Make your anger expensive

By Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

It’s often asked why is there imperfection in the world if all is God. If all is love, why are there emotions such as lust, pride, attachment, anger, ego, greed and jealousy? These negative emotions are nothing but distortions of love. These distortions manifest in animals also, but they have no way to go beyond them as Nature rules them. But human beings are endowed with discrimination and can move from these distortions to a state of pure love.

Every sincere seeker wants to get rid of anger and reach a state perfection, but is often swept by his or her emotions. What can you do when anger rises in you? You may remind yourself a hundred times that you shouldn’t get angry, but when the mood comes, you are unable to control it. It comes like a thunderstorm. Emotions are much more powerful than your thoughts and promises you make.

Anger is a distortion of our true nature. It is part of this creation but we still call it a distortion because it doesn’t allow the Self to shine forth fully. And this is what sin is. Anger is a sin because when you are angry, you lose your centeredness, you lose sight of the Self. Sin is not your nature and you are not born out of sin. It’s just like the wrinkle in the cloth. It needs proper ironing. The structure of human consciousness or mind is very similar to that of an atom. The positively charged protons and neutrons are in the center of the atom while the negative charged particles are only on the circumference. Similarly, in human consciousness, mind and life, all the negativities and vices are only in the periphery.

Anger is a sign of weakness. A strong man doesn’t get angry easily. A bodybuilder doesn’t get angry so fast; it takes a while to raise his temper. A weak person can get angry very fast. When you focus on other’s mistakes, you are bound to get angry yourself. The cause of anger is the lack of total knowledge of what is happening inside that person.

Showing anger itself is not wrong, but being unaware of your anger only hurts you. Sometimes you can show anger purposefully. For example, a mother gets angry at her children. She can act tough or shout at them if they put themselves in danger. There is a place for showing anger, but when you get angry yourself, what happens to you? You are shaken completely. Look at the consequences of getting angry. Are you ever happy with the decisions you have made or the words you have spoken when you are angry? No, because you lose your total awareness. If you are completely aware and you are acting angry, that is fine.

In fact, anger is an instrument. It is useful when you are able to be in control of it. It can work wonders when know how to use it and where to use it. That takes skill – the art of handling your own might.

All anger is about something which has already happened. Is it of any use getting angry about something which you cannot alter? The mind always vacillates between the past and the future. When the mind is in the past, it’s angry about something that has already happened; but anger is meaningless as we can’t alter the past. And when the mind is in the future, it’s anxious about something that may or may not happen. When the mind is in the present moment, anxiousness and anger appear so meaningless.

Spiritual practices help you maintain your centeredness and not be shaken by small events. This is where a little knowledge about ourselves, about our mind, our consciousness, and the root of distortion in our nature will help. It is when you are exhausted and stressed that you lose your nature and get angry. Every individual is bestowed with all the virtues in the world. They simply get covered by lack of understanding and stress. All that is needed is to just to uncover the virtues that are already there.

When you are happy, something in you is expanding, have you noticed this? And when you are upset or angry, you experience a sense of contraction. Just knowing this brings freedom to us. Then our mind or our consciousness no more becomes a puppet of anybody’s words or opinions.

Breathing techniques and meditation are very effective in calming the mind. Learning something about our breath is very important. Our breath has a great lesson to teach us, which we have forgotten. For every rhythm in the mind, there is a corresponding rhythm in the breath and for every rhythm in the breath there is a corresponding emotion. So, when you cannot handle your mind directly, through breath you can handle it better. Meditation is letting go of anger from the past and the events of the past. It’s accepting this moment and living every moment totally with depth.

Often anger comes because you don’t accept the present moment. You look for perfection; that is why you are angry at imperfections. There are three kinds of perfection: perfection in action (kriya), perfection in speech (vachan) and perfection in feelings (bhaav). Suppose someone makes a mistake and when you see that mistake you get angry. Then you are no better than the person who has made the mistake. Your feelings have become imperfect because of someone’s imperfection in action. Any action will have some flaw. But when the feeling becomes imperfect, then it stays for a longer period. The innermost perfection is lost.

Even when someone commits a mistake, know that he or she is not the culprit; the stress inside is causing him or her to make that mistake. Just this understanding and few days of continuous practice of meditation can change the quality of our life.

Usually, you give your anger freely and your smile rarely as though a smile is expensive. In ignorance, anger is cheap and a smile is costly. In knowledge, a smile is free – like the sunshine, air and water – and anger is extremely expensive, like a diamond. Make your smile cheaper and anger expensive.