Chris Marti:
... my concern is with expectations of following the path, the parameters of human possibility, and for buddhists those are fundamentally based around the Buddha's experience.
I know that's your concern but there's simply no way to know. The Buddha lived 2,500 years ago and everything we know about that person comes from an oral tradition. I think it's better, just in terms of what's actually possible to accomplish, to measure your expectations against the people in this time that you can actually interact with, ask opinions of, or get suggestions from.
There have been some people who have, in the recent past, claimed to have eliminated their emotions (anger, for exmple) only to walk that back after some period of time. I think the goal of elminating anger is just not worth the time because it's not possible. What is possible is what multiple people on this thread have suggested - you can change the way you experience anger internally and thus chnage the way it gets expressed externally.
Thanks Chris. I think that this is difficult to judge because even the number of people who live in an awakened way but experience emotions like anger is pretty small, and in that there seems to be a subset of people who say that their emotions are gone, and I do know of a couple who claim this, but nobody has tested them... except maybe Jeff Martin.
I'm surprised that, if the buddha shows no sign of being subject to anger, that this is not taken at face value. I suppose this is a pragmatic view - testing ancient scripture against what seems possible in contemporary life, which is very sensible. But it's not in itself proof that Buddha was lying or mistranslated over the ages, all it is is proof of the state of people we know.
Are we to assume that the scriptures with the buddhas angry outbursts got lost along the way ? Why would that happen ? And what else has been lost along the way ?
And even if it turns out to be impossible to be totally free, at what point is anger seen as a defilement, and at what point as Tara Brach says, as a benefit ?
If buddha thought in the same way as someone like Brach, is there any reliable scripture that says so ?
So there's a big variance in what various teachers are saying about anger. Eckart Tolle for instance holds it to be a product of fear and powerlessness. Is there any other reason for anger ? If this is the case, then we have to assume that awakened people are subject to fear and powerlessness, even though they live in profound harmony with life and have supposedly overcome the illusion of death of a separate self. Wasn't overcoming death one of Buddha's main drives in his story ?
I know for some teachers, getting to a point of selflessness, and getting that sort of mindful attitude to anger is an important preliminary to a deeper stage of being completely free of emotions. At least they say, so it becomes a matter of what we believe about others, what we believe is possible.
Expecting others to be free of anger is difficult, though, because it's like expecting others to be fearless and powerless all the time - so how do you do that ? I thought that a spiritual life was meant to do that, to cut through the fight and flight mechanism by showing the animal part of us that we are part of a greater whole, that death is an illusion, that we are one with our threatening environment, that there is nothing to fear.
If that's not so then the only way to be free of fear is to physically be safe, the rat race struggle to be secure and well fed, or never take chances. And if you want others to be free then ensure they are secure and well fed and not subject to risk. Which means law, money, physical power of threat, and generally a lot of clinging and atttachment.