The brief Lions Roar article below is much more than an American jazz singer, Bobby McFerrin lyric: Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

I highly recommend this piece written by Karen Maezen Miller. See excerpts below:

An Angry Person with a Zen Practice

by Karen Maezen Miller

I wasn’t an angry person until I became a Zen Buddhist. Sure, I yelled. I slammed things. I broke things. But I wouldn’t have called myself angry. It was always another person making me angry. How was that my fault?

But there was hope because I was an angry person with a Zen practice.

No one makes us feel, think, or do anything except as we allow.

Anger comes from our attachments.

We don’t get our way all the time, and besides, even when we do, it doesn’t last.

The wisdom of impermanence shows us the way to work with anger, that is, to not work with it at all.

Without my ruminations and reactions, anger does what all sensations do. It goes away by itself, providing I don’t chase after it.

One more thing has changed my relationship with anger: admitting it. When I feel myself getting angry around others, I try my best to say, “I’m angry right now.” Spoken, the words by themselves are safe. Unspoken, they smolder into fire and brimstone.

These days, though I still get angry, I’m no longer afraid of my anger. I don’t try to hide or avoid it. I remind myself not to rationalize it, justify it, or react in anger. I let it be, and then I let it be gone.

http://www.lionsroar.com/how-3-buddhist-teachers-work-with-difficult-emotions/