Anger meditation

[A sannyasin said that he had at one time an explosion of anger and then of pleasure. He felt very happy about it but wondered what he could do outside the group. Osho said the anger needed to be released and he could do the anger meditation every day…]

Deep down, your anger is hooked with pleasure. In your childhood, whenever you were going to be happy, your parents or somebody else, some authorities, stopped you. You were never allowed to be happy, to enjoy yourself, and you became angry.

Naturally when a child is feeling happy and somebody says, ‘Don’t make a noise. Don’t jump. Don’t shout,’ he feels great anger arising, but you could not be angry either. How can you be angry with your father and your mother? They are powerful and you are helpless. So deep inside the pleasure was there and the anger came; they got hooked.

So now when you become angry you feel pleasure, and if you want to feel happy and pleasant, immediately you feel a certain anger arising. That has to be settled. That hooking has to be dropped, and pleasure and anger have to be disconnected. The only way to disconnect it is to go through that experience which has been stopped. It has remained incomplete in your being and it can be dangerous. It can create many sorts of diseases, so it has to be finished with.

Continue as you are in the group and, out of the group, make it a point every day – the evening is good, because by the time evening comes one has become more and more angry – just close your door, put a pillow in front of you, have a little talk. Get very heated up, say things to the pillow and then start beating. Go really mad for at least twenty minutes. You can do anything to the pillow and no karma happens out of it [laughter]. Pillows are like Buddhas; they don’t retaliate, they don’t react.

When you start feeling ripples of joy arising, just sit silently and enjoy that feeling of bliss. Once you start feeling that there is no more pleasure arising out of the anger, then stop being angry.

There is no need to continue then. Your pleasure is free.

Osho, The Cypress in the Courtyard, Ch 23

Meditations compiled by Nirav Jayant from Osho’s darshan diaries and discourses – www.youtube.com
Photo by Rae Angela on Unsplash