Choices,.action, reaction...
Anger, blood pressure, create electrical impulse response requests, glands manufacture carcinogenic and organ harmful chemicals, cells absorb chemicals,.adrenaline and other chemicals cause euphoria, cells create receptors specific for these chemicals and basically become addicted to them,.leading to impulses which will request more chemicals cause more anger, forgiveness to satisfy itch.
You choose the path that satisfies your need to be angry at your perceived evil and is detrimental to your health and longevity...
Or you don't.
Do you need to know how a cell phone works to use it?
Don't let others push your buttons
I don't know if anyone pushes my buttons purposefully except occasionally online, but whenever something or someone irritates me, I try to resolve it or avoid it or do whatever to remedy it. I don't know how to just ahead of time not be bothered by something I don't know is going to happen happens and then I feel agitated. I think it might be an additional stress if the anger lasted really long or something and didn't give a sense of relief through acknowledging and expressing it and then furthermore doing something constructive in response to it to make it not happen again or further alleviate it. I think if I was very worried about feeling concern over my going "shoot!" and then saying "oh no the bus driver who just drove past without stopping when they were supposed to is controlling me now". Instead I say dang that son of a gun is bad! Then I might call and report the jerk who was so inconsiderate as to just think they can drive by without stopping at a stop when people are waiting and waving him down? Crazy, creating so much anxiety for people, the anger motivates action be taken. Maybe it gives me a dose of death juice, but is there someone who lives really much longer and never feels irritated? How do they look at 90? I've seen happy people live very long and end up demented and pooping themselves, and they didn't even get to enjoy thinking that someone is a piece of trash when they do something bad to people?
I need to get healthier though overall. Mainly I'll be less stressed by limiting my interaction with stressful situations more and more, which I already manage pretty well, but disturbing things still happen, and they seem to happen to rich, poor, happy, unhappy, people with kids, without kids, married, unmarried, single, dating, in a relationship, with pets, with pests, without pests, of all blood types, races, religions, creeds. Satan doesn't save Satanists, God doesn't save Godists, Buddhists poop themselves, Hindus rub cow poop on their head sometimes maybe to stimulate hair growth, might work a little, fitness buffs sometimes drop dead, smokers sometimes live very long, there seem to be no guarantees, but maybe an illusion of risk ratios and increases and satistics.
Like you said, and what you said is true, when those chemicals are released they can definitely hurt the body, and if its happening a lot it can very likely hurt the body a bit more, so its better to be happy. Now the only way I've found to be happy currently, is by indulging in what makes one happy and avoiding what makes one unhappy, but what makes one happy or unhappy requires some sensitivity to know which might be nice and not so nice, in order to avoid it. Then step by step filling life with the good and skipping the bad, and when bad happens, find solutions, if no solutions one can throw out a prayer and simply tolerate what is un-avoidable and focus mostly on other happy things. That is all I've figured out. I've been around for only 30 years, might be around for a few more (expected normally to be 60 to 90 so 30 to 60 more or around that much or a bit more or less since thats the usual death range, but so many die sooner, even just saw the movie Rush and heard of the one guy dying at 40 from a heart attack, the guy who lived longer is currently a millionaire who had his face and ear and lungs mutilated by being a silly race car driver but he won before it once and after it twice.), do not yet know.
I think the Buddha went too far. The Buddha's enemy Devadatta (God's Gift) thought he didn't go far enough. The Buddha was an extremist radical, and Devadatta was wanting to take it up a notch apparently.
The Buddha went too far because he supposedly remembered that he had in some way "been there, done that" and was bored with it all.
A dumby like me thinks this life is semi-precious, even as a hassle and a nuisance, because we might not have another one or another one like this. So that is why the life of a Buddhist or the Buddha seems like a total waste of time, but to the believers it wasn't, because everything else is a waste of time except getting out of this demented pain cycle and never falling into it again.
So the choice Mara gives is the fear of death, which leads to sex (Mara is strongly associated with the penis and sexuality in Japan), indulgences, attachments, cravings, trying to survive, and "letting yourself be controlled" by things like hunger for example, or the wish for happiness leading to combat for it. The way we've come to think of these days as plain old human or the American Tao.
So a life without good food, good company, and all the things the Buddha sort of threw away (his young wife and child who he named Fetter before jumping out a window on his horse and fleeing all these tricky deceptions of Mara like guilt or obligations to your offspring, and he sort of came back later but still, sounds like what we might not think of as very noble in other contexts today), seems like a life not lived, and that is the exact sort of life which supposedly expiates the karma and expends it to such a point that there is no more debt or weight and one can finally be born again in some way as a non returner.
So I talked to this skinny guy living in the jungle out in some country, eating lizards given to him in his begging bowl and living as a Buddhist beggar extremist and totalky by the books. He seemed a bit rude and annoying, maybe even a bit of temper. I eat very well and even in what might be considered Western squalor, am basically eating and enjoying like a king thanks to all the people who weren't Buddhists and fought like maniacs due to their anger and disapproval to improve rights and the luxuries we can live and take for granted.
Now the question remains, who is really winning? So far we're supposedly tied in the sense that we were both born and are both expected to die at any moment for any possible reason or strike. He expects that he will never have to do this again hopefully, and I may not get to, since I'll maybe have to a worm crushed on a sidewalk a couple zillion times before getting to glory in hot chocolate and comedy movies again or really perfect sex dolls provided by the State in the distant future or something even better.
After a while, "the author of confusion" seems to start making everything sound like absurd rubbish though.
