There are many topics and ways to discipline the mind. In Buddhism, the general understanding and meaning when you hear or read about discipling the mind is to have a calm mind, an aware mind. But for right now, I’ll just talk about disciplining the mind from anger.
We should always be aware and realize our negative emotions when they happen. You want to pause for a minute and be aware that you are angry, frustrated, or sad. Be aware of what is causing these emotions. That way, when you meditate you can meditate on the awarenesses you made. To know the very specific, deep, core reason that made you angry can help you transform that anger into happiness, love, and compassion.
A lot of things can make you angry. Slow drivers and waiting in line for longer than usual seems to be the universal “anger situations” for most people. This is just superficial anger – you know it’s the slow drivers and long lines that’s angering you, but why? Why and how do the slow drivers and long lines have any direct affect on you? Yeah, maybe it’s making you late to work and you have things to do, or maybe you’re just impatient and you have an undisciplined mind. Also, if you’re ever late for something, it’s usually your fault anyway (you should be able to check and predict traffic, weather, etc. things you can foretell, so you leave a little early – if you don’t, whose fault is that?).
So how do we discipline our mind? First, as I mentioned, is to be aware. To be mindful of all our thoughts and emotions. Our thoughts are very powerful. Thinking something negative and destructive is just as bad as actually acting on it. So it’s important to be mindful of our thoughts. This is a very difficult task, because we innately think all the time. Whether we’re criticizing someone’s outfit, daydreaming about mass-murder, or imagining about calling out and cursing at our boss. It’s habitual. So since it takes time and extreme effort to “stop” these thoughts, we condition ourselves to stop the thought before or as it’s forming. For example, if you’re just walking down the street and someone bumps into you and doesn’t apologize, we usually call them a few not-so-nice words, right? So if the thought of, “What a …” pops up, right then and there you want to stop it and remind yourself to be mindful, say ‘no,’ and let it pass.
I do the saying ‘no’ bit, and personally, it’s really help lessen any negative thoughts a lot. It’s a great exercise, because you’re doing two things: you’re being mindful of the negative thought and you’re verbally and mindfully reminding yourself to stop! With practice, negative and angry thoughts and feelings to decrease, and eventually they might even stop because you know it’s wrong, it’s harmful, it isn’t beneficial, and it’s not doing any good for you.
It’s important to discover the causes of our suffering, the second Noble Truth. By finding the root causes of our suffering (why this makes me angry), we can have the cessation of suffering (doing something about it). The Noble Eightfold Path is the path that leads us to the cessation of our suffering. It is the way to help us condition our mind and life to become better people, for ourselves and for others. It’s also important that when bad or frustrating things do happen to just be aware of it and acknowledge it, and then just let it be because it’s something that’s already happened and there’s nothing you can do about it. The only thing you can do is live in the now and know that right now whatever bad or frustrating thing that just happened is OK, because it happened in the past and it’s giving you a challenge to practice and move on.
Smile and be well!