ANGER.

Is there righteous anger ever? Is there righteous anger ever? Or is there only anger? There is no good influence or bad influence, only influence, but when you are influenced by something which doesn’t suit me I call it an evil influence. The moment you protect your family, your country, a bit of coloured rag called a flag, a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that you demand or that you hold, that very protection indicates anger. So can you look at anger without any explanation or justification, without saying, “I must protect my goods,” or “I was right to be angry,” or “How stupid of me to be angry”? Can you look at anger as if it were something by itself? Can you look at completely objectively, which means neither defending it nor condemning it? Freedom from the Known, p 52. In the presence of anger The brain when faced with violence undergoes a rapid chemical change; it reacts much quicker than the blow. One’s whole body reacts and there is immediate response; one may not hit back, but the very presence of anger or hatred causes this response and there is action. In the presence of a person who is angry, see what takes place if one is aware of it and does not respond. The moment one is aware of the other person’s anger and one does not react oneself, there is quite a different response. One’s instinct is to respond to hate by hate, to anger by anger; there is the welling up chemically which creates in the system the nervous reactions. But quieten all this in the presence of anger, and a different action takes place. Questions and Answers, p 23.