The one emotion you need to let go of if you’re on a spiritual path.
Spoiler alert: it’s not anger.
Alternative title: hi, how are you? I’m a Buddhist and I’m here to defend anger.
Please also note: this is coming from a Buddhist perspective. Read my bio. But you can apply it to other faiths or lack thereof. If you’re unreligious but “just into mindfulness”, maybe this is for you too.
Anger gets a bad rep. Some people genuinely think it’s destructive and bad and we should do away with it. Other people disingenuously preach that (especially western Buddhist “gurus” — whom I’d rather call narcissistic cult leaders. Beware them. Beware anyone who shames you for feeling anger. Anger is GOOD AND NECESSARY, because it allows you to fight for justice).
Anger is only bad in excess, or when it becomes a habit. But then again… which emotion ISN’T bad in excess? Even joy can be bad in excess. Even bliss! (because it blinds you to the darkness that needs addressing and healing in the world). Come on now. Let’s not be dumb.
So, let’s get that out of the way before we even start: anger is not the villain. Anger is just like any other emotion. Let it be. Let it come and let it go. Stop stigmatising it. And above all else, stop disingenuously cherrypicking religious teachings in order to stigmatise it. Buddha never said it was all-bad. No Boddhisattva ever said it was all-bad, either. There are literally TONS of Buddhist and Hindu deities (yes, the two faiths share a pantheon, and so does Shamanism) who teach us about productive anger. The people who try to convince you that it’s all-bad are trying to control you and boss you around (because people who never rebel, never feel anger, and therefore are ideal cult members, open and willing to get brainwashed. I’ll repeat: BEWARE).
The bad emotion I’m talking about, instead, is contempt.
Well… I wouldn’t say contempt is all-bad. Nothing is all-bad. The world is best understood in nuance, not in black-or-white. But this article stands as a warning against letting your contempt dominate you, if your objective is to walk a spiritual path.
Let’s unpack the reason why:
An angry person can still listen to spiritual guidance. A contemptuous person, however, cannot.
Contempt makes you look down on people, situations, places, whatever it is you feel contempt against. It makes you feel superior in comparison, it makes you feed your ego and close your ears to any dissonant input.
Right?
I’m not saying anger can’t be felt together with contempt. It can, and it happens (for example, “how dare so-and-so do [insert thing here]! The audacity! I had to remind them of my credentials/who they were dealing with” — implying you’re angry at them because you feel entitled to preferential treatment. Superiority and contempt); But essentially, anger and contempt are different things. Most of the times, when anger is manifesting, a myriad of other motivations can be behind it. It could be your sense of justice ticking (which is driven by a need for equality, not superiority), or an outrage (driven by annoyance with a repeating pattern, not superiority), reactivity (driven by discomfort with receiving aggression, not superiority) etc. You get the idea.
So, anger is not contempt. And they rarely come together. But what does come together with contempt more often? Well, here is what I have observed so far:
Pity, for example, often hides contempt. “Oh, I feel so sorry for so-and-so. If only they knew how dumb they are” (there you go. The contempt. The comparison. The superiority complex creeping in). Or, even, condescension. “Awwww, so-and-so is very cute. I miss the olden days when I was that innocent myself” (there ya go. The contempt. The comparison. The superiority complex once again). No anger was needed in either of these scenarios. See how it’s not the real villain?
In summary, to really drive this point home: anger is not the villain because it’s not a direct line of communication with your narcissism. Sometimes (often times!) it’s simply giving voice to healthier facets of the ego. So, yes, both connect to the ego (which is why you find mentions to both in Buddhist texts, warning us to handle them with care), but one is definitely worse, and if you can’t see that, you’re part of the problem. Many an oppressor has been contemptuous and “fake nice” in History. Many a victim has been angry, and rightfully so, at the oppression suffered.
All these fake gurus here in the West who keep preaching against anger (some of whom can be found here on this platform), and pretend to know a lot about Buddhism (when in fact, no they don’t, they repeat each other’s watered-down philosophy like broken records and never go any deeper) are COINCIDENTALLY ignoring all the instances when Buddhists fought (yes, fought! And still fight! Gasp! Unthinkable! lol) against oppressors and injustice. For example, in case you didn’t know, there is a Buddhist revolutionary army in Myanmar rescuing victims of human trafficking with help from Thai authorities as we speak. Oh, you didn’t hear about them? Your “Buddhist” “guru” from the West didn’t tell you (or probably, didn’t even know, because he couldn’t be arsed caring about what goes on in Asia) that when shit hits the fan in Myanmar, local Buddhists do more than just meditate “for the benefit of all”? Interesting. “Oh but these people aren’t real Buddhists”, they might say (wrong, but… Okay! I’ll bite the bait!) Here’s another example: remember that time when the Dalai Lama caused a conflict between India and China? No? You weren’t informed by western “gurus” either? Let me refresh everyone’s memory. Sure enough, it’s hard to find anyone who is more Buddhist than his Holiness.
In case anyone is wondering, I am FOR the fights I cited above. I’m always for fighting in favour of cultural autonomy and against Colonialism (because here’s a thing a lot of westerners also forget — Colonialism isn’t just a “white people” habit. It happens everywhere).
Thus, on an individual level, I’m also always in favour of fighting for individual autonomy and against the brainwashing and manipulation that happens so often in high-control cults (which aren’t always Christian, and often times are Buddhist — or culturally-appropriative fake “Buddhist” with a heavy dose of internalised Protestant American Christianity, to be more precise — especially today).
ANYWAY, now that some fake nice people’s masks have fallen, let’s talk about the contempt we all harbour inside of us.
Contempt is FUEL for narcissism. One cannot exist without the other.
I’m saying “narcissism” as in the part of our psyche, not the disorder. We all have it. Those who have the disorder simply display a continuous pattern of narcissism, but we all have it on SOME level and it’s our responsibility not to feed it or we’ll develop the disorder too.
It doesn’t always look like adopting a blasé expression and looking down on the “mere peasants” beneath you, FYI. Very few people who struggle with contempt are that performative.
More often than not, it comes hidden behind other emotions (like pity and condescension, as we saw earlier), or carefully spoon-fed behind a facade of fake “love and light”.
In fact, love it or hate it, contempt is usually the motivation behind self-aggrandising words and actions. You don’t always need to talk about the people you feel contempt against, in order to display said contempt. It can be hidden in between the lines! For example: when a self-proclaimed spiritual seeker (or worse, self-proclaimed guide) talks about the importance of pursuing a life of virtue and discipline, who are they othering? The unvirtuous and undisciplined, of course. When they elevate the value of “silence” and “going within” above all else, who are they othering? The vocal people. The people who extend a helping hand outwards and let the underdogs know they’ve got support.
You could say, “Lucy, you have to be mindful of the context”, and indeed, that’s true. I know the context of these teachings usually implies the internal issues we all have — in which case, yes, it IS wise to look at them introspectively instead of relying so much on external support — but I’m not disconsidering that. I’m just looking at the whole thing from above. I’m wondering, in this sea of messages about “introspection, solitude, silence, meditation, yadda yadda”, where are the parallel messages about actually getting our hands dirty whenever needed to help our brothers and sisters MATERIALLY?
Hell, where even are the messages about charity in this modern so-called Buddhist movement here in the West? Because in Asia they abound. But what about here? Where are they? Charity is such a standard thing in religion. The Christian, the neopagan and the atheist are doing a better job at it. Ya know… Of all the groups in aid of Palestine, for example, where I have been involved or accompanying (here in western Europe, at least), not one Buddhist soul is to be seen on the ground. They’re all just sending thoughts and prayers, but not even a penny. Why? Simple: because most western Buddhists are white, they’re not actually FROM the cultures where this faith originated, and I suspect they’re just adopting it as a more hip and trendy version of their original repressive, meek, and conformity-obsessed WASPy upbringing. It’s political, isn’t it? “Know your place”, they heard and never questioned. Meanwhile, the poorer (overwhelmingly Christian, neopagan and atheist) majority are putting actual effort into helping those in need — beyond words and “fluff”.
Love it or hate it, even if it doesn’t seem like it so on a surface level, this kind of indifference to others’ struggles camouflaged by a thin layer of beautiful words, comes from contempt.
Contempt for the “loudness” and the “gaudy, so unclassy” cries for justice that the more economically disadvantaged layers of our society (who are ironically the most generous with every cause imaginable, LOL) insist in inconveniencing them with.
Contempt for the humanness, the instinctive nature of revolutions when it would be so much better (or so the utopic daydream goes…) if we all just silently smiled and nodded at each other without “making a scene”, and the oppressors acknowledged and acquiesced to the politeness of it all.
Can you imagine the Bastille being casually surrounded by peaceful protesters saying “god bless you, one day you rich and greedy will learn to be better people”?
Can you imagine ex-Colonies achieving independence through acts of peace and love alone, while the people just sang and danced and gave each other flowers?
Can you imagine governments starting to give a damn about enacting legislation to protect our environment if it wasn’t for the likes of Greta Thunberg making noise?
Okay, maybe you can imagine that. Now tell me another fairytale. The Easter Bunny will deliver those results, you say?
“But the whole point of spirituality is enlightenment”.
No. No, it’s not. It’s A point, but not the only one. There’s also integrating all of that with the side of us that we’re feeling contemptuous towards and stigmatising: the monkey brain. Precisely the one thing that differentiates us from gods.
Divinity is a very attractive idea for our narcissism, isn’t it? Hmmmmmmmm. Maybe that’s why we unconsciously push for it, and reject what we really are?
Enlightenment is a great objective to have. So is inner peace and inner bliss. In fact, we can have all of these noble objectives while simultaneously doing what needs to be done outside of our meditation sessions. I never said we couldn’t! This isn’t an either-or scenario. It’s just ironic that some western Buddhists will occasionally talk about everything off-topic EXCEPT this: reivindicating justice. I wonder why it’s such a taboo. I wonder why they’ll even openly get into topics such as sexual liberation, witchcraft, and other topics which are frowned upon even in Asian Buddhist communities (and I’m not saying they should. I’m all for discussing “taboos”)… but they draw the line at questioning Colonialism and questioning the status quo. Wow. Just wow. It’s mind-blowing when you really think about it.
Sure enough, enlightenment is noble, but… Look here. We’re also made of a material body, aren’t we? There’s also a need for looking after it, and holding space for our “animal” side too (which includes all the “unvirtuous”, “immature”, etc emotions, without stigma, without pushing them away), not just the transcendent and noble and wholesome. Our mortality. Our physical manifestation. Our urges.
Contempt is underneath that. That good old sense of superiority against the “dirtier”, “more careless”, “more animalesque”, “louder”, “more inconvenient” (Dionysian, if I may) layers of society. Oh but I’m in the first world, am I not? We don’t have stratified societies here- bullshit. Yes we do. We just deny it.
There’s intolerance to EMOTIONAL discomfort in the mix. Intolerance to anything that would disrupt the order, disrupt the routine. Oh, no, how will we deal with such chaos and anarchy, however temporary? Better to look down on the people who propose such a thing.
No, not everyone is overtly scoffing at our “animalesque” human fallibility or building cults around this contempt… But a lot of us are JOINING the cults. As I always say, if there was no demand, there wouldn’t be any offer.
Whether you like it or not, the elephant in the room of alternative spirituality in the West is contempt. Maybe we should take a good look at these feelings of contempt against the “unevolved” when we’re seeking evolution ourselves; Against the “unvirtuous” when we’re fostering our virtues… Life isn’t a zero-sum game! You can respect and coexist with other people even if they “haven’t found the way yet” — but for that to happen, you need to let go of contempt. Yes, completely. Not just overt contempt. You can’t know if your path is the right one, after all. For all you know, maybe the people you secretly despise are more enlightened than you, and when you die and realise that, you’ll be embarrassed. (Just a hypothesis).
Allright. I hope this is enough food for thought, for the time being. Feel free to share your opinion.
