The root cause of any type of vi­o­lence is the five vices of anger, greed, ego, lust and at­tach­ment. Anger and lust are most in­flu­en­tial and pos­si­bly one's great­est en­e­my.

Root caus­es of anger

The three main root caus­es of anger are dis­sat­is­fac­tion, ego and ar­ro­gance of body con­scious­ness as well as un­ful­filled de­sires and ex­pec­ta­tions. Many times, anger be­gins with in­no­cence and fol­ly and ends up in pain and re­pen­tance. Anger can be clas­si­fied in­to three types. The first is the gross form of anger, which is demon­strat­ed by the feet and hands in terms of ac­tion and some­times leads to phys­i­cal al­ter­ca­tion. The sec­ond type is through words that end up with trad­ing in­sults and abus­es and may in­clude high-pitched ex­ple­tives in­stead of your usu­al well ar­tic­u­lat­ed ex­pres­sions. The third type is ex­pressed through the eyes and face and in gen­er­al an­noy­ing body lan­guage. This third type in­cludes a trou­bled or dis­tressed mind that im­bibes anger in nu­mer­ous sub­tle forms that are most dan­ger­ous as such ac­tions are of­ten pre­med­i­tat­ed.

Sub­tle and phys­i­cal do­mes­tic vi­o­lence

There are two types of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. The first type is non-phys­i­cal or sub­tle which is the psy­cho­log­i­cal bat­ter­ing (nag­ging) of each oth­er through vi­cious thoughts, hurt­ful words or un­kind body lan­guage, es­pe­cial­ly the eyes and face. Vi­o­lence through thoughts is when there are neg­a­tive feel­ings and ill wish­es for oth­ers such as hate, en­vy and jeal­ousy. Here both feel the ef­fects, but the gen­er­a­tor of these feel­ings re­ceives the worst. When these neg­a­tive feel­ings can no longer be con­tained, phys­i­cal ag­gres­sion is the next step. Phys­i­cal abuse there­fore is the prod­uct of sub­tle vi­o­lence. What­ev­er the form of vi­o­lence, the root cause stems from get­ting an­gry, or from ex­pec­ta­tions when some de­sire is not ful­filled, or from hurt­ing some­one's pride or ego, re­sult­ing main­ly from in­fi­deli­ty, or from un­re­quit­ed love, or from be­ing pos­ses­sive as a re­sult of at­tach­ment.

Trig­gers of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence

Some of the fac­tors that trig­ger anger and ar­ro­gance are un­ful­filled de­sires and ex­pec­ta­tions, ob­ses­sions as well as ad­dic­tions to lust, greed and pow­er. Un­ful­filled de­sires and ob­ses­sions are gen­er­al­ly tem­po­rary in na­ture, but ad­dic­tions to lust and greed for pow­er are more per­ma­nent in na­ture and very of­ten end in ca­su­al­ties. An ad­dic­tion to in­fi­deli­ty or de­bauch­ery is pos­si­bly your worst en­e­my as this can lead to sep­a­ra­tion, di­vorce or death. When bit­ten by lust­ful in­fi­deli­ty, a per­son los­es all rea­son­ing pow­ers, ne­glects all re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as well as re­spectabil­i­ty and will com­mit the most heinous crime if his ad­dic­tion is un­re­quit­ed and scorned. They be­come wrong and strong and prac­tise might is right. Death is al­most cer­tain if a re­strain­ing or­der is ap­plied, es­pe­cial­ly in the case of un­re­quit­ed love. Lust for po­lit­i­cal pow­er is no dif­fer­ent and any­one who wish­es to chal­lenge that pow­er is risk­ing po­lit­i­cal sui­cide and per­son­al defama­tion.

Spir­i­tu­al so­lu­tions

The spir­i­tu­al so­lu­tion to min­imise do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is to take con­trol of the mind the mo­ment anger is sensed in a forced or spon­ta­neous al­ter­ca­tion. The method to quick­ly adopt is to be­come peace­ful­ly silent and qui­et­ly re­treat, man­ag­ing a smile if it is pos­si­ble. Use that time in silent prayer, deep in­tro­spec­tion and con­tin­u­ous re­mem­brance of God. This is but the spir­i­tu­al pow­er of the soul to "with­draw" that the wise see as "strength" but the ego­ists per­ceive as a "weak­ness." When that mo­ment of anger is con­trolled and you are in a bet­ter frame of mind, hon­est­ly see if you are part of the prob­lem. If yes, then rec­on­cil­i­a­tion can start by in­vok­ing the pow­er of hu­mil­i­ty, the strength to say sor­ry and the wis­dom to seek for­give­ness. In many of the sit­u­a­tions that lead to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, it is very dif­fi­cult to break off bad habits, es­pe­cial­ly when the cause is one of un­faith­ful­ness or sub­stance abuse.

There­fore, some form of spir­i­tu­al or psy­chi­atric coun­selling and guid­ance is es­sen­tial. There are no easy so­lu­tions and some­times it may mean walk­ing away, some­times ex­er­cis­ing un­shak­able tol­er­ance un­til such time you are in a po­si­tion to do bet­ter, but what­ev­er you do, do it with great tact and hu­mil­i­ty. Do not try and test the oth­er par­ty's ego and ar­ro­gance. The im­por­tant thing to re­mem­ber is that there is al­ways a so­lu­tion how­ev­er painful it may be­come. Trust in your­self and have un­shak­able faith in God, but do not take the law in­to your hands.

BK Khem Jokhoo is a physi­cist/en­gi­neer/yo­gi by pro­fes­sion. In the last 16 years, he has done ex­ten­sive stud­ies in moral val­ues and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. He is a stu­dent and teacher of yo­ga and med­i­ta­tion.

BK Yo­gi Khem Jokhoo