I co-host the Circle City Sangha, a Plum Village group in Indianapolis. Recently, after one of the sessions I facilitated, a woman who has become a regular attendee came to me with some degree of gratitude for sharing a presentation of Buddhist thought different from what she had heard before. She told me of how she heard a teaching on the “simile of the saw.” The way it had been taught to her was that if you don’t keep love in your heart even when having your limbs sawed off by brigands, you aren’t a Real Buddhist™. I’m glad that karma or the devas or her ancestors brought her to us, and that she is now able to add Buddhist ideas to her already existing robust spiritual practice.
The “Discourse on the Simile of the Saw” is in the Majjhima Nikāya, the Book of Middle-Length Discourses. In it, the Buddha gives a scenario in which one of his disciples has been bound and is being dismembered by a saw. As each limb is removed, the Buddhist is to retain love for their captors in their heart. Any speck of hate is said to be unacceptable. If just this part of the sutta is isolated and presented to newcomers as an example of how to practice, most would quite rightfully turn away from Dhamma, except perhaps those who are pathological people-pleasers or doormats willing to be stepped on (indicative of a deeper pattern that needs healing).
Now, let’s talk about the discourse as a whole and give the simile more context. It’s the final conceit used, and thus meant to be an extreme, shocking example. The sutta begins with a story about a monk, Venerable Phagguna of the Top-Knot, who has been spending too much time hanging out with the nuns. It has gotten to the point where if anyone criticizes the nuns, the Venerable becomes upset and even initiates disciplinary proceedings against the critic, and likewise the nuns if anyone criticizes him.[1] The Buddha scolds his monk, telling him that if he or someone he cares about gets criticized, he should hold back angry words. He should train himself to be caring towards everyone, even an offending party. He should train himself to have a heart full of love, even when subjected to physical violence.
There’s a key word here that should not be overlooked. In Pali it is sikkhitabba, “should train.” The Buddha is not telling us that’s how we should already be at the beginning. That is not going to be the starting point for almost anyone. Expecting someone, whether new to Dhamma or even an advanced practitioner, to be able to keep love in their heart for their assailant while being assaulted would be ridiculous, and not something the Buddha did. Indeed, the capacity for anger is only eliminated at one of the final stages of enlightenment! So you’re not a bad Buddhist if you get angry when someone is attacking you. Even monastics do not commit an offense, according to their legal framework, if they get angry while acting in self-defense (which is specified as using only the amount of force required to escape a violent situation—escape from it, not retaliate it). You are a bad Buddhist if you don’t recognize the danger in anger, and if you aren’t at least putting some effort into training for its eradication. And, until then, the task is learning how to handle anger in a way that is not destructive, neither to you nor to anyone else.
So you recognize that anger is dangerous, and you want to learn to deal with it in a healthy way. The absolute worst thing you can do is to try to convince yourself you’re not angry when you actually are. To repress it and deny it. Gil Fronsdal says the one person it’s most important not to lie to is yourself, so never lie to yourself that you are not feeling a feeling that you’re actually feeling, including anger.
Next is to not get upset with yourself over the presence of anger. While we may have a goal of eventually freeing ourselves from anger, that comes at the end of a long road. Measuring yourself against some ideal for how you should be, and berating yourself for falling short, is emotional self-harm. Being aversive to your own aversion is adding more aversion, and aversion is one of the fundamental forces from which we want to liberate ourselves. You need to accept that you are angry without judging yourself as a bad person or as a bad Buddhist for being angry.
Now you need to find out how to deal with anger. This could be recognizing that the anger is coming from a part of you that is hurting. You need to take care of that part.[2] Thích Nhất Hạnh teaches giving that part a hug. You recognize that it is wounded, expanding your awareness around it, and you embrace it with love. You simultaneously feel the anger fully, but you also feel love for the angry part. This can be profoundly healing.
This probably won’t work the first time, or the first fifty times, you do it. That’s why persistence is so important, which means finding a pace that won’t be too slow to progress nor so fast you burn out quickly. But once you can get some skill at this, you might begin investigating why that part is hurt. What does it need that it’s not getting? What perceptions does it have that are leading to the pain? Are the perceptions accurate? Is the anger distorting them? Perhaps your perception that someone is deliberately trying to harm you is correct. But in that case, what purpose will anger serve? See how it blocks wisdom, and how it becomes motivation for bad, harmful actions.
Here we can take advice from a well-known sutta, “The Discourse on Insults.” In this sutta, a man is furious with the Buddha. He goes to the Buddha and begins insulting him, speaking with rage. After he finished, the Buddha that gently asks him if, when friends or relatives come to visit him, he makes them a meal. Obviously, yes, he does, like any good host should. And if they do not accept the meal, to whom does it belong? The man replied that if they did not accept the meal, it would still belong to him. The Buddha then compares the angry words to such a gift. And, as the Buddha does not accept the gift of verbal abuse, it still belongs to that man. So that is a way we might respond when another directs anger on intent to harm towards us.
The Buddha says in verse (Bhante Sujāto’s translation):
When you get angry at an angry person you just make things worse for yourself. When you don’t get angry at an angry person you win a battle hard to win. When you know that the other is angry, you act for the good of both yourself and the other if you’re mindful and stay calm. People unfamiliar with the teaching consider one who heals both oneself and the other to be a fool.
But wait. Why should this be a goal? Isn’t it good to be angry when you are being attacked? Doesn’t the anger serve to energize you, to motivate you to protect yourself?
Well, is it really?
No. Anger is corrosive. Anger hurts. Anger distorts perceptions. Anger builds resentment. The Pali word for bearing a grudge or resentment towards someone is literally “binding to.” You bind yourself to a person you have a grudge against. Why would you want to do that?! Holding on to anger can also cause a cascade of problems in physical health. Wouldn’t it be better to be free of it? Isn’t it better to respond to an attack with wisdom and clarity? This does not mean not defending oneself in some way. It means defending oneself more effectively.
The root of the problem is that we’re identifying with what’s being attacked. Maybe it’s something we regard as “my” character or “my” personality, “my” beliefs or “my” thoughts. Or even, “my” body. But all of those things are constantly changing, and trying to hold on to them is only going to cause trouble. Even this body is temporary. We are borrowing it from the elements, and it will return to the elements when we cast it off “like a rotting log,” as a line from a contemplation on impermanence goes.
So, when the sutta concludes with a monastic immobilized by binds, being dismembered by a saw, who should still feel love for their captors, this is not something anyone is expected to automatically be able to do right away. It’s an extreme example, meant to illustrate a worthwhile goal: freeing oneself of anger.
[1] There is a bit in the sutta about monks and nuns fraternizing, which I’m gliding over but would be remiss to fail to acknowledge. Whatever that sutta says, in the modern day, from what I’ve seen, there is no problem with monks and nuns spending time together. I have even seen some of them be close friends.
[2] Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy can be an effective way of handling this.