if you end up injured while trying to get some steam off, now that would piss and disappoint many.
so gym yes, but I would put a bit lower weights, or go for some cardio
If something repeatedly causes anger or stress it might be a good idea to re-evaluate whether you need that thing in your life. Stuck in a 35-minute queue? It might be time to take your business elsewhere. Angry and motivated often go hand-in-hand.
Fix the problem, don't dwell on the emotion.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the OP of this line of commentary. Saying anger is good and one should embrace it is a really bad suggestion.
Anger makes you blind, it fogs your rational thinking and makes you do things you'll probably regret afterwards.
So, avoid it and think rationally.
The worst thing you can do is avoiding anger because sooner or later you'll explode. Learn to handle it or burn all that excess of energy on something useful but never avoid it.
Suppressing anger for a while (by self-distraction, leading yourself to see the other side of the coin, whatever) might be worse than stepping out for 30 seconds and letting go (e.g., by laying waste to a plastic cup). My 2c.
However you can remove anger by acknowledging your feelings, recognizing them as a fruitless and unnecessary state of mind and then letting go. This requires practice but when you succeed you'll see benefits in mood and likely also in stress levels and long term health.
It's not about assuming that anger is wrong. It's about understanding that anger rarely has any benefits.
It's also ironic that you see the Western culture as particular obsessed with suppressing anger. Our media and culture has become increasingly more angry and less inhibited the recent decades. I have the experience that people are more aggressive and ranting than ever. Just take the current presidential election as an example. We have the most hostile climate around the candidates ever and the media and the people love it.
“Protect yourself from anger for its beginning is insanity and its end is remorse.”
- Ali (Islam)
"When anger rises, think of the consequences."
- Confucius (Chinese Philosophy)
"Not being angry at someone who doesn't know, isn't this a Gentleman?" 人不知而不愠，不亦君子乎？
"Ji Wenzi thought three times before acting. Confucius heard this, and said 'twice is enough'." 季文子三思而后行。子闻之曰：“再，斯可矣。”
In the specific context of his student Zi Zhang asking Confucius about how to get an official salary, he responded: "Hear much and put aside the points of which you stand in doubt, while you speak cautiously at the same time of the others:—then you will afford few occasions for blame. See much and put aside the things which seem perilous, while you are cautious at the same time in carrying the others into practice:—then you will have few occasions for repentance. When one gives few occasions for blame in his words, and few occasions for repentance in his conduct, he is in the way to get emolument." (tr. Legge)
> the vajrayana schools (mainly tibet) also claim that there is clarity and
> energy in this emotion
The earliest Buddhist records explicitly recommend suppressing anger, even by sheer force of will if necessary (but only as a last resort.)
If evil, unskillful thoughts — imbued with desire, aversion or delusion —
still arise in the monk while he is attending to the relaxing of
thought-fabrication with regard to those thoughts, then — with his teeth
clenched and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth — he should beat
down, constrain, and crush his mind with his awareness. As — with his teeth
clenched and his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth — he is beating
down, constraining, and crushing his mind with his awareness, those evil,
unskillful thoughts are abandoned and subside. With their abandoning, he
steadies his mind right within, settles it, unifies it, and concentrates it.
Just as a strong man, seizing a weaker man by the head or the throat or the
shoulders, would beat him down, constrain, and crush him; in the same way, if
evil, unskillful thoughts — imbued with desire, aversion or delusion — still
arise in the monk while he is attending to the relaxing of thought-fabrication
with regard to those thoughts, then — with his teeth clenched and his tongue
pressed against the roof of his mouth — he should beat down, constrain, and
crush his mind with his awareness.
One obvious counter point is that the Dalai Lama, as the main representative of Tibetian Buddhism, is far more interested in political reconciliation than any sort of political domination. There are no tibetian lamas Buddhists that I know that seem interested in political domination. Quite the opposite, in fact. They are generally the most accomodating and open minded people. I know.
Also, I think the quote you are using is misleading for several reasons. First, for several paragraphs befor the exerpt, that particular sutta talks about being skillful with regard to those thoughts, abandoning them, ignoring them, questioning them, and being mindful of them without reacting to them. Also that passage is from a later translation of an early text, and the passage about crushing down or forcing your thoughts doesn't exist in the earlier text itself. This strongly suggests that beating down unskillful thoughts wasn't an original teaching, but was added later by a translator.
One last point, in general the idea of forcing your mind to do anything in particular isn't in-line with Buddhist teachings.
> that passage is from a later translation of an early
> text, and the passage about crushing down or forcing your
> thoughts doesn't exist in the earlier text itself
Your sutra is from the theravada traditions. The vajrayana tradition is not recognized by the theravada tradition, the vajrayana does recognise the theravada sutra's, but in vajrayana there are a bit more tools for dealing with disturbing emotions. How that came to be is a discussion on it's own.
The method in your passage is recommended often as a last resort in these schools. So I'm not claiming you should let anger run it's free course, definitely not, better there are other ways of dealing with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy#P...
I doubt it can be detached from the ego in anyone but the most advanced practitioners, if at all.
Anger creates a cognitive bias and narrows your attention to the object of threat. It distorts your perceptions.
I think the best way to handle anger is to acknowledge it and consciously try to let it go. Even the strongest anger will dissipate this way, because in order for anger to persist it has to be maintained by rumination on the object of the anger.
Anger only has a useful effect on people with power. Being mad at a phone rep is pointless. Being mad at an enterprise sales person that you've worked with for months can change things.
But they have to have some power. Never kick puppies.
In fact, if can pinpoint being angry in public often to any country it's the US.
If we accept this, then I would argue "anger suppression" in said countries isn't anger suppression in the Western sense ("We have to prevent the next Hitler at all costs!!!! No moar hate guise, kthx love all yaaaaay :) :) :) ") as much as it is part of an overall suppression of desire.
Mere suppression leads to inner fementation of emotion, not release from the emotions. However I will grant that Buddhist teachings may have been mis(applied|understood|interpreted) to lead to a suppression of emotion.
Let a man remove his anger. Let him root out his pride. Let him overcome all fetters of passions. No sufferings overtake him who neither clings to mind-and-body nor claims anything of the world.
Anger originates from a time where responding with anger to a certain situation could save your life and rise the probability to reproduce. That was long ago before human reason arised. Today anger is an overkill for most of the situations we face in daily life. Fortunately we can use human reasoning to deal with this. Read the book A Guide To The Good Life: The Ancient Art Of Stoic Joy! It is a life changer.
Tl,dr: you don't have to suppress it because you can eliminate it by changing yor point of view.
Anger exists in order to keep animals on top of the sometimes deadly contests that exist in the world. It can cause feuds, but it also causes us to win them.
It is easy to see how the world would be better off with less anger. Harder to see how unilateral disarmement will help the individual. But even then, humans, the rational animals, have the option of cooling their heads and calculating a strategy.
Certainly, there are times when anger is justified and appropriate, but it is helpful to properly control it and not to aim it at people who are innocent bystanders.
The flip side of this is to consider the point of view of an "innocent bystander". Does someone being angry at an unrelated event hurt them? Does the person describing that event to them, angrily, hurt them, either?
I think that I would trust someone more who had a range of emotion based on what has happened to them recently, than someone who always tried to show a particular "face" to everyone, regardless of their current circumstances.
In that sense, always hiding your anger is actually hurting your chances of being trusted by others, which I think is one of the most valuable things other people can give you.
Normally functioning adults do have some control over their emotions. If one is red-hot angry, they can take a deep breath, count to ten, put the situation into perspective, and reflect on the feelings of others. It is not an accident that this is what we tell children to do when they're having a fit-- it fucking works! This is not "hiding" anger, it is recognizing and dealing with anger.
Or, perhaps they managed to reduce their base anger response, and aren't actually hiding anything?
It could also mean that they are constantly trying to game people into believing they feel a certain way but they actually don't.
Or it could mean they were taught to do this at a young age, and it's an automatic response.
In any case, it makes one look less human and more likely a manipulator, or at least concerned with the manipulation of people enough to suppress an automatic reaction.
I doubt that many would agree with you that those who react more calmly "look less human". People are generally drawn to those with a calm, positive demeanor, as they are often enjoyable to be around.
Everyone trying to hide their anger all the time leads to fake, sterile interactions, and pent up hostility, in my opinion.
We'd be a lot healthier of a society if we didn't project and expect a perfect image of everyone all the time.
For example, in the hypothetical phone call, what if you say to John:
"John, I want to say I'm feeling very frustrated and angry right now. I expected a short call and I had to wait 35 minutes instead. I realize it's not your fault, but I wanted to get the feeling out, because you would have noticed it in my voice anyway."
Also, yes I do believe that someone in the presence of someone else being angry should not automatically assume it is about them.
Although, I went further to not get pissed off at all as many times as I could for typical bullshit of corporations. I mentally relax, do other things, and am ready to focus the second support answers. I do something similar to what was advised. You'd be surprised how much good service I've gotten from especially Comcast but also others. There's, as author says, people that just don't give a damn. Most are happy to help and happier to be appreciated. Which is sincere on my part by the end of it so long as they put forth effort on the problem. :)
Anger is then a tool of emotional manipulation to further your need for the environment to meet your expectations.
Emotionally manipulating people around you poisons your relationships with them in the long term though.
I think the author of the article is confusing anger with someone being mean. He mentions don't be angry with the guy on the other end. Why not say don't be mean to the guy on the other end but let him know that your not happy/angry/upset.
We're taught to recognize we won't have as much self-control, train ourselves to avoid letting emotions control us in an encounter, spend times when we're calm to prepare for likely situations with rehearsed reactions, and defined points when we stop attacks. The combination of these, esp with repetition, lets us handle a highly stressful and illogical situation with low risk of permanent consequences. An ability almost nobody in these classes started with.
Same is true in customer service, management, etc where you're dealing with stress, anger, and/or uncertainty. Same principles. The customer service people most of all since they deal all day with people saying or doing things that would piss them off. By not getting pissed, they keep customers, get paid, and keep their companies from loosing customers. So, the principle to avoid acting in anger where possible just keeps showing up with financial losses or jail time avoided many times over by following it.
The fact that a trait has been selected says nothing of its intrinsic value or its utility in a different context. It certainly bears no moral value.
Surely, you would agree that the context we experience today is a little different from the time where selection pressure could favor anger?
That matches my own personal observation at least.
That is the whole argument of western civilization, that suppressing anger is what allows us to be an intelligent species.
If a predator attacks your child and you chase it off, isn't that anger? Is that because your model was wrong?
The child was attacked.
You suddenly have the energy for resynchronization so that your model can persist despite this exception.
I don't think all anger is about models being violated, but if you said that some or even most (in the modern world) is I might better see where you're coming from.
As a log from a pyre, burnt at both ends and fouled in the middle, serves neither for firewood in the village nor for timber in the forest, so is such a wrathful man.
He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me of my property. Whosoever harbor such thoughts will never be able to still their enmity.
Never indeed is hatred stilled by hatred; it will only be stilled by non-hatred — this is an eternal law.
Society frowns on having an adult temper tantrum (the behavior); it doesn't care, in general, how you are feeling.
A different way that I know is: Anger is a secondary feeling that we use to cover the main feeling, may it be pain, sadness, or any other. Anger is a symptom, the hidden feeling is the cause. To manage anger we need to address the hidden feeling.
I agree that anger on it self is not wrong. But it is not a justification either. Hurting other people because I am angry is not ok either. And that is what the Western culture (or at least some of it) tries to address. To control the damage that the "out of sync" can produce
Some people are not prepared to receive feedback, and will probably react strongly against it. It's easier to believe someone else is wrong than to accept that you are wrong. This becomes reinforced as more people support a wrong idea.
It's also useful to sticks to facts, not opinions, and emphasize the problem, not the person.
I don't think I've ever seen someone build an apple orchard with anger, or sink a well, or construct a road between two nicely cooperating villages.
Anger exists to provide homage to entropy, and that really is about it. Life, mostly though, can exist at the other end of the spectrum without much anger required.
Your initial premise is wrong.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Anger exists for a reason and it exists for good reasons. The manifestation of anger means some model you are holding onto is no longer in sync with reality and that resynchronization costs more than your time preferences will allow. (Using the authors scenario, your expectation was for a reasonably timed phone call, not a 35 minute wait.)
It's not that anger is wrong. The anger is correct. The expectation was wrong. The West automatically assumes all instances of anger are permanently wrong, and this child-like ritual prevents one from appreciated the value of anger as a compulsion that tells you in no uncertain terms that your expectation is completely out of whack and you need to either cut your losses or resynchronize the expectation.
Anger becomes fuel for remodeling reality once you understand what is is trying to tell you. Putting taboos up around it prevents this realization, which in turn, creates people who are trained to perpetually cling to false models of reality out of fear of violating the taboo.