Why do I wish to write about stubbornness? Because contrary to our common belief anger is not always bad abut stubbornness that usually follows anger is always bad. It is the stubbornness that lets us lose our reasoning. And when we lose our reasoning, we become animals. God did not want us to be animals. Had He so wished He would not have given us human forms. Hence without doubt our greatest fault or may I say our greatest enemy is the anger which brings forth stubbornness in us.
In the Gita the Lord says that when our desire is not realized then we become angry and often from anger comes delusion, from delusion the loss of memory, from loss of memory the destruction of discrimination and from destruction of discrimination the angry man perishes. In my opinion delusion is the root cause of stubbornness. We all have learnt by our sad experience that when our temper flies we are deluded to think that we are right and the others are wrong. In other words, we become so obstinate that our power of judgment and rational thinking vanishes. We become totally insane. In fact there is no passion that is more frantic, more destructive to its own self as anger coupled with stubbornness is. The beginning of anger could be the most trivial but in no time has the potential to reach its greatest height and that is when we become stubborn. As soon as that happens, we forget whom we are talking to or whom we are harming and what the consequences would be. We lose our discriminating power and start behaving like animals. No one is safe from anger– it rouses even those who are gentle and quiet to commit savage and violent acts. Revenge is another fallout of anger and stubbornness.
Now that we have understood how very, powerful and ruinous anger followed by stubbornness is what should we do about it? Every evening set aside 10 minutes before going to bed and lay before your mind all the vices connected with anger and stubbornness and estimate it at its real value. Remember you cannot afford to be stubborn without losing something. Anger and stubbornness bring grief to a father, divorce to a husband, failure to a businessman and the list goes on and on. Apology does not help curb our anger. In fact by saying you are sorry all you have done is that have justified your deeds in anger. You have found an excuse to be angry and stubborn again.