Loving-Kindness as the Antidote to Anger

If an individual experiences anger (paṭigha), then he or she has ill-will (vyāpāda). In Anger and Forgiveness, Nussbaum argues that anger is an emotion “that seeks the pain of the offender because of and as a way of assuaging or compensating for one’s own pain”. In other words, the individual desires that some individuals experience pain (dukkha) at some time.¹ ²
If an individual has loving-kindness (mettā), then he desires that all individuals experience pleasure (sukha) at all times. In Metta Means Goodwill, Thanissaro Bikkhu argues that loving-kindness is “a wish for [true] happiness […] for ourselves and everyone else”.³
If an individual has loving-kindness, then he or she does not experience anger. This is because if an individual has loving-kindness, then he or she does not have ill-will. In the Nissaraniya Sutta, the Buddha argues that loving-kindness is the “escape from ill-will”. Because an individual experiences anger only if he or she has ill-will, if the individual has loving-kindness, then he or she does not experience anger.

Footnotes

In Rhetoric, Aristotle defines anger as “desire, involving pain, for apparent revenge”↩︎
In Ethics, Spinoza defines anger as “sadness accompanied by the idea of an external cause”. According to him, “a person who hates endeavours to get rid of the thing that he hates and to destroy it”.↩︎
In the Karaniya Metta Sutta, loving-kindness is cultivated through the desire that “all beings [are] happy at heart”.↩︎