How does bhakti-yoga help us overcome anger?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so how can we, how does bhakti yoga help us to get rid of anger broadly if we consider what is anger that as I said that there are some things in our control and some things out of our control but suppose some things that are out of our control go wildly against our plan or some things that we thought were in our control slip out of our control then we tend to overreact and anger usually comes in these two situations when things out of control go very badly out of control things in our control slip out of our control so now bhakti yoga helps us to deal with this at three levels first is that when things go out of our control certain emotions start pushing us so if we have studied the bhakti wisdom then we understand that there is a mind inside us and the mind is conditioned to act in particular ways but we ourselves are not our mind so we can learn to distance ourselves from this anger is coming inside me but i don’t have to become angry the bhagavad gita tells us that don’t identify with the mind identify the mind this is the anger script that is running now this is the anger story that is being told so if i can become a little more introspective bhakti yoga is not just about chanting mantras or worshipping in the temple that is there but through this one is meant to rise to the spiritual level of reality and once we are at the spiritual level we can experience oh this is the mental this is the mind saying this i don’t have to accept this i can distance myself from it so that introspective capacity to understand how our mind is working and how anger is creeping among us that also increases gradually it will take time but it will increase that’s one level second thing is so this is more introspective but at a more philosophical level as we start practicing bhakti our faith starts increasing that there is a higher plan to my life and therefore when things are going out of control they are not necessarily going wrong generally you think out of control means wrong this out of control is not good but maybe something good will come out of it let me focus not on overreacting but doing my best usually it is the it is the panic when things start going out of control panic and overreaction that’s what leads to anger but if you develop that fear fear out of my control ultimately in some higher control that also helps us to let go not let go in the sense of responsibility but let go in the sense of maturity and detachment we can think more calmly and then decide how to move forward and thirdly is that in the process of bhakti the understanding is that the supreme lord by whatever name we call him, he is all pure and when we connect with him at that time we become purified, it’s like if there is darkness in a particular room I turn on the light and darkness automatically goes away, so similarly when we repeatedly bring ourselves in the presence of the divine through the practice of bhakti yoga then we ourselves become purged of the anger so the first two are involving more of our efforts, introspection and intellectual analysis or faith based conviction and the third is what we call as purification so through all this we will find that devotion will also help us to become free from our anger, however at a practical level it is good to prepare that means if I am going on a road and I understand that there is a pothole over here, first time I just run to the pothole and jolt, next time when I go, ok this pothole, let me slow down or let me go this way so like that if we observe ourselves and see what are the situations when we get angry and if we learn to prepare for those situations in this situation I tend to get angry so either I will postpone trying to confront this to a later time when I am calmer or I will slow down, I won’t be that impulsive it is good for us if we can develop a pause button, generally when anger comes we think of two things, either I will express it or I will repress it but both are unhealthy if I express it hurts others if I repress then it just hurts me and I will express it later in some ugly forms, so we need to have a third option, not expressing not repressing but processing so now how do I process it for that it is good to have a pause button, not yes, not play, not stop but pause, yes I am experiencing this anger, I will deal with it but not pause, so some pausing can be just by taking deep breaths or it can count till 10 these are good but here again bhakti can give us a very powerful way to pause, if you can chant mantras, you can chant some wisdom verses from text, chant some mantras about God, then those can act as a very powerful pause button and by that pause button we will at least for that time being check the impulse so the first thing that I am talking about is a gradual way of eventually becoming free from anger but when the angry impulse comes into us, this pause button can help us and bhakti gives us a very powerful pause button