Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 97-minute commentary on patience from the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra, Kyabje Rinpoche unpacks Śāntideva’s core argument: if people who harm us are enslaved to afflictive emotions and lack freedom, why become angry at them rather than at their anger? He walks through three types of patience—non-retaliation, perseverance in practice, and equanimity toward suffering—then works through striking metaphors: we don’t fault disease for suffering or the stick for striking, so why fault a person driven by forces beyond their control? He grounds this in Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka and dependent origination, connecting it to karma—present harm ripens from harm created through lack of patience before. Pitched at serious practitioners familiar with Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1988-11-28 – Patience – KR.mp3
UUID: 6a71edd5-d663-407c-9c06-20b59b452514
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra
Date: 1988-11-28
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~4,895
So we should try initially to adjust our motivation such that we’re going to listen to this teaching on the great vehicle whereby to attain peerless, complete, perfect enlightenment in order to bring happiness and peace to all sentient beings. So, the definition of patience or forbearance is not to become angry in the face of harm and suffering. So, There are three types of patience or forbearance. The first is not to retaliate in the face of harm. And this is not to return harm for harm, not to become angry when someone has hurt you.
In the ceremony offering to the spiritual master it speaks about the perfection of patience. And here the verse mentions that in the face of someone speaking harmful words to you, unpleasant words, that when they speak about all your various faults, even when they beat you, or finally if they were to kill you, that not to retaliate and return harm in the face of their harm, but instead to gain the perfection of patience and meditate on compassion for them. Then the second type of patience would be perseverance in difficult practices. This would involve, for example, in one’s practice of Dharma, being willing to persevere in the face of difficulties, in the face of obstacles, and thinking that how the Buddha conducted his life and his practice and understanding what is necessary to progress along the path, persevering in all the difficult in order to gain the various realizations, in order to meditate on such things as selflessness and the law of cause and effect, impermanence, etcetera. That is to persevere and be willing to tolerate difficulties in one’s practice.
And the third is the patience of equanimity toward both happiness and suffering. And this would involve that to remain equanimous in the face of both happiness and suffering in that we don’t become attached to contaminated happinesses nor do we seek to avoid sufferings. We have to, it becomes necessary to see the excellent qualities of suffering as if it were medicine. Just as when we’re sick, it’s sometimes necessary to take courses of treatment which involve further difficulties, further suffering, but in fact these are going to ultimately cure us. Likewise, we should see that suffering in itself is of the excellent qualities of persevering and tolerating suffering as a medicine, and not to become discouraged in the face of difficulties.
So the second type of patience is perseverance in the face of difficulties. In such circumstances as when someone were to become angry with us and they start to abuse us with harsh words, in the face of that abuse oneself becomes angry and thinking that now one suffers due to those harsh words of others and this suffering actually has a condition for ones self to become angry and not, and being unwilling to apply an antidote to prevent the anger from rising even when one is suffering. So, the text goes on to explain that in this as an example of how this does not make sense that we shouldn’t one is unwilling to meditate or apply the antidote of patience in becoming angry. You know, when having a sickness such as jaundice and this jaundice can act as a great source of suffering, then why don’t we become angry at this sickness in the same way we’re acting as we’re becoming angry at this, but what we conceive of as a source of suffering? So there’s a debate going on here.
The idea of the unwillingness to try to control one’s anger in the face of suffering. And that first off, Śāntideva talks about, well if that’s the case, then why don’t you get angry when you become, when you suffer from a disease like jaundice? Since the jaundice is a source of your suffering, why don’t you become angry at your disease? And the other person says, Well, you know, that’s not quite similar. You know, this person has become, has abused me, has become angry at me and this acts as a condition for my afflictive emotions to rise.
And therefore and, know, I I don’t have any control over this. So it’s not a similar case. So, just as jaundice can act as a source of suffering for you, but you don’t get angry at this particular type of source of suffering, you don’t get angry at the jaundice, then why do you get angry at this person since they are just in the same way that they simply aren’t a source of suffering? And the person responds, it’s not the same case. You know, I have no control.
The condition of the jaundice arising is uncontrolled, but this person is becoming angry at me. They’re abusing me. Then Śāntideva responds, Well this person likewise has no control. In the same way that a disease arises without any control, this person becomes angry without any control. They’re overcome by their afflictive emotions.
Just as sickness has arisen uncontrolled, afflictive emotion arises uncontrolled. Therefore, this is just as if you’re going to get angry at something, then you should get angry at their anger, at their anger under which they are controlled. If you’re going to get angry at something, then get angry at their anger because they’re under the control of their anger. And that’s the source of their behavior. Then why not get angry at their anger?
So this person has no freedom. They are completely under the control of their afflictive emotion. The reasons for their very bad actions toward you is that they’ve, without any control, that they’re completely governed by their afflictive emotions which has arisen, they’ve gone completely under the anger which they developed. So this person is under the influence of the condition of his own anger. This is due to the former habituations of actions that he’s created.
He’s created the actions of the karma in the past and now due to the forces that he’s now under the or she is now under the control of anger again repeating this same type of pattern. Perhaps in fact they have no intention but they have completely lost control of the situation and they’re completely under the influence of their own afflictive emotions. So all these mistaken ways of acting, these these harmful harmful activities which this person has directed you arise through the simply when this person meets a specific type of condition then without any freedom he falls under the complete influence of situation and under these conditions and within his non freedom he enacts out habitual patterns and he has no freedom when meeting the proper circumstances. It’s as if the afflictive emotions automatically arise. He automatically becomes angry without any attention to become angry.
He has no desire to develop anger. So the Buddha said that sentient beings are not the source of harm. That in fact it’s the afflictive emotions which are the source of harm. That whatever someone else might do to us, whether they speak badly toward us, you know, find all the list our various faults. It’s not them who is causing us the difficulty, it’s their afflictive emotions which they have come under the control of.
So in the same way that if we were harmed by a piece of machinery, we might think to become angry at the machine itself. But in fact the driving force behind the machine is the electricity. So that’s what we should be angry at if we’re going to become angry at all is what is energy or driving force behind the machine itself. And likewise, when someone hurts us, generally, why don’t we, rather than becoming angry at the person, become angry at the driving force behind this person and that is the afflictive emotions. And we might say, well, if someone calls me a bad word, these bad words hurt me, and so then, therefore I get angry at the person.
But if this were the case, if somebody were to beat us with a stick, then, you know, the person doesn’t hurt. It’s the stick hitting us on top of the head, for example, which gives us the pain. So why don’t we get angry at the stick? But we would say, well you know, when we’re asked, well why don’t you get angry at this stick, that’s what’s actually hurting you, you say, Well it’s the person who wields the stick. The stick has no, does not have the, the stick is under the control of the person.
I’m not going get angry at this stick, I’m going to get angry at the person because they’re under their their controlling the stick. And you say, then it’s not proper to get angry at the person either because they don’t have an independence or freedom. They’re also under the control of something else, another condition, they’re under the control of the afflicted emotions. Just as the stick is under the control of something else and you don’t get angry at it, then you shouldn’t get angry at the person because they’re also under the control of something else that is the afflicted emotion. So then the text goes on.
So this I presented an argument with respect to a non-Buddhist school, I think it’s called the Charvaka, in which they assert what is called a primal substance. And this primal substance is imputed to be the self and it is a cause but it is not a result. It only acts as a cause. And they list 25 types of objects of knowledge. So this primal substance is asserted to be the creator of all things.
So, in this tradition, in this system, whatever the sentient beings conceive, then from this primal substance, it is developed or created out of this primal substance. Conceiving sounds and sounds are created, conceiving smells or tastes or food, etcetera, then these all arise out of primal substance. But not understanding that these are being created out of primal substance, that in fact all these things truly exist, the sentient beings are deceived in this way, and in this way they revolve in cyclic existence. But in order to, in this system, Sankhyas, in order to attain liberation, one attains a clairvoyance and seeing that all phenomena are simply emanations or a creation of this primal substance. Upon seeing this all the various manifestations of objects are withdrawn into the primal substance and the being completely abides alone without any appearances of any manifestations of any object and this is what they would call liberation.
Śāntideva then refutes this assertion of the Sankhyas saying that you assert that the primal substance is permanent or that is to say unchanging and how can something which is unchanging produce an effect? How can it bring about all the various creations and emanations? Therefore your unchanging primal substance cannot be the source of all the creations since it cannot produce anything and therefore it is not the reason for us to be entering into or returning out of cyclic existence. So everything Everything is governed by conditions, by other factors outside themselves, whether it’s suffering, whether it’s staying or going, all these are unchanging, are changing, they’re not unchanging. And therefore all the various causes and effects which arise are dependent on meeting various types of constantly changing conditions.
Nothing is contained within itself. Everything is governed by something outside of itself. So we have to understand that nothing is self governing, that things are governed by other factors outside themselves, and these are the various causes and conditions, the situation in which they exist in. And upon the aggregation of various causes and conditions, a particular effect will arise. And even these previous, even these causes and conditions, this situation is governed by something else.
A previous set of causes and conditions. The cause and conditions of a previous situation arose, this gave rise to new results, new conditions and it gave on further to later results, later conditions. Something is always being conditioned by something previous to it. It’s never under its own control. Therefore, understanding that things are never governing themselves, that they’re always coming into being by something other than themselves, and we can begin to look on phenomena as if they were mirages and aberrations.
And therefore, in this way, seeing all phenomena in this way, this will help us to cease anger toward them. So, Śāntideva’s text is explained from the point of view of the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, which is the highest thought of the Buddha. In that it is to see everything as non truly existent, as not naturally existing, as lacking self existence. This is in the lower schools they accept, that is to say the Great Exposition School, the Sūtra School, and the Mind Only School, they accept true existence. That in fact objects naturally exist, they truly exist.
They say that if things didn’t exist truly, if they didn’t exist naturally, then they wouldn’t exist at all. But the Consequentialist Middle Way school that says nothing exists naturally, that nothing exists truly, that in fact things are simply like apparitions or mirages. That they simply come about through the aggregation of causes and conditions, they’re all dependent arising. They have no nature of their own. They’re always dependent upon something else outside of themselves.
But the lower schools argue back that if in fact these things weren’t, if phenomena were not truly existent, then there would be no antidotes, there would be no abandonment, that in fact if things do not truly exist then they don’t exist at all. So now he’s explaining something of the view of the middle way school, that is emptiness, and it’s a little bit difficult to understand. The Middle Way school says that all, in fact, all phenomena do not inherently exist. By coming to understand that all phenomena do not inherently exist, this acts as an antidote whereby we can rid ourselves of all the afflictive emotions and this way eliminate all the afflictive emotions within our mind. By eliminating all the afflictive emotions we cut off the continuum of suffering and can attain liberation and Buddhahood.
So, you know, if we were to briefly, in a summation, then whoever the person might be, whether it’s our enemy, whether it’s our friend, our relative, our husband, our wife, upon their becoming angry at us, upon their inflicting some kind of harm at us, then we are simply to see that in fact these people are not under their own control. They’re under the control of various causes and conditions outside of themselves, that they have no freedom. And in this way, understanding this, we do not become angry at the person themselves, understanding that they’re under control of something else other than themselves, and our mind will remain happy. We ourselves will not become angry. So these people are not they have no freedom.
They’re under the control of other conditions than themselves. If in fact they had a choice in the matter, if people had a choice of what states of mind arose in their own mind, then since nobody wants to have suffering, then suffering would simply not exist. They would choose not to suffer. But since they don’t have this choice, they don’t have this control, and likewise they don’t have this control over their mind and when they bring harm to you or they become angry at you, they’re under the power of something else in which they have no choice. So, some people, due to in fact we do not to suffer, have no choice but to harm ourselves, Oftentimes in fact we do.
Because of carelessness, because of lack of conscientiousness, people in fact do bring harm to themselves without any choice. For example, through carelessness you might step on a thorn and hurt yourself and simply by not being watchful one hurts oneself. Also, because of some obsession, you know, wanting to through attachment to a man or a woman. One engage in actions which in fact deprive, you know, some people would deprive themselves of food. I don’t know, maybe it’s a go on diets or something.
And cause all kinds of harm themselves just to attain a particular object that they would hurt themselves with either in carelessness or with lack of foresight into what the lack of understanding of what they were doing. So, you know, in coming to understand the actions of others and that it’s not surprising that in fact they may bring us harm. Some people, they in fact cause harm to themselves. They, you know, through such a, you know, some people actually jump off cliffs, some people swallowing poison, some people eating unhealthy food. They do this, they bring all this harm to themselves through coming under the influence of afflicted emotions.
And if people actually kill themselves, they commit suicide under the influence of their afflictive emotions. And if people are so unfree that they actually kill themselves due to the force of other conditions, that is their afflictive emotions, then they should be the object of our compassion and not the object of our anger in the sense that they have no complete choice and they have no choice. If in fact they’re going to kill themselves, hurt themselves, then what to say that they’re going to hurt others, that they may even try to kill others? So people bring unimaginable sufferings to themselves, so it shouldn’t be surprising that that they may suffering to others. Now nobody wants to suffer, so they have no choice in bringing all these sufferings to themselves.
In fact, they’re under the afflictive emotions even when it comes to their own welfare, what to say of how they react, relate with others. And therefore, it is the afflictive emotion which is the enemy of of is their afflictive emotion which is both our enemy and their enemy. It is actually what’s bringing us everyone’s suffering, and this is what is to be destroyed. So if people are are so enslaved that they’re actually they will go to the extreme of killing their most treasured self, then how can we hold it against them? How can we generate anger when they bring us they might bring us some harm since no one would want to no one who had the control would want to bring suffering to themselves.
In fact, they’re under the power, have no, but they have no freedom, they have no choice in this matter. They’re completely under the influence of the afflicted emotions to the extent that they’re willing to kill themselves, to bring great sufferings to themselves. And therefore, when understanding that beings have no freedom, in fact they’re enslaved to their afflictive emotions, that rather than being objects of our anger, they should be the objects of our compassion. So, seeing that people bring great harm to themselves, they also bring harm to their closest companions. Understanding, seeing this, that they have no freedom, that they’re completely enslaved to their afflictive emotions, by seeing the fact that choicelessly they bring harm to themselves and their closest companions, then even if we can’t develop compassion for them, we at least, you know, at least the last thing we should do is become angry at them.
Then on the other hand, if we were to suppose the case of a childish person, that is someone who had little understanding, If it was their nature to cause other people harm, so if someone, a childish person who has lack of little understanding has a nature of causing harm to others, And this is it would still not be proper to become angry at such a person because this would be similar to the case of begrudging fire to have the nature of burning. You know, if we’re burnt by fire, if we burn our finger in a fire, we can’t begrudge the fire that it burns because that’s its very nature. We can’t hold it against That’s in its nature to be that way. And likewise, if there’s a childish person who hurts others, if we say, well that’s their nature, we’re thinking that that’s their nature, well how can we begrudge them their nature in the same way we don’t begrudge fire, it’s burning quality. On the other hand, if we were to criticize someone who is normally reliable person, someone who is in general a kind hearted person, if we were to become angry at them when they temporarily harm us, they’re overcome by a particular afflictive emotion and therefore they become angrier and they harm us.
If we were to criticize them for this, then this would be in the same way as begrudging space or sky for allowing smoke to arise in it. You know, that it is the nature of space or the sky that temporarily smoke, it allows space for something to arise within it. A condition may arise such as smoke. If we were to say to the sky that you shouldn’t allow that smoke to arise, you would be grudging it, it’s very nature, allowing it that it temporarily creates the condition whereby smoke can arise within it. Likewise, this person who is generally kind hearted and reliable, that they have the condition of their mind as such that from time to time they may there may be the space or the opportunity for an afflictive emotion to arise in their mind.
And we can’t begrudge them in the same way. We can’t begrudge space for allowing smoke. We can’t begrudge them for allowing temporarily afflictive emotions to arise since these are dependent upon conditions which they have no control over. So another case would be where I’m becoming angry at a person who hits us with a stick. That is the stick which actually brings us harm.
But we don’t become angry at the stick since the stick is secondary. It’s the wielder of the stick that we become angry at. And likewise if we’re going to become the if we’re going to be angry at the wielder of the stick, that is the that we don’t see the stick as being the primary cause of our suffering but only as a secondary, well the actual source of the suffering is that person’s own hatred, that person’s own anger. So that person also is only a secondary. The primary source of the cause of our suffering is that person’s hatred and anger.
That’s where we should It’s only suitable to become angry at their own hatred. So, in the like in the sense that we don’t become angry at the stick, we don’t become angry at his hand, why do we become angry at the person when in fact he or she is being governed by another secondary factor, the ultimate cause being their own hatred and that’s the ultimate cause for this harm. And therefore, not the ultimate, that is the cause, primary cause of this harm, and that is the object of our anger. Also, in the face of being harmed by others, we should understand that this is simply harm being returned to us that we have committed previously. That before, through not having practiced patience, that we hurt others through actually physically hurting them, hurting with our words, that these harmful actions that we created before are now simply returning to us now to bring us harm, that because of our lack of patience previously, we’re now experiencing suffering.
It’s one of the basic teachings of the Buddha. One of the basic teachings of the Buddha is the law of cause and effect. And essentially it is simply that by doing wrong to others, then harm will come to ourselves in return. By benefiting others, then benefit will come to ourselves in return. Whatever actions that we create, we will experience their future results.
If we harm others through harmful, for example, through harmful speech, through harmful physical actions, then this will, we will have to later, this same type of action will eventually be returned to us. If, on the other hand, we benefit others through, for example, saving life, through generosity, other types of skillful actions, then it’s definite that in the future these same types of actions will return to us. This was one of the most basic teachings of the Buddha. So we can understand through reasoning that there’s always a similarity between cause and effect. That If we plant a barley seed, then a barley sprout will arise.
If we plant a wheat seed, then a wheat sprout will arise. If we plant chili seeds, then we’re going to get something, fruit which is very hot. If we make something is very if we make something from sweet ingredients, we’re going to have what we end up with will be very sweet. If we make something with sour ingredients, then our product is going to be sour. There’s always going to be a similarity in type between the cause and the effect.
Do you have some questions? Can there be anger without a person to feel anger? Can there be anger can there be anger without a person? Can there be anger without do you wanna explain a little bit more? Rinpoche was saying, don’t look at the stick.
Look at the the person wielding the stick. Yeah. And then he’s saying, don’t look at the person wielding the stick because, really, they’re controlled by afflictive emotion. Mhmm. If they’re not controlled by conflicting emotion, there’s a such thing as an afflictive emotion when they’re not under its control.
And they’re not under the last part? They’re not under? They’re not under. When they’re not under the control of the afflictive emotion, does that emotion exist somewhere else? Does it exist somewhere else?
Is it in your system? Situations for example where you have a very happy mind, example you have meditated on compassion or you have some faith or something like that, and your mind is very happy, Even at those times, there’s still afflictive emotion. You still have afflictive emotion, but they’re not manifested afflictive emotions. It’s the latencies or the predispositions for afflictive emotions. So still the The latencies.
It’s not manifest. It’s just like a disposition. So you could be sitting there very peacefully and happily, and someone comes up here and suddenly says, Are you a thief? And I’m like, What do you mean by that? All of a sudden this anger can arise very suddenly and that shows that’s a sign that it was latent, you were disposed to that anger even though at that moment it wasn’t manifest.
So I was pointing out to the interlocutor that also afflicting emotions are not self powered. They’re not under control themselves. So, nothing so whatever is a product is synonymous with being other powered or that’s another word, another way to translate it is dependent, is a dependent phenomenon. That everything, all products are dependent upon cause and condition and therefore even afflictive emotions. When we meet certain conditions, certain situations, then that acts as a cause for afflictive emotions to arise.
afflictive emotions do not choose to arise themselves, they’re not creating themselves, they also arise dependent upon something else. They also arise on causes and conditions. So, their production depends upon causes and conditions. When certain causes and conditions are present, they aggregate, come together, then a specific effect will arise. And we think that in order for cessation or destructions to occur that we have to add special types of, we have to, we generally think that we have to create the various causes and conditions necessary to destroy something for something to cease or to undergo cessation.
But the very factor of production is the condition necessary for cessation or destruction. That is in the nature of all things when they’re produced that they will abide and that they will finally cease, that the very fact of being produced is the condition necessary for them to cease. That is to say, another way of looking at it is that birth is the cause of death. So all these various many synonymous terms such as product, conditioned phenomena, impermanent phenomena, transitory phenomena. These are all, and though they’re different names, we’re talking about the same thing.
Just synonymous terms for the same object. So, having been born is the condition necessary for something’s destruction. That the mere factor of production acts as the condition necessary for that phenomena without the necessity for any other conditions acts as the cause for that phenomena’s final cessation. That no matter who the person might be, for example, previously in India, you know, the Buddha and the various 16 Arhats, all the great masters of Tibet, that simply by their very birth, no matter how long they may have lived, they were still, their existence was transitory since they had, as in nature, that which is produced, to experience cessation and to become non existent. So it’s extremely important to meditate on impermanence.
It’s extremely beneficial to our practice of Dharma.