My little sister died yesterday. She was 58. Pancreatic cancer. I turned 65 the day before that.

[vlyons]

15. So sorry that you lost your sister

I'm a Buddhist and a 76 yr senior, and I have a lot of experience with anger. First off, anger is poison, especially when it arises and is cultivated to be harmful to others. Having said that, anger, like all other emotions is empty, devoid of intrinsic self-existence. It is impermanent, comes and goes and disappears back into nothing. However, we can transform the energy of anger into enlightened activity that is beneficial to the well-being of everyone. Think the racial civil rights activists of the 60s, who channeled their anger into working for voting rights, equal access to housing and education.

I too experience anger in the presence of outright stupidity. What I want to transcend is habitual unmindful anger. I've meditated a lot on anger. What I discovered is that what I used to label as "anger" is usually just frustration with something, an obstacle to what I want to accomplish, or some new difficulty that has crossed my path. That is not the same as blind stupid anger at someone, because they are black, gay, immigrant, or just plain ol' selfish & greedy.