Anger

When your expectations are not fulfilled, that is the situation you call anger. Your expectation is nothing but a desire that the other person should behave according to your image of him. You create images because you are afraid. If you are not afraid, you cannot be angry. All these diseases come from a basic fountainhead — ignorance. They go away once ignorance goes away.

You need to pass through the entire spectrum of living. You need to experience maddening anger. You need to experience the rising force of lust. You need to experience the terrible temptation to be dishonest. You need to go through all of this without suppressing it, without being equivocal about…

If you are in a railway coach, and that too an enclosed cabin with two fellow passengers, and it’s just a journey, let’s say, ten hours long, and those two guys are constantly squabbling, what would it do to you? If you are very patient, you will try to sleep.…

How do we justify our anger? We justify our anger by feeling short-changed, cheated, or victimized; by continuing to assert that we are incomplete, while simultaneously bemoaning the incompleteness. If you have grudges within, if you feel a victim of situations, or past, or persons, and if you lend credence…

He gets angry, so do you. Maybe the objects of anger are different. Maybe the intensity is different. He is lustful, so is he. Maybe the objects are different. Maybe the intensity is different. She is possessive, so is she. He is suspicious, so is he. He is ignorant, so…

Yes, we are animals. We are animals, and animals can get extremely violent if they discover their mates being stolen away.

There was one board I once read. It said, “How to be cautious of dogs?” It particularly warned against disturbing dogs on two or three occasions. One, when they…

The common man aspires to be a criminal, a respectable criminal albeit. “I am a respectable government officer”—we very well know what all that implies. And we are not talking of Seshans and Khairnars here; we are talking of 99.99999% of the government officers.

The common man himself takes pleasure…

Do you see what is violence? To forget God, to forget the Truth. What is non-violence? To fight that which makes you forget the Truth.

So, non-violence actually means you have to fight. If you are not a fighter you cannot be non-violent. The false is to be fought, and…

Anger is not a disease in itself. Anger is an indicator. Anger is a very powerful and gross indicator. Anger becomes necessary so that you may see how bad your condition is.

Subtle signs of discomfort and bad living are always there, but one misses those signs. Because you miss…

Questioner (Q): When I am not able to complete a task or meet a deadline, I feel the need to punish myself. I will maybe skip a meal, or if I have planned to do something with my friends, like going out or cycling or something, I will skip that;…

Questioner (Q): I see that I want to say a lot of things but I don’t, and I just be a coward. So, for example, I saw a man whip a bull with a stick but he was doing it behind the ears, under the chin where it really hurts,…

Questioner: Acharya Ji, we use anger as a weapon and it's a weakness too. How to stop anger from becoming a weakness and why do we get angry?

Acharya Prashant: When desire is not fulfilled Parul (Questioner) then one gets angry, you know that. So, it's not about anger. It's…

Questioner: How to control our anger? Should be reactive, somebody hurt us, or how to react in a way?

Acharya Prashant: There are two parts: One, how do we control or anger? Second, how do we react when somebody hurts us? You see in both these parts you are describing…

Acharya Prashant (AP): I was asked how to get out of aggressiveness. First of all, you have to totally forget that aggressiveness is the issue. All problems arise from ignorance, all problems including aggressiveness. And it is a part of ignorance to assume that aggression is an important problem or…

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, I have been at a stage in life where I would get angry at God. My understanding of God at that point was, that there is an external entity out there, overseeing everything, trying to protect the entire world.

Eventually, I could see that there are…

Question: “How to overcome impulsive feelings, like anger, and how to increase tolerance?”.

Acharya Prashant: Why do you want to overcome anger? Why do you want to overcome anger?

L: Because you are insufficient and you feel incomplete.

AP: That looks like an academic explanation. When you say you don’t…

Question: Well how to be in a crowd but not get lost in maintaining yourself in a crowd?

Acharya Prashant: There is very little that you can do, when you are already in the middle of a crowd. Stimuli are raining upon you from all sides, responses are demanded. Every…

Question: Sir, how can I stop myself from wanting to smash a car or motorcycle when I am about to smash?

Acharya Prashant: There is no need to stop yourself, you are already stopping yourself. I don’t think so you have ever smashed your bike against any car. So, when…

Question: How to deal with a short-tempered person?

Shri Prashant: Why are you only asking about how to deal with those who are very short tempered? There are different people in the world, some are short-tempered and some are long-tempered (laughs).

People have different natures. If you’re aware, attentive…

Question: Moving from opinions to the realm of facts, I feel an intense need to look very closely at my mind’s desires but there is anger. What is this anger and why is it there? I want to understand it.

Speaker: Realization becomes anger in absence of action. You get…

Question: What is anger?

Speaker: Something happens and you get angry. We are looking at that event very, very closely. Something happens and you get angry. Let us give the whole thing a shape, a name, a face. Let us say that a stranger comes to you and says that…

Question: Sir, I asked you a question during Samvaad that how can I get rid of my anger. You said that we feel pleasure while getting angry. You said I need to think before getting angry that to whom am I showing anger. I need to think of relation with…

हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।

How do you, asks the chief of police, patrol a city, where the butcher shops are guarded by vultures, where bulls get pregnant, cows are barren, and calves give milk three times a day, where mice are the boatmen, and tomcats row the boats, where frogs keep snakes as watchdogs,…

The woman is simpler, more innocent. I would dare to say the woman is simple and innocent just as animals are, because woman, just like animals, is biology-driven. She is emotional, and her emotions do not really arise from understanding, not even from intellect. Her emotions arise from her body, from her biological conditioning, from her hormones.

If you are someone who cannot take care of herself, how will you be sure that your presence, your company is not becoming an influence of sickness on the other person?

Be very, very alert about cohabitation. Just don’t start living with anybody. Be very, very conscious of your personal…

If you take yourself as primarily physical, then beauty too for you would be something just physical. You will look at the woman most capable of successfully reproducing. That’s the prakritik definition of beauty.

The first thing that comes to mind is flowers. What are flowers? Flowers are the reproductive…

Whenever you will give a lot of importance to what others give you, you will be afraid, and then you will want to play safe. Make a list of all that others give you—company, attachment, reputation, and these are the things that are at the core of your fear.

Whenever…

“I will beat him!”

“I will destroy her!”

“Did you just insult me? Did you?”

Four hours forty-eight minutes of deep intellectual perspiration!

“Did she? Did she not?”

Have some mercy upon yourself. Learn to ignore, please. Bypass the small issues. Learn to ignore the small for the big, would…

Hurt is not automatic. Somewhere there is an admission from you that you are hurt, and that you would be hurt, and that you would call yourself as hurt. Don’t call yourself as hurt, and see what happens.

Hurt is not an obligation. Hurt is a choice. Insecurity, fear, temptations—none…

Worrying is the other name of hope. When you think negatively about the future, you call it worry. When you think positively about the future, you call it hope. So, worrying is just as equally bad as hoping.

Conserve your energy. Train your thoughts. Discipline your little self. Time is…

Just as the ego loves to take credit, it also loves to play the victim.

If something good has happened, “I did it!”

If something bad happened, “It happened to me.”

“Good things I do, bad things happen to me”—this is astounding.

Playing the victim is a favorite pastime of…

When you say that you go to your workplace for a purpose, the purpose is never work, or is it? The purpose is the salary cheque. In fact, if work could be bypassed and you could straight away reach the salary cheque, then who would want to work? Now, why…

There was this king of the demons; his name was Hiranyakashyupa. The king worked really hard. He kept austerities, he forced even God to come down and bless him. So, it would have required a very special effort. But then, what did he want from God? Nothing but the extension…

When you don’t operate from a spiritual center, then you operate from an emotional center. These emotions are causing this climate change. You are so emotional about that next foreign holiday, right? That is carbon intensive. You are so emotional about having a good, nice nest of your own—that is…

You are so powerful actually that you are scared of yourself.

There are three ‘you’s in that statement. The first two refer to the small self or the ego. The third one refers to the best that you can be, the Great Self, the Truth—classically, the Ātman. And classically…

There is really no pleasure deeper than not getting disturbed when the entire world is conspiring to disturb you. This deepest pleasure is called joy.

Everybody, the entire game of situations, seems hell-bent on freaking you out, on just destroying your peace, and you are looking at it with indifference;…

Emotions, they can do whatever they want to do. It doesn’t matter how I am feeling. What matters is what I must do.

Ask yourself: Had you not been feeling this way or that way, what would have you done? And you will get a very good answer.

When you…

Pay attention to all your thoughts, emotions, actions. Something unknown is waiting there for you. Most people know nothing about themselves.

If you are angry, it tells you that there is something within you that is resisting the world now. Why is it resisting the world? Go into it. Try…

There was a Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna. He talked of a painter who fills his entire room with terrifying paintings painted by himself. So, on this wall he paints a demon, there he makes another horrible scene, something there, something there. And he is painting it himself, and then he becomes…

If the mind is a diseased organ, then why do you trust it so much? If it is a diseased organ, then whatever you see through it, why can’t you just reject it? Why do you trust this unfaithful servant so much? If I have a machine that continuously gives…

“Why are women so emotional? If we are saying that it is okay for a man to be emotional, there is an implicit assumption that men are not emotional but women are.”

Both are. It’s just that both express their emotionality in different ways. Inner urges, latent tendencies in women…

The movies tell us that unless there is a special person in your life, you are really missing out on something big, and then you are seized by FOMO. What is FOMO? Fear of missing out.

“Oh my God, everybody has that! I am the only one left behind! I…

Choose a person who will challenge you, not someone who will pamper you, console you, tell you, “You are beautiful as you are.” And in the very same way, choose work. Choose work that will really be difficult to handle. Because if it is difficult to handle, then maybe it…

Love knows on its own. Love needs no instructions. Hence, we are so afraid of it. We cannot control it. We do not know where it would go and what trouble it might lead us into. So, we say, keep your hands off this dangerous thing! Better be in formal…

I’ll tell you what the rape of the mind is. When the mind has nonsensical purposes, that is rape of the mind. When things like stuff that happened in the childhood or teenage attracts you and dominates you, then the mind is being raped. Forgive me the clichéd expression, but…

The past is a great resource. It is not to be wasted away or thrown away or forgotten. If you do not really decode your past, you are bound to repeat your past. Forget all the propaganda coming from the neo-spiritual circles that say that the past is something to…

“Enjoy the moment! Go with the flow!” What is that flow? Where is it coming from? Why should I go with it? Why don’t you just pause and ask, which flow are we talking of?

The tsunamis are coming to take you away, and the great master is teaching you:…