How to deal with anger by Lama Surya Das

Anger is an unpredictable thing. Everyone feels anger. However, as you know, anger is not always a unlikely emotion to have. Anger sometimes makes you less appealing as a person; it affects your work, your private life and your sense of well-being. This is particularly true when you feel constantly on the edge of having an emotional breakdown.There are three basic causes of human suffering, according to Buddhist teachings: ignorance, desire and anger. Of these, it would seem, anger is perhaps the most-readily identifiable as well as potentially the most damaging to one's self, to others and to the environment.

Lama Surya Das writes in "Awakening the Buddha Within," his bestselling book on Buddhist practice. "Anger is a human emotion and it doesn't automatically disappear. Also it has its own logic, its own intelligence and function. If you bottle up and swallow your anger too often, you are going to make yourself ill." "Meeting the challenge of ill will is not about denying, repressing, or suppressing anger. It's about staying up to date with anger and other emotions by experiencing and releasing their energy moment by moment rather than storing them up. It's about not carrying grudges, or blaming yourself, or turning your anger inward and becoming depressed and despondent. Ideally we should be able to be sensitive enough and aware enough not only to feel life fully but also to let it go."

Here is a simple practice that you can implement to help you rein in your anger demons. Hopefully, this helps you obtain the control you need to be less stressed and avoid a rage filled day-to-day lifestyle.

A few steps from Lama Surya Das to contain anger 1. Breathe deeply: while breathing out, with the exhalation. In this practice, do a mantra and some variation of it; this will magically interrupt the general pattern of unskillful, thoughtless reactivity. This on the spot practice can instantly provide a moment of mindfulness and sanity. It helps you take better care of yourself, rather than putting yourself down; and it heads off negative behaviors that we realize we don’t want to do, because such reactions have not really helped us in the past.

2. Meditation can be the ultimate therapy to completely eliminating anger from your mind. In the beginning, one can do systematic meditations (like this meditation on anger), but also meditation on compassion, love and forgiving reduce anger as well. Ultimately, the realization of emptiness eradicates all vision like anger. 3. Patience is the main solution to anger. As common wisdom says: just count to 100... During this time, any of the below methods can be effective. The most effective method will depend on the actual situation. Especially in our age of rush and intense change, patience may not be seen as a positive quality, but take a minute to think impatience can easily give rise to a general feeling of anger. 

Article Source - http://spiritualblissblog.blogspot.in/2011/08/lama-surya-das-on-dealing-with-anger.html