1. Anthony de Mello writes in Awareness:
Imagine a patient who goes to a doctor and tells him what he is suffering from. The doctor says, “Very well, I’ve understood your symptoms. Do you know what I will do? I will prescribe a medicine for your neighbor!” The patient replies, “Thank you very much, Doctor, that makes me feel much better.” Isn’t that absurd? But that’s what we all do. The person who is asleep always thinks he’ll feel better if somebody else changes. You’re suffering because you are asleep, but you’re thinking, “How wonderful life would be if somebody else would change; how wonderful life would be if my neighbor changed, my wife changed, my boss changed.”
Your problems with other people are a reflection of yourself. You see the world as you are.
The most effective solution to your problems isn’t to change somebody else, but to change the conditions that you’re creating.
2. A classic zen koan:
A monk wishing to meditate away from others takes a boat and goes to the middle of a lake. He closes his eyes and begins to meditate. After a few hours of uninterrupted silence, he suddenly feels and hears a bumping of another boat hitting his.
He keeps on with his practice, with his eyes still closed, slightly disturbed though by the interruption of silence. He then feels the bump again. Now his thoughts rise and an irritation stirs within him. His anger rises to the point that he cannot contain it any longer. He is ready to shout at the boatman “who dares to disturb my meditation!”
However, when he opened his eyes, all that he sees is an empty boat, just floating in the middle of the lake… At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization and understands that anger is within him; it simply needs to hit an external object to provoke it.
After that, whenever the monk met someone or something that irritated or provoked his anger, he remembered: “Its just an empty boat…The anger is inside me.”
Take things impersonally. If the same thing happened but nobody else was involved, would you be upset?
3. Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga write in The Courage to Be Disliked:
One day, a mother and daughter were quarreling loudly. Then, suddenly, the telephone rang. “Hello?” The mother picked up the receiver hurriedly, her voice still thick with anger. The caller was her daughter’s homeroom teacher. As soon as the mother realized who was phoning, the tone of her voice changed and she became very polite. Then, for the next five minutes or so, she carried on a conversation in her best telephone voice. Once she hung up, in a moment, her expression changed again and she went straight back to yelling at her daughter.
…
In a word, anger is a tool that can be taken out as needed. It can be put away the moment the phone rings, and pulled out again after one hangs up. The mother isn’t yelling in anger she cannot control. She is simply using the anger to overpower her daughter with a loud voice and thereby assert her opinions.
What emotions are you using as tools? Better yet, what is your goal with the tool? If you want to hang your painting, you might not need to buy a drill.