"Whoso checks anger, when it
arises like an uncontrolled chariot,
That person, indeed, I call a charioteer.
The other folk are mere rein-holders."
— The Buddha (Dhammapada)
 |
| Escape to Reality: Buddhist Essays |
The human world (a vast plane extending far beyond the limits of this earth) we live in is far from perfect. Things happen which, we feel, would not happen if others only were a little more intelligent and considerate, a little less greedy and selfish.
When such things happen, the ill-tempered horse of anger takes charge of the chariot of personality, and we are in for a period of subhuman behavior.
It is easy to give one’s anger a loose rein and let it gallop all out of control. It is easy to make it gallop faster and faster with flicks from the whip of self-righteousness or delusion.
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If the mad career does not end in a crash, the runaway horse tires and slows down after a while, the chariot resumes its normal pace, and the charioteer feels a bit foolish -- quite a bit foolish. There has been, perhaps, nothing worse than an exhibition of very bad manners.
But all too often such mad careers end in serious crashes, careening all out of control into a ditch. In Sri Lanka, an island of Buddhist Dharma, a depressingly large number of people are killed in quarrels every year.
A striking feature of these criminal offences is that in most cases the motive seems ridiculously inadequate. A fancied slight at a wedding party, a delay in the repayment of a small debt, a dispute over the ownership of a tree or even a fruit — such things as these have sufficed as the motive for brutal murders. Why is this?
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Clearly, it is not the gravity of the motive that matters, but the character of the person concerned. If a man is childish, if he lacks a sense of humor and sense of proportion, which are really the same thing, any minor annoyance can send him along the road that ends on the gallows.
The Buddha Dharma offers people a peerless method for the building of a strong, wise, kindly character. Why is it that so many people in Buddhist lands do not have that sort of character? It must be that they have not understood the Buddha’s Teachings.
They call themselves "Buddhists." They take part in religious ceremonies. They listen to the Dharma on occasion. But that Dharma has not soaked into them and permeated them with its coolness and sanity. They are like children, happy, generous, and truly lovable at times, but horrible little brutes whenever something sends them into a tantrum.
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In such black moments they behave as though the Buddha had never taught, never given to humanity a message of universal loving-kindness and understanding.
We who are mere worldlings cannot pretend to that mastery over self, which was characteristic of the Buddha and the enlightened (arhats). To us, anger is a problem. But there are things we can do.
There are ways of thinking which make the control of anger less difficult. To begin with, we should understand that the failure to control anger is always a sign of weakness, never a sign of strength. We all like to be considered strong and masterful.
Anger, when it takes charge of us, does make us feel stronger and more masterful than we do normally. But this is a mere delusion, misleading and dangerous. In truth, we are, at such times, weaker and less efficient than normal.
A clever boxer, if s/he knows that his/her opponent has a quick temper, will do her or his level best to provoke a fit of temper in the opponent, because it makes the opponent much more vulnerable to attack.
Whenever we get angry we should realize that the strength we feel is not the strength of a charioteer reining in anger. It is the strength of the runaway horse sending us careening off course.
We should immediately begin to put the charioteer back in control. If we can do this, we are masters. If we cannot, we are slaves to the horse.
It is also important to reflect that nothing ever matters half so much as we think it does. There are people who take themselves so seriously that they seem to be in a state of rigor mortis while still alive. Such people should realize that their occasional exhibitions of bad temper are not nearly as impressive as they imagine.
A person in a temper looks ugly and may even be dangerous, but that person is too funny to be impressive. The wise person learns to laugh at oneself at times. If one cannot, others will. More
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