Anger
No religion allows anger as a permissible trait in human beings. No Prophet or Avatar endorsed it. And yet it is such a commonly experienced and expressed emotion, that one might mistake it for an intrinsic part of our personality.
Every spiritual path emphasizes the importance of building virtues like having a peaceful mind. Anger is one emotion that works in the opposite direction. It agitates our mind. An agitated mind is a highly uncomfortable one. To return to its comfortable state, it has to let out the anger. Where, when, how and on whom, it does not think.
The Hindu scriptures tell us of five weaknesses / sins which are a hindrance to our spiritual progress. They are: Kam (desire), Krodh (anger), Lobh (greed), Moh (attachment), and Ahankar (ego pride). Out of these five, Krodh (anger) is classed as the deadliest. Why? Because when a person gets angry, he loses his Buddhi, his sense of discrimination between right and wrong. In his angered state, he can say and do things which he would never think of saying or doing in his normal, peaceful state.
Consider this scenario. Person A and person B are having an argument for some time and A starts to get angry. As the heated argument continues, A insults B. After some time, emotions expended, they go their way. Later on, they meet again. Following is a possible conversation between them.
B asks A: ‘why did you say ……… (hurtful statements)?’.
A retorts: ‘I never said that!’.
B who has been hurt counters with: ‘But you did!’
To which A replies: ‘ Well, ….. did I? I don’t remember!’
To B, this may sound like an escape route, but it is entirely possible that A really does not remember. How is that? Because in his fit of anger, he had ‘lost it’. Lost his discriminating power of right and wrong.
Such scenarios are more common than we think or know or realize. The case of the husband who during a fit of anger beats his spouse or children is well known, as is that of the harried mother who lashes out on her defenceless children for the smallest act of disobedience of refusing to eat or study or sleep on time, the teacher who in a fit of anger metes out a punishment totally out of proportion to the misdemeanor like caning for not doing homework, an angry boss who fires his employee on the spot for a small mistake …….
When the angry person has calmed down, he either does not truly remember the hurt he has caused, or if he does, he regrets his behavior, is even sorry about it. In some cases, he even tries to make up for it. All this ….. until the next time he gets angry, and then it starts all over again.
Anger, then, is clearly an indication of loss of control. We tend to think that our anger is a reaction to external factors beyond our control. Others push our buttons, we say, and so it is ‘not our fault’. But the fact of the matter is that regardless of who or what causes us to become angry, it is us that lose control. It is us that do the harm to others. So it is us that we have to worry about, to change. The buck stops with us.
The way we react to external events and situations etc. triggers our nerves and hormones which in turn trigger responses such as anger which makes us helpless. If this is repeated again and again, we start to get more and more easily angry over smaller and smaller issues. The anger response begins to feel like a normal state for us. Without realizing it, we are suffering from anger dependency illness. At the same time, each time we give in to anger, minute poisons are released into our body, causing physical illnesses over a period of time.
But, you will say, are there not times and situations when anger is justified and necessary? My answer is no. No act of self poisoning is justified. No act of inflicting hurt on others is justified. And certainly no act of losing your peace of mind is justified.
Next week: healing yourself of anger.