It is as if he had said he had been enlightened. I slapped him across the
face. I knew he was deluded and simply tricking his parents for what
ever reason he had. At first he was startled, but he paid attention, and
then I showed him how to do a number of asanas that helped to
ground him and bring him to himself. I am not suggesting that teachers
should hit their students or that parents should hit their children. Too
often this is done because the teacher or parent is out of control, and
this is destructive anger. I am saying that there is a place for righteous
anger-not self-righteous anger-that we use skillfully in a way that
helps rather than hurts others. I was not angry with the boy. I was
angry with his delusion. The slap was to awaken him from his dan
gerous fantasy. Perhaps the simplest and most common example is
when a mother grabs her small child as he is stepping into the street.
The mother's anger is constructive, and she may scold the child to
make sure the child learns how to stay safe. If the mother ruminates on
her anger and continues to shout at the child all day, it is not con
structive, for the child will think that the mother is angry with him and
not simply with what he has done.
HatredHatred and its relatives, malice and envy, are the last of the emotional
disturbances mentioned by Patanjali. The destructive nature of hatred
is everywhere evidenced in intolerance, violence, and war. But it also
exists in our own lives when we wish others ill or envy what they have.
If they are less, we feel like we are more. There is a story about a
farmer who encounters a great magician who tells him he can have
anything he wants. The farmer's reply is that he wants his neighbor's
cow to die. The offices of psychiatrists in the We st are filled with adults
whose parents loved one child in the family more than the other,
causing hatred and sibling rivalry in the family. As we see in this ex
ample, even something like a parents love can be destructive. We must