Anger is a natural, necessary function of being human. It occurs instinctually as a primary emotion, a physical response to something perceived as other. I have always struggled with anger as an outlet for pain and thus have spent significant time considering it, managing it, predicting, and extinguishing it lest I be consumed by it. But I am also comfortable with it, in myself and others. I see anger as pain, simply pain. Overflow from a body replete with pain, a body weakened and unable to carry its mental and emotional burdens.

David Shrigley's illustration "Fucking Hell" from his book How Are You Feeling?

In his collection of reimagined words, poet David Whyte layers this emotion with even more complexity, not merely feeling pain but caring deeply about that pain: "Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family, and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt." 

The angriest I've ever been is when I am protecting someone else, which helps me realize anger is more than a release of pain; it is a protection of something that coexists with pain, or rather, the weakened structure pain has wrought—the powerlessness of being. The problem with anger is not that we feel it or even show it; the problem is when it becomes more significant than the pained-weakened self that we are protecting. 

Whyte continues: 

What we name as anger is only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life, the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.

However we consider this emotion, and its hand-maidens regret, guilt, and even shame - we might all agree anger is a necessary function and should not be ignored. Things like "don't get angry" might affect the moment, but anger is much more than a moment.

I am not against anger, which initially seems wrong because it has negatively affected me and so many people I know - people we all know. And yet, anger is a sparkling moment of aliveness, a plea for help, protection, and compassion. It is caring. 

Whyte said it beautifully: 

Anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here; it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous.

How do we avoid the anger that harms others?  How do we feel and protect our pain, to see its yelp of helplessness rather than fierce barbs? 

Buddhist monk, teacher, and prolific writer Thích Nhất Hạnh's (October 11, 1926 – January 22, 2022) explored this critical emotion in Anger: Buddhist Wisdom For Cooling the Flames. He sideswipes peripheral noise and deals with the precise moment of anger. What do we do at the moment we feel anger twisting around trying to burn its way out?

Observe Your Anger as Suffering

Echoing the wisdom in his guidance on embracing the present to change the past, Thích Nhất Hạnh advises we be here. In that exact moment of feeling, be still. Rather than focusing on the thing ignited, focus on the anger and you as part of it. "Go back to yourself," to quote Rilke, and do nothing else but that.

When someone says or does something that makes us angry, we suffer. We tend to say or do something back to make the other suffer, with the hope that we will suffer less. We think, "I want to punish you; I want to make you suffer because you have made me suffer. And when I see you suffer a lot, I will feel better." Many of us are inclined to believe in such a childish practice. The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides. Both of you need compassion and help. Neither of you needs punishment. When you get angry, go back to yourself, and take very good care of your anger. And when someone makes you suffer, go back and take care of your suffering, your anger. Do not say or do anything.

Controlled breathing and slight, physical movement like stepping outside a room or simply being in touch with the information registered in our senses - what does it smell, what are your feet touching, your hands? What color is the light? Things that return us to our deeply suffering bodies and spirits.

Flood Yourself with Self-Tenderness

Once you've found your body, and reconnected to its suffering, flood it with self-tenderness and care. The house is on fire, focus on the house, not the arsonist. Nhất Hạnh gives us an illustrative metaphor:

If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has burned your house, your house will burn down while you are chasing him or her. That is not wise. You must go back and put out the fire. So when you are angry, if you continue to interact with or argue with the other person and try to punish her, you are acting exactly like someone who runs after the arsonist while everything goes up in flames.

The ubiquitous imagery of fire and fire prevention, like these canisters in Notting Hill, has a new meaning when seen as a metaphor. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

The metaphor of anger as fire helps keep us separate from our anger and allows us to ask, what do we think of the offense? What does it look like and feel like?

Intellectualize Feeling as a Way to Understand It

Intellectualizing emotions means standing apart and making sense of them as if they were sitting in front of you. It requires self-awareness, even a duality of self. As you stand next to your anger, study it. The way Joan Didion intellectualizes her way through the death of her husband, and Annie Dillard sees herself sitting in nature.

From this focused thought process comes insight:

When we begin to cultivate the energy of mindfulness, the first insight we have is that the main cause of our suffering, of our misery, is not the other person-it is the seed of anger in us. Then we will stop blaming the other person for causing all our suffering. We realize she or he is only a secondary cause. You get a lot of relief when you have this kind of insight and begin to feel much better. But the other person may still be in hell because she does not know how to practice. Once you have taken care of your anger, you become aware that she is still suffering. So now you can focus your attention on the other person.

This intellectualization (my word, not Nhất Hạnh's) of anger is very visible in one of the most thoughtful studies of anger I've ever seen, 12 Angry Men. It's a film that Director Sidney Lumet, in his exceptional guide to filmmaking, said was about "listening." A jury of twelve men, never named, comes together and then falls apart in the quest for justice. As each character works through the case, what they work through is their issues and pain. Pain is expressed through anger.  I've turned to the film many, many times to understand anger and pain.

Lee Cobb's hot anger at Henry Fonda's cool rationality in Twelve Angry Men, 1957.

We might call it "listening" in Western culture, but it goes back to mindfulness, and it is essential to Nhất Hạnh's wisdom to manage anger in moments and life.

Practice Mindfulness

The core of Thích Nhất Hạnh's teaching is mindfulness, the awareness of ourselves, and pausing at the moment to feel - and celebrate - our incredible aliveness.

One minute of practice is one minute of generating the energy of mindfulness. It doesn't come from outside of you; it comes from within. The energy of mindfulness is the kind of energy that helps us to be here, to be fully present in the here and the now. When you drink tea in mindfulness, your body and your mind are perfectly united. You are real, and the tea you drink also becomes real.

"You are real, and the tea you drink also becomes real."

Strive Toward On-Going Compassion

If compassion is the antidote to anger, how do we carry it into the moment of rage? What if, instead of anger, compassion was trigger-ready? If it was ignited as easily and readily as our primary emotions?

If you keep compassion alive while listening, anger and irritation cannot arise. Otherwise, the things he says, and the things she says will touch off your rage, anger, and suffering. Compassion alone can protect you from becoming irritated, angry, or full of despair. So you want to act as a Great Being while listening because you know that the other person suffers so much and needs you to step in and rescue him. But you have to be equipped with something to do the job.

Keeping ourselves alive to compassion, awake to it at all times, is exhausting. And it can leave one weakened and vulnerable to pain. But pain is not the same as weakness; compassion and power are closely aligned. To perfect or even engage in self-loving, we must abandon any evaluation of the object and question of worthiness. And like any art, we will begin poorly, absurdly even.

This is why we have to take good care of ourselves. If you listen too much to the suffering, and the anger of other people, you will be affected. You will be in touch only with suffering, and you won't have the opportunity to be in touch with other, positive elements. This will destroy your balance. Therefore, in your daily life, you have to practice so that you can be in touch with elements that do not constantly express suffering: the sky, the birds, the trees, the flowers, children- whatever is refreshing, healing, and nourishing in us and around us.

There are many ways to turn our anger into something innocuous. In his autobiography, So, Anyway, British comedian John Cleese discusses the anger of Basil Fawlty, Cleese's most iconic character who had a quick temper always triggered. Cleese, who admitted he was raised around his mother's constant anger, essentially turned the emotionally rogue character into a comedic entity. "Funny anger is ineffectual anger," Cleese admitted. He saw Basil's anger as ineffectual, pathetic, and, thus, humorous.

Basil Fawlty, Cleese's character in Fawlty Towers, delivers "a damn good thrashing." The pinnacle of ineffectual anger.

While comedy might disarm anger that comes at us from others, for our anger, something more profound is needed. Something that calls on the pain and soothes it rather than exploits it. Read more in Erich Fromm's generous permission to hold ourselves in the highest esteem,  Thoreau's delightful discovery of self-soothing ambles, and Maya Angelou's songs of recovery and triumph. 

Reading through Anger, I noticed my version was published in September 2001. While the individual response to 9/11 was one of galvanized love, the overall and lasting response was viler. We might say that September 2001 was a month that marked the triumph of anger over gentle-mindedness. The wars that followed, the tyrants that precipitated it, let anger win. Anger veiled in the political ploy of freedom and security is still anger. What do we lose when we let it burn?