Comedian Lewis Black appeared at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art on March 9, part of their BRAINWAVE series, which puts famous thoughtful people and less-famous thoughtful people onstage together to provoke more thought, as far as I can tell. And a lot of talk! Black was appearing with Dr. Robert Allan, psychiatrist, researcher, and author of GETTING CONTROL OF YOUR ANGER. They discussed The Science of Rage.
A quickie review in Time Out NY sketches the scene pretty well, save it has no mention of the gigantic, vivid, and eye-popping angry buddha projection that appeared behind the two men.
Lurid in its polychrome splendor, the angry buddha image was probably just a bit of inexplicable yet appropriately Himalayan stage-dressing for much of the audience.
I love Lewis Black, and he was ON.
What disappointed me was the complete absence of reference by the two men to the image. Granted, neither Black nor Allen are buddhists and both were coming at anger from very different perspectives, but I would have appreciated some attention to the concept.
Allan posited that although expressed anger can lead to a cavalcade of untoward physical events ending in a heart attack – blood pressure spikes, hormone release, etc. — anger itself doesn’t exist as an energy and unexpressed anger doesn’t do anyone any harm. He listed the metaphors of anger — “bottling it up” “sitting on it” “holding it in” “finally exploding” — and concluded that contrary to popular thought, there is no energy of anger, that there is nothing to bottle up – you can’t see it or touchi it til it is expressed, and expressing it is what causes trouble, not feeling it.
He offered examples of how he felt anger, chose not to express it, and was better off. Including one example involving his daughter, his wife, a trophy, a long drive, a snowstorm, and a gymnastics meet that in my opinion, could not have been more passive-aggressive, since his daughter was sitting right there in the audience. Ahem.
Black countered with the example of his mother, who seems to thrive on expressing anger at every turn. And with the example of New York City, which also seems to thrive on the energy “F*ck is a comma here!” He talked bout his performances vs his private demeanor, and how when he travels, he meets flight delays not with anger but with compassion for the travel workers at airports — which helps him get put on flights a lot more quickly.
Old-school as i am, I’m with John Lydon and PiL:
ANGER IS AN ENERGY

What about anger that needs to be expressed for a compassionate end? Is there such a thing? The Tibetan Buddhist teachings about five wisdom energies and five buddha families would say so. And that’s what that angry blue-black buddha in the background was all about. And that is what the next series of Hardcore Dharma classes are all about . . . but I will leave the chronicling of that to Julia May Jonas.
What I’d like to know, is what has anger done for you lately? Good, bad, indifferent? Has anyone recently expressed anger and relieved suffering? If so, how’d it go down?