Что можно сказать о соотношении гнева и творчества?
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This is an interesting concept. I have heard His Holiness discuss this several times. He has differentiated between anger and hate. Hate can have no positive outcome. In some instances anger can. In Tibetan Buddhism there are wrathful deities like Yamantaka ( who is the wrathful aspect of the diety of wisdom - Manjushrishri who do act in a “wrathful manner” for the greater good. An example of this might be like angrily (apparently) disciplining of a child who refuses to behave when asked politely not to do something. (Or Christ throwing the money lenders out of the temple.) This anger is not a reactive anger, but an active anger that had been thought about and planned carefully to have a given effect.
Dieties in Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism are archetypical characters each symbolic of certain qualities. Some have been given a bad rap by Westerners who have a limited understanding. Another example in the Hindu goddess Kali. The wrathful diety’s goal is to rid us of selfishness (egotistic actions).
There are many actions where moral indignation has been a motivating factor to very positive actions. Gandhi, the woman who started mothers against drunk drivers, etc
Jan B. Newman,MA,MD,FACS,ABHM
3436 Mountain Dr
Clinton, MT 59825
1-406-258-6284
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Hi K
As others have mentioned already, a look into Bi-polar disorder will be good.
The following is a great link to a be-zillion further references into
bi-polar - and you will find loads of "creativity" references:
http://www.abc.net.au/quantum/scripts98/9824/manic.htm
The ABC Quantum is Australia's government broadcaster of science stuff. You will note the mention of Kay Redfield Jamison, a US psychiatrist with manic depressive illness, who has written a book about manic depression and creativity called Touched with Fire (Free Press/MacMillan) …
Enjoy this and hope it is useful.
Good luck on your research - it is very valuable "mind and life" work indeed!
Caterina De Re
RPI, NY
MLRN Discussion List
In Healing Anger- The Power of Patience from a Buddhist Perspective the Dalai Lama writes :
"Generally speaking there are many afflictive emotions such as conceit, arrogance, jealousy, desire, lust, closed-mindedness, and so on, but of all these , hatred or anger is singled out as the greatest evil. This is done for two reasons.
One is that hatred or anger is the greatest stumbling block for a practioner who is aspiring to enhance his or her bodhicitta-- altruistic aspiration and a good heart. Anger or hatred is the greatest obstacle to that.
Second, when hatred and anger are generated they have the capacity to destroy one's virtue and calmness of mind. It is due to these reasons that hatred is considered the greatest evil.
Hatred is one of the six root afflictions according to Buddhist psychology. The Tibetan word for it is "zhe dang" (Tib.zhe sdang), which can be translated as either "anger" or "hatred" in English. However, I feel that it should be translated as "hatred" because "anger" as it is understood in English, can be positive in very special circumstances. These occur when anger is motivated by compassion or when it acts as an impetus or a catalyst for a positive action. In such rare circumstances anger can be positive whereas hatred can never be positive. It is totally negative.
Since hatred is totally negative, it should never be used to translate the Tibetan word "zhe dang" when it appears in the context of tantra. Sometimes we hear the expression "taking hatred into the path". This is a mistranslation. In this context hatred is not the right word; one should use "anger",:" taking anger into the path. So the Tibetan word can be translated as either "anger" or "hatred", but "anger" can be positive, therefore, when "zhe dang" refers to the afflictive emotion it must be translated as "hatred". (pg 7)
In Sanskrit the word for anger is krodha which translates as anger, wrath, passion. Anger is personified as the child of Lobha and Nikriti. Lobha is perplexity or confusion: eager desire for or longing after; covetousness, cupidity or avarice.
Nikriti is low conduct, baseness, dishonesty, fraud, wickedness.(The word also means to cut apart, to undercut, to destroy.) She is the daughter of a-dharma. Alternatively Nikriti is the sister of Lobha and daughter of Dambha, who is deceit, fraud, feigning, hypocrisy.
Thus one could say that anger dependently arises from the preexistent conditions of confusion and desire coupled with dishonesty. In this context anger is delusional and by definition can never be dharmic. This differentiation has to be made in the definition of "anger".
I think that this may be one of the problems with the English word "anger". Perhaps there should be a differentiation between "anger" which is malevolent and delusional and "righteous indignation" which may give rise to positive social and personal change.
This leads back to the comments on manic-depression. In my limited experience with patients with manic depression, I have found that they may be highly talented people, but I have yet to find one who is honest. I have found most of them to be highly manipulative with the goal to achieving something for themselves. I have found them to be deeply conflicted. Their conflicts and therefore their dis-ease is born out of their (self) dishonesty and selfishness or atleast confusion. Their "creativity" may arise from their attempts to resolve their inner conflicts.
Patience is the antidote to anger. I like to go back to the Sanskrit terms because Sanskrit is one of the original languages of Buddhism. I find that it often displays a fuller meaning and color to the words than English does.
The words for patience in Sanskrit are ksham and sahan. Ksham means to be patient or composed, suppress anger, be quiet, to endure, allow permit, to suffer, but ksham also means earth implying to "be grounded" as in "not flying off". Sahan means to be united with oneself.
From this origin patience implies much more than "just waiting". It is an active, sometimes painful, stepping back to get clarity- truth -and to insure that one's actions are dharmic, e.g from altruistic intent, and come from a place of "Self-wholeness", rather than from a place of inadequacy, desire or need e.g ego, before responding.
I am doing a workshop on dealing with difficult people and emotions in about a month. Anger is one of the emotions I have been exploring for this talk.
It seems I have been fortunate enough to be dealing with a lot of selfish angry people lately. I haven't found patience to be an easy practice. My own anger certainly hasn't led me to be more creative. It has, however, disrupted my sleep and made me unpleasant company. Sapolsky, in his talk in D.C, spoke about monkeys who were attacked by monkeys. He noted that their usual solution was to find another monkey to take their frustrations out on. That too didn't appear to be highly creative.
Jan B. Newman.