That Grudge You’re Holding? It’s Really Holding You . . .

We hold on to a lot of grudges from the past, and still more are cultivated everyday through interactions with people who provoke us and bring about unpleasant feelings. If we are unable to cleanse an unpleasant feeling when it arises, the mind will grab onto that feeling and form yet another “grudge.” Some grudges take root, the aggression is already evident in our mind, and some are present as seeds. Even if the grudge doesn’t manifest immediately, it can fester, eventually, into ill will, negative action, or anger. Since anger has the power to destroy the peace and joy in your life and others’ lives, how can we pacify our “toxic grudges” before they cause any significant harm?

A grudge is far from innocent; it harbors subtle, latent power as a “mind-disturbing food” or “nutritional fuel” for negative emotions. Anger and aggression always come from some kind of grudge, resentment, or lack of appreciation. So, before we reach a state of anger, we must cleanse the grudge, or “eat the mind-disturbing food” (“yi mi de we ze” in Tibetan) which is the root of the disturbance. Here are some simple tools to help detoxify a grudge’s ability to fuel negative emotions:

First, look at your mind each day and try to recognize any grudges you are holding. This applies to anything that gives you even the slightest feeling of discomfort. Then, practice developing tolerance and patience towards those feelings. Remember that the main thing at risk here is your peace, your cheerful state of mind.

Next, cultivate equanimity between experiences, pleasant versus unpleasant, joyful versus disagreeable, fair versus unfair. By seeing all experiences as equal, you can naturally cleanse your mind of any poisonous grudge or resentment that might be forming. Also, if you can succeed in developing equanimity, you won’t become irritated enough to form a grudge in the first place, and any one-sided rationale about things being fair or unfair, reasonable or unreasonable will simply melt away.

If you can’t help yourself from being irritated by a person or situation, try and cut through that irritation by remembering that irritation is an illogical and petty emotion. Why would you get irritated with one person, but not with someone else? Irritation is undemocratic and biased, you don’t get irritated when you are in control of your mind and emotions. Move beyond irritation by developing the patience and tolerance necessary to face challenging people without begrudging them.

Lastly, ask yourself: “Why am I angry and irritated? Why am I holding on to this grudge at all?” You might think somebody intended to harm you, but, for the most part, people don’t have much control over their intentions, so it is unlikely that the person even meant to slight you. If you find it difficult to control your own temper and actions, aren’t other people vulnerable in the same way? Try to see yourself as being equal to the person who has injured you in terms of that vulnerability and it will be hard to hold on to the grudge.

The core of this practice is to continually cleanse your heart of the grudges you harbor from day to day, from year to year. By eliminating the “mind-disturbing food” that fuels aggression, you will starve your anger and be left, instead, with a joyous mind, free from any disturbance whatsoever.