In one of our sacred books (Osashizu), God tells us that if we have anger, we do not know God’s teachings. In my case, people have often told me I have much anger, and to “chill out”. But how does one get rid of anger and what causes anger?
In the Ofudesaki, God tells us there are paths of the mistaken mind. These paths are arrogance, greed, self-love, miserliness, and covetousness. These five are also called dusts in our religion. God tells us not to act upon these five dusts. But where is the dust of anger; it is not one of the dusts that is mentioned.
Anger is not a thought like the five mentioned dusts. It is an emotion. It is not something that can usually be controlled like the five dusts mentioned above. When anger appears, it is usually too late. It either eats us up from the inside, or it leads to hate, enmity and retribution. So what causes anger?
It is my belief that anger arises from arrogance. Arrogance by definition is a belief that one is superior to another. When someone does something that irritates us, it does not mean that we are not right. Certainly the opposition may be wrong. We must realize that everyone sometimes has thoughts that are evil or wrong, and we all have goodness within us. With this belief, one must not feel superior to others, and realize that sometimes we all make mistakes or have mistaken beliefs. When we do not act on arrogance, we can eliminate anger! Something we should all ponder.
But what happens when arrogance predominates? In world history, many have suffered when the dust of arrogance spread from one mind to another. We have had the crusades, the holocaust, slavery, misogyny and terrorism. When people have the mistaken mind that they are superior to others, the emotion of anger ignites these horrendous acts upon our brothers and sisters. History usually repeats itself because we cannot control the dust of arrogance.
OFUDESAKI-GOD'S TEACHINGS 