Good thought about Anger

Once again, we I come across good thoughts, I would write it down to express my thoughts and experiences in life (even though it's limited just yet considering my chronological age). The thought for today I have read is about anger management....I once again wholehearted agree with the teaching of the Buddha and the thoughts of Eknath; however, it seems farfetched in doing so. Knowing our own minds is very important, no doubt about that. However, knowing and doing are those two different elements that will never be met like oil and water. We know that eating this or that is bad for our health, yet we seem to make compromises and come up with great excuses repeatedly. In managing our anger, similarly, we seem to struggle with it. It is like driving a racecar, even though we know that speeding very fast when we come to the cornor, it's more likely that we will not be able to touch the brake in time. Within the split of a second, we would lose control and hit the barricade.

Yesterday, I was distracted by the front page on a Thai newspaper. It was about a younger brother angrily shot his older brother after slapping his wife on her face. It's very sad really.

In teaching, I was told that good teachers should treat their students as their children, which means that we should be merciful to them. Looking back at myself, I sometimes get angry at my students and feel very bad about it afterwards. I always want to make my class fun and so that students would have better attitudes towards English learning. Students these days are not very responsible and they just don't know yet what is right or wrong and what is good or bad for them..they just want to "go with the flow" I myself came from a family with a single parent and very poor, so I had to manage everything concerning my education and life plans by myself. Thus, I knew what I wanted to do and be...In class, I usually teach them how to learn, to change, and to grow, not merely to pass the course and gain more knowledge in the subject matters I teach.

I guess from now on I just have to praise good students and shed the light on the good things they do in classroom...It's after all wasting time, energy, and headache pills to focus on the wrong doings in the classroom. I can only hope that the world outside school will teach them how to be fully mature by going through all the good and bad or ups and downs by themselves without teachers and parents to guild them.

Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.
– The Buddha


Blaming ourselves when we get angry is not going to be of much help in the long run. What is helpful is to gain a clearer understanding of how anger comes about. Getting angry is like having a malfunctioning engine. The mind is like the engine of the body, which can be compared to the chassis of the car we drive. But the sad fact is that most of us know a lot more about our car engine than we do about our own minds.

We don’t even have the slightest idea of where the ignition switch of the mind is located. As a result, the engine goes on cranking out thoughts of every description throughout the day and throughout the long night in dreams. Worry and resentment and anger use up enormous quantities of vitality. It’s like leaving our car idling in the garage all night long; in the morning when we need to get to work, we have to push it down the road.

What we need to do is learn how to slow down the mind, and eventually to park it at the side of the road when travel isn’t necessary. Then we will have all the vitality, all the fuel, we need when we want to reach a worthwhile destination.