พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่าความโกรธเกิดจากอกุศลอาศัยความยินร้ายและความเสียใจในรูปรสกลิ่นเสียงสัมผัสมากดดันให้เราทำบาปทางกายวาจา การเจริญสัมมาสติเพื่อวางใจเป็นกลางๆ อยู่กับอุเบกขาธรรม จึงเป็นทางเดียวที่จะทำให้ความโกรธไม่อาจครอบงำได้The teacher explains that anger arises when unwholesome forces exploit our dislike and disappointment toward sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch, pressuring us into wrongful speech and action. Cultivating right mindfulness to hold the mind in equanimity is the only way to keep anger from taking hold.
Someone asked the teacher to expand on the verse: "One who holds no anger in the mind, who has passed beyond countless states of becoming — the devas cannot even glimpse the movements of such a mind; that person is safe, joyful, and free of sorrow."
Anger can only arise when some force stands behind it directing the process — and that force is side, which relies on aversion and disappointment as its tools. As the Buddha taught in the foundation of , we should clearly know body, feeling, mind, and mental objects in order to eliminate covetousness and grief regarding the world. Covetousness is delight and clinging; grief is aversion and disappointment toward sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. Whenever someone causes us to lose something we were attached to, aversion arises. If we're not alert to this, the unwholesome side seizes the moment and takes hold of the mind; before it steers us anywhere, it first presses and squeezes us, because the state of the unwholesome side itself is one of suffering — something to be endured, and endured with difficulty. From there, a voice that sounds just like our own thought begins directing us toward wrongdoing, so as to draw in more unwholesome energy and generate further trouble and suffering.
When we're displeased over something small, the unwholesome side gradually twists it into something much larger, using pride and self-importance as its excuse, until a kind of "wish to escape this state" (vi-tanha) arises. Once we accept this direction, the hell-being or demon-like quality takes hold of the mind, and our freedom is lost — we're driven to speak and act in ways that bring suffering to ourselves and others. Once the act is carried out, we "earn" the completed template of an unwholesome deed as a reward, along with a latent misfortune that will go on to damage our future wellbeing.
The remedy is to cultivate right continuously, so we recognize the moment these forces try to seize control, and to abide in equanimity — holding the mind in balance, neither pleased nor displeased by any sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. Once the mind is grounded in equanimity, the unwholesome side can no longer twist our emotions, because we are protected by system, backed by the Triple Gem and Nirvana. A wise person who understands the cause of anger, and understands its arising, persisting, and passing away, is able to let go of anger and is no longer overtaken by it.