Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche explores patience, a core bodhisattva practice, through the lens of anger’s devastating consequences. A single moment of anger directed at a bodhisattva destroys all virtues accumulated through giving and ethics over a hundred eons — a thousand eons if an ordinary person becomes angry at a bodhisattva. He illustrates this vast timescale through Buddhist cosmology, then systematically details how anger damages appearance, judgment, and future rebirths. He then presents patience’s opposite fruits: beauty, clarity, strong relationships, and eventual rebirth as human or celestial being. For practitioners studying Śāntideva’s Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-07-25 – 19A – KR.mp3
UUID: d240205d-afd3-4d65-a31c-801defc755a5
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Entering the Middle Way
Date: 1991-07-25
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,445
Alright. I must attain a state for myself and for the sake of all sentient beings in which I have removed all my various faults and brought to consummation all my excellent qualities. Having done that, lovingly and compassionately I will be able to teach them the Dharma and thereby help them to remove all their various faults and bring to consummation all of their excellent qualities. For the next three minutes cultivate the healthy attitude of the awakening heart which seeks to be of best benefit to others through the training of their mind. And in the context of this, in order to achieve these ends that we have just mentioned, that one is going to train in the profound view the essence of the Dharma of the great vehicle.
I have a maybe the people in the back would like to have his copies. Beginning verse 33 where it states, One moment of hating a conqueror child destroys the virtues arising from giving and ethics accumulated for a 100 eons. Thus there can be no worse sin than impatience. So we’re presently studying the third chapter, the mind generation chapter. So, it is referred to as the ultimate mind generation because the chapter on the ultimate mind generation of tolerance.
This is because the direct realization of emptiness is being assisted with by the by the mind of tolerance or patience. Tolerance we mean an undistressed mind, a mind which does not become angry due to the harm caused by others to oneself, nor forbearance in the difficulties of Dharma, where one, though having difficulties in one’s practice, still remains in a joyful state, maintaining a happy mind in the face of adversity. So the opposite of tolerance is anger, and this is that one becomes distressed with respect to having been harmed by others. One is not able to bear difficulties. Becomes unhappy.
Tolerance is an extremely skillful state. It involves a great deal of positive potential, and it’s greatly beneficial. It’s a great blessing to be able to develop this mind, and it will bring about a great result. On the other hand, the opposite of tolerance is anger, and this would have the opposite effects whereby one would suffer in the present and gain only a suffering result in the future. So, previously, we talked about the faults of anger and now we’re going to talk about the benefits of tolerance.
So, are many levels of individuals who we can become angry at. For example, someone who is a great as a bodhisattva with having great qualities can become angry at bodhisattva having lesser qualities. Or someone can be a bodhisattva who has great qualities and becomes angry at someone who is a peer, with equal qualities. Someone can be a bodhisattva who has lesser qualities and become angry at a bodhisattva with greater qualities. Or one can be like us and be an ordinary person getting angry at a bodhisattva.
So even bodhisattvas have not abandoned anger, they at times become angry. So in terms of there are five paths in the great vehicle, and when one has reached the third path and has direct realization of emptiness, one becomes a superior bodhisattva, and these beings no longer generate anger. But those on the upper three paths have ceased all of these various types of faults. But those beneath that, the ordinary beings, they have not gained direct realization of emptiness and they have occasions for developing anger. So in this thirty third verse that we’re discussing, there are the five paths of the great vehicle, vehicle, and those on the upper three paths do not have occasion to develop anger, but those on the lower two paths have occasions where they do develop anger.
And what is being specifically spoken of here is when a person on the second path generates anger toward a bodhisattva on the path of accumulation. The consequences of that even a minute’s moment of a generation of anger is that all of the skillful actions that they have developed through their previous practices of giving and ethics are over a period of 100 or one hundred eons is destroyed. So, you know, even one eon is an extremely long time. What to say of 100 eons? And all of these skillful actions created out of giving and ethics created over 100 eons of time is destroyed in but a single moment of anger generated by bodhisattva.
So if we give an try to give an idea of what we mean by an eon. Within one eon there are 80 intermediate eons. If we were to say, how long is an intermediate eon? It’s an innumerable number of years. So to give you a rough idea what we mean by one intermediate eon, the length of time.
From the time of the creation of our present world system, at that time people lived an innumerable number of years, incalculable number of years. And as time proceeds, that life span has been decreasing. And it has been decreasing from thousands of years down to hundreds, down to fifty, and it will proceed down to generate until just ten years will be a ripe old age in the future. That span of time which is necessary for the degeneration of life span to go from incalculable down to ten years is one How is it that our the lifespan shortens over this period of time? So initially the initial inhabitants of our world system were very much involved with only creating skillful actions, They didn’t create unskillful ones.
And but over the span of time, their conduct began to degenerate and they became more and more involved in unskillful actions, negative ways of conduct, and their life span shortened. Presently if one is able to live to a hundred years and this is considered extremely long life. And this thought of what is a long life will decrease as time goes by. Will reach a time when fifty years will be a long life, and then twenty years, and then finally ten years will seem like a long life. So long life is a consequence of skillful actions and especially the skillful action of abandoned killing.
So as skillful actions begin to degenerate, lifespan begins to shorten. And there will things are going to degenerate in the future, that the negativities and the unskillful actions will become even greater than they are at present. Reach a time when there will be no Dharma, that there will be no Dharma to hear, will be no or spiritual teachers teaching the Dharma. There will only be negativity. So we’ve described roughly the length of one intermediate eon and it takes 80 of these intermediate eons to make one eon.
And we have said that if a bodhisattva in one instant of anger directed toward a lower bodhisattva destroys the skillful actions created over a 100 eons that’s created out of giving and ethics. So this is what Candrakīrti in his Entering into the Middle Way has stated. Here Candrakīrti states that in this one moment of anger one destroys the skillful actions created over a 100 eons. But Śāntideva goes on to state that by one moment of anger one destroys the skillful actions created over a thousand eons. That’s very surprising.
And the explanation of this difference is that this 100 eon figure was in terms of a bodhisattva becoming angry at a lower bodhisattva, but this thousand eon figure is an ordinary person becoming angry at a bodhisattva. It’s really rough. So the consequences of the anger are greatest in becoming angry at a bodhisattva because of the importance of the object. A bodhisattva is an extremely special type of person since they are dedicated to benefiting sentient beings, and so there is greatest consequence of getting angry at them. So, we don’t know who a bodhisattva is.
A bodhisattva, there’s no particular external sign which designates one as a bodhisattva. bodhisattva is an internal quality, so even amongst our friends we might have a bodhisattva. So not knowing who might be a bodhisattva, it’s important that we don’t become angry at anyone. Perhaps the greatest fault of anger in terms of its destruction of our skillful actions. Have gone through a great many difficulties in order to develop, to create the skillful actions that we have and through anger the lesser types of skillful actions will be completely destroyed.
The greater types of skillful actions they will degenerate, they will bear less result. And those types of skillful actions which would have ripened, say for example this year, the ripening effect will be put off for many, many years into the future. So this is really a terrible fault when you consider the fact that how little time we put into practice these skillful actions. If even that little bit of skillful action that we do create can be completely destroyed in just the briefest moments of time, then this is a terrible fault of anger. So anger has two folds.
On the one hand we destroy previously created skillful actions and on the other we create some of the greatest types of unskillful actions. So therefore it is said that because of the tremendous disadvantages of anger, it’s extremely beneficial to seek to cultivate tolerance. So that’s the first thought to consider with respect to anger, but we go on and begin to see what types of other faults accrue through anger. And in a situation where one was simply in a relaxed position, one was simply feeling relaxed and someone comes in and says a bad word, something nasty to you, and you become angry. Then all of a sudden your face becomes twisted and ugly.
It becomes red. You become red in the face. When somebody is angry, their face becomes so repulsive that others they don’t even like to look at them. They don’t want to be around such a type of person. It can be a rather frightening So this outward repulsive appearance is product of this distressed mind.
And having become angry, one loses one’s discriminated power. One is no longer able to discriminate well. One comes out with many types of harsh words, hurt for words. One will hit another person. One will even go so far as to kill another person motivated by anger.
So out of this distressed state of mind one loses one’s discriminative ability in determining what is a skillful action and what is an unskillful action as if one loses one’s power of wisdom. So there is this temporal disadvantage fault in this life itself that one even at the occasion of becoming angry one is distressed, one is unhappy and one creates a great deal of negative actions motivated by the anger. But even beyond that present occasion of the temporal disadvantages in the future out of the negativity created by that one will be reborn in bad migration and experience suffering for a great length of time. So previously and just now we’ve talked about the disadvantages of anger and now we’re going to talk about the benefits of its opposite that is tolerance. The verse that’s being explained.
Patience creates qualities opposite to those explained above. From patience comes beauty, dearness to the holy, skill and discriminating between the right and the wrong, birth afterwards as a human or a God, an extinguishment of non virtues. So we’ve talked at length about the various faults of anger and through the cultivation of tolerance then all of these, the cultivation of tolerance has as a result the cessation of all of these faults of anger that we’ve just discussed. But but not only do as a result of cultivating tolerance do we cease the above mentioned faults of anger, but additionally there are positive qualities that we develop. For example, through the cultivation of tolerance one will develop a beautiful body.
Just that people just by seeing their body think, Ah, what a wonderful body. And they develop a great liking for you. So the consequences of cultivating tolerance are the exact opposite of developing anger. Those who develop anger, as a consequence of developing anger, no one likes to look at that person. They have a repulsive appearance and they don’t like them.
On the other hand, through the cultivation of tolerance, the result of that is that one has a beautiful appearance. People enjoy looking at you, they like you and you have many friends. So, you know, we can even understand the results of tolerance according to this life, that people who are quite patient and tolerant usually have a very pleasant appearance about them and a good feeling about them and people enjoy being with them. But this result of tolerance extends also into the future where one will actually have a beautiful body. One will be in the future, one will be an excellent person of whatever type one will be.
So the reason it’s said one will be an excellent person whether one takes a rebirth as a male or female, one will have a natural inclination to to involve oneself in skillful actions and not to involve oneself in unskillful actions as to what is an excellent person. So one will be beautiful, an excellent person whether as a male or female, abandoning other types of unskillful actions, cultivating skillful actions. But additionally one will have the discrimination to be able to distinguish between right and wrong, what good and what is bad, what is beneficial and what is harmful, and one will be able to, through this discriminative ability, be able to cease harmful activities and begin to cultivate beneficial ones. One will be able to carry on the practice of engaging in skillful actions, abandon negative ones, one will have discriminative awareness and will be reborn as either a celestial being or a human being, and as an ultimate consequence one can achieve the happiness of liberation. So through the cultivation of tolerance, can cease all the faults of anger that we’ve mentioned and all of these we will accrue all the various benefits that we’ve roughly spoken about.
Reading the next verse: Ordinary beings and conquerors’ children, realizing the fault of anger and the advantages of patience and forsaking impatience, should quickly and always observe the patience praised by superior beings. So Candrakīrti is giving us some advice that we should reflect well upon benefits of tolerance and the disadvantages of anger and thereby come to practice the cessation of our anger.