How to control your anger!

Anger is defined as a strong feeling of displeasure and hostility. Even a moment of anger has a potential to eliminate the merit and noble things we did. Anger is like a fire which can consume a forest. So the great Buddhist master, Shantideva, said that there is no greater evil than anger.When we hear and feel something unpleasant words or acts, we show reaction of anger, because we want to hear and feel only pleasant things. Stoked by anger, we say and act displeasing things, and disrupt our healthy relationship with our partner, family and friends. On top of that, anger generates a sore in the mind. We could heal the sore on our body, but it is difficult to heal sore in our heart. We argue with our buddies. When we encounter with disagreement, we grow anger, which lead to verbal fighting. This anger distances our friendship. Later we regret to have verbal fight with our best pal.

A short-tempered Jampa, he lived next to my house. His classmates knew him as a short tempered and mocked him to stir his anger. He took no pain in reacting like copra. Later, he radiates patience instead of anger.

Jampa says,"Why should I grow anger and make myself unhappy?” So we make ourselves unhappy, stirring anger. With influence of our anger, we speak the unpleasant words or engage in unpleasant acts. These words and acts not only boil your blood, but also hurt the feeling of others.

In Bodhisattva’s way of life, Shatideva said:

How can we find the leather

To cover the whole earth?

It’s like covering the earth

if the sole of our shoes is leather.

Our anger, knowingly and unknowingly, create enemies one after another. Instead of turning enemies into friends, we toil to defect our enemies. If so, we then have to defect all human beings on the earth, since they are approaching objects of our anger. This is impossible. If we really want to defect our enemies, why don’t we defect the anger in our mental continuum? As long as the anger is concerned, all human beings seem to be our enemies. They are directly or indirectly the object of our anger. What is the root cause of our so called enemies? This is our own anger. If we overcome our anger, it is as if we defect all our enemies. No more enemies will be there in our life. We neither aware of, nor figure out what is the cause of enemy. If we analyze we come to know that It is our anger which causes enemy. Therefore, we need to try eliminating the anger. With proper reflection, we realize that we are interdependent to each other from our birth to death. In our daily life, we rely on many people directly and indirectly, no matter who we are. In this respect too, it is not right to show anger to our fellow human beings. When we enjoy good position, we might think: “I don’t care if he gets anger”. This is a sign of getting drunk by the pride or egoism. The good position we enjoy is uncertain. Later, we would lose the position. We need people, and therefore we should care them. If we care them, we are able to sustain anger.

How difficult it is to build a good friendship and healthy relationship? How regretful it is to destroy the good friendship and healthy relationship which was built for years.

So we should develop conviction that the anger is the main culprit. In long term, we need each other, we help each other, and we work for each other. When we land in bad situation, it is often that a person to whom you have no hope at all come to our help. There are cases that those to whom we have hope would disappoint us. So there is no point to care your friends and to ignore strangers and acquaintances. Generally speaking, we get angry when what we expect didn’t materialize.

The anger merely makes the matter worse. Therefore, do what we have to do properly, and let it happen. Never expect. There is nothing to get angry if it doesn’t happen. Sometimes we want to touch the sky with our hand. However, we have a saying that if you don’t make yourself happy, others might give you sufferings.

Let's take an example of a child. He broke a cup, felling it down. He didn’t do it intentionally. When you hear the sound of broken cup, you instantly grow anger; you scold the child. Eventually you two land in anger. Your scolds don’t prevent the child from further breaking. Instead, when a child breaks a cup, you help gather the broken cup, and say, “Didn’t you hurt? You be careful in the future.” It works better. The driver hit on brake when it is needed, or it will hit the passing cars. When anger is about to rise, you must stop the tragedy of the anger, by hitting the brake of patience. When anger is about to appear, you must say to yourself that a destructive and dreaded feeling is rising up. Each time when anger appears, you must press it down, lets it is activated. One day it would be difficult for anger to appear, on the ground that you have been pressing down for long enough.

Our mind is more familiar with anger, and strange to patience. As a result, anger comes faster than patience.

For our own happiness we should make our mind familiar with patience. How do we feel when we are annoyed? We feel madness and gloomy; our face turn into red; there is feeling of burning inside. We neither could speak well, nor could think well. On the top of that, we give negative influence to the people around you. Our mere anger destroys our position, reputation, relationship, and happy life - these we cherish lot.

When someone try to annoy us, we should think it doesn't matter and justify his anger positively. It helps to stop the anger. First, keep our anger under control. Second you turn it into patience. If you want to scold, you must scold your anger. From now on, let's say, “Goodbye to anger.”