You can never “be insulted” and the "god of death"

Today in Paris there was a woman on a scooter insulting a guy in a car who was insulting her back and they kept escalating and escalating.?As I was continuing my path these two were about to beat each other up.?

This reminded me about my recent post Anger is a waste of your energy.

The above painting is a Thangka one of the teaching tools depicting the life of the Buddha. This one is Yamantaka and there is the associated song mantra. I know nothing about Buddhism but as you can see I am curious about this energy so I am writing this listening to the mantra. If you know about this, please help educate me in comments… I might be wrong.

Someone who knows some Buddhism told me this was a good tool for anger. If you look carefully there are three main characters depicted.

-the “animal”, a bull? The one that responds without being conscious and attacks immediately if triggered

-on top of it I see a very angry man

-on top of it there is calm and conscious Buddha

What it tells me is when one gets angry he or she needs to remember we are humans not animals so we should be able to “see ourselves” getting angry and control it.

The Buddha on top I see as a reminder we all have some Buddha nature superior to our animal and human states and should control ourselves no matter what the situation is and the conscious human can control the animal so it doesn’t attack, even if under attack himself.

This mantra is a beautiful and calm song even though this painting depicts “the god of death”. It means in Sanskrit “Yama” = the god of death and “antaka” = destroyer. “Terminating death” is a quality of all buddhas as they have stopped the cycle of rebirth, samsara. “So Yamāntaka represents the goal of the Mahayana practitioner's journey to enlightenment, or the journey itself: On final awakening, one manifests Yamāntaka – the ending of death.”

There is a beautiful statue for sale on Etsy look at this fire all around the deity…

Someone told me it’s a tool to work on anger and therefore insults. Someone is always free to insult you, it is “their” freedom.?

If someone gives you a gift and you refuse it, the gift goes back to that person.

Your freedom is to refuse a poisoned gift such as insults.

It’s like if I give you a glass of poison and you drink it. Will you drink a glass of poison??Do you want to kill yourself?

Simply do not react to the insults, refuse the poisoned gift. Not reacting is just simply sending the insults back to their author.?

Now if you are unconscious, you get insulted and you insult back. This means “I accepted the insults” and the poisoned gift.?

If this happens, don’t say ??I got insulted?? say ??I accepted the insults??.

It takes quite a bit of consciousness to remain equanimous while being insulted.?

This note was inspired by those two human beings who were fighting today in Paris randomly on my path (thanks for the teaching) and?“The Buddha Said”.

I recorded a video on my Instagram and YouTube channels with more about this. You can also listen to these thoughts with more emotions on this episode of my podcast also on Apple Podcasts, Amazon and Spotify

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