Definición de términos

Anger has a desiderative aspect. It desires something. This

characteristic of anger can be seen from the fact (relating to the discussion in 3.2) that an angry person is disturbed by the emotion and wants to act upon it. Anger seeks to satisfy itself, which may include bringing about certain actions or the occurrence of certain events, such as getting back at the person who harms you, some disaster befalling the person who harmed them, or simply receiving apologies, after which such disturbance subsides. Buddhists also recognise that in anger there is a desire, a state of

dissatisfaction that needs something to be appeased. In many cases in the Buddhist texts, anger is defined by the desire to harm (such as when Nāgasena explains that the Buddha is free from anger as the ocean is free from the desire to harm).41 _{So the question that can be asked is: what is it that could} occur to satiate my desire and allow my anger to subside? Perhaps more narrowly: what do Buddhist philosophers think that anger desires?

In some Buddhist accounts, they indicate that anger is appeased by the wrongdoer’s suffering. In AN 7:64, a list of seven things we wish to befall our transgressor is laid out; if these things happen, it leaves us feeling

satisfied. The list consists in wishing that one’s enemy looks unattractive, loses some sleep, fails in what she does, acquires no wealth, nor achieves

fame, has no friends, and goes to hell! The Buddha’s intention in this

account, however, is not about what an angry person wants, but to stress the negative consequences that she would inevitably meet — thus if our enemy is angry at us, they will suffer these fates because of their own doings, not from our malicious wishes. This is also expressed by Śāntideva, “Suppose something unpleasant does befall your rival. Would your satisfaction make it happen again? It will not happen without a cause, merely by your wishing it.”42 Likewise, if we respond with anger, such affliction will turn to

ourselves.

Of course, the manners of harm are not necessarily limited to what have been listed in the Buddhist text and delineated above. We should not assume that people cannot or do not want other bad things beyond this list to happen to their enemy. As a matter of fact, it by no means exhausts all the possibilities of people’s wishes to harm the wrongdoers when they get angry. But whatever wishes they may be, it is acknowledged that a typical reaction of one who has been offended is the desire to see our enemies afflicted by some kind of pain. In other words, it is a desire for revenge (as opposed to a desire to harm which is initiated by the agent and not considered a retaliation). Note the distinction between a desire for and an actual act of revenge. You may contemplate a revenge for thirty years without exacting it yourself. If you act upon it, your act is done out of vengeance and it becomes actual revenge. But for what we are talking about in the case of anger, merely the ill wish suffices. This allows you to be

satisfied when unfortunate events fall upon your target.43

Again, this shares similarities with Aristotle’s conception of anger, whose definition includes a desire to seek revenge.44 More recently, William Blake’s poem A Poison Tree draws a visible line between anger and the kind of unintended revenge in which ills befall our enemies by telling the story of a pent-up anger that gives rise to a poisoned apple, eventually causing the

42 _{BCA 6.87}

43 _{Trudy Govier offers some examples that distinguish the myriad nuances revolving}

‘revenge’ in Forgiveness and Revenge, 2-3.

death of an enemy. The poem opens with lines which advise on what happens when anger is expressed, and what happens when it is not:

I was angry with my friend I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

However, at the end of the poem we see that the anger has grown into an apple tree, which bears poisoned fruit. When his enemy took the apple from the tree, Blake writes of his pleasure at seeing the consequences of his anger:

And into my garden stole

When the night had veil’d the pole: In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.

Note that Blake writes of being ‘glad’ to see his poisoned foe. For Blake, then, anger is the perfect ingredient for the dish of revenge. However, in this instance it isn’t clear that Blake has taken any particular action to bring about the death of his foe (if anything, it appears to be a result of his foe’s further actions), he simply allows his anger to grow, and what follows is the death of an enemy.

The desire that something bad happens to the person you are angry with, especially with enemies, seem entirely typical, whether those bad things happen because of actions taken yourself or they are simply what befalls them by chance. But for the same thing to happen to our loved ones seems unthinkable. Look at how Blake contrasts his treatment of friend and foe; one was spared his anger but the other was killed. People tend to draw this line between friends and foes. Śāntideva also makes an observation on this disparate treatment: “suffering, humiliation, harsh words, and disgrace: these we desire neither for ourselves nor our loved ones; but for our enemies

it is the reverse.”45 This disparity urges us to consider whether all anger desires harm to happen to the wrongdoer.

Perhaps more common and more often do we find ourselves getting angry with family and friends than with ‘enemies’, but we appear to

sometimes have a different way of dealing with them. A popular solution is demanding an apology or some form of acknowledgement that they were in the wrong, just like how Blake telling his friend supposedly wanting him to recognise his anger. But are apologies entirely harmless? I think it could be argued otherwise. An apology is an act of admitting our past wrongdoings. Doing so requires us to humble ourselves before the person to whom we apologise. Notable synonyms for ‘humble’ as a verb include ‘humiliate’, ‘degrade’ and ‘debase’ — an apology involves lowering one’s estimation of oneself in relation to another. In this sense, at least, our self-esteem is harmed. A demand for an apology is, therefore, arguably a desire that causes harm to the person with whom we are angry. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a feigned or genuine apology, whether they really feel regretful or not, because the expression of it is what lowers them.

And what about simply telling of our anger to the subject? This one is trickier as it appears as if we don’t want anything from the wrongdoer but an acknowledgement. To be sure, an acknowledgement must have some purpose. For an explanation for this, I think we should return to the point about pain. Typically we respond to pain in the manner of ‘pushing’, e.g. by turning away from it, retreating, or avoiding it (and the opposite is true of pleasure). In Buddhism, we can think of pleasure and pain in the sense of likes and dislikes respectively, which is more of disposition than deliberation, thus, for example, some people can find pleasure in physical pain because they like it. Pain prompts us to try to end or destroy whatever we think causes the pain. The methods to stop it can be varied. In this case, the friend’s wrong may damage their relationship or cause some tension between them, which is perhaps more painful than the pain that occasions

his anger. Telling his friend can be a way to reach a mutual understanding and reparation of their friendship, hence ending the pain.

I argue that understanding anger thus gives us a better picture of the Buddhist notion of dveṣa. Let me remind you that, as discussed early on, dveṣa — a kind of negative afflictive emotion — associates with various ‘emotions’ from anger and hatred to irritation and annoyance. While contemporary philosophers tend to distinguish these conceptual cousins from one another, Buddhist philosophers see them as manifestations of the same poisonous root, viz. dveṣa. As such, a desire to harm those who cause pain to us is not sufficient. Dveṣa is manifested in the form of ‘opposition’.46 _{In terms of how} these harms manifest themselves, irritation and annoyance might be associated more closely with avoidance behaviour than with seeking

revenge. When something irritates us, we might walk away from the source of irritation, or if a person irritates us, we may simply stop talking to them. In other words you sever ties to the source of unpleasantness by retreating, but it doesn’t seem to involve the desire to harm it. However, we might sometimes act more positively to stop an irritation — by retorting to the person who irritates us, or by swatting the insect, etc. This kind of positive action isn’t done out of anger in the sense we’re familiar with, yet the outward manifestation of irritation here is very close to outward manifestations of anger, and borne of a desire to stop the unpleasant sensation.

To be precise, due to unpleasantness of, and discontent concerning, the state of affairs,there’s a desire to put an end to such feelings. What we often do in order to ‘put an end to’ these feelings is we harm, destroy, or avoid that which we take to be the source of pain, which can be persons, things, or states of affairs. Again, this requires an appraisal of the situation. If we take another person to be the cause, while feeling unhappy, we may

46 _{Padmasiri De Silva thinks that, according to Buddhist psychology, dveṣa or dosa is a kind of}

'avoidance desire' i.e. a desire to turn away from what we don’t like. He explains of the desire, "If we wish to avoid a situation or a person that we dislike, and we cannot do so, there is excited in us an urge to destroy, harm, fight, etc." See De Silva, An Introduction to

harm her so she stops causing the pain, or in anticipation she will not cause us pain again. Alternatively, although being angry, we may ask her nicely, just like the way we normally deal with loved ones. It will be clear in

Chapter 2 that the definition of anger that requires a desire to harm another agent will not suffice for eliminativist Buddhists who argue for all kinds of anger (which includes similar but milder versions of these attitudes) to be eliminated i.e. not just anger directed towards agents, but also anger that is directed towards an object or an event. It is towards the directedness of anger that we now turn.