Photo coming!

I just realized that I never posted a picture of my 1,000 paper cranes. Sorry! I will do that tomorrow ... I promise ... if the weather is good and I can take them outside in the fresh air for a group portrait.

Right now they're stashed in two large Michael's shopping bags in a corner of my closet. 1 - 500 in one bag; 501 - 1,000 in the other bag. Still not sure what I'm going to do with them all. (See my post "Shall I give away the cranes?" on 10/27/08.) Hmmmm.

Stay tuned for the photo of senbazuru.

What's your anger score?

I'm pleased to report that, since completing senbazuru, I've been mostly successful at managing my anger. I'd say about 85% of the time. But that, of course, is an estimate -- heavily colored, I'm sure, by wishful thinking.

Is there a way to put an accurate number on one's anger? A rating of some sort?

A relative of mine, someone who also struggles with anger (or used to), told me last week about his anger quotient rating scale. You give yourself a score, from 1 to 5, in each of these categories:


1. Occurrence (how often you get angry)

2. Trigger (how easily you're set off)

3. Escalation (how mad you get)

4. Duration (how long your anger lasts)


He said the process of breaking anger down into its components, and assigning a numerical value to each component, helped him to understand and work with such a strong emotion. The idea, he says, is to try and reduce each category gradually. Over the course of a few years, he brought his total score down from 16.5 to 6. Wow!

My score ... if I'm totally honest: 3.5 + 4 + 2.5 + 2 = 12

What's yours?

Senbazuru !!!

Early this afternoon, I sat down on my living room floor, in front of a fire, my cat in my lap (his choice, of course), put on some quiet music and ... folded the last 10 cranes of my 1,000.

For the final one, I chose a beautiful, shiny piece of gold origami paper. (I had been saving it for this honor.)

When I took it in my hands, I tried to slow down, breathe and really look at it -- a thin piece of paper, like gold leaf, delicate and light. In four minutes, it would be transformed from this flat "nothing" into a three-dimensional thing of beauty. Paper turned into bird. Transformation.

As I folded -- I tried to make the creases so perfectly on this last crane -- I thought about transformation, and how I've been trying to transform myself. Or at least, the part of myself that needs to change.

The alchemy of lead into gold, anger into peace, is not instantaneous. It's a process. It takes effort and concentration and, most of all, a commitment of the heart.

After I finished Crane No. 1,000, I took a pen and wrote on its underwings: "1,000" and "senbazuru." Today's date. My initials.

And then it was over.

Tomorrow I'll post a photo of the thousand cranes.

Day 99

Today is the next-to-last day of this experiment and I'm at 990 paper cranes. Have almost reached my goal, and the completion of senbazuru.

In some ways, it has been so easy. The folding of 10 cranes each day is no big deal. I enjoy it. I will miss the daily ritual.

In other ways -- trying to tame my anger -- it is the most difficult thing I've ever done. The struggle is not over.

I will post a photo and write more tomorrow (and beyond), when I have folded 1,000 paper cranes.

Almost there!!!!!!

A small victory

Well, well ... my "special someone" (aka teacher/guru/anger button-pusher) gave me a beautiful opportunity to practice my skills this afternoon. I bow to her in gratitude.

(See my "Helpful Enemies" post on Nov. 12, 2008 for details on how the people who drive us crazy are actually teachers in disguise -- they help us develop spiritually!)

Luckily, I had a little lead time and was able to compose myself, i.e. calm down/think through a sane course of action before I had to actually confront her in person. That seemed to be the magic key ... the time I needed to calm down, think a bit, and choose the path of peace.

I really, really wanted to do it right this time. And -- glory be! -- I DID do it right. I was calm, my voice was normal, I was not emotional. I was kind, even.

Now the "incident" is over and I'm happy. Relieved. Excited. Totally at peace with how I responded. And yes, proud proud proud of myself! This is a small victory, but a victory just the same.

Mind is the cause of suffering

Time for more Buddhist words of wisdom for those of us who struggle with anger. This is from Tibetan teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche, from his book "The Door to Satisfaction." (Thank you, Beliefnet's Daily Buddhist Wisdom.)


"Happiness and suffering come from your own mind, not from outside. Your own mind is the cause of happiness; your own mind is the cause of suffering. To obtain happiness and pacify suffering, you have to work within your own mind."


Today's total number of cranes: 970. I am so near senbazuru.

A New Year's resolution

Today begins a new year, and people are making resolutions. Mine is obvious. I've already been writing about it, thinking about it and trying to put it into practice for months.

And as I draw nearer to senbazuru (930 cranes today), the responsibility of wrapping up this experiment -- effecting some kind of lasting change in myself -- looms like a giant shadow. It's scary.

Over the holidays, I fell off the wagon often. It was a disaster. Only a few times did I manage to control my anger and keep it inside -- which, of course, is no more healthy and no less injurious than letting it out. Anger is anger, whether expressed outwardly in a tantrum (and thus hurting someone else) or nursed silently, eating away at my fiber.

The only hopeful sign is that one afternoon, a couple of days ago, I had a small revelation. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing that will banish my anger forever. But it felt important. It felt like hope.

Somehow, in 40+ years of battling this demon, this one tiny fact has eluded me: I feel physically bad when I'm angry. It's NOT some addictive, pleasurable, adrenaline high. Quite the opposite. It feels like caustic poison has been injected in my arteries and is ripping through me. It's painful. My heart pounds in a way that is frightening, out of control, like the first flutterings of a heart attack. My head hurts. My skin smolders.

That afternoon, I realized that I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to be angry. I sat down on the floor of my bedroom, in a pool of winter sunlight pouring through the window, and just breathed for a few minutes. It felt .... exquisite. Peaceful. And that's what I crave. That feeling. It was very clear. I put my fingertips together, in gassho, in the sunlight, and the pleasurable touch of skin to skin sunk into me deeply.

I'm struggling to describe this adequately, but it felt authentic. And simply understanding this, knowing that I can CHOOSE pleasure, I can choose a peaceful, calm feeling instead of anger -- that felt enormously hopeful.