I was surprised to find that at least three people I know (and I'm on talking terms with maybe 7, and I couldn't ask the rest of them without them feeling very uncomfortable about being around me), here in the place I stay, have never mentally engaged in murder. They have never killed anybody in their head-empires, have never banished anybody from their head-empires, have never temporarily ostracised anybody from their head-empires, have never told people off....leave alone anything else. I found that quite sobering in a way - in fact they looked at me peculiarly when I was asking them the question. I wouldn't have because I'd assumed somehow that most regular people must have engaged in some form of violence inside their heads but one very early morning while in the middle of a conversation inside my head it struck me that maybe, no matter how hard it is for me to contemplate, there are people who are absolutely non-violent even inside their heads - so I had to go and ask the people I knew. I haven't killed any babies, children and animals I know - not in my head that is and it seems outrageous and ironic to me that I actually worry how I can save and protect children and animals and babies - but grown-up human beings I have indeed demolished inside my head....and I've felt so much unmitigated anger against or scorn for or irritation and/or disgust for more than some that I have felt hot lightning sparks and forks zig-zagging through my head.
I'm not really sure as to what I'm supposed to do with this piece of self-knowing and other-knowing. It's like having a set of clues and not having a clue as to where it's supposed to lead to or what one is supposed to do with it. Not the first time that I've been in this pot. When I chanced upon this bit of knowing I was in a quiet trance but now I know not what I'm supposed to do although I know I'm supposed to do something. Kill fewer people in my head maybe? And stop trying to chop off the heads I've already chopped off maybe twice in a row? Maybe stop yelling and chasing people and asking them to 'get out'? It's difficult though and there is nothing that I can do about the hot shooting sparks - even breathing deeply does not help. It just makes me blank and misty for some hours or for some days before I get mad again. Yet there is the bit about 'Right Thought' after all and not for nothing is the Eight Fold Path so elegant in its simplicity and yet so difficult to put into practice. And there is the dodgy bit about experiencing non-channeled violence and non-channeled passion - even if it is just in the head at one point - if for no other reason (and there are others) that some of it will threaten to burst the dam or burst it.
P.S: I guess a part of me was annoyed about painting myself in bad colours - so it wanted to remind me that I can't, at least, accuse myself of being a hypocrite. I have killed myself a number of times and jumped out of my own skin in shock and with sharp disgust.
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"Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy."
(Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics)
Who am I to add a word to that?
Hmm. I remember now that you'd used this quote for someone else who was singing about 'no-anger'.
But how does one practice the right way? It's easy to get angry and it's also easy to imagine/pretend that one can contain or has contained one's anger or that one has no anger....to imagine that one is some sort of a saint. But how does one get to a point where one can channel it or control it(really control it - the way Aristotle puts it in) and direct it so that one really has mastered it?...
One takes a lifetime, Shilpi, and then ruefully realises that one has actually made very little headway. The world being what it is, it doesn't help much in the pilgrim's progress. That is why the poet sang 'This world is not my home, I'm just passing through...'
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