Frustration is born when something does not go according to our wishes or needs, or when it goes wrong. In order not to get carried away by this feeling, you have to know yourself enough, this through calm. According to Zen teachings, there is a way to cultivate calm and deal with the feeling of failure.
Calm and peace during difficult times help to deal with frustration, as they are helpful in building resistance to problems. In addition to helping us act more sensibly and calmly in the face of problems, they also make it easier to think clearly, making us understand that there are things over which we lose control.
How to cultivate calm
According to the teachings of Kao Sawaki, a connoisseur and popularizer of Japanese Zen, to obtain calm you have to know yourself. He affirms that when peace is obtained, the necessary tools are obtained to eliminate those obsessive thoughts that make a person a victim of frustration.
in his book The Dharma of “Homless Kôdô”, Sawaki collected a series of his teachings on how to deal with frustration by cultivating calm. As taught by Sawaki, frustration arises when a person falls prey to society’s standards. To cultivate peace, this connoisseur of Zen proposes not to be carried away by standards, and only concentrate on the present, valuing it. In this way it is easier to calm down.
If you feel frustrated at any point, just take a minute, take a deep breath, and remember that standards don’t rule you. To achieve peace you have to take moments of introspection. In this way, get in tune with your true self.
How to live a life without frustration
Unfortunately, we don’t have a recipe that will instantly get rid of frustration, and it can’t be completely eliminated despite cultivating peace of mind. By harvesting peace and tranquility, what you do is prepare yourself to face frustration once it appears.
What Master Kao Sawaki’s teachings do is put you on the path to achieving tranquility more easily. According to this Zen master, it is useless to be frustrated, since we live in a contradictory world where situations cannot be explained. Sawaki recommends remembering this whenever we are faced with a situation that can make you feel frustrated.
It is important to remember the simplicity of life, indicates the Zen master, in addition to emphasizing that the feeling of frustration is temporary, so it is useless to get carried away by it and other feelings such as anxiety. Sawaki sums it all up in a teaching written in the form of a poem, which goes like this:
practicing the zazen calmly in the dojo
Pushing aside negative thoughts
Getting nothing but a mind without desire
This bliss is beyond paradise.