anger
Is “Cheating” A Get Out Of Hell Free” Card?
I just watched “It’s Complicated”—great movie. In it Meryl Streep’s character admits the divorce wasn’t entirely “his fault”. (Sadly, this is full of irony in and of itself. But more about that later.) Then she says “but I didn’t have to admit it because you cheated”.
This is one I have heard over and over—people are getting a divorce because “he cheated” with an occasional “she cheated.”
It’s actually fairly hard to suss out how many ways this belief system-–this shibboleth—makes me crazy.
Let’s see if I can pull apart the tangled threads:
1. 99% of these people had multiple partners before marriage—and sex before marriage.
2. Studies show a HUGE number if partners ADMIT to having additional sexual partners after marriage.
3. Many scientific studies sow that it is built into both man and, yes, women, to have multiple sexual partners.
4. It is IMPOSSIBLE that in ANY of these cases no other betrayals of any sort had taken place.
Listen to Your Anger and Use It Effectively
I get tired of New Age gurus preaching that I shouldn’t be angry. The fact is, sometimes I am angry. I am angry when people I trust betray me. I am angry when people make promises they don’t keep.
Anger was not considered a “nice” emotion in my birth family. My mother rarely expressed it. Neither did my father. There was an occasional exception.
Pausing to refresh
As I begin this post, I realize that I will use the Buddha as a point of reference. I want to be clear that I do not intend to proselytize. He is simply my teacher. I don't cite to him as an absolute authority or deity, but someone whose teachings help me live in line with my aspirations. And so ...
Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something. In this post, I want to address mindfulness of feelings, one of the four foundations of mindfulness. (Sattipattana Sutta) Today, I had the opportunity to practice this aspect of mindfulness in difficult circumstances.
An Attorney Transformed: Len Scheff Transforms His Anger
It’s one of those stories that can help define a life, although the hero of this one says it was just part of a progression. S. Leonard Scheff had already been “messing around with Buddhism for years” when he handled quite a bit of legal work to help facilitate the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tucson, Arizona, in 1993. So, he figures, he was probably already receptive to the message His Holiness presented. At the same time, though, getting that message to hit home took another, less kindly teacher.