Control your anger through

Meditation

by Lionel Wijesiri

On one occasion the Buddha was staying near Rajagaha in the Bamboo Grove. The Brahman Akkosaka Bharadvajahas heard that a brahman of his clan had become a disciple of Buddha. Angered and displeased, he went to the Buddha and, on arrival, insulted and cursed him with rude, harsh words.

Thus reviled, the Buddha gently spoke to Bharadvaja: “Do visitors come to your house, good Brahmin?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“What do you do when they come?”

“Oh, we prepare a sumptuous feast,” he replied. “What do you if they refuse to receive the meal?”

“Why, we gladly partake of them ourselves,” he replied.

“Well, good Brahmin, we do not accept your abuses. Therefore now it belongs to you.”

Three poisons

In Buddhist teachings, greed, hatred, and delusion are known, for good reason, as the three poisons, the three unwholesome roots, and the three fires.

These metaphors suggest how dangerous afflictive thoughts and emotions can be if they are not understood and transformed.

The symptoms of hatred can show up as anger, hostility, dislike, aversion, or ill-will; wishing harm or suffering upon another person. Here we will concentrate on anger.

Anger is one of the most destructive emotions. It ruins relationships, intimidates co-workers, and creates bad feelings.

So it’s surprising that it’s often an overlooked issue. In some quarters anger is actually considered positive, a tool for getting what you want.

Two points

At some point, however, many angry people realise they have to change their tactics. They begin to see how negative anger really is. Weighed against its supposed usefulness, getting mad is unrealistic, impractical, and unhealthy.

It’s unrealistic because your anger won’t cause others to change, no matter how strongly you feel they must.

It’s impractical because one person’s rage is puny compared to the wrongs and injustice of the world.

It’s unhealthy because the upset you feel after is a state of stress that’s harmful to every cell in your body.

Anger is rooted in human nature. It runs the gamut from a righteous sense of injustice to petty resentment, fantasies of revenge, bullying, and intimidation - all very common human experiences - before escalating to physical violence, crime, and war.

Assuming you’ve reached the point where you want to do something about your own anger or anger directed at you, where do you start? The anger management therapy may be of little use.

It teaches you to be more self-aware of your anger, but this isn’t useful when anger decides to explode. The force is too primal to overcome with rational restraint.

Buddhist teaching takes a different tack, offering two valuable insights: (1) Your anger is all about you. You will never deal with it until you look inward to examine yourself. (2) Once you look inward, you will see that anger isn’t part of your true self. Be your true self and anger is solved.

The first point keeps you from the endless circle of blame, where you look out into the world and spot something or someone who enrages you, thus giving anger its power. Buddhism teaches you that bad things happen, and often they are unimaginably bad.

But however vicious the crime, violation, or war, anger is always personal; its seed infects even the best causes.

Only by going inward and removing the seed can you contribute to the end of violence.

This tactic would not appeal to youif you in fighting back. Only after you accept the negativity of anger and its bad effects on you personally does it become feasible to test if going inward is the answer.

The second point says that when you do decide to go inward, you’ll be shocked at how entangled your anger is with your entire personality, daily actions, beliefs, and worldview. Every person contains the anger of centuries. The effect is so pervasive that there is no answer on the level of your ego-personality. It believes in anger and is also helpless to control it.

Control anger

How can we control anger?

Socrates once said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” This applies well to anger management. Think of the last time you got angry, and try to remember all the elements involved in that situation: what made you angry, what triggered it, how did other people react, and how did you also react to those people’s reactions.

Write it down in some journal or notebook, the more detailed the better. Do this self-analysis after each instance that you get angry, and you will learn more about yourself and thereby master your own emotions. Anger is a decision - you don’t become angry unless you allow yourself to be.

The trouble, however, is that often getting angry has become an easy habit that losing your temper becomes automatic.

The silver lining: you can start deciding not to get angry after you’ve spent enough time getting acquainted with the reasons why you get angry in the first place.

Engaging in meditation is the best long-term anger management techniques for adults. Moreover, it not only enables you to have better control of your emotions (especially the negative ones), but can also bring about a deep sense of inner peace and calm. There are several meditation techniques that can be applicable to anger management, but the simplest would be the most straightforward: tell yourself the following: “I will control my anger.

I will control my mind. I will be calm, peaceful, and contented. Nothing pierces the sphere of peace that surrounds me.”

Regularly practice this little meditation technique a few minutes each day and you’ll eventually notice a significant difference in how well you can catch yourself before you lose your temper.

Controlling anger, especially if losing your temper has been a deeply ingrained habit, can be difficult, if not exceptionally challenging. But with perseverance and regular application of the meditation techniques, you will eventually master your own emotions and enjoy living a more productive, happier life.