The Secret to Taming Anger According to Stoic, Buddhist, and Aztec Philosophy
Learn to Address What You Can’t Perceive
Seneca the Younger (4 BC — 65 AD), a Stoic philosopher during the reign of Nero in Rome, took up the task of writing about anger in a letter that is 125 pages long. Why?
Let me begin to explain with a story, since we’ve all experienced the harm that can come from anger, even if we’re in the right.
Some years ago, I ran to be the director of a university center. I got news, just after beginning my campaign, that I had been appointed to a different directorship and so wouldn’t have the time to run the other center. Following guidelines, I withdrew from the active race — making it a one-person race.
Despite withdrawing, the person who managed the election reported that I had lost the race, and that I had almost no votes (I don’t know why I had any actually). My response was a mixture of confusion and anger. Why would anyone do that? Just to make me look bad? Had I wronged the election manager in some way? Why not announce that I had withdrawn, and that a two-person race had become an uncontested election? That was the truth after all.
I tried to refrain from emailing and I said nothing for 24 hours. But the next day, when I wrote a short inquiring email, the election manager played stupid — which just galled me. After many more emails, most of which were equally frustrating, the manager eventually agreed to apologize and I got my way. Then they cut all ties with the center and with me. I “won” but lost an important university contact.
That’s about as good as results get when giving into anger.
And that explains why Seneca addressed it as a topic. But 125 pages in a letter? Seneca, in fact, spends more time on this topic than he does on any other in the letters called his Moral Essays — more than on what the good life is, or what the virtues are (the one exception is Of Benefits which is its own book and not a letter). What could motivate such an obsession?
The reason is that anger, as Seneca develops it, is a model for the passions. And Stoic “passions” are not our colloquial “emotions.” They are rather the single controllable source of your mind’s diseases.
The Stoics thought that what we call “emotions” were rational cognitions along with what we call “thoughts.” In Latin, the word Seneca uses for “passion” is “adfectus,” which is the origin of our “affect” in English. But their idea was that an adfectus is something from outside your mind that is added to it, thereby transforming your thoughts into irrational cognitions.
Nothing good comes from the irrational transformation of your mind — mostly because you forget what is good when you are in that state.
How to Practice This Insight
Practicing anger control is a gateway to practicing control over all your passions. So it’s worth your special attention. I’ll give you three ways to practice anger — and by extension — passion control.
Seneca’s Approach
In summing up his primary point about anger, Seneca writes the following:
The best course is to reject at once the first incitement to anger, to resist even its small beginnings, and to take pains to avoid falling into anger.
Following Seneca’s advice, a first step to controlling anger is to admit that you will not be able to control yourself in your impassioned state well. Instead of trying to win that battle, try to avoid doing anything important during that period when you are angry.
This line of reasoning was (and is) behind my own “rule” to wait 24 hours before responding to something that makes me angry. It’s saved me many times.
But I failed to recognize my anger when I was galled by the response I received. I just never imagined someone in such a high-level position would respond as they did.
I should have waited again before a reply, then, but I literally forgot my purpose in writing the follow-up email. This point thus suggests a deeper insight, which turns on recognizing when you are angry. To address that, you might try a basic Buddhist practice.
The Buddhist Approach
A second practice is to develop a keener sense of your own passions. You have to learn to feel them coming on and transforming your mind. While the Stoics never advocated meditation, the Aztecs did (they called it teomania) and of course Buddhists do.
Gautama Buddha himself taught “ānāpānasmṛti” or mindfulness of breathing. This is basically just sitting still and trying only to focus on your pattern of breathing. When your mind wanders, and it will, just bring your focus back to your breath. (Here’s a link to an article from Harvard Medical on the practice).
This is a reasonable way to become aware of your own mental states so that you can catch your mental transformation before it does too much harm.
It comes with a caveat though: don’t get discouraged.
In fact, I’d recommend another type of meditation, but none works quite so well at resolving just this problem. When I first tried breath meditation, my “monkey mind” wandered all the time. It still does — though less so.
My best advice is to repeat what a more experienced friend told me: reframe your wandering. When I spoke to him about my persistent failure to keep my mind focused on my breathing, he laughed and said: “You’re getting lots of practice — each time you catch yourself wandering off. So you’re getting more value from it than most.”
The Aztec Approach
Finally, I think a lesson from Aztec philosophy proves useful. The basic Aztec approach to a good life is to learn to accept the help of other people. In the description of the philosopher in the Florentine Codex, for example, we read:
Like a watchful physician, the good philosopher is a reputable person of trust, and a credible teacher worthy of confidence…She helps one to assume a face (ixtli) … acting as a guide, preparing one’s path. And she goes accompanying one, teaching one to know oneself.
Like a physician, she is worthy of being taken as an example, effectively arranging affairs and establishing order. She illuminates the world and knows what is above and below the earth.…She is confided in, trusted, quite affable, satisfying one’s heart (yollotl), making one content (FC 10.8).
The Aztecs pursued what might be called the outward path to enlightenment. Rather than begin with your interior mind, they suggested that you should begin with the world and your surroundings, then move inward.
In this case, the philosopher is helping another in aligning the two principal features of the human psyche: the face (ixtli) or seat of judgment, and the heart (yollotl) or seat of desires.
In some ways, this approach is akin to the purpose of Buddhist “monasteries.” Those are special places where your circumstances, interactions, and practices are arranged to facilitate a better experience. The Aztecs simply implemented this principle everywhere.
Following in that vein, I could also have asked someone else to decide whether I should send an email. I could have set up a system whereby I wrote what I really felt, but none of it got sent until it was approved by someone who could be more objective. I could try leaning on someone else, so as to avoid errors from the loss in my own judgment.
The drawback is that you have to find someone who is willing to help you out. But the upside is that it’s faster to attain, by a long measure, than mastering your monkey mind.
Steps To A Better Life
In another article on Stoic philosophy, I explained their art for thinking slowly in a fast world. The present article has been focused on the complimentary concern: how to back out of our passions so we can begin the process of thinking in the first place.
My implicit thesis throughout has been that three of the world’s great traditions, Stoicism, Buddhism, and Aztec philosophy may be understood to converge on this point of moral psychology: our minds are often transformed without our recognition and this poses special problems for acting well.
That orientation explains Seneca’s focus in his letter both more specifically as anger and generally as a passion. On the specific point he wrote:
No plague has cost human kind more dearly. [From anger] you will see bloodshed and poisoning, the vile countercharges of criminals, the downfall of cities and whole nations given to destruction.
In my own case, I got off easy in following anger’s path.
On the general point, Seneca was right too that reason loses its directing role once anger, a passion, steps foot on our life’s stage.
When once the mind has been aroused and shaken, it becomes the slave of the disturbing agent.
This point explains why I couldn’t stop myself when I received an unexpected reply.
While their ultimate philosophical aims don’t totally converge, the Stoic, Buddhist, and Aztec traditions do give us three different approaches to anger, and by extension how to address all our passions.
- Don’t try to fight them directly.
- Develop your awareness through meditation.
- Lean on those around you to intervene.
I know better now, and I hope these three practices will help you in getting a handle on all your passions too. I’ll leave you with a final statement from Seneca.
“Anger embodies nothing useful … for virtue, being self-sufficient, never needs the help of vice.”
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Sebastian Purcell’s research specializes in world comparative philosophy, especially as these ancient traditions teach us how to lead happier, richer lives. He lives with his wife, a fellow philosopher, and their three cats in upstate New York.