C H A P T E R 32§
ANGER Management
Seven Ways to
Tame Your Most
Destructive Emotion §
By Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami§
WO CARS BANG FENDERS AT AN INTERSECTION; tempers flare and a fistfight breaks out. In a store nearby, a man stomps off in a fury, cursing the clerk for declining his credit card. In an apartment up the street, a mother screams at her daughter to clean up her room. Down the block, a schoolgirl pouts because her father won’t let her date an older boy. Nearby, a man slaps his eight-year-old son because he won’t sit still in the car. Anger is everywhere. It is the most powerful and hurtful emotion we possess. Yet, the average person succumbs to it helplessly, even willingly, lapsing into insane episodes now and again without thinking much about it. Many defend it as a tool they would not live without. §
Anger is expressed in a wide range of ways. Low-minded individuals take delight in being angry with others and expressing that anger in aggressive and violent ways—gang wars, robbery, vandalism and more. They deliberately use anger and violence to get what they want from life. Then there are the mass of generally law-abiding people who live a normal, working life but are seriously angry on the inside about one thing or another and express that anger regularly in their words and actions. They are angry at life and have neither the means nor the motivation to eliminate this hurtful force from their lives. §