WHERE IS MY ANGER COMING FROM?

Several years ago, I was reading a small booklet by Swami Dayananda Saraswati. I remember an incident he shared in that booklet.  It was about a time when he had become extremely angry - enraged - on seeing the inefficiency of certain people. That, also, happened to be the last time the lid had blown off his pressure cooker…

As far as anger was concerned, Swamiji tells us, in that little book, that it was all over for him…

Well, I could not believe what Swamiji was claiming. “How can anger go like that?” I was unable to accept the claim…

Even today, the lid easily gets blown off my pressure cooker…

And, each time that happens, I revisit, mentally, what Swamiji had said further on anger…

I may not be able to quote him verbatim… But, here is the jist of his teaching in that booklet.

“Anger is, mostly, our reaction to our own inefficiencies!”

Read it, again, dear… Perhaps, it might blow your mind off, totally!

When we see our own inefficiencies, we don’t like them… We get annoyed at ourselves… We don’t like others pointing at our inefficiencies… We don’t like criticism… So, we use our anger as a cover-up… as a preemptive measure…

We speak angrily… and try to shut the other person up… with a misplaced hope that it might help us overcome our guilt…

It only adds to it… Make us guiltier, angrier…

Like the little bird that buries her head in the sand and assumes that nobody is able to see her… We burry our guilt of inefficiencies in the sand called ‘anger… and, assume that others will not find us out…

They do…

And, we get more incensed!

So, what is the solution?

I am still trying to fix my own problem… Please don’t expect from me, a mortal, any solution…

As all other enlightened souls counsel us, Swamiji, too, tells us in his booklet, that the solution comes in proportion to the level of our awareness…

Do I still justify my anger? Do I still think that someone has caused it… someone has made me angry?

Or, am I able to trace the seeds of my own inefficiencies? Am I able to see how desperately I try to deny my inefficiencies, cover them up by being angry?

This morning, while the lid was on its way off my pressure cooker, I remembered Swamiji, all over again…

Luckily, I was able to trace the seeds – 

from where my steam was coming…

The bomb was defused, in time!

Maybe, unlike Swamiji, not forever!

That’s okay… I am happy I was able to ‘see’ it…

May I, therefore, claim: Seeing is not only believing… it is, also, doing!

If so, I have done it… Yes, I have done it!

Haven’t I?

GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.: Anand Ashokan