OK, the four stages of developing mindfulness and the understanding coming from it. So you got confronted, you got angry back, it's done. As soon as you can get out of it, and as soon as you can reflect about what happened, that's the first stage of mindfulness. If you can't stop the anger while you're in the situation, if you can't get out of it super quick, OK you've got to be there with it. So as soon as possible, later reflect about it, reflect about it, reflect about it! If you don't reflect about it then you miss an opportunity to learn from it.
Now some people think that experience brings wisdom. Not necessarily true. Experience by itself does not bring wisdom. Experience and reflection about experience brings wisdom. Typical example:
A man's working late Friday afternoon, and his mates say, "Hey, let's go have a beer before we go home." So he goes and has a beer and he gets drunk. He goes home and he beats up on his wife. The next morning he doesn't remember any of it, but he sees his wife with a black eye, "Oh I'm sorry dear, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He apologizes, he's very apologetic. That's enough, she forgives him and things are fine. The next Friday afternoon, the same thing happens, "Let's go get drunk, let's go have a few beers!" He does, and he beats his wife again, the cycle's repeated.
A second man, Friday afternoon, his mates say, "Hey, let's go have some beers." He does. He gets drunk, he comes home, he beats his wife. The next morning, "Oh my gosh, how could I do that? How could I do that? He apologizes, and then he remembers it. "How could I do that? I was so stupid!" On Sunday he remembers it, on Monday he remembers it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. He's having moral shame, regrets it, remembering, "How could I do that, how could I do that! Through compassion to himself and his wife he makes a determination, I can't ever do it again." Friday afternoon, his mates say, "Hey, let's go get a drink." "Nope! No way!" He brought up the effort to prevent, which is the first of the Four Great Efforts.
What's the difference? One reflected about it, and one did not. So when we think about wisdom, it comes from reflecting about something, not just from the experience itself. The experience itself was identical for those two men, but one reflected about it and one did not. So that's first stage of mindfulness, coming after a situation occurred. It is very important, we've got to do it, we're never going to be able to have the wisdom to bring up the effort to prevent unless we've reflected about how to prevent, how to stop this Dukkha from happening.
So if your anger flares up instantly and you get caught up in a situation, as soon as you can, reflect about it. As soon as it's over and done, reflect about it. How did I do that? How could I not do it in the future? How? How? How? Look at it from every different angle. If you can't understand it yourself, ask your good friends about how to avoid it. Yeah, it sounds so simple, the four stages of developing mindfulness, being mindful after, thinking about it, then later, being mindful in the middle, thinking about it, then in the beginning, and so on. It sounds like a simple little process, it just takes hard work to do it, but the work is so valuable.