It's useless if you find a person who has not experienced anger. No matter how hard you try you will not be able to find someone like that; it's natural that you get angry. It's useful to discuss about anger, because it's common among us. What makes you angry?
Disappointment makes you angry. We all have dreams. We all have hopes and we expect our dreams and hopes to come true as we want and when we want. But unfortunately there is a difference between what we want and what we get. And that can make us angry.
Anger is not good for us or for society. When you get angry it is you who suffers first. If you can, the next time you get angry, look at yourself in a mirror. You can see it for your self, it damages your nervous and blood circulation system. So by getting angry you damage your self before anyone else. We can all understand that anger is not good for our society; an angry person cannot understand what they are doing nor are they rational, and this makes people do many bad things, in some cases to the extent that they shoot everyone they meet.
What we can do about this, how we can control anger?
As I mentioned before, disappointment makes us angry. What I do is to let my hopes and dreams go. That doesn't mean that I don't have hopes and dreams. What I do is stop holding them too tight. I do have hopes and dreams as I had before, but I always keep in my mind that it is not going to come true when I want, and the way that I want.
I wanted to go to Thailand last year, at the time I did not even have a national identity card. So I had to get an identity card first and then a passport second. Due to my circumstances it was not easy to get these, but I did it somehow, and then I bought the plane ticket (Well my friend bought that for me). We booked the tickets together on the same flight and then I went to Thai embassy to get visa. I filled the application and gave it to officer. At that time I was a monk, and I was shocked when he told me that I needed a letter from the religious ministry to get a visa. So, I went to ministry, and they told me that I needed a letter from the chief monk of Sri Lanka. I was so disappointed. I could not go to Thailand with my friend. We had lots of hopes, we had planed where we will go and what we will do and everything. I thought I could kill the minister and the chief monk. And who the f—k is the chief monk to decide where and when I a go, I was so angry. But after some hours I understood that these things will not happened the way I want. So I went to my temple and arranged some letters, got the letter and got the visa. It took some time but finally I achieved it. From that day I understood and learned how to deal with disappointments.
Again this year I wanted to go to Vietnam. As we don't have a Vietnam embassy in Sri Lanka I went to Bangkok and applied for the visa in the same manner as most nationalities do. But the visa officer didn't even look at my application, she just looked at the cover of my passport, and without even opening it informed me that Sri Lankan nationals cannot get a tourist visa to Vietnam. Again I was very disappointed, particularly as at the time I was having lots of problems in Sri Lanka and I wanted to get out of there. I was so close and yet so far, my friend had to return to Vietnam and I returned empty handed and disappointed to Sri Lanka.
At the time my friend was working in Vietnam and I wanted to go there, he wanted me to come also. We were both very disappointed, but I didn't feel angry or sad because in my mind I knew that disappointments are natural. My friend however, got very angry and sad and was far les able to accept this disappointment because he held this dream and hope tighter than I did.
As long as this life goes on there will be disappointments, no one can avoid that, and we all need to learn to accept and deal with this fact. Sometimes my friend cries for me because of what happened to me but I can smile, because I know it is natural. I remember a phrase in bible which says, please God, give me the strength to change what I can change and the courage to accept what I cannot. When I am disappointed what I can do is I search for ways to overcome it, and not dwelling on it and cursing everyone I can. Still I couldn't get visa to Vietnam, but I will never give up, still my friend and I continue to try in many. Someday, someway I will get it. But cursing Vietnam authorities will not get me a visa, nor will getting angry achieve it.