Tonight's topic is alleviating anger.

I'll be going into the tools that I use in various settings,

classrooms one-on- one and on retreats, and I'll be focusing on one specific

type of anger.

There are many types of anger, and I'll outline it first the types of anger that I won't really be

addressing just so that we can distinguish between them to give a talk on alleviating

all the different kinds of anger would not be feasible

in one half hour talk.

So there is of course anger at systemic social injustice the politicians who

incite violence and

bigotry institutions that demean and violate the rights of people of color, women, members of

LGBTQ communities and I find members of LGBTQ communities.

And I find as a lifelong lefty who grew up with parents

that were actively protesting the Vietnam War and marching with Martin Luther King that for me the way I process my anger as social injustice is through action.

Either I volunteer, I protest, or I support the causes that address social injustice and then I then move on to the Buddhist practice of

equanimity which is first take action whatever action I can take and then knowing that the world

has always been an unfair

unjust place where all kinds of

injustices occur if we make our happiness or peace of mind contingent on the world

suddenly addressing all of the inequality, it's not a good choice. In fact, we'll burn out. As a young activist in a lot of causes such as

cyspeth in the 1980s, God's lovely deliver and other groups in the 90s, what I found was that people

who didn't know how to practice equanimity would burn out and not continue to take positive action.

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