The dust of anger is to become angry at what someone has said or done. To become angry when displeased with anything said by others, to become angry over someone's error or mistake, to become angry recklessly even over a tiny thing simply because you are in a bad mood, to lose patience and become angry--these betray a narrow, mean mind, and all such anger arising from a short temper is dust.

There might be some who vent their anger on their wives or children simply because they have done something disagreeable, and their wives and children might be at a loss what to do. There might also be some who, when others make mistakes, become wild with rage toward them. But, what if you were to make a mistake yourself? You would probably leave it untouched.

When you are in a bad mood, you may thoughtlessly become angry with everybody and anything indiscriminately and sometimes break things. There are some parents who, when their children disobey them, hit their children, or others who indiscreetly become angry, scolding and giving cruel treatment to their children when the children get into mischief or wet their pants. These parents do not remember that each way they have used their minds is shown in their children by the providences. Also, there are some children who become angry and stamp their feet, complaining that they do not like the things their parents have given to them. These are all the dust of anger.

Anger arises because of your own willfulness, and because your minds are impure. To become angry at what someone has said or done is largely because we wish others to understand us without trying to understand them. Giving vent to anger lessens one's virtues. It can, as physicians also say, lead one to shorten one's life. Let us not become angry but be broad-minded so as to understand others.

Oyasama taught Isaburo Masui the following: "Some are good within yet bad without, and there are also people with the opposite character. To be sure, anger, selfishness and irritability are unadvisable. A single word is important. One achieves harmony in the family by the way one breathes in and out to form the very words one speaks." Further: "Isaburo, you are gentle and sociable to everyone outside your house. When you are home and face your wife, you become angry and shout at her; that is the worst thing you could do. Never do it again."

Masui suspected that his wife might have complained about him, but on considering that God knows and sees through everything, he simply decided he would never get angry again. Thereafter, he was never irritated by anything his wife said.

(Anecdotes of Oyasama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo, pp. 111-112)

(The above is an excerpt from Dust and Innen, first published in September 1982. Quotations from the Ofudesaki and the Kakisage have been replaced by the revised, current translations.)