Anger; Objects in Disguise

Many of us share an existential question; why is that in one moment my parent/child/boss/sibling is acting with a level-head, and at the next moment, has completely lost their head in anger with me, someone they claim to love or care for? The answer is, and always will be, desire and expectation.

As a young boy, my parents would shield my eyes whenever an explicit scene would appear as we watched a film. They knew at some level that experiences taken in through the senses color the mind, and that it is best to avoid a young mind seeing base, explicit scenes before I was ready to handle them. In a strange way, my parents would, in these situations, exude some of the behaviours announced by Krishna to keep a mind at peace through the restraining of the senses. It is important to note that the word “objects” in this article (and in Advaita Vedanta) not only includes physical objects, but anything that one may perceive; for example, another’s words or actions.

But the self-controlled man moving among objects, with his senses under restraint, and free from both attraction and repulsion, attains peace

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 64

The idea behind this verse is that the senses are what allow objects in the world to sway us from attraction and repulsion, and these two cause our mind unrest. Conversely, by controlling the senses and what we allow ourselves to engage with, we attain peace. This much my parents were cognizant of during explicit movie scenes.

However a turn of the heel would arise when, amidst a bubbling disagreement, soon would follow anger, yelling, and weeping. Never was I shielded from such base and explicit experiences. Why is it that in one situation they were keenly aware of the sensitivity of my mind to vile sensory input, and in the next completely oblivious to the monstrous effects they were causing this same mind? I answer this with the help of Krishna.

As you read the remainder of this article, I want you to reflect on all those moments where you or someone you know has acted out of control. You will be able to trace back each of these to some underlying expectation and desire. To deliver the message that the seed of discontent is desire, the Gita describes the “ladder of fall” that explains how through desire one “achieves” for themselves a state of anger and further, complete mental dissolution.

Here I provide an extremely basic example of how the ladder of fall can manifest in life. You can surely think of better.

A significant other may expect you to wash the dishes, and when they get home from work and see you have not washed them – or better that you have not lived up to their expectation – there is a chance you will have upset them, possibly to a point where they completely lose their head towards you.

You might think, “well Anthony I have never heard of such a person who completely loses their mind at such lowly things”. To this I say, flip the coin, turn your head to the wind, and listen to the stories of those around you. I can tell you that the number of people I know whose parents and family have ruined their young minds because of their own arbitrary and unfulfilled expectations and desires far outnumbers those of healthy upbringing.

But there is a subtlety here; it is not really you who is upsetting them, but it is them who have become upset by themselves due to the difference between the response they expected from you, and the actual response you gave them. This outcome-delta is the unmet desire/expectation. From this we can see that it is desire for an outcome that leads to anger.

You may further think, “well Anthony, how is it that someone makes themselves upset when it is clearly in the interaction with this other person; without the other person the situation would not exist, thus the anger would not exist. To conclude, you need two people to create conflict and anger is a product of two people, not a person in themselves.” To this I say unto you, have you never seen a person become upset at a machine, a website, or even a lifeless physical object? Have you never seen a dysfunctional printer create a dysfunctional human? Have you never seen an inoperable TV get smacked like a misbehaving child? Have you never seen the unstarting car that starts the human? Have you never witnessed the rigid plastic covering on a product cause madness in a human with dull scissors? Have you never heard of the anger towards a lost package delivery? Have you never seen the student who cannot understand their prescribed material that becomes restless and angry? It is not a requirement that another person sever our expectations, but even inanimate things can cause us distress. Veritably how futile anger is when seen from this ugly perspective. Here I am demonstrating that anger is mostly generated by oneself and that another person is not required, even if they are part of the miserable drama.

Now we get into Krishna’s so eloquently expounding of the “ladder of fall”

When a man thinks of objects, ‘attachment’ for them arises; from attachment ‘desire’ is born; from desire arises ‘anger’. From anger comes ‘delusion’; from delusion ‘loss of memory’; from loss of memory the ‘destruction of discrimination’; from destruction of discrimination, he ‘perishes’

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verses 62-63

Let me explain. Attachment and desire for an object means that you want a situation in the external world (where objects reside) to go as you imagine it. It is your belief in a completely imagined future that you are holding near and dear to you. How stupid. Of course the sages in those times knew very well that the chaotic nature of reality is such that most often your imagined futures (desires/expectations) will never occur. Like a bowling pin stuck rigidly in the face of a speedily oncoming bowling ball, you set yourself up perfectly in the sights of anger as it comes to knock you down. This is plainly described as: desire/expectation + its unfulfillment = anger. You cannot deny this, as a close inspection of the instances of anger in your life will reveal a broken expectation as the underlying seed.

Once you have become angry, the show has merely just begun. Anger quickly leads to the delusion of the mind and loss of memory. This loss of memory allows for a destruction of discrimination, because when you’re angry and deluded, the sages realized you lose proper access to your memory, and thus to your very own family are you willing to curse until you are blue in the face and theirs are filled with tears and sorrow. What is the faculty that allows us to recognize our family? Memory. Once that’s gone, you’re a cold, shivering, ugly animal. This is why we have apologies, because “I don’t know what got into me.” Hopefully, with this knowledge, you will never utter such an ignorant sentence again.

From this perspective, we can see that the loss of memory is what my (and your) parents experience when they’re upset. In their folly during argumentation, they expect to be right, they expect to prove their point, and neither of them get around to it. In the middle of it all, you are sitting in an adjacent room, sobbing and in terror. They have even forgotten you are there, they have forgotten that you matter, and they have become totally blind to the pain they are causing.

Anger is thus objects of the world in disguise. One day a regular old object, another the source of anger. You must carry in your perception of the world this profound knowledge as it will bring clarity to your and the behaviour of others. This does not mean anger will not arise within you, but you know its origins, and you know where it goes. With that, unless absolutely necessary, hold that thought, mute that tongue. This is not repression, but conscious suppression for the sake of keeping our mind and the minds of others at peace. This does not mean to avoid voicing your opinions and concerns about a situation, it means “prevent the anger part.” And do not make the old claim that suppression is a negative, as we suppress ourselves for the higher things in life all the time (we defecate in toilets instead of the ground even when we really need to go, we do not swear at our boss even though we really want to, we don’t eat that donut because of how we’ll feel immediately after it, we reduce parties when we study for exams). With practice, anger will subside like the minuscule ripple-wave generated by passing a stick through a still body of water.

I want to leave you with a beautiful verse given by Krishna soon after explaining the ladder of fall;

For, the mind which follows in the wake of the wandering senses, carries away his discrimination, as the wind carries away a boat on the waters

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 67

Just as the wind that fills the sails of a boat propels it here-and-there, by not controlling your senses and thus allowing yourself to expect from the world of objects (physical objects and actions of others), objects will carry your mind to a state of anger and shortly after sever your ability for memory-discrimination. Lacking memory, you are no longer yourself as you spit sour suffering and introduce it into the very world that seeded it.