Long ago, Krishna in the Gita stated that anger, depression, greed, egocentricity, etc., are demonic qualities. They are damaging to harmony and have very little external causation.
It does not require much ascetic tapasya in caves to know that these reactions can come into play for a variety of reasons. The same reason or cause may produce different responses of anger, depression etc., of different degrees, the same reason which produces anger at one time in one situation may fail to do so at another time, the same set of reasons which produce anger in one person may fail to do so in another.
You are driving your car. Some muddy water gets splashed on your windscreen. If you do not at once do something to wipe your windscreen, but look this way and that to find the 'CAUSE', who threw the mud, why and so on, you will get into a crash.
Each time a reaction of anger or depression is provoked in you, a run-away circuit is set up in your vehicle called your body, the most potent and dangerous machine on earth. With anger and depression your headlights get dimmed, you will be pressing accelerator instead of clutch or brake and you head for disaster to yourself and others. Your search for causes is not an innocent or innocuous legal or objective pursuit for truth. Each so called 'cause' becomes a stimulus for further chaotic defensive action provoking counter measures in the other cars around you.
Let us say, you have received a dangerous cut on your body and the blood is flowing freely. Would you first rush to do something about it, got to a hospital, bandage, or do something to stop the bleeding or would you start a court of enquiry to find out by whom and how and why the cut was inflicted? You see you first attend to the cut because the damage is obvious. But you don't take any immediate action on your anger or depression because the dangers are not obvious, though anger and depression are playing havoc with all your inner subtle control mechanisms - your heart, lungs, blood vessels, intestines, etc. You justify them, you will go to a doctor who provides you further sophisticated justifications for your almost wicked determination to destroy yourself.
When you can learn English, Algebra, all sorts of of gymnastics, what is the hassle, humming and hawing, medical or philosophic disputation about learning to do something about the deadly accidents that confront you every minute on the road of your daily life?
Attend to the disturbance: not to its so-called cause.
The first step is to realise, to feel that this disturbance is damaging the most priceless possession you have, without which you are nothing, your body.
Have the dignity and pride of being master of your own car, which you are. If you can make your body scowl, sulk or shout you can jolly well make it smile, shut up and breathe easy at some point of time in relation to the disturbance. Do the smallest thing, control the smallest possible movement to show you are the driver.
Otherwise, give your body over to the family, doctor or guru, in fact to the driving school for public buses. You will be taught driving lessons. The family will advise you rest in bed, knowing full well that the most likely place to get a heart attack is in bed; the doctor will chemically or physically annihilate your amygdaloid nucleus because even a chimpanzee without this nucleus smiles at the experimenter cutting it to bits, and the guru teaches you how to walk gently so that ants won't get crushed. You will be like the car driver who has been taught to drive at 25 mph in the first gear with a proper silencer attached to your car no matter how the road is.
You hand over the driving of your car to the public school for driving. You will ensure the maximum insurance, covering the cost of staying in an intensive care unit in Switzerland and a safe passage to the abode of the Gods.
There is nothing wrong or immoral about anger or depression. They are words. Remember: Do not fall into the trap of saying anger or depression is bad. it is, that some learnt reflex responses covered by these words are damaging to your car and prevent your reaching the objective you have in view. Saying that anger or depression is bad has no operative value. That way, laugher and love are bad. If you cannot help laughing or making love when the house is on fire and your stated objective is to put out the fire, then laughter and love are bad.
Therefore, what is central to the discussion is that there are no good and bad emotions. The issue is your inability to modify your responses.
The mechanisms for learning are within you and with you. The motivation for learning the skills are thwarted by a social conditioning which in the guise of helping you makes you helpless, takes away your interest in learning, provides you with justifications and paralyses you.
Then to say that all society and organisation is bad is equally stupid. To avoid using these words and to attend to the type of responses you make to them, and the capacity to modify them in the interests of your harmony and growth is the issue.
It does not require much ascetic tapasya in caves to know that these reactions can come into play for a variety of reasons. The same reason or cause may produce different responses of anger, depression etc., of different degrees, the same reason which produces anger at one time in one situation may fail to do so at another time, the same set of reasons which produce anger in one person may fail to do so in another.
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| Sixteen faces expressing the human passions-coloured engraving by J. Pass, 1821, after Charles Le Brun |
Compiling huge volumes on the causes for these emotional responses is a relatively sterile occupation.
You are driving your car. Some muddy water gets splashed on your windscreen. If you do not at once do something to wipe your windscreen, but look this way and that to find the 'CAUSE', who threw the mud, why and so on, you will get into a crash.
Each time a reaction of anger or depression is provoked in you, a run-away circuit is set up in your vehicle called your body, the most potent and dangerous machine on earth. With anger and depression your headlights get dimmed, you will be pressing accelerator instead of clutch or brake and you head for disaster to yourself and others. Your search for causes is not an innocent or innocuous legal or objective pursuit for truth. Each so called 'cause' becomes a stimulus for further chaotic defensive action provoking counter measures in the other cars around you.
Let us say, you have received a dangerous cut on your body and the blood is flowing freely. Would you first rush to do something about it, got to a hospital, bandage, or do something to stop the bleeding or would you start a court of enquiry to find out by whom and how and why the cut was inflicted? You see you first attend to the cut because the damage is obvious. But you don't take any immediate action on your anger or depression because the dangers are not obvious, though anger and depression are playing havoc with all your inner subtle control mechanisms - your heart, lungs, blood vessels, intestines, etc. You justify them, you will go to a doctor who provides you further sophisticated justifications for your almost wicked determination to destroy yourself.
When you can learn English, Algebra, all sorts of of gymnastics, what is the hassle, humming and hawing, medical or philosophic disputation about learning to do something about the deadly accidents that confront you every minute on the road of your daily life?
Attend to the disturbance: not to its so-called cause.
The first step is to realise, to feel that this disturbance is damaging the most priceless possession you have, without which you are nothing, your body.
Have the dignity and pride of being master of your own car, which you are. If you can make your body scowl, sulk or shout you can jolly well make it smile, shut up and breathe easy at some point of time in relation to the disturbance. Do the smallest thing, control the smallest possible movement to show you are the driver.
Otherwise, give your body over to the family, doctor or guru, in fact to the driving school for public buses. You will be taught driving lessons. The family will advise you rest in bed, knowing full well that the most likely place to get a heart attack is in bed; the doctor will chemically or physically annihilate your amygdaloid nucleus because even a chimpanzee without this nucleus smiles at the experimenter cutting it to bits, and the guru teaches you how to walk gently so that ants won't get crushed. You will be like the car driver who has been taught to drive at 25 mph in the first gear with a proper silencer attached to your car no matter how the road is.
You hand over the driving of your car to the public school for driving. You will ensure the maximum insurance, covering the cost of staying in an intensive care unit in Switzerland and a safe passage to the abode of the Gods.
There is nothing wrong or immoral about anger or depression. They are words. Remember: Do not fall into the trap of saying anger or depression is bad. it is, that some learnt reflex responses covered by these words are damaging to your car and prevent your reaching the objective you have in view. Saying that anger or depression is bad has no operative value. That way, laugher and love are bad. If you cannot help laughing or making love when the house is on fire and your stated objective is to put out the fire, then laughter and love are bad.
Therefore, what is central to the discussion is that there are no good and bad emotions. The issue is your inability to modify your responses.
The mechanisms for learning are within you and with you. The motivation for learning the skills are thwarted by a social conditioning which in the guise of helping you makes you helpless, takes away your interest in learning, provides you with justifications and paralyses you.
Then to say that all society and organisation is bad is equally stupid. To avoid using these words and to attend to the type of responses you make to them, and the capacity to modify them in the interests of your harmony and growth is the issue.
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