Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Intelligent practice remembers that the value of practicing with the precepts lies not in how it measures our distance along the idealized path to enlightenment but rather how it helps us live in the everyday circumstances of our life. In the real life most of us live, we yell at our kids, we shout back at our partner, we get angry with our political leaders, and so forth.
So rather than trying not to become angry, the most helpful way of working with the precept [the ninth grave precept] is to watch what happens when anger arises.’ (Deep Hope)

Again, this is pointing to how the Mahayana school works. And we know that when anger arises it can get pretty messy very quickly, so we do our best not to get caught up in it, rather than having unrealistic expectations that we must never get angry if we want to be ‘good Buddhists.’