What is the great fire that rages
when we approach too closely to others?
Terrible anger that cannot bear
even the smallest challenge.
The second of the root klesha is anger. Sensory fixation may be the most pervasive destroyer of human happiness, but anger is the most immediate. One cannot experience anger and happiness in the same moment of time. When the heat of anger rises, the waters of happiness instantly evaporate. Anger by itself is a kind of spiritual pain.
As a result of anger the world engages in endless streams of harmful activity. When anger controls the mind, common sense and wisdom no longer operate. The person does foolish things, striking out violently at whatever is close, and thus destroying the happiness of self and others.
The great Indian master Shantideva wrote, “There is no negativity as strong as anger, and no spiritual practice as important as the discipline of restraint from it.” And also, “The person who understands that anger is the real enemy and works with persistence to overcome it, and who does not identify enemies as external, finds happiness in this life and in whatever follows thereafter.”
In Tantric Buddhism, anger is said to be connected wit chemical activity in the crown chakra, i.e., the brain. Every time we allow anger to arise we send poisonous chemicals from t brain into the bloodstream and thereby into the entire body. So the release of these chemicals becomes a habit. Not only is on state of consciousness profoundly impaired by them, in addition they give rise to a host of physical diseases. In other words, as well as harming the soul, anger harms our health.
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Book reference: Gems of Wisdom from the seventh Dalai Lama by Glenn H. Mullin