When we get angry with another person, the first crime is against ourselves.
Our anger turns us away from the Truth that we are all essentially the same and are all in this together, bound in and through an infinite spiritual Love that chooses us all.
We rob yourself of the Joy at Life that is your true home.
Instead of resting on and growing in Love, we cut your mind and heart on shards of pointless cruelty.
If we do not catch your error here, but instead indulge it and nourish the anger, our crime turns outward and harms others, as well as further damaging us.

When I lie or cheat or steal or hurt in any way harm another or our shared dreaming-space, the first attack is against my relationship to my own inner Light. Only when I succeed at harming my connection to Kind Joy can the knife move outward into another’s gut.

Abiding by the universal values (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, and joyfully-sharing); prioritizing the fundamental questions (what is really going?, what really matters?, where to give and seek love?); and practicing the standard spiritual practices (prayer, meditation, study and contemplation, fellowship, acts of service, practicing humility, selflessness, loving kindness, and sharing joy) protects us from confusing ourselves and losing sight of the Love shining in and through and for all things.

When we allow ourselves to relate to anyone (ourselves or others) with anything but the careful compassion that knows and grows Kind Joy, we sin first against ourselves, and then against our neighbor.

The wise rest on impermanence and interdependence like seagulls float on the winds over the waters.

The wise rest on and are exploded through by the Love shining through, overtaking, and ultimately being everything and nothing — the Love beyond self and other, beyond being and nonbeing, beyond true and false, beyond all our conceptualizations.

Wisdom is to be torn asunder by the joy of the emptiness.
Emptied of our misplaced faith in the Reality of our own feelings and ideas, we are free to leave our narrow confines and know Love.

This is what we do whenever we find ourselves impatient with ourselves or anyone else:
Feel them, us, and everything dissolve into infinite strands of feeling/thought/body.
Let Love overflowing giggle over and guide us all together to what is best for everyone.
We relax our shoulders and remember that we’re all in this together, bound in and through the Love that is All — remember that we sense that more fundamentally than we sense any doubts, explanations, or paeans of it.

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW

Thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh for the insight that the wise rest on impermanence and interdependence.
And for his explanations of impermanence, interdependence, and emptiness (see Wisdom Meme Notes a couple posts back)