Suppose someone insults us. Feeling angry, we lash out at them. They feel hurt and react defensively or aggressively, doing things that hurt us further. And we retaliate, leading to an ever-escalating cycle. Initially, there was only our hurt because of their actions, but now there is their hurt because of our angry outburst, and our hurt because of their reaction to our outburst. Thus, the consequences of anger hurt far more than the causes of anger. No wonder the Bhagavad-gita (16.21) cautions that anger can make our life hellish. 

What makes things terrible is not our anger itself, but our thoughtless actions impelled by anger. 

Even when anger indicates correctly that something is wrong, it doesn’t always indicate correctly what is wrong. Anger impels us to snap judgments, whereby we think we know what has happened and why. If we judge wrongly and condemn others, our presumptuousness angers them. Even if we judge correctly, still anger impels us to use unnecessarily harsh words, thereby causing avoidable pain and alienation. 

To address our hurt constructively, we need to first calm ourselves. For gaining such calmness, nourishing our spirituality is immensely helpful. What does nourishing our spirituality mean? Broadly, it means realizing two truths: we are at our core souls who are indestructible, and overseeing all events is our omnibenevolent Lord who can bring good out of everything, even the bad. Appreciating these truths, we experience inner security; we don’t feel so threatened by others’ actions. Being thus internally stabilized, we can understand the situation better and act with greater maturity to resolve the underlying issue. 

By remembering that the consequences of anger hurt more than its causes, we can get the impetus to restrain our anger and then address the hurt constructively. 

 

Think it over: 

  • How do the consequences of anger hurt more than its causes?
  • How does anger impel us to act thoughtlessly? 
  • How does nourishing our spirituality help us deal with anger?

 

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16.21 There are three gates leading to this hell – lust, anger and greed. Every sane man should give these up, for they lead to the degradation of the soul.

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