Friday, Apr 19 2024  

ANGER - 23 FEBRUARY 2004

My humble pranams at the lotus feet of Swami. Sairam respected elders, gurus, uncles, aunties, brothers and sisters.

I am Chirag from the Young Adults and today I would like to share with all of you, a little bit more about the enemy within-anger. When I was first asked to give a talk, I went through the topics and in an instant I chose to speak on this simply because of the experiences I have had with dealing with my anger. I will start with defining anger, the problems that come with it and what Swami says about it. Then I will share some suggested solutions to this very dangerous yet common problem.

What is anger? Anger is the most lethal emotion one can posses and for it to harm oneself, it does not necessarily need to be expressed. What I mean is that when a person feels angry he may be able to suppress his feelings but if that anger stays within, then it is doing as much harm as it would have if it was vented out at someone or something. Let me quote Swami on this . Swami says "eradicate anger". Now if you look close enough you will notice that Swami has used the word eradicate, not remove, not avoid, not control. I was curious as to why HE used that word. When I checked the dictionary to obtain eradicate's exact meaning. The meaning in the dictionary explained it as "destroy completely as if down to the roots"! If that is not explicit enough then I don't know what is. Remember "down to the roots". That is the importance Swami places on getting rid of ones anger. Let me talk about my experience now. Firstly anger cannot be justified. You cannot say it was ok to shout at because I had a bad day at the office so I am bound to be frustrated. Secondly, anger always has an alternative. By this I mean there is always a way out of a problem or a disappointment instead of blowing your top over it. And thirdly, anger has never benefited anyone in anyway. It has been said that the energy wasted at getting angry once will take almost 2 months to replace provided you stay happy and joyful throughout the 2 months. Imagine the amount of energy you are wasting every time you get angry at your child, you get frustrated with your parents or you give your friend a piece of your mind. Imagine the benefits if all that energy is used instead to solve a problem in a calmer and more sensible way. SWAMI would also be very happy. So now we all agree that anger is not only bad.it's horrible and something has to be done about it.

As we all know, the word anger is just one letter away from danger. Just to site a personal experience before I go on to how to go about dealing with anger. One night, I was looking for my cricket whites as I had a match the following day. I looked everywhere but I could not find them. After a while I got so angry, that I took a paper weight and smashed it against the glass on my study table! I ended up cutting my finger and could not play the match. This clearly shows that anger definitely does more harm not only to others but to oneself.

Let me now talk about how we can overcome this enemy which is within us. We have to realize that eradicating anger from our daily lives and from our system cannot be done over night. Firstly we have to develop a habit of being happy always. Smile as much as possible cause that way your brains will send hormones regularly related to joy and happiness and you as a whole will feel very good. Then it becomes very unnatural for anger to set in. So from today onwards, we should all strive to be as happy as we can at all times so as to remove the negative vibes which instigate anger. From what I have seen and experienced, anger works like a runaway reaction where the longer you are angry all that negativity will just build up until it explodes. Your anger will just shoot up like a rocket and then there is no turning back. So the safest way is not to get angry! Swami says drink water, go for a walk or close your eyes and count till ten whenever you get angry but my favorite is to look at yourself at the mirror whenever you get angry. However I have found another method to deal with our anger and that is to question yourself continuously. This has been very fruitful for me. Well, you should always ask yourself questions just before you get angry, while you are angry and after you have gotten over your anger. Ask yourself is it worth it? Could there be a better way of doing things? Will this solve my problem? Can it make it worst? (Trust me it will). When you ask yourself all these questions, you will realize for yourself that anger can never help. So if you can't exactly control your anger, ask yourself these questions every time you get angry. You will get the answers from within. To conclude, brothers and sisters, lets all try to remember what swami says about anger and promise to at least try to ERADICATE anger from our lives.

Jai Sai Ram

Bro Chirag
Young Adult