I lose my temper and then feel awful — how do I stop being so angry?
Anger is usually self-harm dressed up as defiance — Tukaram holds up the mirror.
You snap. The words are out before you can catch them, and a few minutes later the heat drains away and leaves you sick with yourself — the wreckage on someone's face, the thing you can't unsay, the small ruin you made of your own afternoon. The shame is real, and so is the helplessness: if you could just stop, you would. But the anger keeps arriving faster than you can decide anything.
Tukaram does not scold you for the feeling. What he does, over and over, is turn the camera around. His first move is almost always to show you that the angry gesture hurts you more than the person you aimed it at — the man who quarrels with the oil-seller ends up eating dry bread; the woman who storms out in spite comes home to a house full of dogs (abhang 56). The defiance feels like power; it is actually you handing away your own well-being to win a gesture. Once you see that, anger stops looking like strength and starts looking like a bad trade.
His second move is gentler and more practical. He insists the problem is upstream of any one outburst. A quick temper is a kind of digestive fire that's gone wrong — nothing good "keeps down" in it (abhang 76); and the permanent scowl on the chronically angry face is just the visible leak of no samādhāna (no settled contentment) in the heart (abhang 1615). So the work isn't white-knuckling the next flare. It's tending the unsettled thing inside that keeps lighting the fuse — and, where you can, letting anger become a step you climb rather than a wall you smash into (abhang 193).
Abhang 56 — The fool who burns his own house
तेलनीशीं रुसला वेडा । रागें कोरडें खातो भिडा ॥१॥ आपुलें हित आपण पाही । संकोच तो न धरी कांहीं ॥ध्रु.॥
This is Tukaram's comic mirror for the spite-cascade: every angry gesture aimed at someone else lands hardest on you. The oil-seller still has her shop — you have dry bread. The neighbour's house is fine — yours filled with dogs while you were off sulking. The remedy is the refrain, आपुलें हित आपण पाही — "look after your own good" — which here means: before the next righteous outburst, ask honestly who it actually costs. When you feel awful afterward, this is why: you were the target all along.
Abhang 76 — The fire where nothing keeps down
श्वान शीघ्रकोपी । आपणा घातकर पापी ॥१॥ नाहीं भीड आणि धीर । उपदेश न जिरे क्षीर ॥ध्रु. ॥
Tukaram names the quick-tempered person self-harming (आपणा घातकर) and gives the exact diagnosis: नाहीं भीड आणि धीर — no restraint and no patience — so the "milk of teaching does not digest." This speaks straight to you, not just to people who anger you. All the good advice you give yourself ("stay calm," "let it go") keeps coming back up because the temper resets it daily. The fix isn't a better mantra in the moment; it's slowly building the patience underneath, so that next time the lesson actually stays down.
Abhang 90 — Burnt sesame in the rice
तीळ जाळिले तांदुळ । काम क्रोधे तैसे चि खळ ॥१॥ कां रे सिणलासी वाउगा । न भजतां पांडुरंगा ॥ध्रु.॥
A few sesame seeds burnt in with the rice spoil the whole pot — and kāma-krodha, lust-and-anger, ruins everything good you do the same way. You can be generous, disciplined, sincere; one outburst sours the lot, and afterward all that effort tastes of ash. Tukaram's point for the angry person: the anger isn't a separate small fault you can quarantine — it contaminates the rest of your life and undoes work you were proud of. That's the awful aftertaste you keep noticing. Worth more than the gesture was.
Abhang 193 — Anger made into a step
खेळ मांडियेला वाळवंटीं घाई । नाचती वैष्णव भाई रे । क्रोध अभिमान केला पावटणी । एक एका लागतील पायीं रे ॥१॥
Here is the constructive answer the satires only imply. On the festival sand-bank, क्रोध अभिमान केला पावटणी — anger and pride are made into stepping-stones, the very footrests by which people rise to bow at one another's feet. Tukaram doesn't ask you to banish anger by force (which never works); he shows it transmuted — its energy turned into humility instead of injury. Practically: anger is fuel. In the wrong place it burns the house down (abhang 56); caught in good company and turned toward bowing rather than striking, the same heat lifts you.
Abhang 1615 — The knotted brow
जळों त्याचें तोंड । ऐसी कां ते व्याली रांड ॥१॥ सदा भोवयासी गांठी । क्रोध धडधडीत पोटीं ॥ध्रु.॥
A blunt, almost gutter-curse portrait — the permanent knot between the brows, the anger blazing in the belly (क्रोध धडधडीत पोटीं), the face cracked like a fallen cow-dung cake. But the last line is the whole diagnosis: no contentment in the chitta at all. The chronic scowl isn't a character trait to police; it's steam escaping from an unsettled heart. This is why "just stop being angry" never works on its own — the anger is a symptom. Tend the discontent underneath, and the belly-fire has nothing left to feed it.
Abhang 555 — Anger beside the prayer
जप करितां राग । आला जवळी तो मांग ॥१॥ नको भोंवतालें जगीं । पाहों जवळी राख अंगीं ॥ध्रु.॥
जप करितां राग — let anger come near while you're at your practice, Tukaram says, and it defiles the whole thing, as if something foul had walked in. The instruction that follows is inward: नको भोंवतालें जगीं पाहों — stop scanning the world around you (looking for offences, for who wronged you) and keep your attention close to home. So much temper is fed by watching others; turning the gaze inward starves it. Guard your quiet the way you'd guard anything precious — anger is exactly what spoils it.
In one breath
Stop treating anger as power you wield and see it as Tukaram does — self-harm dressed up as defiance, a fire in which nothing good keeps down and which sours everything else you do. The outburst isn't the disease; it's steam off an unsettled heart, so the real work is tending the contentment underneath and turning your gaze inward instead of hunting the world for offences. Today: before the next snap, ask who it actually costs — almost always, it's you.