A brass chandelier looms over my kitchen table. It waits for me to finish my work, stand up mindlessly, and meet it with my cranium. I’ve had plenty of contact with that lamp over the years. So when I bashed my head for the third time one day, I didn’t think much of it. Upon later reflection, however, I was in for a surprise.

This head bumping routine is like a controlled experiment for my temper. (My reaction is the only variable.) The impulse to hit back has arisen too many times to count. I clench and stew with my blood boiling until I realize that I am, in fact, angry at a light fixture. Incredibly, the lamp has so far survived my apish displays.

“The other vices drive the mind on,” wrote Stoic philosopher Seneca. “Anger hurls it headlong. […] Other vices revolt from good sense, this one from sanity. […] And it makes no difference how great the source is from which [anger] springs; for from the most trivial origins it reaches massive proportions.”

Anger hurls the mind headlong. We become irrational, slobbering beasts. And it doesn’t take much to set us off. A stubbed toe. A barking dog. A paper jam. In the movie Office Space, Peter and the gang steal the company copier – infamous for getting jammed up – and demolish it with baseball bats and golf clubs. Samir has to be dragged away, so great is his bloodlust for the machine. When angry, this is our level of mental maturity.

Can this insanity be willfully banished? This is where I part ways with Seneca’s program. The venerable Stoic wrote that anger should be “driven” and to “do battle” with ourselves. But this struggle to suppress emotion – though it could avert some embarrassing displays – only creates more internal strife. We get angry and then feel guilty.

Yet anger is part of life. When asked if he ever gets angry, the Dalai Lama responded in typical, humble fashion. “Oh, yes, of course,” said the revered monk, “I’m a human being. Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.” If even the Lama gets pissed, we shouldn’t expect to maintain imperturbable calm.

To cope with anger, we first have to know it’s coming. There are definite physical signals. Blood rushes to our face. Our abdomens contract. Our jaws clench. Noticing these reactions can diffuse our temper before it blooms. A clenched fist or sensation of heat can be cues – ah, I’m getting angry. It’s hard to stay angry when you’ve seen it in such a subtle way.

“The best way of dealing with these hindrances is to be aware of them, to be mindful,” wrote meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein. “Sit back and notice ‘anger, anger.’ Not identifying with it, not condemning oneself for being angry. Simply watch.”

The method described by Goldstein is mindfulness in a nutshell: a non-judgmental watching of phenomena arising in the mind. When this meditative attitude is cultivated, we are less likely to be swirled away by a torrent of thoughts and emotions. The chain is broken. We can settle back into a relaxed state.

If this sounds like a bong-infused rant from an unwashed, incense-toting guru… allow me to invoke some science. Regular mindfulness practice, it has been shown, rewires the brain for increased emotional stability. In brain regions that govern emotional regulation – like the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex – experienced meditators had more gray matter than controls. And the amygdala, the stress center of our brains, actually shrinks through meditation.

Here, Britta Hölzel and colleagues discuss how mindfulness can lead to “extinction” of our wired emotional responses:

[In mindfulness], exposure is pursued toward whatever emotions present themselves, including sadness, anger, and aversion, as well as pleasant emotions, such as happiness. We therefore suggest that extinction is effective during all of these emotional experiences, leading to an overwriting of previously learned stimulus- response associations. Buddhist teachings claim that the non- clinging to unpleasant and pleasant experiences leads to liberation (Olendzki, 2010). Framed in Western psychological terminology, one could say that nonreactivity leads to unlearning of previous connections (extinction and reconsolidation) and thereby to liberation from being bound to habitual emotional reactions.

This leads nicely back to my encounter with the chandelier. The surprise was in my reaction. Or, perhaps I should say, lack of one. When I blundered into the lamp, I felt the blunt sensation of pressure radiating through my skull. It hurt for a moment and then faded away. And that was that. No destructive impulses arose. Not even one fantasy of tearing it out – Hulk style – from the ceiling.

The results of this experiment left me convinced. I’ve only practiced meditation for a year, yet it seems I’ve rewired my brain. Some of my temper has gone extinct.

Print Sources

Goldstein, Joseph. The Experience of Insight: A Simple and Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation. Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala, 1983. Print.

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, and John Davie. Dialogues and Essays. 2008. Print.