One of my very close friends who I love dearly lost his Mom recently. His Mom passed away this week, and we spent time together talking about sadness.

All emotions including anger, sadness and happiness come
from within us, not from the outside.

In our daily lives, we encounter various emotions both in business and in our personal lives.

Here are the thoughts I shared with my friend and may help us all to practise handling our emotions.

A local well-known retired doctor in Vernon (who is also Buddhist) asked me one day about losing my daughter Emily.

“How is the sadness coming?” he asked.

Sadness, anger, and happiness all come from inside of us.

I now understand that what matters most is what you do with the emotions that come from within us.

If one builds awareness about anger for example, it is just “mud” that is inside you.

If you hold it gently, you can turn the anger into a flower, or you can smear that anger/sadness on others.

Also, when someone is angry or sad and does things to you, it is only because they have not taken the anger/sadness that is inside them and turned it into a lovely flower. Therefore, the one that is angry spreads that anger.

Sadness is the same. Yes, the feeling of sadness and hurt is there when we lose a loved one, but when we truly understand that they have transformed and in fact exist within us and we can be with them always, a smile emerges and so does happiness. That can be shared with others instead of sadness.

The “mud” can become a lovely “flower” and happiness spreads within us and others. We all know others that are happy and only spread happiness, and we all know people that are angry and only spread anger. It is those that are angry or sad that need our compassion the most.

It is also important that if someone is mean/angry towards us, they clearly are suffering and should be treated with compassion, as they are displaying a lack of happiness within themselves.

Many Christians may have lost sight or never knew of what Jesus meant when he said “they know not what they do.”

I believe that what Jesus meant was that those that made him suffer were full of anger and were suffering and that is why he showed them nothing but compassion and was opening the door to enlightenment for his followers. If you follow this practice as a Christian, Buddhist, or any human being for that matter, you yourself become God. And God is love.

Thich Nhat Hahn describes this so nicely in the video included.

This is what we must teach our children and ourselves every day, and we must practise this to develop an awareness of our true nature.

So, the next time we are angry and are ready to lash out at the other person, we should breathe in and breathe out and consider showing compassion instead of anger.

This takes practise in the form of quiet meditation.

Sherman Dahl
The Emily Dahl Foundation
July 2020