Transforming Greed, Anger and Ignorance

The Buddha taught that there were three poisons in life, however, he did not feel they should be destroyed but merely transformed, to allow us to be more positive people. By transforming these three poisons we can be more positive and rid ourselves of those negative emotions that cause us to feel down, alone and generally unhappy with our lives. Below I will explain how to transform each of these poisons into something positive.

Greed: Greed can ensure that we only look out for ourselves and keep everything to ourselves, even when we can see others in need more than ourselves. The Buddha taught that greed should be transformed into its opposite, generosity. By being generous to others in their hour of need, not only makes the person receiving feel happier, it also make the giver feel happy knowing that they have helped another person become happier. It can be said that by giving to others can be infectious and I feel that this can be the case, as the joy that is felt, knowing you are helping others is very enjoyable. One must also approach generosity with wisdom also, but this will be explained later.

Anger: Anger is caused by a feeling of not getting what we want or not being in control. The Buddha taught that anger should be transformed into compassion. When we get angry at people for doing certain things we are doing this based on assumptions that this person is doing this to us and wants us to be unhappy. But when we look at the situation from a compassionate angle we can see it from a much more positive way. For example; You are walking down the street and some person tries to snatch your bag or steal your wallet. At first we are in fear of losing our items and often our life and this fear changes to anger very quickly. However, when we look deeper this person may be doing this for a number of reasons, and they are trying to make themselves happy also. If we could really see why people did things, we would see that they too are only trying to be happy. Compassion allows us to try and understand things from other peoples prospectives (this does not mean that we condone the actions taken). Often we only see how things affect us and this can cause negative emissions that only suffice to make us feel unhappy and often cause horrible physical symptoms.
Compassion can offer us a way out from anger and its negative affects.

Ignorance: Ignorance is something that can be destructive not only to ourselves but to other people too. The Buddha taught that ignorance should be transformed into wisdom. Here is an example; We see a homeless man on the street and feel that we may seem tight or stingy so we give the homeless guy some money. This may seem like a good idea, but when we look deeper we see that by giving the man money we are trying to make our selves feel better about ourselves. The reason this is ignorance is that we are not looking at the root of the problem, but merely treating a small symptom by giving this person money. Upon deeper reflection by giving this person money you are allowing them to feed their addiction (I understand that not all homeless people have addictions, but to assume all don't have addictions is more destructive to those who do). So the wiser thing to do would be to help him by giving him some food or drink or giving money to a homeless shelter in the area that will allow homeless people to have a place to sleep and a meal to warm them. This can be applied to many situations by reflecting on what outcomes our actions will really have. Acting without thinking about the outcome is ignorant. Acting after thinking about the outcome is wisdom.

By just making small changes to how we do things or treat people can make a big difference to other peoples lives and in turn your life too. So turn these poisons around and see the benefits in the lives of all sentient beings.