Question: When we are angry and feel annoyance with other people, what is the best way to deal with it?

Sri Chinmoy: When you are angry with someone please ask yourself whether by getting angry with him, by showing your eyes like fire and bullets, are you gaining anything or not. Naturally your answer will be, “No.” But when you meditate, what do you expect? Peace, Light, Delight and Power. When we have peace of mind, then we are in a position to conquer our anger.

When anger comes, sometimes you feel it is coming from outside and sometimes you feel it is coming from within. If it is coming from outside, try to feel that an enemy is entering into you. If it is from within that anger is coming, then feel that you have allowed a new enemy to live with you and now you have to try to kill it. How? With peace. When we are attacked from within, we use peace to kill the inner enemy who in an unconscious moment has entered into us and made its abode.

God has many aspects: Peace, Light, Bliss, Power and so forth. But every day if you can meditate for ten or fifteen minutes only on Peace, if you concentrate on His Peace aspect, then you will see that whenever somebody does something wrong to you, immediately your peace will be able to swallow it. Suppose somebody has done something wrong. You have every right to be angry with that person, but you know that by getting angry with him you are only losing your precious peace of mind. If you have already acquired abundant peace from your meditation, then you will see that your peace, like the sea, will be able to swallow others’ misbehaviour or misdeeds.

So please meditate daily for at least ten minutes on God’s aspect of Peace. If you have peace, you cannot be angry with anybody. And if you do not have inner peace, then at every moment you will be angry with others even if they have not done anything. Why? Because you do not have peace in your own inner being. When you are wanting in peace, the whole world is doing something absurd, acting like a mad elephant, according to your judgement. But if you have abundant peace within, then you will see that you have the capacity to transform others’ misdeeds.

If you love humanity, then please acquire and develop inner peace. This inner peace is bound to change the face of the world. You will see that people will not misbehave to the extent that they are misbehaving right now. Peace is one of the most important aspects of God. When your whole outer existence is flooded with peace, you will see that anger cannot exist either within you or without you. Anger at that time will become a real stranger to you.