Anger

The most difficult mindset to control is anger. Once it is unleashed, getting it back under control is very difficult.

Why is this?

As we learned from Yoda, or Daoism if you study such things, anger is part of an emotional cycle. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to suffering, which then, in turn, leads to more fear.

The reason anger is so hard to get under control is because it is so much more preferable to fear.

As soon as we become angry we, out of long habit, nurture and strengthen the feeling in order to blot out our sensation of fear. Being afraid is socially unacceptable, and as such, is strongly humiliating, and whenever we feel fear, it is compounded by our humiliation at being afraid.

It is, perhaps, easier to see fear turn to anger in other people than it is to see it in ourselves for the vary reason that it so hard to get under control. When looking at ourselves, it is too easy to pretend that what we got angry about, we were not first afraid of.

So, the next time you see someone you know get angry, ask yourself what it was that made him or her angry, and why they had reason to be afraid. But don’t necessarily accept the easy answers, especially if it doesn’t seem on the surface that there was anything for them to be afraid of.

Look instead for the deeper answer.

And don’t try to point it out to the angered person. Instead, study it and see if it provides insight into your own fear and anger.

One purpose of sub-ascetics in general, and meditation in particular, is to help you overcome your fears, and also to accept your fears instead of hiding from them in a cloud of anger.

It is better to acknowledge to yourself that you are feeling fear, than it is to get angry so that you can pretend that you aren’t afraid. Once you become angry, it is such a small step to seeking out someone that you don’t fear, and then making that person afraid just so you can prove to yourself that you weren’t really afraid.

But you were, in fact, afraid, and your anger proves it.