately listen instead of jumping in to correct a perception.

Ideally, you want to let your anger be known within 24 hours of the event that upset you. If 24 hours is up and you’re still seething and can’t start the conversation with love in your heart, write it all out for your beloved. If it happens during the weekday, set Friday as the day to talk so you’ll be able to enjoy the weekend together.

In that interim time before Friday, remember that you are partially responsible for the other’s suffering. There are ways you haven’t been tending to your garden, there are ways you’ve neglected to water the seeds of what is positive in your life, and instead watered the seeds of anger in your beloved’s garden. With that in mind, think less 

about what you want your beloved to own, and look deeply at your own actions and how those are contributing to your beloved’s suffering. We become cruel when we believe that we are the only person suffering.

As a general practice, it is healthy and humbling to ask yourself, “Am I sure?” Write it down on a slip of paper and place it somewhere you can revisit, maybe on your dashboard or in your wallet. It will keep you humble and curious. You may think you “know” why you’re so angry, but by asking yourself, “Are you sure?” a fuller story can emerge—details you might have forgotten or ways you might have provoked your beloved’s anger.

Some people have found it helpful to carry a pebble in their pocket wherever they go. Every time anger arises, they hold the pebble (gently). It serves as a simple, beautiful, tangible reminder of the present moment and an invitation to return to it. It might sound juvenile, but give it a try: Pull out the pebble whenever you feel anger rising up in you, gently cradle it, smile, and breathe slowly. Remember those three lines:

Darling, I am angry. I suffer.

I’m doing my best.

Please help me.

Just like the bells at a temple, the practices of using a slip of paper and the pebble help you pause and slow down enough to see your own anger and where you are contributing suffering to your partner instead of love.

As you continue your practices, you will be able to listen compassionately to others in suffering without activating your own suffering. Your practices will reduce your suffering to such a degree that you can stay protected as you go with people to their dark places. The act of fully, attentively listening to someone’s suffering without jumping in or correcting can unravel a great deal of pain in his life.

It can’t be emphasized enough that you cannot effectively help others with their anger if you have not tended to yours. Imagine being a psychotherapist, where your job is to listen attentively and compassionately. In a single session, you will encounter tremendous suffering, and this suffering will set off yours if you do not practice mindfulness.

If someone’s suffering has led to you drowning in your own suffering, you will not be able to listen deeply. Moreover, they will sense that you are not fully present to them, that your suffering has taken you somewhere else other than the present.

Firefighters are trained to put other people’s fires out, but they don’t go without their equipment: They bring ladders and water and flame-retardant attire so the fires of others don’t singe them. Compassion is your equipment that helps you go into a home full of suffering and cool the flames. Like a firefighter, your goal is to help others, not to punish them. A person with a house on fire is a distressed and suffering person. Punishing someone for having a house on fire will not save anyone from the flames.

It's important to understand that anger is not a purely psychological process. We make a mistake when we divide up body and mind, and treat them like separate entities. In Buddhism, there is a concept of namarupa, which roughly translates “body-mind.” It gets at the idea that they belong together and are a single entity. Body is mind and mind is body.

This might sound nonsensical, but recent discoveries in quantum mechanics help make this connection clearer. Scientists noticed while trying to observe the most basic elements of life that sometimes they behave like particles, other times like waves. So is it a particle, or is it a wave? Or is it both? Some scientists, uneasy with the dualistic division, have started calling these elements “wavicles.” Similarly, the body-mind defies the tidy dualisms we create.

What does all this have to do with anger? It is tempting to view anger as psychological, without considering our body and how we treat it. The truth is that our patterns of consumption can exacerbate our anger. Give a little thought to what you put into your body and your mind.

Some of the systems that supply our food are full of pain and they proliferate pain and anger. For example, think about where your eggs come from. More and more frequently, we get our eggs from chickens housed under inhumane conditions. They are jammed into cramped cages with other chickens, and held in giant warehouses. These birds have no time outdoors—no opportunity to spread their wings or even walk. In that fear and stress, they claw and peck at each other—sometimes to death. To prevent this, some companies cut off chickens’ breaks. What is more, the lighting is intended to imitate a day-night rhythm to stimulate egg production—but the cycle is expedited, so chickens can churn out eggs even faster. This puts stress and strain on their bodies that is unnatural.

With all this involved in the production of eggs, what kind of eggs are you getting? You are getting eggs that are full of suffering. It would be naïve to believe that all that rage from such an exploitative system would not be transferred to the eggs the chickens produce. You’re putting angry eggs in your body. As you ingest this kind of energy, it will come out of and create more suffering for you and for others.

Be mindful of where your food comes from. Be mindful of how you eat it, too. Chew your food thoroughly—at least 50 times a bite. In addition to slowing you down, becoming a mindfulness practice, and allowing you to enjoy your food, eating your food this way will ease your digestion and allow your body to access more energy, rather than expending extra energy breaking down mindlessly half-chewed food.

Be conscious of what you put in your mind, too. From attention-grabbing headlines or violent shows, there’s plenty of content that will rob you of peace and fuel your anger.

Think about how you feel when you are around an angry person. Think about that person’s face, twisted into a frown. Reflect on the fear it evokes. Even if you have the insight that an angry person is a suffering person, such interactions can still be frightening experiences. It is worth pondering what you must look like when you’re angry, about how your face looks when it’s contorted into a scowl. People will treat you like a bomb that could explode at any moment and keep their distance. Go to a mirror and greet your frustrated visage with deep breaths and a smile. You are far more attractive when you smile.

This practice might seem artificial or cloying, but don’t underestimate the link between the mind and the body. Body influences mind as much as mind influences body. A lifetime of smiling (or scowling) alters a person’s physiology and psychology, so be mindful of the links you want to develop, of the countenance you want to bring to the world.

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