Couple weeks ago I finished the Ajahn Brahm’s book Who Ordered This Truckload Of Dung?, the 2nd. This is may be the most enlightening book I had ever read. The book is like the chicken-soup short story only that it is a Buddhist monk experience, known as Ajahn Brahm. One of the stories that stunned me is about anger. While modern psychology tells us to manage our anger, he simply said how not to be angry, two steps earlier before anger takes place.
Anger, the book said, takes us buried deeper. Being angry makes our feeling worse and sadder than the sad moment actually took. When we are angry it is like we shoot fireball to anyone who make us angry by our hand. Sometimes we got and hurt the target but sometimes not. One thing for sure, every time we shoot, the fireball hurt our hand.
I used to think that being angry or sad is just like being happy. It is natural. I feel it without thinking that we have a capacity for not being angry. The book said anger and sad are like a truckload of dung. How can we live well if we have to take the heavy and rotten dung everywhere we go?
But the question then how come we not be angry while at the same time everything seems not like we expected? Ajahn Brahm said we can choose to have a heart made by Teflon, by not letting everything attached in our heart. This includes sadness, anger, and happiness. By not letting everything attached in our heart, we live at the moment and not to be burdened by the past, whatever it was.
But this is not the same as an approval for everything bad we did or experienced. By not letting every mistake attached in our life means we are very sorry, we forgive others, we forgive ourselves and then we move on. For whatever mistakes others made, we said our heart is always open for them. For whatever our mistakes that made our live worse, we are very sorry and we said that our heart will always open for ourselves, sincerely.
The most unexpectable is that even the happiness is included in something that we should not be attached with. Ajahn Brahms said the happiness with our passed-away parents, sisters, and relatives made us difficult to let them go. Be happy when the moment happened but move on, live happily with whatever we have today.
The message of the book is consistent with my favorite wise line, “when you love yourself truly, you will never be angry with anyone”.
