Wisdom Anger Management

Because we are out of touch with these fundamental truths, we experience persistent confusion and suffering in our lives. Despite material abundance we feel empty inside. Our relationships are in turmoil, we often feel angry, depressed, and full of anxiety, and there is an ongoing sense that something just isn’t right.

Life doesn’t make sense, and in order to find some meaning we accumulate more and more stuff. We become obsessed with our plans for our life and our future. We are drunk with hope that it will all come together, and paralyzed with fear that it’s going to fall apart.

This doesn’t mean that wanting material things or having plans and ambitions are bad, not at all. But it’s the desperateness and seriousness with which we go about it that gets us into trouble. We become so caught up in securing our ground that we completely lose touch with the present moment. We miss the amazing display of beauty and mystery that is our life.

Everything becomes like a machine; we work, we strive, we try harder and harder. Rarely do we let go of our struggle and just enjoy what’s all around us in this very moment. We forget to appreciate the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and bodily sensations of our life. We forget to love our family, friends, and neighbors, and we forget to love ourselves.

The late meditation master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche taught extensively about the goodness of reality. In his book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior he writes;

Experiencing the basic goodness of our lives makes us feel we are intelligent and decent people and that the world is not a threat. When we feel that our lives are genuine and good, we do not have to deceive ourselves or other people. We can see our shortcomings without feeling guilty or inadequate, and at the same time, we can see our potential for extending goodness to others.

To be continued…

We think things are fundamentally bad, including ourselves and other people. We think that because we are unhappy, it means we are intrinsically bad…

2. The second aspect of our mistaken belief is that we think we are separate from the world and from other people. We believe that the world and other people are out there and that we exist independent of them …

Even science knows everything changes, but still we have a deep-seated habit of thinking we’re solid individuals. Biology tells us that all the cells in our bodies die and are replaced by new ones after seven years…

In order to understand anger from the Buddhist perspective, we need to begin by establishing a background of some Buddhist fundamentals. One of the first issues Buddhism address is the question of suffering…

It’s safe to say that everyone experiences some amount of anger. Even the Dalai Lama has his moments, “I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten…

When we have habitual anger management problems, we are addicted to anger. At the slightest provocation or inconvenience our default response is anger; we just can’t help it…

If there are individuals in your life that you frequently get into conflicts with, practice walking away from those situations. Rather than continue in the same old way of getting into escalated conflicts…

Khenpo Chonyi Rangdrol explains how mindfulness helps us have less anger and be more successful in our lives.

Sometimes as you work at anger management, it might seem like your anger is even worse! You may find yourself experiencing even more anger than usual. However don’t worry. You are not more angry, it’s just that you are paying more attention to it than usual…