---
ai_generation_date: '2026-09-26'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
    - date: '2020-05-24'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/11441/20200524-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-becoming_wise_about_anger_and_frustration.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: Becoming Wise about Anger and Frustration
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11441
      video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: UmetUys2ZaY
  imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04'
  title: Becoming Wise About Anger and Frustration
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmetUys2ZaY
---

# Becoming Wise about Anger and Frustration - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1)

_This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._

## [Becoming Wise about Anger and Frustration](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11441)

For today's Sunday morning talk, I am very conscious of the idea that many of us have been sheltering in place now for over two months. It is a long time, and there are plenty of people for whom this time is starting to wear them down. They are starting to be tired of it. Maybe there is a frustration with it, maybe even a degree of anger, because life has been limited. Some of the core, fundamental activities of our lives have been curtailed. Contact with people we love has been limited, as has contact with our friends in all the kinds of ways we are familiar with. The activities we do in the world have been severely limited.

It has been long enough now that I think I am noticing in some people greater irritation, frustration, and even anger. Certainly, I read in the news that a lot of people are angry about the restrictions they still have, restrictions they feel they want to finally break loose from to have some sense of freedom.

One of the principles or understandings that we have as people who practice Insight Meditation is that the stronger the inner reactivity—the stronger the emotional reaction we have to world activities and what is going on—the more likely it represents something very deep inside of us that has been touched and activated. If we remain focused on the externals, on what we are frustrated or upset with, we are missing half the picture. We are missing the opportunity to go in and connect deeply with what is inside, to find out what it is that was touched.

Sometimes what has been touched is very important to attend to because it is a valuable thing in itself. Sometimes what has been touched is what is unresolved in our life, some deeper place that needs attention, care, and resolution within us. If external events touch this place of discomfort—this unresolved place inside—and we keep focusing outwards with our anger, frustration, or irritation, we don't really use the opportunity to have insight. We miss the chance to dive deep inside and ask: "What is this inside? What is the attachment? What is the wound? What is the pain? What are the beliefs or values I am operating under that are the source of this reactivity?"

I can well understand the sense of frustration that people have these days. One of the opportunities in this practice is to turn around and have insight, to really go into the subjective experience and see what is actually going on for us. There are a number of things that can happen. One is to understand it and resolve something that needs to be resolved, or to get a different perspective on what is happening so we can operate more from wisdom.

It has often been said that for whatever reason we are angry, whether it is justified or not, it is often best not to act or speak from the anger if possible. Generally, when people are angry, frustrated, or irritated, they don't have access to the most wisdom that is within them. It is better to wait, if possible, until the anger has dissipated and then address the issue. We do not ignore the issue, but we wait until we are in a better place to reflect, think, and act.

This is one of the great things about meditation practice. We turn into the subjective experience and settle things down. Otherwise, we are over-activated, over-involved with thoughts in such a way that we are actually disconnected from ourselves, or we are riding the edge of the wave of some of our difficult emotions, being pushed along by them. Imagine being on a surfboard, catching a wave of anger that pushes us along. We feel justified acting on it, allowing ourselves to be pushed by the anger, warning people to watch out for whatever is in front of us.

Meditation is a time to let yourself settle back and come to the backside of the wave, to let it all settle down and relax into where it is more peaceful and quiet. From there, we can have more wisdom and clarity. Some of the frustration, irritation, weariness, and maybe boredom that comes with sheltering in place for so long is, in fact, an activity of the mind. Boredom, weariness, and this tiredness with the limitations of life is, oddly enough, a doing of the mind.

Take boredom, for example. We are not bored unless the mind is activated—evaluating, thinking about things, and comparing our situation to different ways of being. Boredom is an action of the mind. In meditation, all these active ways in which the mind is spinning and churning have a chance to settle and quiet. Then, we see with fresh eyes.

Some of the wonderful experience of meditation is to no longer be defined or pushed around by the waves of particular activated states, and to be able to be renewed. It is hard for me to imagine someone doing well in challenging times without a daily meditation practice. Even if we are not completely renewed, we start to have the capacity to be renewed each day through meditation. That way, when we go into life, we are not carrying the baggage or momentum of yesterday, or the past month or two. We are not carrying our preoccupations, concerns, and tensions that have built up. We can start fresh. This ability to put down the activity of the mind can surprisingly put down some of the built-up weariness, irritation, and frustration we have had.

This insight allows us to look into our subjective experience, see what is going on, and settle it. Some of what is going on at this time is anger. There is anger in all directions in our society, perhaps more so now than usual. There are people who are angry because other people are angry. There are people who are angry because of the limitations their lives are under. There are people who are angry with themselves because they are angry. There are people who feel like things are not fair. There are some people taking advantage of the situation and not cooperating with our societal efforts to limit the transmission of this virus, leading others to feel indignant, upset, or fearful about what is going on.

What is a wise way? How can we be with anger in a good, wise way? I think there are a variety of good things to consider in this whole field of anger. First, it is interesting to consider the whole list of concepts and forms of anger. Anger is an umbrella term. What are the subcategories? We have indignation, annoyance, rage, fury, ire, wrath, hate, irritation, sulking, grumpy, grouchy, resentment, aversion, and hostility. There are probably a lot more words as well.

The word hostility[^1] is interesting because a primary word in Buddhism that is sometimes translated as anger is really hostility. It is interesting to distinguish between when anger or frustration is a form of hostility and when there is no hostility—just a strong, powerful, and passionate sense of feeling that something is not right, or that there is injustice. If there is hostility, certainly in Buddhism it is never considered a useful thing to be hostile. It is our responsibility to look deeply and settle the hostility, to find out what our attachments are and to find other ways to take care of ourselves besides being hostile.

If the anger has no hostility to it, hopefully, the people around us can see and feel that. I have certainly had the experience of someone being angry with me in a way I called "clean anger." It was very clear and clean. I had said something that someone thought was maybe disrespectful, and the person came back right away and said, "Gil, never say that again." It was quite intense, but as soon as it had been said, it was crystal clear the person had dropped it completely. There was nothing left over. I thought, "Wow, that was so impressive." I got the message, and there was no social friction, tension, or problem at all. The person just put it down; they were finished with it. I felt that person had no hostility. There was no hate, no judgment of me. It was really about what I said, and I was inspired by how clean it was.

There is an interesting, somewhat provocative quote about anger from one of the Desert Fathers[^2]. It says: "We need to reclaim anger for its proper purpose. It is always a waste of good anger to get annoyed with other human beings. What the contemplative needs to do is to focus attention on the fact that they are annoyed. Instead of seeing some other human being angrily, the contemplative tries to see their own anger; they can then begin to overcome it."

This is not a dismissal or suppression of anger, but rather a reclaiming of it for its proper purpose. This idea suggests that anger is a very important messenger and has an important place in our lives. This particular Desert Father talks about the need to use it to go deeply inside to understand ourselves.

It is often useful to see anger as a messenger. Don't kill the messenger! Anger always means something needs our attention. The Desert Father says it is important to go inside. Sometimes it is a message that something in the world needs attention and focus. But the messenger doesn't have to be the general. The messenger doesn't have to be the person who is in charge of how we respond. The messenger is just the messenger. We can thank the messenger and then figure out what needs attention. Sometimes we need to look inside, and sometimes we need to see what is going on around us better. Sometimes we need to do both.

We can see better what is in the world if we settle the agitation of the anger so that we can see more clearly. If we need to act because there is something not right in the world, more often than not, we can act more effectively when we don't act from the anger.

One of the most common protests I have heard in my thirty years of being a Buddhist teacher is from people who are very quick to protest any discussion of anger that seems to put a limit on its expression. There seems to be a very powerful desire to justify anger. I find it very curious. I think this comes for a good reason. There is a very painful, heartbreaking social situation. In all societies, but certainly in the United States, people who are oppressed are often not allowed to express their anger. They are not allowed to be angry by the dominant class. Often, white males can feel like it is fine for them to be angry, but it is not okay for other people. If women or people of color are angry, it is seen as something that must be suppressed; it is not allowed, and it is used to prove that they are somehow wrong.

In many cultures, the subordinates in a society are not allowed to have or express their anger. They have to bottle it up, or it is ignored, which makes things even worse. Meanwhile, the dominant group often feels they can express anger freely; it is the most natural thing in the world for them. This creates an ugly social situation: the people who have the most cause to be angry have the least ability to express it. It gets suppressed and frozen, building up as resentment.

Because of this, we want to be very careful not to limit, repress, or deny the existence of anger. Anger in other people is also a messenger. Whenever anybody is angry, something is not right. Exactly what is not right is the art of what we have to discover. Where does the attention need to go? Does it need to go into looking at ourselves, at others, or into the social situation? What needs our care and attention?

I think a good approach with annoyance, frustration, or irritation is to see it as a messenger, to always respect it, and to have the capacity to turn inwards to see what we are doing with the anger. There is a common idea that other people can harm our physical bodies, but for other people to harm our hearts, our minds, or our inner life, we have to cooperate. Our inner reactivity contributes to the way our heart responds and reacts to what is happening around us.

This is one of the great values of meditation practice. We really begin understanding how our inner life operates, what our reactivity is, what we pick up, how we get involved, and how we react and push away with all that inner movement that gets snarled up. By repeatedly sitting, meditating, and observing the subjective experience deeply, we learn how not to pick anything up. We might be angered by what someone does, but it is not necessary to pick up the anger. The anger can be there as its own thing, and we don't have to become the angry person.

This ability to make room for our inner life—for the different dimensions and aspects that come up—and let them be is a powerful skill. Anger, sadness, joy, love, resentment; all these things can bubble up. The ability to turn inward in meditation, allow these things to surface, and let go of the thoughts, involvement, reactivity, and being for or against them, is powerful. When we are out in our social world and people say or do things that touch something deep inside, and we feel angry, irritated, upset, or sad, we don't have to disrespect how we are feeling. But we also don't have to pick it up. We can be bigger and more spacious than what we are feeling.

If we react and pick up the anger, we are hurting ourselves. One of the teachings of the Buddha is that expressed anger or hostility is like a fire that is burning its own fuel[^3]. The fuel is who we are. Hostile anger, strong irritation, and strong frustration harm ourselves.

It is possible to recognize that when people do not have a subjective life—when they don't know or feel themselves well, or understand what is happening—there can be pleasure in being angry. There can be an outward movement of expressing powerful spite and frustration that feels like a wonderful release of energy, a sense of efficacy, and a strong sense of self. It provides a surge of pleasure and self-assertion. But if that person really feels what is going on deeply inside, they will see that it isn't only outward directed; it is really damaging. It is very painful to feel inside how anger lives in us. It is very rare that it is a clean anger; certainly, if it is hostility, it is not.

So we learn to sit, turn our attention inward, and settle our reactivity. The important thing to understand is that settling our reactivity is not meant to be a repression of ourselves. It is not meant to belittle ourselves or deny what is happening. If we can use things like anger, frustration, weariness, fear, and sadness—sometimes what is most useful is to see them as messengers. We want to respect the message. We want to hear the message and ask, "What is the message here that is really needed?" Perhaps we can't really hear the message well until we have settled down, relaxed, and learned not to be entangled or caught up in the experience.

I find it useful, if I get too angry, to not speak and not act, if the situation allows for that. I do my inner work first, finding a way so that I am no longer caught in the grip of the emotion, no longer pushed by its wave. Then I consider what the wise thing to do is. Do I speak up now? Do I point out the issues? Do I come back to someone and say, "I'd like to have a conversation with you about something that was difficult for me"? I have seen over and over again that the conversation tends to be much more productive. People generally do not respond well to receiving anger; they get defensive, reactive, and angry themselves.

Sometimes if you are strong or powerful enough with your anger, people will back down. You can get your way with strong enough anger. But it is really not a useful way of doing things. It is usually counterproductive. It will come back and bite us. It may be useful in a moment, but not over a long period of time.

Over a long period of time, I think we want to figure out how we can cooperate with others. How do we create a cooperative world? How do we create a collaborative situation in this world where we learn how to talk with each other, be together, and respect each other for all the feelings we have? If other people know we respect their anger, and we are not angry or afraid in return, then they can relax. They might feel it is easier to speak up and say what needs to be said, because we are holding their anger and willing to feel it in a respectful, kind way.

Sometimes I think one of the most important things this country could use is a lot of wisdom about anger. It is a societal issue. Doing our personal work to become wise and skillful in dealing with all forms of anger—from the mildest irritations to the strongest forms of wrath—is a contribution to our society. As a society, we have to learn to become wise. If we are wise about it, it is easier to do what is wise. It is easier to live from our care, concern, love, and compassion for others. We are less likely to be selfish.

Instead of being selfish, we take all of us into account. Recognizing who we are as a society and as a globe, we see that we are in this together. May we all live cooperatively together, wise about each other's feelings, and wise about these messengers. Let us listen to each other carefully. Let's be wise, and let's meditate every day so we can start fresh. We can have fresh, new eyes to engage in the world as if each day is new, not building up tension day after day. We put it down every day and start fresh. Then, no matter how limited your life is, it can be glorious. There can be a treasure just in being in your home or in your neighborhood.

May this practice of ours help you to live a rich, valuable, meaningful, caring life that has very few needs that can be frustrated. Thank you all, and I look forward to being here with you again next Sunday.

---

[^1]: **Hostility (_Dosa_ / _Vyāpāda_):** In Buddhist psychology, the Pali term _dosa_ (often translated as aversion, anger, or hatred) or _vyāpāda_ (ill will) refers to the negative, rejecting, or hostile state of mind, which is considered an unskillful root (_akusala-mūla_) causing suffering.

[^2]: **Desert Fathers:** Early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the third century AD. They are renowned for their profound psychological and spiritual insights.

[^3]: **The Fire of Anger:** In Buddhist teachings, anger (_dosa_) is often likened to a fire that consumes the person holding it. A famous analogy compares harboring anger to picking up a hot coal to throw at someone else; you are the one who gets burned first.