Solange, The Arrow Suttra, and the Alchemy of Anger
I’ve recently been interested in emotional alchemy. This is what I’m calling the practice of acknowledging an emotional stimulus and making a conscious effort not to feel the emotion through.
I’ve recently been interested in emotional alchemy. This is what I’m calling the practice of acknowledging an emotional stimulus and making a conscious effort not to feel the emotion through.
Think of stubbing your toe as a stimulus, and instead of yelling out a couple of malcriadezas, you breathe through it. Another instance is seeing an object of beauty and catching yourself when you rouse up feelings of obtainment. This practice has allowed me to call into question the way our bodies have been programmed to interpret the world—and as someone who is interested in the powers and limits of our consciousness, this has been an enticing endeavor.
I came to this experiment in a couple of ways. I have been a Jessica Dore fan for years now. She is a tarot reader and a licensed social worker who often reads the major and minor arcana through psychological and self-help concepts. Years ago, she pulled The Magician card and shared a quote by Catherine MacCoun that is simple in theory but challenging in practice: “to change something is to analyze one’s relationship to it… because in this relationship lies the access point to your potential for impact.” Because we are living through a time of immense cultural and political strife, I am holding this potential close to me as I measure where I can contribute my impact.
As I was listening to Solange’s A Seat at the Table recently, I was reminded of how timeless, musically evocative, and poetic the album is. I remember being in high school in the wake of the first Trump presidency when the record came out. I was entranced by Solange’s introspective poetry in conjunction with the stripped-back, funky, and Cancerian instrumentals. I have long held that an impactful work of art is universal through the personal, and Solange expounds on her experiences while also offering a love letter to the Black community.
One song in particular has been top of mind as I’ve deepened my understanding of Buddhism: Mad (feat. Lil Wayne). This is instantly one of the most recognizable songs of the project to me, both in its thematic and musical approach. Through revisiting the album, I’ve been trying to grapple once more with this song’s meaning. For a long time, I’ve listened to the song as an assertion of the right to be angry. We are collectively aware of the stereotypes regarding Blackness and the vilification of anger. Solange invites Lil Wayne on this song to rap a memoir of his experience with anger—including references to profiling, self-harm, and the justice system.
I’ve been interested in what Buddhism has to say about anger, particularly because I have found myself feeling it, in conjunction with sadness, about how arbitrary justice feels, how wealth inequality keeps growing, how an oligarchy can control who lives and who dies. Action is going to be an inevitable consequence of what we are seeing in the world, and I am interested in cultivating a skillful internal experience that will make these movements sustainable.
Ajahn Sona, a Theravāda Buddhist monk with whom I start my days, has informed the way I approach this question. Primarily, he preaches that it is unskillful to hold onto anger or sadness in the face of suffering because, by doing so, we are contributing to the overall suffering of the world.
Buddhism, in its collectivist views, does not differentiate between our own suffering and the suffering of our neighbor. In a beautiful contrast, we are then responsible for the way we react to this suffering. By lessening our internal suffering, we are taking the first step to lessening the overall suffering in the world. This is taught to us in The Arrow Suttra, as translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu:
"Now, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones, when touched with a feeling of pain, does not sorrow, grieve, or lament, does not beat his breast or become distraught. So he feels one pain: physical, but not mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, did not shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pain of only one arrow. In the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones does not sorrow, grieve, or lament, does not beat his breast or become distraught. He feels one pain: physical, but not mental.”
Here, The Buddha compares being consumed by anger to being shot by an arrow and choosing to be shot again in letting these feelings consume you.
In contrast, the wise person is shot by one arrow and does not choose to be shot by the second one.
We may have long recognized anger, grief, and sadness as worthy motivators for action. But I wonder what it means to perform emotional alchemy here—to approach witnessing suffering not through these inward emotions but rather through compassion, equanimity, and coexistence.
After relistening to Solange’s song, I see it a bit differently now. The song begins with:
“You got the light, count it all joy.”
She then proclaims:
“But when you carry [anger] alone, you find it only getting in the way.”
She complicates anger here. We have the right to be angry, but we also have the choice of what to do with it once it arises.
Solange suggests it can get in the way, and Lil Wayne corroborates:
“But I try not to let it build up… So I let it go, let it go, let it go.”
In Solange’s second verse, background vocals are commanding her to “be mad, be mad, be mad.” She sings about running into a girl who asks why she’s always mad, as if she is demanding anger from Solange. Solange ends this exchange by saying, “I got a lot to be mad about,” but she doesn’t hold onto this anger.
Rather, she asks:
“Where did your love go?”
That is the question I also ought to ask myself.
D.O. Altamira