Meditation is a tool so that when your life scks, your boss is an ssh*le, and your personal relationships are a mess, THEN someone cuts you off in traffic you take a minute or two of breath awareness and open monitoring instead of running them off the road and karate kicking them in the head.
It helps you relax into feelings of anger, pain, or depression instead of running from them and chasing your addictive behavior of choice to escape. Also like every other tool out there it isn't 100% effective.
You need to get worked up, speak your mind, start the argument, quit your job when things get too bad. Life isn't a float on the lazy river. Feelings of anger and pain exist for a reason.
Thats why meditation, as it's sold, is bullsh*t. You're describing an alternative to xanax.
The distinction is that you work on "meta-cognitive awareness". You try to avoid getting swept up in the narrative thought stream if possible. So here goes from my own experience (doesn't work 100% of the time).
without mindful awareness Guy cuts me off -> "WTF is that guy doing? What a moron! Someone always has to mess with me! Look at how smug he is. I want to jam his nose into the back of his head"
with Guy cuts me off -> "WTF is that guy doing? Woah feeling that anger. I can feel it right in my chest and kind of a warm feeling in my face and arms. Hmm interesting. I wonder if he is rushing to the hospital or to some emergency. Just like me, I've accidentally cut someone off before. Oh well what's on the radio"
It helps you build more mature mental models. Mental models are useful but often wrong. Mindfulness can help you question your own mental models and take things less personally. Tons of reputable studies will back up mindfulness and meditation as a standalone or complementary tool for stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. Medication still plays a very important role.
Edit: Upvote to you for bringing up a good point. It is very hard to sort out the bull*hit in the meditation community. There is an awful lot of tradition, psudo-science, and plain old snobbery in this community. Anyone that gets involved should start with the basics and avoid as much of the spiritual hype as possible.
I mean, I find specially hard to improve myself at my job if I hate it, and so it will be harder for me to find somewhere else better. If I'm mindful, I will actually keep working hard, learning, and I will separate myself from the bad feelings. That doesn't mean I will stop searching for alternatives.
There are times where being angry actually helps, but they're a lot less common in the modern world. Usually, it will screw you over. (For example, getting angry in traffic is utterly useless.) Starting that argument because you're angry makes it unlikely that you'll actually persuade anyone.
You'll make a better case if you're calm about it and can think clearly. How do you do that? Meditation is one way.
Also -- I believe Buddhism does not apply negative connotations to 'indignation' as opposed to raw anger, i.e. I don't think it is classified as a negative state of mind to be dissolved.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engaged_Buddhism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism
My personal experience is that anger is accompanied by a level of agitation that makes all action dangerous. If you manage to do the right thing, it is by accident. More often than not, you cause more damage. It's true that anger gives you a lot of energy to accomplish a goal; but it's one of life's sad ironies that it also causes you to fixate on a goal which a) might not be a good one, and b) brings with it a set of (bad) trade-offs.
That said, there may be situations where a jolt of any energy, including that from anger, is ultimately a good thing. E.g. a depressed person unable to do anything, who suddenly feels furious and throws a tantrum and runs away. Gonna be tough in the short-term, but if you're stuck in a rut any change can be a good thing.
Anyway, thanks for the comment and I hope you get more upvotes.
People tend to be caught up in the past or future. They are either constantly thinking about regrets or hopes and wishes to distracted to see the opportunities in the present.
There's a saying. You should meditate for atleast 30 minutes a day. If you don't think you have time for that, you should meditate for 1 hour a day.x6