It's important for people to keep in mind that while anger is a feeling that everybody has, aggression is a choice.

Your anger is like a flower. In the beginning you may not understand the nature of your anger, or why it has come up. But if you know how to embrace it with the energy of mindfulness, it will begin to open. You may be sitting, following your breathing, or you may be practicing walking meditation to generate the energy of mindfulness and embrace your anger. After ten or twenty minutes your anger will have to open herself to you, and suddenly, you will see the true nature of your anger. It may have arisen just because of a wrong perception or the lack of skilfulness.

Anger is one of the ways God protects us. Anger is, in fact, a God-given experience. We have been given a divine emotional signal in our heads that tells us when we are getting too near the edge. Like semaphore lights at a dangerous train crossing, anger tells us to pay careful attention.

Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something. Hit someone, break something, throw a fit, smash a fist into the wall, tell those bastards. But we are nice people, and what we do with our anger is stuff it, deny it, bury it, block it, hide it, lie about it, medicate it, muffle it, ignore it. We do everything but listen to it. Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand.... We are meant to use anger as a fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.

Anger is a fuel. You need fuel to launch a rocket. But if all you have is fuel without any complex internal mechanism directing it, you don't have a rocket. You have a bomb.

When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress or chase away our anger is to suppress or chase away ourselves. When anger is born, we can be aware that anger is an energy in us, and we can change that energy into another kind of energy. If we want to transform it, first we have to know how to accept it.

Anger is not a sinful emotion. But how we act when we are angry may well be a sin.

Anger arises for specific and understandable reasons, just like any other emotions, such as happiness and sadness. Emotions are an essential part of being a human being, so if your goal is to completely eliminate anger from your life, forget it! First of all, this would be an impossible task. Second, you wouldn't want to do that, even if you could, any more than you would want to eliminate love, joy, or fear. All emotions have their proper place in a man's life; the experience of emotion is what makes life rich. And there are times when anger is an appropriate reaction to events and people.

You can learn to handle your anger well. First, recognize that anger is a normal part of life. Everybody feels angry from time to time. Like all feelings, anger is neither good nor bad, it just is.

A good therapist once told me that you should get angry as many times a day as you visit the bathroom. I think what she meant was, first, that anger is natural. You may not like it, but it has its place and, depending on your temperament, it may be a constant in your life. She also meant that anger arrives on its own schedule and for its own purposes, and its schedule may be different from yours.

Anger, in general, is healthy. Just like sadness or happiness, it's a normal emotion. Where people get into trouble is when anger becomes a behavior that is physically, verbally or emotionally inappropriate.

At the moment you become angry, you tend to believe that your misery has been created by another person. You blame him or her for all your suffering. But by looking deeply, you may realize that the seed of anger in you is the main cause of your suffering. Many other people, confronted with the same situation, would not get angry like you. They hear the same words, they see the same situation, and yet they are able to stay calm and not be carried away. Why do you get angry so easily? You may get angry very easily because your seed of anger is too strong. And because you have not practiced the methods for taking good care of your anger, the seed of anger has been watered too often in the past.

When anger is not trampling roughshod through our nervous system, it is sitting sullenly in some unspecified internal organ. "She's got a lot of anger in her," people will say (it nestles, presumably, somewhere in the gut), or, "He's a deeply angry man" (as opposed, presumably, to a superficially angry one). If anger isn't released, it "turns inward" and metamorphoses into another creature altogether.

Anger is like a flame blazing up and consuming our self-control, making us think, say, and do things that we will probably regret later.

People with a healthy attitude concerning anger understand the difference between constructive and destructive anger. Anger is constructive when your anger expression affirms and acknowledges your integrity and boundaries without intending to threaten or violate another person's integrity or boundaries. Destructive anger is when your expression of anger is a defensive and rigid attempt to protect your vulnerability and boundaries by intending to threaten or violate another's integrity and boundaries (whether the intention is conscious or not). If you have a healthy relationship with anger, you have learned how to transform anger from a weapon that wounds others and yourself to a tool that promotes understanding and healthy change in relationships. Anger is most constructive when it is used to solve a problem, rather than merely to prove a point or vent your feelings.

When you have been done an injustice, anger flares up before you have a chance to understand what has happened. It's as though someone else is looking out for you and letting you know immediately that you have been wronged. Anger gives you the impetus you need to change conditions that need to be changed. In this way, anger is like a dark guardian angel, a daimonic force--a daimon is an unnamed but felt invisible presence--that offers guidance and spiritual support.

Anger is our reaction to the violation of our boundaries.

Anger is energy, and energy must be transferred into activity. Anger comes from our passions, but it becomes sin when it is destructive, either to others or to ourselves. Pent-up anger will either explode uncontrollably or eat away at our hearts and souls until it takes up all of our interior space. Unless and until we deal with our anger, there is no room in us for anything else.

Anger is neither legitimate nor illegitimate, meaningful nor pointless. Anger simply is. To ask, "Is my anger legitimate?" is similar to asking, "Do I have the right to be thirsty? After all, I just had a glass of water fifteen minutes ago. Surely my thirst is not legitimate. And besides, what's the point of getting thirsty when I can't get anything to drink now, anyway?" Anger is something we feel. It exists for a reason and always deserves our respect and attention. We all have a right to everything we feel--and certainly our anger is no exception.

There is no psychological reward for anger.... Anger is debilitating. In the physiological realm, it can produce hypertension, ulcers, rashes, heart palpitations, insomnia, fatigue and even heart disease. In the phsychological sense, anger breaks down love relationships, interferes with communication, leads to guilt and depression and generally just gets in your way. You may be skeptical, since you've always heard that expressing your anger is healthier than keeping it bottled up inside of you. Yes, the expression of anger is indeed a healthier alternative than suppressing it. But there is an even healthier alternative than suppressing it--not having the anger at all. In this case you won't be confronted with the dilemma of whether to let it out or keep it in.

Anger is not the opposite of love, for the opposite of love is indifference. To be angry is to care tremendously. It is a signal that your caring extends beyond polite conversation, and that you are willing to risk a confrontation to share how you feel.

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