A Little Daily Dharma

For years I've been receiving Daily Dharma emails from Tricycle Magazine, and over the course of time, they've ended in my Junk Mail folder. As a result, I will admit with all the overwhelming emails that I receive each day, I've let them go by the wayside.

For whatever reason, I decided to open up today's Daily Dharma, which I think we can all relate to every now and again- ANGER. It addresses real "freedom," which means being able to CHOOSE how we react in the face of anger. I like that, because it's very empowering to know that we have the ability to react or NOT react. Truly understanding this is where the freedom part comes in, and it puts the ball back in our court. Yeah!

So, here's today's Daily Dharma which I'd like to share....

Real Freedom

Freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things. When wisdom is not well developed, it can be easily obscured by the provocations of others. In such cases we may as well be animals or robots. If there is no space between an insulting stimulus and its immediate conditioned response—anger—then we are in fact under the control of others. Mindfulness opens up such a space, and when wisdom is there to fill it one is capable of responding with forbearance. It’s not that anger is repressed; anger never arises in the first place.

-Andrew Olendzki, "Calm in the Face of Anger," from the Fall 2006 Tricycle

You can read the entire article here.