This week’s email contains three lessons or reflections - the previous two weeks and this week. They seem a part of a sequence and may be valuable to reflect upon them as a group, each leading to the next.
It began two weeks ago with the reflection on anger and hatred, emotions that can take root especially now as we witness the suffering of so many people in our own country and because of our own country in ways that seemed unimaginable to us a few years ago. Last week we viewed a Youtube called ?The Spiral Path on Transcendent Dependent Liberation" (see below). Ajahn Kovilo of the Clear Mountain Monastery describes this path from suffering to liberation as based on the foundational principle that each step on the path to freedom conditions the arising of the next step, just as water flowing down a mountain fills the pools at the top until these overflow and cascade down to lower pools.
In one way or another, many of you have heard of the Buddha’s teaching on Dependent Origination which lays out the entire cycle of our earthly suffering starting with ignorance which conditions our habit patterns, unconscious choices, karmic knots. It too is based on that same foundational principle that one step on the path to suffering conditions the next. It is therefore encouraging to know that the conditions that lead to liberation condition each other, support each other, and create movement toward freedom as well. Once we can place our feet on the path to freedom, the path has a movement all its own.
In Dependent Origination, the path to earthly suffering, a critical point arises when we experience a contact with our world through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body or mind called the six sense spheres. We experience that contact, that sight, sound, etc. as positive, negative or neutral. If the contact is positive, wanting arises. If negative, not wanting or aversion arises. If neutral, we are deluded and according to Ajahn Kovilo engage in repetitive habit patterns to not feel (binge watching, doom scrolling, procrastinating, whatever behavior shuts us down). The wanting, not wanting or deluded behaviors lead to attachment and clinging to having good experiences and avoiding bad experiences.
Ajahn Kovilo points out - as have other teachers - that this point of experiencing the positive, negative, or neutral feeling tone is one very favorable point for escape from the wheel of conditioned suffering. The key is wise attention - becoming aware that the unpleasant sensation has arisen and that aversion may quickly follow and tangle us up.
We often experience suffering non-verbally, through our bodies and our feelings, or through different reactive thoughts or thought patterns. Connecting our non-verbal suffering with the words in these ancient teachings may be challenging. The Buddha always encouraged a process of hearing the teachings and pondering and reflecting upon them as well as sitting in meditation. This prescription has been key to finding the connections between these wisdom teachings and our every day suffering. Suddenly through reading, listening, and reflection, they come alive for us.
As the heat and humidity settled in last week, I found myself thinking of vacations in Seattle or Nantucket or Canada - anywhere cool. I also found myself despairing that global warming was rendering all cool places not so cool. The heat and wildfire smoke in Seattle over several years tarnished its image in my mind of the great escape from oppressive heat. I recognized that I go through this every August (now July) remembering late summer escapes from the heat of NYC for a few precious weeks. It was a conditioned reaction and arose predictably every summer. I just had to wait it out.
This week, remembering Ajahn Kovilo’s urging to look for examples of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral in our daily lives, I saw it with fresh eyes - not as a memory of the past, but as suffering in this present moment fueled by one simple arising. I didn’t like the heat. It was unpleasant and I wanted it to go away. The aversion was strong and persistent and had been operating out of conscious awareness for several days. As wise attention was finally aroused, I could see the aversion, the dislike. Mindfulness awakened, it was clear I had been avoiding these unpleasant experiences and trying to escape them by fantasies of leaving town. I also noted strong selfing. “I" didn’t like this heat. “I" needed to get this heat out of “my" life, find better conditions for “myself."
As I turned toward the unpleasantness and allowed it to be seen, the self weakened. There was warmth, humidity, stickiness, sweatiness, unpleasant sensations. And that’s all. It was a relatively neutral experience - not so overwhelming in reality.
The obsessive thoughts and aversion disappeared. It turned out to be a persistent habit pattern, operating under the radar until Ajahn Kovilo encouraged us all to look for the positive, negative or neutral feeling tones leading to attachment or aversion in our daily lives.
These patterns abound. We have only to know where to look.
Ajahn Kovilo recapped the spiral this way - wise attention (or mindfulness) leads to seeing the arising of positive, negative, or neutral experiences which gives rise to joy (just being mindful is a condition for joy) which gives rise to delight which gives rise to calming the body which gives rise to happiness which gives rise to concentration which gives rise to a collected mind which can see things as they really are which gives rise to disenchantment with chasing after pleasure and avoiding pain as the recipe for happiness which gives rise to dispassion and liberation. The later steps are more clearly visible in our meditation practice but it starts with our awareness of positive, negative, or neutral.
Our challenge these days - and all days - is to rise to whatever pressures are causing us to suffer, to turn toward them, investigate them, understand how they operate upon us, and just put them down. And to do so with kindness and compassion for ourselves and others.
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From July 14th, 2025
Last week we spent some time reflecting on anger and hatred and how destructive these emotions are - to ourselves as well as others. What is being destroyed by anger and hatred is our own happiness and our own capacity for tranquillity, calm and concentration. Many of you have tasted these beautiful states and learned to cherish them. When we allow anger and hatred to take hold, we are cut off from the beautiful and wholesome states of mind that we turned to meditation for in the first place.
Tricycle Magazine is currently offering a movie called Honeygiver Among the Dogs. Set in the Buddhist country of Bhutan, a beautiful spiritual woman is suspected of murder and tracked by a policeman who comes to believe in her innocence. It turns out she is using the policeman to lead her to the people who wrongly accused her and who are trying to steal land from the nunnery. Her mission is based on compassion as she wants to talk to the perpetrators and help release them from the torments of greed and anger. Toward the end, one of the perpetrators says he has given up trying to steal the land from the nunnery as the greed itself was exhausting and making him unhappy.
Only a movie and only in a Buddhist country perhaps, but the message is an enlightening one for us. The beautiful spiritual woman evinced such peace and calm throughout the movie in her serene expression, her unhurried movements, her tranquil demeanor as she stopped to take in the beauties of the countryside, that the denouement was totally right when it came. Rather than experiencing anger and hatred at the men who framed her and tried to steal the land of the nunnery, she felt immense compassion for them knowing how lost they were in their greed.
Tonight I want to share with you Ajahn Kovilo’s teaching of Transcendent Origination. Ajahn Kovilo is one of two Ajahns who lead the Clear Mountain Monastery in Seattle. His bio includes the following: "Ajahn Kovilo first encountered meditation through the Goenka tradition and entered the monastery in 2006, receiving full ordination from Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro at Abhayagiri Monastery in 2010.” He studied in the Thai Forest tradition with senior disciples of Ajahn Chah whom I have mentioned in the pages many times. More can be found on their website below.
I wrote about the teaching on Transcendent Origination last week and have included that email below. What Ajahn Kovilo’s teaching highlights is the path out of suffering, a path of joy, rapture, tranquillity, happiness, concentration all the way to liberation, a path in which one quality flows out of the presence of the one before as naturally as water flowing downhill.
But the other reason I want to share this with you is the joy and happiness that flit in and out of Ajahn Kovila’s face and being as he talks. His joy and happiness are infectious and, at least for me, reminded me of the wonderful qualities of mind that I experienced in my concentration practice as I walked the path he described. These wonderful emotions are also a reminder of what we become separated from if we allow anger and hatred to take root in us.
One thing that I want to stress here is that while the Buddha was teaching a path from suffering to liberation or enlightenment, there is the overall path and journey and there are many such smaller liberations along the way. These smaller liberations are available to us all as we practice and many of you have experienced these liberations often. So allow yourself to open to the joy and happiness that radiate from Ajahn Kovilo. You may have a memory of such feelings in your practice and you may also notice how his joy and happiness inspire similar feelings in yourself.
Much of what he says will be somewhat familiar to you but you may notice some variations in how he teaches vs what I have shared here. Nevertheless, everything he says supports the power and beauty of the teaching and communicates his genuine delight in the both the teaching and practice.
This teaching is about 30 minutes long but includes an opening meditation after a brief introduction. So we will start our evening with this teaching, break for a brief period of mindful movement, and then sit for the remainder of our time.
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From July 7th, 2025:
When the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet, many of the monks left behind were captured by the Chinese and subjected to imprisonment and torture. One such monk escaped and found his way to the Dalai Lama. In his conversation with the Dalai Lama, the monk confessed that he had been in very grave danger. The Dalai Lama nodding acknowledging the danger of the monk’s time of imprisonment. But the monk demurred saying that he had been in grave danger of hating his captors. The danger the monk spoke of was not to his life or his body but to the purity of his mind. He understood that hatred and anger only beget more hatred and anger and do grave harm to the individual who is captured by hatred and anger.
This is not new news. The great religions have all pointed to the vicious cycle of hatred and anger. We only have to read the news or history books to see how hatred and anger can be manipulated to cause whole peoples to annihilate or attempt to annihilate other peoples - usually of a different religion or ethnicity. This hatred is learned, passed on from generation to generation, transmitted through lies and manipulations from leaders to followers. If all ills are blamed on a certain group of people, if those people are belittled by slurs and comparisons to sub-human or non-human beings, if those people become perceived as threats to the dominant group, hatred and anger grow. Hatred and anger can be habitual, can become negative habits.
The Buddha called anger the poisoned arrow with the honeyed tip. The honey of anger is self-righteousness, being right, being better than other people. Maybe that translates into the momentary safety of belonging to a stronger or dominant group. Maybe it’s fueled by seeing something or someone cared for threatened or destroyed and blaming a certain group for the threat or destruction. But hatred or anger has a blindness to it, an unreasoning quality. It doesn’t stop to check the facts. It doesn’t stop to feel compassion for the individual caught in hatred or anger or the human beings who are its targets. In fact, it objectifies its human targets.
And to add insult to injury, it does not even make us happy. In fact, hatred and anger interfere with our attempts at happiness by perpetuating a deep restlessness upon us. Hatred and anger interfere with our peaceful meditations, with tranquility, joy, happiness, all the qualities that support our progress on the spiritual path, that support our concentration and insight. We know hatred and anger as one of the five hindrances along with desire, agitation, sloth and torpor, and doubt.
There is a corollary teaching related to the chain of dependent origination which shows us how ignorance takes us step by step to birth, death and all the misery that goes along with it. This teaching is Transcendental Origination or Dependent Libration. It starts at the end of the chain of dependent origination, at suffering, and shows how faith or confidence can arise out of suffering. That faith or confidence leads to gladdening which leads to joy which leads to tranquility which leads to happiness. It is often said that concentration is dependent on happiness. Many meditators understand this who have tried fruitlessly to bear down hard to concentrate. Concentration arises naturally when conditioned by happiness. Out of concentration comes insight, seeing things are they really are which leads to dis-enchantment with seeking happiness in worldly pleasures which leads to dispassion, freedom, and knowledge of the destruction of the taints.
Some of the teachings on Transcendental Origination place the beginning point on virtue rather than suffering and faith. This virtue gives rise to non-remorse and gladness and is developed by a life of non-harming, both in speech and action and also in our minds. This non-harming stands in direct opposition to hatred and anger.
So hatred and anger are important obstacles to our own happiness. Bhikkus Bramali in his tract “Dependent Liberation” (https://samita.be/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/dl.pdf) considers our habitual tendencies around hatred and anger to be a major area of our spiritual path to be considered. He says, “To overcome anger we need to ask ourselves how we can look at the world around us in a different way. Is there a way of looking at it so that these negative states don’t arise? You will find that if you put effort into such reflection then over time you will gradually change - you will start to see things in a new way; you will start to see the world with more compassion and kindness.”
He goes on to say, “Often people think that will-power is the way to deal with harmful mental qualities. They think they can force themselves to be kind, that they can crush the anger, crush the negativity. …But what the Buddha is really saying is that the best way to overcome negative states is to use wisdom (MN19).”
One of the most powerful tenets of wisdom we can use to soften anger is to see deeply and completely how destructive anger is to ourselves and to others, to everything we value on our spiritual path. Seeing through anger is a critical first step to weakening its influence in our lives.
Dr. Judson Brewer’s analysis of habit loops can be helpful here as well. If a habit is composed of a trigger, a behavior, and a result, one place we can begin to look to weaken the habit pattern is at the result. What are we getting out of this habit pattern? He found in his studies of smoking that when people took a long, intense, non-judgmental look at what the results of smoking were, they were surprised to find how completely negative the results were. It didn’t taste good, it didn’t smell good, it was disgusting to look at (imagine crushing out the cigarette in unfinished food as we used to in college). Basically there was a whole lot of Yuck! People quit smoking in much larger numbers and for longer periods of time when they looked closely and dispassionately at the results of the habit.
It wouldn’t be surprising if many of you have already seen many of the less pleasant results of hatred and anger in your own lives. Most of us don’t go around popping off at friends and neighbors, family and pets very often - because it doesn’t feel good, because we inevitably pile a greater wrong on top of the misdemeanor we were angry about in the first place, and because then we have to go through a very uncomfortable process of remorse and apology. Better to avoid it in the first place.
But these times have piled onto us circumstances that are dismaying, painful, heartbreaking. And sometimes our response is a reaction - anger and hatred at those who perpetuate the horrible conditions we are witnessing and hearing about.
What then?
First is to recognize that the anger and hatred we may be feeling are more destructive to ourselves than they are helpful to the situation. Not only can we ourselves see that the anger and hatred doesn’t make us happy, we can take heart that the Buddha’s teachings show us that these negative mental factors directly interfere with our happiness, our tranquillity, our ability to concentrate, in short, in our ability to meditate and regain a peaceful mind that we came to meditation for in the first place. Now, as well as supporting a happy and pure mind, we find that meditation depends on a happy, pure mind to begin with.
So we are turned and turned again to the task of investigating our anger and our hatred. We might understand that watching the news is the trigger, the behavior is the arising of anger and hatred and the result is angry thoughts, angry speech, angry actions. We are poisoning ourselves and the atmosphere around us when that habit pattern gets activated.
Mindfulness, clear seeing of what is happening is the first step. What are the results of our anger and hatred? Do we see deeply into the harmful nature of these mental states? Accessing, practicing, calling upon compassion and kindness are powerful solutions. As the Dalai Lama said, the religion I practice is kindness.
None of this is new. None of this is surprising. But the circumstances of our world have brought news of harm, images of harm, plans for continued harm closer to us, into our news feeds, into our conversations, into our plans for resistance.
Our task is to recognize the power of these harmful occurrences to corrupt our minds and to prevent us from accessing our usual sources for peace and tranquillity. As Joseph Goldstein said and I have quoted before, “Our practice is only as strong as the challenges we have met so far.”
And we can all understand and be inspired by the Dalai Lama’s monk who said he was in very grave danger of hating his captors. We also are in danger, and our task is to see anger and hatred, not as useful responses to circumstances, but as threats to our ability to combat these circumstances with compassion and kindness and to replace hatred with love and joy.