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hen you set yourself goals, and you encounter obstacles, you will
naturally feel frustrated,” the Archbishop said. “Or when you are
trying to do your best and those with whom you are working, or should be
working, aren’t as cooperative as you had hoped, or at home with your
family when something you do is misconstrued, this inevitably leads to
frustration and anger. When people impugn your intentions, and you
know that you have noble intentions. It’s really quite painful. You grind
your teeth and you say, there they go again.
“Or, on a larger scale, at home when we were involved in the
apartheid struggle, and there were those amongst us who used methods
that were not acceptable, like ‘necklacing,’ where they would set
somebody alight with a car tire filled with gasoline around their neck and
kill them, and you wanted to say, We don’t need this, it just makes it
easier for them to criticize us and our movement.
“Or in a personal way, when you have to deal with physical ailments,
and you wish maybe that you had a great deal more energy than you in
fact have. One is reminded of one’s humanity and one’s fragility.”
“One time I was in Jerusalem,” the Dalai Lama said, “and I met with a
teacher who used to tell his students, When you are irritated or angry with
someone, you should remember that they are made in the image of God.
Some of the students in the class were Palestinians, and they had to cross
through Israeli checkpoints. They told him that when they would get
nervous and irritated, they would think that these soldiers were made in
the image of God, and they would relax and feel better. At the physical
level one has to act accordingly, but at the mental level one can remain
calm and relaxed. This is how you train the mind.”
Yet certainly anger must have a place, I thought. Sometimes it serves
a role in protecting us or others from hurt or harm. What, I wondered,
was the role of righteous anger? The Archbishop, during the killings that
often marred the peaceful protests against apartheid, would raise a fist
and a rant, calling down fire and brimstone against the evildoers of
injustice. His biography, by his longtime press secretary John Allen, is