DEALING WITH ANGER

Sunanda (Dubai, U.A.E):

Q) “Hari Aum! Please explain, how should I deal with my anger (one of the six obstacles)? Is it possible to transcend it?”

Manish ji's reply:

[As understood by me]

“In order to deal with anger, we must first understand its mechanism. Amongst the six obstacles, the first one is kaam / desire. If our desire gets fulfilled, then anger doesn’t follow. But if our desire meets with any obstacle on its way to fulfilment, or our expectations are not met with, then anger comes into play.
Desire, directly is not just one of the reason, but playing in many ways, it can give rise to anger. For e.g. - If one is overworked then it gets built up and bursts. To avoid that; do your best and leave the rest. But the leaving bit doesn’t happen due to attachment which leads to doer-ship. This automatically leads to expectations and when expectations are not met with, anger springs up! If we perform our duty truly for its sake, without expectation, then doer-ship would take a back seat and subsequently anger too.
We cannot shun down all the desires immediately. The solution is to first make the foundation strong by fulfilling some desires, coaxing some while ignoring the others. Else, it gets pent up.
One needs to understand intellectually, why desires should not be entertained and at the same time not even supressed! Else there will be too much of pressure mounting. Anger is because of desire. It is not the intellect but the calculative mind that keeps calculating gain n loss and keeps giving excuses to make place for fulfilling desires.
To transcend anger - If we look at anger as a knife or a tool for cutting / chopping vegetables, it indeed can be of help. If mishandled, due to its sharpness, it can cause a lot of damage. Similarly, if the mind loses control and comes in the sway of anger, then it can be very abusive and destructive.
So anger as a tool can help bring things in order or take a human to his devolution. Hence anger should not supersede, but get channelized!”