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by John Cianciosi. It is well known that a predisposition to anger and irritation contributes to many health problems, such as high blood pressure, digestive disorders, and stress-related illnesses. Even worse, anger tends to be contagious; it spreads easily from one person to another.
Anger: Friend or Foe?
by John Cianciosi
 How
can we motivate ourselves to overcome anger? We might begin by considering the
nature of anger to see whether it is a necessary, helpful, or pleasant state of
mind. In other words, does anger improve the quality of our lives in any way? If
we have ever observed how our mind and body feel when we are angry, we will have
no illusions about anger being a pleasant experience. Irritation, annoyance, and
hatred are miserable states. Not only is the mind agitated so that we cannot
rest, but the body is also affected in a negative way. It is well known that a
predisposition to anger and irritation contributes to many health problems, such
as high blood pressure, digestive disorders, and stress-related illnesses.
Allowing for the fact that anger is a miserable state of mind and that it is
detrimental to our health, does it have any redeeming value? Perhaps you think
that anger can motivate people to "do what needs to be done." Indeed, anger can
be a strong and energetic motivator, but it often compromises our performance
because it weakens our reason, intelligence, carefulness, and circumspection.
Whatever we do when we are angry, in other words, may fall short of our true
potential.
For example, if you are engaged in any kind of negotiation, say a discussion
with your boss over a raise you have asked for, the worst thing you can do is
become angry. Anger can make you "lose your cool" and start blurting out all
sorts of nonsense. You might even insult your boss and jeopardize your job.
Whatever happens, it's unlikely that you'll get the raise you are seeking. While
anger may be an effective motivator for irrational, foolish, and destructive
action, it is not useful for improving the quality of our lives.
Other people might argue that "righteous indignation" or anger in response to
some injustice in the world is a positive quality. We may have good reasons to
justify our anger, and we may be right. But anger is never a constructive
response that leads to beneficial action.
In many parts of rural Asia, people still use oxen-drawn carts to transport
goods and produce. While standing on the side of the road, a man observed a
merchant sitting on a fully laden cart being drawn by a scrawny ox. The
merchant must have been in a hurry and impatient with the pace of the ox, for
he was beating the poor animal with a whip. On seeing this act of cruelty, the
man on the side of the road was overcome by feelings of indignation. He leapt
onto the cart, grabbed the whip out of the merchant's hand, and started to
beat him!
You may be thinking that the example above is remote from present-day
experience, but consider the recent story of a father who had taken his
ten-year-old son to play a game of hockey. Like many other sports, hockey can be
quite aggressive, and it seems that this children's game was no exception.
While watching from the stands, the father became increasingly angry by the
amount of physical contact and fighting being tolerated by the adults
monitoring the game. His righteous indignation focused on one of the men on
the ice, who happened to be the parent of another player. The father became so
irate that he assaulted the man as he was leaving the rink, and then, after
being ordered out by a rink manger, returned to slam the man to the ground
beside a soda machine. The man's head hit the concrete floor, killing him
instantly.
As this shocking story illustrates, anger is not a constructive response to
any situation. It is an affliction that benefits neither the person who is
angry, nor the people who come into contact with that person. Even worse, anger
tends to be contagious; it spreads easily from one person to another. Therefore,
when we say, "I have a right to be angry!" we are saying in effect, "I have a
right to suffer this miserable and destructive state of mind!" Indeed we do, but
why would we want to exercise such a right? We do not need anger to make a
responsible and meaningful contribution to life. As human beings we can be
motivated by more skillful qualities, such as reason, understanding, compassion,
or duty. Anger is neither a good friend nor a helpful companion, so why not get
rid of it?
FREEING THE MIND
If the preceding discussion has convinced you that anger is a state of mind
you can do without, the Meditative Path offers a variety of approaches that can
help you reduce the power of anger in your life. These methods help to free the
mind from anger by changing the way you think about experiences, or the way you
view the world.
Stopping the Cycle of Negative Thinking
It is possible for us to prevent the mind from sinking into a cycle of
negative thinking when we are faced with an unpleasant physical sensation. We
can apply the same approach to dealing with the anger that may arise when we
come into contact with a person, experience, or situation that is not pleasing
to us.
Using the awareness we have developed in meditation, we can "catch ourselves"
quickly when feelings and thoughts of irritation arise. At the first sign of an
angry response, we halt the negative thinking by reminding ourselves that anger
never solves anything and that it always contributes to misery. When we use our
powers of awareness and concentration in this way, we are not repressing our
anger; rather, we are making a conscious choice about how we wish to respond to
a situation and the mental state we wish to create.
Buddhist teachers often say that dwelling on thoughts of anger is like
picking up red-hot coals to throw at someone. Who will be burned first? Because
we do not want to burn our own fingers, we stop ourselves from picking up the
coals. Similarly, to prevent a mental state of misery, we stop the mind from
indulging in thoughts of irritation and anger. We center ourselves and establish
awareness to guard against such tendencies.
This approach can be quite effective if our awareness is sharp and we are
able to catch the negative reaction at its inception, before it gathers
momentum. However, once our reaction has developed into a strong feeling, it is
very difficult to stop the process, because anger weakens the rational and
reflective qualities of the mind. An angry mind is highly agitated and has
little chance of establishing the clear awareness necessary to restore peace and
balance.
We can think of anger, in this regard, as a fire in a wooded area and
negative thoughts as the brush and other fuel that feeds the fire. While the
fire is small, it is relatively easy to extinguish it by denying it fuel.
However, once a brush fire has consumed enough fuel to grow into a forest fire,
it is very difficult to put out. In such cases, firefighters often must retreat
and establish a perimeter of firebreaks to contain the fire until it burns out.
Similarly, when anger has already developed into a strong emotion, it is very
difficult for us to halt the negative mental cycle. We may need to retreat or
remove ourselves from the situation until the inner fire of negative feelings
and thoughts burns itself out. Then we will be able to reestablish awareness and
assess the experience with a clear mind.
Replacing Negative Thoughts
A variation on the approach above involves using awareness to interrupt
negative thinking and replace it with constructive thoughts that help diffuse
the feelings of irritation and annoyance. In other words, instead of continuing
to justify and reinforce our negative reaction to a situation, we make the
effort to bring to mind thoughts that elicit a more positive response.
We can prove to ourselves that this technique is effective by considering the
following story:
A man was waiting at the station for his usually punctual 7 o'clock train
to the city. But this morning, the train was late. As he waited, the man
became increasingly irate. By the time the train arrived forty minutes later,
he was fuming. He could barely restrain himself from venting his anger at the
conductor. However, before the man could speak, he overheard someone say that
there had been an accident at the previous station during which a little girl
had been killed. The feelings of sympathy and sorrow the man felt at this news
caused his anger to vanish immediately.
Many times we generate anger or irritation about some situation based on
assumptions and speculation because we do not know all the facts. Rather than
persist in this unhappy pattern, we might try abstaining from judgment or giving
people the benefit of the doubt until we understand what's really going on. To
counter rising feelings of anger, we can intentionally bring to mind an
explanation that helps us respond in a more patient and equanimous way.
For example, say you are driving to work and someone cuts in front of you.
Instead of becoming angry or planting the seeds for "road rage" by indulging in
negative thoughts about inconsiderate and dangerous drivers, why not give the
driver who cut in front of you the benefit of the doubt? What if someone in that
car was being rushed to the hospital? What if that driver was late to pick up a
young child who was waiting at school? Once the thought of those possibilities
arises in the mind, your feeling of annoyance automatically disappears.
The two methods for dealing with anger we have discussed -- stopping the
cycle of negative thinking and replacing negative thoughts with positive ones --
assume that we have sufficient awareness to catch our negative thoughts early in
the cycle, before they generate too much energy. Both are valuable techniques
that require continuous vigilance, like an allergy that requires preventative
medicine to keep its painful symptoms from flaring up. Other approaches to anger
focus more directly on the root cause of the problem -- the way we view
ourselves and the world around us.
Changing Our Attitude
Since our attitudes color the way we perceive the world, we may be able to
get at the root of anger by examining our view of the world with the aim of
replacing critical, impatient, and intolerant attitudes with patient, tolerant,
and forgiving ones. When we do, we automatically find the world -- and help to
make the world -- a less irritating place.
First of all, most of us have highly developed critical faculties. That is to
say, we have views and opinions about everything and everyone. Because of this
tendency to judge, we are continually deciding whether we approve of or like
each experience as it occurs. Wherever we go and whatever we do, our internal
"critic" is saying, "I don't like this," or "I don't approve of that." Constant
judging predisposes us to experience irritation, annoyance, and anger. I'm sure
you can remember many times when your negative judgment or disapproval of even a
trivial event -- an umpire's call at a baseball game, an off-hand remark by a
business associate -- made you feel annoyed, irritated, or even angry.
The more intolerant and demanding we are, the more irritation and anger we
experience. It is impossible to change the world so that nothing we encounter
arouses our disapproval. Working consciously to reduce our tendency to judge and
to soften our critical attitudes is the only solution. To make this point, my
teacher would often tell the story of the mangy dog:
A dog with the mange sought relief from its affliction by running from one
place to another. First, the dog would lie in the shade, but it would soon
feel uncomfortable and go and lie in a bush. After a short time, it would feel
the irritation again and run off to sit in the open. But nothing brought
relief. Wherever the mangy dog went, it was miserable, because it was not the
place or the conditions, but the disease that caused its discomfort. If it
could be cured of the mange, the dog would be comfortable anywhere.
The dog's mange, of course, is a metaphor for any attitude that causes us to
react negatively and create misery. Changing our attitude to become less
critical does not mean that we abandon our appreciation for good and bad, or
right and wrong, and start living irresponsible lives. It simply means that we
become a little more tolerant and patient. It is unrealistic to expect
everything and everybody to be exactly as we want them to be at all times, and
yet we often approach life with this attitude. Little wonder, then, that we
experience so much irritation and anger!
A traditional example of the attitude we want to overcome is the story of the
man who thought it would be marvelous to cover the whole earth with soft leather
so that he could walk everywhere without hurting his tender feet. It was a nice
idea, but completely impractical. A wiser man would make a pair of shoes that
allowed him to walk wherever he liked without pain. We cannot change everything
and control everybody to satisfy our whims and wishes. But we can change our
attitudes and learn to accommodate a variety of conditions and situations
without becoming upset, irritated, or angry.
My teacher would say to us, "Look at the trees in the forest. Do you see that
some are big and tall while others are small, and that some are straight while
others are crooked? People are like trees; you cannot expect them all to be the
same." This teaching reminds us that if we can be a little more accommodating of
the people around us, we experience less anger and conflict. At other times, my
teacher would hold up his hand and say, "Look at these fingers. They are all of
different lengths and thicknesses, yet they can coexist in harmony, each
fulfilling a purpose. Even this little pinky is useful for scratching inside the
ear." Indeed, variety enriches life, and not everything needs to be the way we
think it should be. By learning to allow for differences and to accommodate
diversity, we reduce our risk for irritation and anger.
Another important attitude for diminishing negative states of mind is
forgiveness. Either intentionally or through carelessness, we all make mistakes.
Learning to accommodate human imperfections lessens our tendency to nurse
grudges or harbor resentment and helps us forgive others as well as ourselves.
Forgiving mistakes does not mean that we condone mediocrity or evil. It only
means that we are willing to allow a new start in the present with hope for the
future. Forgiveness is a soothing ointment applied to a wound so that healing
can take place. It is an essential part of a healthy attitude and conducive to a
peaceful and harmonious life.
In his book
No
Future Without Forgiveness, the Reverend Desmond Tutu illustrates the
healing effect of forgiveness with some very powerful examples. For instance, he
tells the story of a mother whose seven-year-old daughter was kidnapped during a
family camping trip in Montana. The kidnapper was eventually caught, but not in
time to save the child's life. Even faced with such a horrible tragedy, Tutu
reports, the mother refused to become a victim of hatred:
"Though I readily admit that initially I wanted to kill the man with my
bare hands, by the time of the resolution of his crimes, I was convinced that
my best and healthiest option was to forgive...." Victim families ... who
retain a vindictive mind-set ultimately give the offender another victim.
Embittered, tormented, enslaved by the past, the quality of life is
diminished. However justified, our unforgiveness undoes us. Anger, hatred,
resentment, bitterness, revenge -- they are death-dealing spirits, and they
"will take our lives." . . . I believe the only way we can be whole, healthy,
happy persons is to learn to forgive. (155-156)
This discussion on changing your attitudes may help you view life in a new
light. Instead of seeing everything in a cold, critical way, you begin to see
that it is possible to soften your perspective and see experiences in a way that
is less abrasive.
 This
article was excerpted from The Meditative Path, ?2001, by John
Cianciosi.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Quest Books.
www.questbooks.net
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
John
Cianciosi, a student of the late Venerable Ajahn Chah, was ordained a Buddhist
monk in 1972 and served as spiritual director of monasteries in Thailand and
Australia. He now teaches at the College of DuPage near Chicago.
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