Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Anger presents itself as a friend — Geshe Pema Tsering builds to this striking claim in this 38-minute session, showing how anger disguises itself as a protector yet a single moment of it destroys an eon’s accumulated virtue and ultimately serves our enemies, not ourselves. The argument is the climax of a walk through ethics and patience, the second and third of the six perfections, where Geshe Pema first establishes that what practitioners currently do are facsimiles of the real perfections — the actual thing requires both bodhichitta and an understanding of emptiness. A Q&A then covers why calm abiding must precede genuine bodhichitta, the distinction between aspirational and engaged bodhichitta, and closes with a warm exchange about whether Buddhas might appear incognito to help chronically angry people.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 D BC 2004 06 29.mp3
UUID: f54808c4-9550-49ac-b842-06f2d75db008
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB How to Develop Bodhichitta (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.5 minutes
Words: ~3,274
To practice any of the other perfections either. The second type of ethics is a gathering of virtuous actions or gathering of virtuous Dharma, it says here. So this means that performing virtuous actions. Every time we perform a virtuous action, then that brings ethics along with it because we have this ethics of gathering virtuous dharma. It’s a type of ethics.
Positive action brings with it ethics type of dharma. So because of this type of ethics. So in in this way, we need to try and do as many positive things as we can in order to sustain our ethics as well. The third type, the ethic of working for the sake of sentient beings, is all the kind of things that we’ve been discussing earlier in previous weeks like compassion and love and kindness and the development of bodhicitta and the practice of the seven-point cause and effect instructions and exchanging self and others and all of these things. They come in within the ethic of working for the sake of sentient beings.
Don’t have the actual great compassion in our mind stream and the actual great loving kindness in our mind stream or bodhicitta, any of these things. We don’t have them, but we have things like them. We have thoughts of compassion. We have moments of developing the idea of bodhicitta or the idea of loving kindness and compassion. In order to develop the real thing, we actually need to develop calm abiding first, or this single pointed equipoise, a meditatively concentrated state, which we probably don’t have at the moment.
This means that we can’t develop the actual instance of great compassion or bodhicitta, or so forth. But we can work on the things that we have got. We can work on the things that are like that in our mind stream. And by doing this, then we’re practicing the ethic of ethic of working for the sake of sentient beings. So this means that the ethic of working for the sake of sentient beings is when we develop the ideas and we work on the idea of whatever it is that we’re doing, that there may be a cause for us to receive Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
We try and work towards being able to benefit other sentient beings or work in order to help them. So the core of this practice, the ethic of working for the sake of sentient beings, is actually bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. And we may not have that at the moment. If we don’t have have that, it’s a difficult idea to develop in a very kind of advanced state. So if we don’t have that at the moment, then we need to look at the things that we have in our mind stream that are similar to that.
The idea that we may have of helping others, developing compassion and love and kindness towards others, and we need to encourage that and to see how powerful those things are and to see what it is that we’re actually able to do in order to help others and to see what it is we can actually think about that is a mind or a way of thinking that’s focused on helping others. And if we look at that and we keep concentrating on that and developing that, then we’ll see that we actually do have quite a bit of potential or power in our mind in this direction. We do have thoughts like this. We do have the ability to develop these thoughts and to make these thoughts stronger and stronger. So that’s the third of the six perfections.
The perfection of sorry, second. I’m jumping ahead of myself. Second of the six perfections, the perfection of ethics. And so basically, to review that, we have these three different types of ethics. Ethic where we ethics where we restrain ourselves from performing negative actions, have the ethic of performing positive actions, the ethic of working for the sake of sentient beings.
So, again, the difference between ethics and the perfection of ethics is similar to what the difference between generosity and the perfection of generosity was in that. If we do something that is ethical, then that becomes ethics, but it doesn’t become the perfection of ethics or the practice of the perfection of ethics until it is mixed with both the mind of bodhicitta and then that some understanding of emptiness. So this means doing things with the motivation as an ordinary being, things with the motivation that this become a cause for us to achieve enlightenment, to lead all sentient beings out of suffering, and to concentrate on all aspects of that action being not inherently existent. Okay. So in actual fact, in order for something to become a perfection and the practice of perfection, then it needs to be combined with an understanding of emptiness and the mind of bodhicitta, which means that we can practice trying to develop these perfections, but we can’t actually practice the perfections until we become bodhisattvas.
What we do and what even arhats or beings who have developed great realizations on the paths, what they do and and what we do is what’s called that which accords with the six perfections. A facsimile of the six perfections. We can’t actually call it the practice of the perfections because we don’t have these understandings of emptiness and the mind of bodhicitta, the enlightened mind. We can’t call what we’re doing the practice of these perfections because we are trying to develop bodhicitta so we can engage in trying to develop these things. Then when we actually develop bodhicitta, then it becomes a perfection.
It changes from being a facsimile into being the real thing once we develop bodhicitta and the realization of emptiness. Oh, yeah. He went to jump in on me. Like, I haven’t finished.
Okay. So, when we talk about this word perfection, it’s actually a translation of a Tibetan word which comes from a Sanskrit word, which is paramita, and it’s similar to our word perimeter. It means, what you look at me there for? Is it really? Yes.
So it has this idea of the edge, the outer limit. And comes in Tibetanus has this idea of going to the other side. Now to go to the other side is to become a Buddha. It’s a metaphor for becoming a Buddha. So this idea of the Paramita and the perfection, which is a strange yeah, it works, is this idea of taking things to their limits.
So the actual perfection comes in achieving Buddhahood. And the actual practice of the perfections comes with bodhicitta and emptiness. And what we do is practice a facsimile of that. Okay. So the next one of these perfections is the practice of patience.
Now patience is described as not being disturbed by harm that is inflicted or mental anguish due to suffering. So if we are not disturbed by these things, if our mind isn’t churned up because of this, then we are able to practice patience. So it is, as Śāntideva said, There is no sin like hostility, and there is no austerity like patience. And so what this means is anger or aversion is more disruptive or destructive than any other negative emotion or experience that we can have. And there’s nothing as soothing or nothing as potent or nothing as that cuts through everything like patience.
And so the first of the different types of patience is the patience of remaining calm in the face of your attackers. And this what this means is that no matter what people do to you, if you don’t get nasty or this word that means like thorny, if you don’t get thorny back at them, if you don’t get snappy back at them, I guess, then you don’t have that reaction then you’re practicing patience. Whatever they do to you, whether they harm you physically or mentally or in terms of your reputation, if you don’t have a reaction, then that’s said to be the practice of patience remaining calm in the face of your attackers. In order for us to want to practice patience, we have to understand the drawbacks or the faults of anger. Because if we understand the faults of anger, then we’re going to want to practice patience because we’ll see the pointlessness of anger.
One of the ways for us to look at the pointlessness of anger or the drawbacks of of anger is that if we get angry at someone, then it actually destroys our stores of merits, it said, or our collections of positive actions that we’ve performed. And it is said that one instance of anger is said to harm or hurt or De degenerate is the word I’m looking for. it is said to degenerate or get rid of our stores of virtue for an eon. So one instance of anger can degenerate our stores of virtue for from an eon. Okay?
So this is one way of looking at it. It’s pointless because we by getting angry, then we are creating the causes for ourselves to experience suffering and destroying the positive work that we’ve done in order to experience happiness. And we don’t do anything to the person that we’re angry at. We can’t actually affect them in any real way. We can’t take away their causes for happiness, and we can’t give them causes for suffering.
We’re only harming ourselves. So in this way, we can see that anger really has no real point. Alright. So in this way, anger is really, really negative and really nasty and really destructive, And it doesn’t take much to get us angry. People do a little thing and then we we’re we’re all riled up.
Now the reason that we get so riled up so easily is because we’ve habituated ourselves to anger and to self grasping for all this time. And the way that anger presents itself to us is as our friend, as someone who can protect us. We think that if we’re angry then we can stop people from hurting us, can stop people from creating suffering for us. But in actual fact, anger is the thing that will create suffering for us more than anything else. It’s the thing that creates more harm and more destruction and more pain than anything else.
But that’s not the way it presents itself to us. It presents itself as a way to pay people back. Anger presents itself as a way for us to make ourselves happy and a powerful tool that we can use. It doesn’t show its true face. And because of this, because people don’t see the true nature of anger and the true negative aspects of anger, then they even tend to meditate on anger, to store up their anger, to think on things again and again and again.
And so in this way, meditating on anger, familiarizing themselves with anger so they can store up their anger and try and use it in order to get back at people in the future. So in this way, anger presents itself as our friend, but it isn’t actually our friend. It’s actually the friend of the people that are trying to harm us or the of the thing that’s trying to harm us. Because if people are trying to harm us or to do something to us, it’s because of their negative emotions and their clouded ways of thinking. So they want to harm us because of their clouded ways of thinking.
So if we get angry at them, then we’re actually doing the job for them, because they can’t actually ultimately harm us. They can’t actually create their conditions for us to experience suffering. Only we can do that. So by getting angry with them, we’re helping them. We’re not helping ourselves, but we’re helping the the the the destructive emotions in other people that wanna harm us.
So in this way So in this way, anger doesn’t help us. Helps our enemies. Anger helps the people that are trying to hurt us or their emotions within those people that are trying to hurt us. And so we shouldn’t think anger is my friend. We should think anger is the friend of the the the others.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. So we can stop there. Okay. Alright.
So please don’t get angry. So no one has questions? None. Except that was a surprise. Okay.
It actually does say in most graduated path texts that you need it to develop calm abiding or śamatha in order to develop bodhicitta because you need to have this mind stable enough to concentrate on these things in a single pointed way in order for you to develop a single pointed concentration bodhicitta and therefore to have the mind spontaneous in your continuum. The reason it usually explains calm abiding after that in texts, in a graduated path text, is because it’s referring to the way to use calm abiding in order to develop insight into emptiness. So it goes through them in the six perfections. The fifth perfection is the perfection of meditation, and it describes the development of calm abiding then. But it’s in relation to the development of the understanding of wisdom, which is the sixth of the perfections.
So it talks about developing mental equilibrium in order to an understanding of emptiness. But it does usually say you need calm abiding before you can develop. When it’s explained in the Lamrim, the set out of the Lamrim, is that you explain how to develop bodhicitta, and then you start going through the six perfections. Right? The last of the six perfections is the development of wisdom, the perfection of wisdom.
So when it talks about this, the reason that bodhicitta is explained first before the section on the perfection of meditation is that in order for something to become the perfection of something, it has to be practiced along with bodhicitta. So you develop bodhicitta and then you practice the six perfections in conjunction with bodhicitta. So there’s a section about developing the meditational stages of developing bodhicitta, and then there’s a section about the meditational stages of developing the six perfections. But you can’t have a perfection without Bodhachitta, so they have to stick Bodhachitta first. Okay.
So when it was So in the description Okay. So when it’s talking about the development of bodhicitta, it talks about the two things that you need in order to develop bodhicitta, that is the base which is a body and the base which is a mind. And the base which is a body is the human rebirth with the leisures and endowments, right? Now the base that is a mind is either the Okay. So and for the mental base, you need one of the eight preliminary aspects of the form realm, which is a mental concentration that is developed after calm abiding.
So that’s like a preliminary to the actual first concentration of the form realm. And then there’s another type of concentration you can also use which was one of the second level I think of the form That has a specific name. So based on these levels of meditative concentration, are actually more subtle than the development of calm abiding, then you can develop bodhicitta because you can concentrate on something significantly. And so they say that you need it, and then they actually go into the explanation. So they say you need these one of these two form form realm levels of meditation in order to develop bodhicitta.
And after that, they actually go into the description of the development of calm abiding because that actually fits more into the perfection of meditation. Yeah. I’m gonna ask you, sir. So once you develop the bodhicitta, you practice the six perfections, but you don’t actually achieve the six perfections until you become a Buddha, hence the perfection part. So there’s actually two types of bodhicitta.
Right? There’s a mind wishing to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, which is called aspirational bodhicitta. And then there’s what’s called engaged bodhicitta, which means actually doing something about it. And the thing that you do about it is that you practice the six perfections. And so the practice of the six perfections is the means by which you achieve that goal.
Yes? Yeah? I didn’t see him. I was I was I was leaving you to last. Oh, okay.
Version. Okay. Let me down. Sorry. Is that okay?
Is Okay. So if the if a Buddha ran into one of these people, then he it wouldn’t actually affect the Buddha in any way. They wouldn’t necessarily be thinking, oh, I’m afraid of that person because they’re angry or I’m upset because that person’s angry. They wouldn’t have that kind of reaction to them. And they may not even actually do anything because if by doing something, they may not help be able to help them.
Right? So the Buddha would because of their perception, they would know a Buddha would know why it was they were angry and if there was anything that they could do to help them to see problems with their actions, the results of their actions or how their anger is based on something that isn’t real. So if they could help them, they would do that. If they weren’t able to help them, they wouldn’t have to do anything in that instant. Buddhas are constantly trying to find or constantly know and working for others’ benefit.
They know how to work for others’ benefit, so they do something to benefit. But they may not necessarily be doing something at that very point when they’re very angry. Yeah. There was something else, but I can’t remember. But there’s something like that could happen to us as well.
Right? Because if they’re if they’re that angry and they’re engulfed in anger, then the Buddha may not be able to benefit them. And that’s a bit like us as well. We are so kind of engrossed in our negative ways of thinking and our confusion that Buddhas could appear in front of us, and we may not see them either. Yeah?
And we may not have the perception to see them either. But if the Buddhas can do something to help us, then they’ll show up. If we have the ability to be helped, if we have the perception to be helped, then they’ll show up. And so because so there’s some people that go and help people that are angry all the time. Right?
There’s, like so if there’s someone that’s really angry all the time, there may be someone who comes and helps that person. And we can’t say that that’s not a Buddha in disguise. In disguise. Like a Buddha that we can’t see as a Buddha. In disguise.
In disguise. Yeah. Not clearly for us a Buddha. We can’t they’re not going, hi. I’m a Buddha.
Yeah. Hi. He wants wants to know if you get angry when you get angry, if people come and help you. When you if if you get angry. Yeah.
He said, if Hiro gets angry, do people come and help him? He said they might be Buddhas. We don’t know. They might be Buddhas coming to help you. Thank you.
Yeah.