Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A colonial analogy gives this 45-minute commentary its sharpest edge: Geshe Pema Tsering compares humanity’s unexamined submission to desire and anger with peoples under colonial rule who did not yet realize they had the power to be free — once that inherent slavery is recognized, it can be undone. The session works through the Second Noble Truth, tracing how self-grasping generates six root afflictions (desire, anger, pride, ignorance, wrong views, and afflicted doubt) and twenty secondary afflictive emotions. Geshe Pema then examines desire and anger in detail — desire illustrated through wanting a car, attachment to one’s body, and romantic relationships; anger shown to be more purely destructive because it seeks only to harm, never to gain. The commentary closes on the antidote: understanding selflessness dissolves the wrong views that drive all affliction.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 4NT 2003 08 18.mp3
UUID: aaa08ab2-3538-46ef-8103-947759880f37
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB The four noble truths (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-08-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,977
Okay so we’re going through the Four Noble Truths am I turned on? Okay, yes. I need Geshe-la’s voice for later to double check things. Now, we’re going through the Four Noble Truths and we talked about the first truth being the truth of suffering and we started talking about the second truth, which is the truth of the origin of suffering, which is how suffering comes about. Now, within this second truth, the truth of the origin of suffering, there’s a division of two.
The first of these is truth of that is usually described as the truth of karma, the truth of the origin of suffering of karma, that is, that karma is the thing that causes suffering. But, for karma to come about, we need this other aspect to the truth of the origin of suffering, which is afflictive emotions, negative thoughts, sometimes it’s called afflictions, the negative things that we need to get out of our mind stream. So, the main afflictive emotion that we have to deal with is this thing called self grasping or holding ourselves to be inherently existent, to be a truly established thing. Because we take ourselves to be a truly established being, a solid thing, then we think of some things that we desire and we have attachment to those things we have some things that we like and we develop attachment to those things and there’s some things that we don’t like which we develop an aversion to or we don’t like or get angry about so because of this first of we have a sense of self, very strong sense of self, and then from that we develop this attachment and aversion. The root cause of all these negative ways of thinking is grasping itself, not seeing selflessness, taking itself to be inherently existent.
Because of that, develop what’s called the six root afflictions and then from the six root afflictions or the six main negative emotions, then we have what’s called twenty secondary negative emotions. We have twenty secondary negative emotions that come about because of those six root or six main negative emotions. The six root afflictive emotions are: desire, anger, pride, ignorance, wrong or afflicted views, and wrong or afflicted doubts. Okay, so there is these other twenty secondary afflictions or I think there is a problem because there is a word in Tibetan that can either mean secondary or it can mean close and then the way Geshe-la is interpreting at the moment means close in the way that I was learnt to translate it and mean secondary but anyway, these twenty secondary afflictive emotions these things like belligerence, denial, miserliness and everything now we’ve got most of them in our mind streams at one time or another and from those twenty so first of all we have this this sense of grasping in a true identity to grasping a true sense of self now from that then we have these different things come up we have distraction we have belligerence these some of these twenty secondary afflictive emotions Then from those, they develop into one of these six main afflictive emotions like desire and anger and pride that are stronger than the secondary affliction.
Okay, so when we’re talking about the six root afflictions to start off with, the six main negative emotions that we have in our mind stream the first one that’s usually referred to is desire because it’s so easy for us to develop desire as talked about first. Now when it is dividing the different types of desire that exist, it’s usually said that desire exists according to which realm it’s in. In this case, it’s talking about what’s called the three realms: there’s the Desire Realm, the Form Realm, and the Formless Realm. The form and the formless realms are different states of mental concentration that aren’t peculiar to Buddhist but also like sadhus and things can develop so it’s a very intense type of meditative concentration now what desire is defined as being is after our mind becomes something becomes appealing to our mind we label that thing as being inherently appealing as opposed to seeing that it’s appealing because of causes and conditions. We take that thing to be inherently appealing and hence we superimpose something on it that isn’t actually there.
The mind that goes towards a superimposition that has opposed on something and this is an appealing superimposition, then that’s what we call desire. There’s many different types of desire that we can have within the human realm that we have all different types of desire or attachment, whichever word. We have attachment or desire to material things, we have attachment and desire to our friends, our partners, we have attachment and desire to our cars, to life, to all of these different things. And all of these different things, the different types of minds where we superimpose something on something that isn’t there and become attached to that because we think that it’s giving us happiness in some way, this is what definition of desire is. So, as we are beings who are in this desire realms, that is, we haven’t developed these states of meditational stabilization, which means that we can experience different types of minds, as beings within this desire realm, then we experience all three different types of desires.
The one that we mainly experience though is the desire for happiness or the desire for pleasantness. That’s the thing that we tend to experience most of the time. Usually the way that this desire for happiness or something manifests is we think that if we possess something that that will make us happy. Develop this idea about something and how that thing will make us happy and then we become like a slave to that desire or to that attachment. If we watch our mind stream then we’ll notice that that’s what happens.
Once we have the idea of wanting something or if we have something that that will make us happy then we lose our independence we don’t have the ability to think independently of that desire that attachment we find ourselves doing whatever it is that we can in order to get that thing without having the independence in order to to choose what what it is with it we do or don’t do. So for example, if people really really want a car, they’re really fixed on getting a car, think that they need a car. Have all these ideas about what a car will do for them and how happy they’ll be to have a car. Then they’ll do all sorts of things to get the car. They’ll work really hard all the time to get the money to get the car, and they’ll constantly be thinking about how good it will be when they get the car, and they’ll have to put themselves through things in order to get this car.
Because of their desire for that car, they don’t actually have enough, they don’t have any independence to change what they’re doing. So because if they change what they’re doing and that will go against getting the car, then that then they’ll think they won’t be happy. So they’re stuck on the idea of getting the car. So the thing that we are probably the most attached to and that we can have the most experience of and see the clearest in terms of our personal experience would be our body. We’re incredibly attached to our body.
So this means that if someone or something does something to us that hurts us even just a little bit, even if it’s just the slightest bit of pain that we experience, then we get really angry at that person. It’s like, Look, don’t hurt me, and we have this sense of animosity towards them, even by a little bit of pain. Likewise, if someone does something to us that makes us physically feel good, then we really like that person and in terms of attachment that’s usually the way that men and women or whoever ends up together there’s this feeling that okay that person made me feel so good that be to be apart from them for even for a day is gonna hurt me and so with that attachment becomes incredibly strong because there’s this sense of because we’re so attached to our bodies and we become attached to anyone who makes us feel any good. So Okay. So the way that our mind works is that we we we have this this wrong concept of things.
This wrong concept takes the form of being in a superimposition. So, if there’s something that we are attached to, then we put all these qualities, we superimpose all these qualities onto that thing by the force of our desire or our attachment that make that thing seem a lot better and as if it’s got a lot more qualities and a lot more positive aspects than it actually does. That superimposition is what we’re actually attached to, not any inherent quality in the thing itself. It’s the same with our partners or with anyone that we have a relationship with. We tend to put a lot of qualities on them and get attached to these qualities that they probably don’t have because in essence they are the same as any other person but because we see them in a different way because we put these superimpositions on them then we get this attachment to the idea of them so and that’s the way that this attachment kind of chains us or binds us is by we get stuck in our ideas of what things are.
Okay, so because then we have this idea of what it is. This person may have a few qualities but we blow them up. We have this exaggerated idea of the qualities that being or the car because any car would probably do what it is that we need a car to do but we have an idea about a specific car. So we have this exaggerated idea about the car or the person and because of that attachment to that exaggerated idea of something then we accumulate karma like in it constantly. Even if we if we thought about it for five minutes we’ve accumulated an enormous amount of karma with regards to the things that we desire for example if someone wants to take the thing that we want away from them then we get very angry at them if someone if someone wants to change something about the way the things are then we also can get very angry we can think of the so we have this idea of desire but then we also have the idea of anger when it’s taken away from us then there’s also the idea of jealousy that comes up there’s all these different things the mind that wants to hurt beings who are going to take that thing away from us all the different things all the different actions that we do because we’re driven by this desire because we don’t have independence from this desire so all these different things that the different minds all the different actions the different thoughts or the different actions that we have because of this desire all become the cause or the action that will result in being stuck in saṃsāra or being reborn in lower realms or for experiencing different kinds of suffering.
So, they’re the karma, I feel like, the different types of karma that will result in these different causes, these actions that we do being propelled by this negative emotion of desire attachment. So if we’re going to compare the faults and the qualities or the positive qualities of desire then we can say okay on the side of the positive qualities that desire has, okay desire can cause us or propel us to get a little bit of comfort for a very short amount a period of time in this life only, alright so if we have propelled along by our desires or attachments, then we can experience moments of happiness when we attain those desires or attain those things that we’re attached to in this life only. It’s very temporary and very fleeting. On the other hand, faults of desires is that it leads us to create all these amazingly very different negative states of mind and things that can cause us to experience suffering in the future. It can be a cause for us to be born as an animal and so forth it can be a cause for us to experience all different types of sufferings and on top of that to be stuck in saṃsāra so if we’re going to weigh up the faults and the positive qualities of desire then we can see that desire is actually something that needs to be abandoned.
Desire is something that we need to give up, not something that we need to keep holding on to. If we follow the logic and see the qualities and the good points, then this is the conclusion that we’ll come to. Okay. So the next one we have to deal with is anger. Now, anger is, if we think someone’s going to harm something that we are attached to, something ourselves or a friend or family or an acquaintance that we feel close to, then anger comes up almost immediately.
You have this strong feeling of aggression towards the thing or the being that was going to slightly harm or even greatly harm something that we feel attached to, whatever it is. Now there s different types of anger. So anger, like with the previous one, is anger of the desire realm or the desire experiences and the form and formless realms. Although in the formless realm, which is the state of meditative concentration, there there is no manifest anger. If people achieve that state of meditative concentration, is no manifest anger.
There is still anger that can arise once they’ve fallen out of that state. So all of these different experiences still have anger in them. So anger is this incredibly powerful thing, negative thing is an incredibly powerful thing. By the force of anger then we can seek to do all sorts of negative things to the being or the thing that is supposedly harming us or supposedly hurting us we also think that anger is our friend because we think that anger can help us to protect ourselves so but in fact anger doesn’t protect us it takes control of us so people from the force of anger and without any control we can do many different negative things to people they can even kill them or beat them or try and figure out ways to harm them through all through the force of anger. It’s usually developed around an object.
People will see an object and then think that object whether it’s a person or whether it’s a thing, it’s the thing that hurt me therefore I’m going to destroy that or I’m going to hurt that. People even develop anger towards themselves and that can cause them even to kill themselves because of self anger or hatred. There you can see it can be an incredibly powerful, incredibly negative thing. So anger is this really powerful thing. It causes people to kill their friends.
It causes people to kill people they care about. It even causes people to kill their teachers and so forth, people that they have respect and admiration for because if the anger is strong enough then it can cause them to do that and it can also cause us to do incredibly stupid and pointless things like Geshe-la is saying you know people beat up their stuff they throw their things around the room and destroy them what s the point of that? It’s really strange. Because they’re so caught up in anger, people destroy things that can t possibly harm them just because they are built up with the anger is so forceful within them. So so if you get really angry and you start breaking stuff, then when you come down, it’s like, no.
And you’re trying to put this stuff back together and you can’t, and it’s like, why did I do that? But it won’t go back to people do this. So if we actually think about it, then we can see the anger or hatred. They’re actually more destructive even than desire or attachment to things. Because when we desire or we’re attached to something then we want to get something and when we get that thing then we will have this moment of happiness but if we’re angry if we’re angry at something then we’re seeking to destroy something not to actually get something so destroying something can’t actually make us feel any better.
So the anger doesn’t even make us feel good for a moment. So you can see the anger is is is much more negative and much more powerful than desire well, not more powerful, but more than desire. So if we think about it, then we spend most of our time being a slave to either desire or attachment or anger, one of the two, because we have all these things that we’re working after all the time. We’re constantly trying to get certain things. We’re trying to get to ourselves certain experiences of happiness all the time.
And then when something stops us from working towards getting that happy result or getting something that’s going to make us happy, then we get really angry and we’re really frustrated about that situation and we develop hatred towards the thing that’s stopping us from getting what we want because that’s going to make us happy. So if we watch it, if we watch the way our minds work, then we’ll notice that we’re like a slave to these two different types of emotion. We spend all our time striving after things we desire and getting angry at things when they stop us from getting what we would what we desire. Okay. Right.
I think I’ve got this. So we’re these slaves to these these these different things of desire and anger. And the thing is we don’t understand properly that we are a slave to desire and anger until we’re we don’t understand the power that we actually have because we’re so influenced by desire and anger because we’ve been under the sway of these two things. It’s like this grasping at some things and pushing others away since beginningless time. We’ve been through many, many, many different rebirths, and we’ve always been under the sway of these two things.
We’re so used to it. We’re so this is the way that we’ve been that we don’t notice that we’re not aware of it. We just accept that situation and don’t try and get out of that situation and try and experience something else. It’s a similar thing to Okay. It’s the same it’s a similar thing to what happens when some countries gain dominance over other countries.
So if we’re talking when European people first came to Australia or when slaves were taken out of Africa and taken to America, up until a certain point, they didn’t realize that they had the power, that they were just as powerful or they were just they had just as many rights as the people that were oppressing them so because they didn’t realize this they didn’t do anything to change it they thought that well my father was like this and this is my parents were like this this is my situation I can’t do anything to change it Once they realized that that there wasn’t anything inherent in that situation, there wasn’t anything that made them inherently a slave, then they were able to get out of that situation. They were able to help to change the situation that they were in. They were able to realize that that wasn’t their true nature, that they weren’t inherently enslaved in these situations. So the same thing is when we realize it’s a similar situation for us when we realize that we’re not bound by our desires and our attachments, our desires and attachments and our anger and our aversion to things, then we will become free of suffering.
We’ll attain nirvana. We’ll attain nirvana because we will understand that it isn’t inherently thus So we have to try and realize, we have to work hard to realize and to try and establish in our mind that that that that these things of desire and attachment aren’t aren’t inherent inherently the way they are, that they can be changed, that we we are like a slave to them, but there is no inherent reason why we have to be a slave to those things, and we have to keep working at it to understand why it is that we are attached and angry at things, and hence, keep experiencing suffering. If we keep working at it, then we realize that from amongst these six main afflictive emotions or afflictive ways of thinking, there’s this one called afflictive views. We realize that or this is the cause for all the different types of afflicted emotions or negative emotions. Afflicted views consist of things like seeing me and mine as being inherently existent and holding extremes about existence and nihilism and things like that.
So by our views of things, we realize that the main one in those is grasping itself. And then we have to apply the antidote. First of all, rely on the antidote to desire and anger. And, eventually, we rely on the antidote to these wrong views. And the antidote to wrong views is seeing the selflessness of the person because if there’s selflessness of the person if we understand the selflessness of the person, the other afflicted emotions or negative emotions don’t arise.
Okay. So these these two things, desire and anger, have been so influential and have been so we’ve been under this sway for so long that it’s it takes a fair bit of work in order for us to reverse that. We really have to rely on the antidotes to reverse these two things otherwise, we’re not going to experience anything but suffering. There won’t be any end to the suffering that we’ve experienced, If we look at it, these two things or there is another root and other negative emotions have been the cause for us to experience the suffering that we’ve experienced in countless lifetimes. Unless we do something to negate or turn around or we find an antidote to these things, then we’re going to continue to suffer.
If we actually watch the way we think about it, then we usually think that attachment and anger are our friends. We have this subconscious thing that we re not aware of. I don’t know about using the word subconscious, but We have this in our head that desire and anger help us. Desire helps us to get what we want, and anger stops us from getting hurt. So we’re constantly thinking that these two things are our friends, that they’re helping us, they’re going to make us happy if we keep having desire and anger.
But if we look at it again, then we realize that desire and anger are actually doing nothing but creating more misery for us, and they have done nothing but misery for us up until now. So once we realize that, then we realize there are things that need to be abandoned, and they’re not actually helping us.