Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The bulk of this 45-minute commentary is a careful, definition-by-definition tour of the twenty secondary afflictions — mental states that branch from the six root afflictions covered in the previous session. Geshe Pema Tsering distinguishes easily confused pairs such as resentment versus spite, dissimulation versus deceit, and shamelessness versus non-embarrassment, giving plain examples for each. He then shows how all twenty-six afflictions drive karma-accumulation and samsaric rebirth, and traces them all back to one root: ignorance, or grasping at inherent existence. The session closes by introducing the third noble truth — drawing a key distinction between temporarily suppressing afflictions through meditative concentration and completely obliterating them along with their seeds, which constitutes actual liberation. Best followed by students already working through the series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 4NT 2003 09 01.mp3
UUID: 8a5a02ce-adec-4623-9017-5cb1bbae3d7b
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB The four noble truths (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-09-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~3,579
The truth of suffering. We started on the second noble truth, which is the truth of the origin of suffering and has two aspects to it: the origin of suffering, which is karma, and the truth of the origin of suffering, which is afflictive emotions or afflictions. Amongst these afflictions, we had talked about what’s called the six root afflictions: desire, anger, pride, ignorance, etcetera. And we are now up to what’s called the twenty secondary afflictions or afflictive types of emotion. So there’s always there’s twenty what’s called twenty secondary afflictions or twenty afflictive emotions that arise from the six root afflictions that we talked about last time, which is desire, anger, pride, ignorance, afflicted views, and afflicted doubt.
Now briefly, the twenty secondary afflictions are, belligerence or angry mind, resentment or holding a grudge, denial, spite, jealousy, miserliness, deceit or pretence, dissimulation, haughtiness, harmfulness, shamelessness, non embarrassment, lethargy, excitement, faithlessness, laziness, non conscientiousness or carelessness, it’s also called, forgetfulness, non introspection, and distraction. So the first one, what’s usually translated as belligerence, is in fact the mind that is the the way of thinking that’s associated with anger, but isn’t actually anger manifest. It’s what happens before we get angry. It’s the it’s the the type of mind, the agitated mind that we have before anger comes about. When we’re just on the brink of getting angry, we have this agitated mind that’s called belligerence.
So the next one, resentment or holding a grudge. Now what this refers to is the minding or holding on to looking after resentment that we may have towards someone else by thinking they harmed me at some stage in the past, and I’m not going to forget about that. I’m going to watch out for this or or protect this this resentment that I have towards them for that action and at some stage in the future, I’m going to seek revenge on them. I’m going to get them back for what they did to me. So it’s holding on to that that that feeling of hurt that someone else has hurt us, holding on to that and seeking a way to revenge that hurt.
The next one, denial or concealment, is knowing that we’ve done something wrong, but seeking to hide that fact from others, finding different ways to conceal our wrongdoing from other people in order not to have to face the repercussions of that. So finding different ways, even though we may regret something, we don’t want to say it. We don’t want to explain what we’ve done, so we try and find different ways of concealing it. So the next one, spite. Spite is actual mind that seeks to harm others.
It’s a it’s a mind that or the type of mind when we say mind in Buddhist philosophy, it means a a way of thinking or some type of consciousness. So it’s a consciousness that’s seeking to harm others. So that that is the mind of of spite. It’s the actual intention to harm. The next one is jealousy.
Now jealousy is defined as the thought or the idea that we’re not happy about what somebody else has. I don’t know. Jealousy is technically correct, but something similar. So it’s this mind that’s like, sees somebody else having something positive or having something really good and then thinking, I’m not really happy about them having that. So the next one is is miserliness.
Now what miserliness is is the idea of holding on very tightly to the things that we have. It’s the opposite of generosity. So whether that’s with regards to our things, with regards to our food, with regards to our clothes, it’s this mind that wants to to protect and to hold on to anything that we possess instead of having the mind to instead of having the idea of giving it away. Okay. So the next two I was trying to get which way around they were.
The next two is deceit and pretense and dissimulation. Now, first one, deceit and pretense is the mind or the behavior, the idea of not taking responsibility for our negative actions and blaming someone else for it. So it’s this idea of blame. It’s like, I didn’t do what they did. It wasn’t me.
It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. But it’s not just not it’s not just doing it intentionally. It has the idea of doing it subconsciously as well. So not taking responsibility for ourselves.
The other one is dissimilation sorry. That was dissimulation. The next one is deceit or pretense, which is this idea of pretending that someone no. I knew I was gonna get them all. You.
Okay. That’s why I was getting confused because right now. So the first one we’ll start again. The first one was dissimulation. Now dissimulation is this idea of saying, it wasn’t me.
I didn’t do it. It was them. Yeah? So putting the blame onto somebody else. The next one, deceit or pretense is very similar to the previous one of denial or concealment.
So it’s this idea of pretending that we haven’t done something. But whereas the denial and concealment have this idea of lying to tell someone or having the idea of tricking someone into trying showing them that we haven’t tricking them into thinking we haven’t done something we have, then this idea of deceit is more like hiding the things that we’ve done wrong. So in one way, tricking them into thinking something, and the other, we’re hiding what we’ve done. But they’re very similar. And so the next one, haughtiness, which is a type of pride.
So it’s this idea that it’s a pride that’s thinking that we’re pretty good. It’s the idea of thinking, yeah. Yeah. I’m I I have all these qualities. I can do everything.
So it’s that particular type of pride. So the next one, harmfulness, is is the the idea of trying to figure out ways to harm others. Okay. Maybe it’s not. Okay.
So harmfulness usually come this mind that seeks to harm others usually comes along with anger. So it’s like an accompaniment to anger anger, and it’s this mind that not only thinks, not am I only am I angry at that person, but I’m going to find a way to hurt them. So that accompaniment to anger is called harmfulness. Okay. So the the next two is what’s called shamelessness and non embarrassment.
Now shamelessness is not do not being ashamed of our negative behavior cause we don’t think, okay, someone else is gonna think that that was wrong. So it’s reliance on other people. And the next one, non embarrassment, is not being ourselves not having any remorse or regret or any way of stopping ourselves from doing negative things from our from our side. So one relies on being on what other people think, and the other relies on what we think, like not having any conscience. So the next two is lethargy and excitement.
Lethargy is the is a foggy feeling of not wanting to do things and feeling worn out. I guess you’ll say just like me today. And so and then the so it’s this idea of of of fogginess and tiredness and exhaustion or whatever. And the other the flip side of that is is something called excitement. It’s being agitated and unable to kinda keep still.
So those two those two things are were the flip side of each other, and they’re number thirteen, fourteen within the secondary afflictions, lethargy and excitement. So the next one is faithlessness. Now what faithlessness means is not being happy with or not being not liking, should we say, not liking or not being happy with the the three the idea of the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, not not liking the idea of of karma, not liking the idea of past and future lives, not liking the idea that we have to that we can achieve enlightenment. It’s faith having faith in things is feeling some kind of has some kind of the words literally lacking, but that doesn’t really make sense. So feeling some kind of empathy for or feeling some kind of happy feeling towards these things.
So if that’s lacking, then we have this the fifteenth secondary affliction, faithlessness. Okay. So there’s three different types of the next one, which is laziness or being so interested in things that aren’t going to help us much that we don’t do the things that we actually should be doing, which is different types of laziness. There’s three different types. The first one is is putting something off because we don’t actually have to do it today.
So that so that first kind of procrastination, the laziness. The second type of laziness is this idea, well, like, I’m not gonna achieve enlightenment anyway, so why bother? It’s a lot of hard work. I’ll just forget it. So it’s the laziness of not believing that you can actually achieve something and hence not starting it.
And the third type of laziness is being so into doing things that aren’t helpful that you don’t really think about doing something that is helpful. So being so distracted or engrossed in negative negative ways of thinking and negative negative behavior that there’s no time to actually think about doing something that may be a positive behavior. So these three different types of laziness. And the next one, non-conscientiousness or carelessness is just just hanging out and doing nothing and not really thinking about what you’re doing, not not studying because that may help you not trying to do any meditation, just doing nothing and not really thinking about what you’re doing very much. The next one is forgetfulness.
Now this means that as soon as we learn something, then we forget it. As soon as we try and remember something, it doesn’t work, and we forget it, like, five five, ten minutes later down the track. So we can’t retain any of the things that we are supposed to try and incorporate. Hence, we can’t incorporate them as forgetfulness. So the next one is non introspection.
Now what non what interest what introspection means is watching what we’re thinking as much as possible. So it’s being aware of this the way that our mind works, being aware of of what it is that we spend most of our time thinking about and being aware of the patterns in our mind now if we’re not aware of the patterns in our mind we’re not aware about what we think then we can think all sorts of things and Every time that we think all sorts of things, then we’re creating negative karma. If we don’t pay any attention to that, then there’s no way that we can stop that process. There’s no way that we can tame our minds. There’s no way that we can achieve peace if we don’t practice introspection.
Hence, non introspection is considered an afflictive emotion or a negative emotion. So the last one, distraction. Now what distraction is about is that the fact that our mind can very, very easily drift off into things that are not necessarily helpful for us and but not necessarily helpful for us, but we kind of enjoy. So we we we drift off into enjoying negative things without even realizing that we’re doing it, and we keep getting caught up in things that are negative. So this mind that keeps constantly being distracted by negative things that can lead to a negative outcome is called distraction.
So that’s the twenty secondary afflictions. So if we add those twenty secondary afflictions to the six root afflictions that we’re going through, then we can see what makes up most of our thoughts. If we add all those up together, then we’ve got, you know, the a list of most of the things we think about. If we watch our mind, then we’ll see not only is does is this are do these not only do these make up the main body of our thoughts, but also that, there’s very little else that happens in our minds that aren’t included within these. There’s very little else that goes on in our minds that doesn’t fall into one of these categories.
And that we have a habit towards these things, so actually doing something that isn’t thinking something that isn’t one of these twenty six negative emotions is very difficult for us. We have to put in a lot of work to do it. So because we have these twenty six different types of thoughts going through our head all the time, and these negative emotions, then because of those negative emotions, we do things. Because we do things based on those negative emotions, then we create negative karma. So in dependence on these different types of ways of thinking, we then start doing things.
By doing things, we accumulate positive and negative karma. Now based on this accumulation of positive and negative karma, because these afflictive emotions are the root of that karma, then that karma’s result or that that action’s result will be an experience a samsaric experience will be that we continue to cycle in saṃsāra, that we are reborn in one of the six different realms, that we continue to experience birth and death and the different types of suffering. So this doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that all of these all of these negative or afflicted emotions will lead us to be reborn in negative realms because it depends on our motivation. If we have a positive motivation, then any karma that we accumulate will be will be the cause for us to experience happiness. Now this happiness can be is manifest in the in what’s called the higher realms of of the the Buddhist cosmology.
Now, anytime we do something with a negative emotion, then that acts as a cause for us to be born in the with sorry, with a negative motivation, then that that acts for us as a cause for us to be born in in the lower realms and experience the different types of suffering there. Okay. So I I was thinking that sounds really strange. I know I’m getting something wrong. So you can’t create a positive result by from any of these twenty six negative emotions.
What you can create a positive result by is the opposite of these. So if you do something for example, we had faithlessness as a negative emotion. If you have faith, then that acts as a cause to experience happiness. Faith is a positive action, which as a result is happiness. And likewise, if you have anger, if you have anger, then that acts as a cause for us to experience negativity or suffering in the future.
So the absence of anger or patience, likewise, will act as a cause for us to experience happiness or positive results in the future. So the twenty six afflictive emotions act as a cause for us to experience suffering in saṃsāra. And the opposite of the twenty six afflictive emotions, hence, faith or or patience, etcetera. They act as a cause for us to experience happiness in saṃsāra or a positive samsaric result. Right.
Okay. All of these twenty six different types of negative ways of thinking, all of the afflictive emotions that we can have actually all have the same root. Now the root of all of these negative emotions, negative ways of thinking is grasping to grasping at true existence or grasping itself. If we’re able to get rid of this, which is also is wrong wrong views, it’s ignorance. For us, we’re to get rid of ignorance, then we get rid of all of these.
We get rid of all of the causes for for suffering. So all of these depend all of these negative emotions come from this ignorance, this grasping at inherent existence, grasping grasping inherent existence of things. Now all of the true happiness so this ignorance is the cause for saṃsāra. It’s the cause for experiencing suffering and being reborn saṃsāra in different realms, etcetera, and all the and all the sufferings of those realms. Now the cause for experiencing the cessation of saṃsāra, the cause for experiencing true happiness, the cause for experiencing nirvana, the the understandings that that arhats, which are all foe destroyers, people have completely got rid of their, afflictive emotions have.
What they are is dependent on those coming about, sorry, is dependent on the absence of this ignorance. So it’s dependent on understanding the lack of, inherent existence of things, depending, on developing that understanding. So if you have that understanding, that means that you experience this non samsaric or non contaminated positive outcome. And if you don’t have that, then all of the other things they all of the other experiences come about because they’re all dependent on this ignorance. So the the non ignorance or the wisdom leads to leads to positive completely positive experiences, and all the negative experience the negative experiences come from ignorance.
Right? So the other thing is, though, that understanding that understanding that’s the opposite of ignorance, the wisdom understands the true nature of reality can only come about based on positive actions. So it has to come about from the accumulation of merit, which is accumulated through the opposite of these twenty six afflictive emotions. So, hence, what we have to understand is all of the phenomena, all phenomena, whether it’s phenomena that are caught up in saṃsāra or it’s phenomena that are the result of wisdom and, hence, are phenomena that are in the nature or phenomena that are happiness, all of these come from the basis of karma, come from the basis of action. So what this is is pointing out is that from the Buddhist philosophical point perspective, then all experiences, all phenomena, everything that we can conceive comes about based on karma, about based on cause and effect.
So whether if it’s a positive act outcome, then that came about because of a positive cause, and if it’s a negative outcome, then that came about because of a negative cause. All phenomena, whether they are saṃsāra phenomena or or whether they’re nirvana phenomena attached to nirvana, all come about because of karma. And the thing that is collecting the agent or the actor that is collecting this karma is us. So that means that any time we experience happiness, it’s because of positive karma we’ve accumulated.
And any time we experience suffering, it’s our fault because we’ve accumulated the negative karma that has led us to experience that suffering. So we have to understand that all of our experiences, whether positive or negative, come about because of the karma that we’ve accumulated in the past. So what this means as well is that if we completely get rid of all of these negative emotions, if we completely obliterate them and they never come back, then that means that we have completely gotten rid of all of the causes for experiencing suffering. We’ve gotten rid of anything that may result in us experiencing any of the three different types of suffering. And this this complete obliteration of the negative emotions is what’s called nirvana or what’s called liberation.
There’s two different types of this liberation. There’s what’s called moksha or or the liberation of the the individual, and then there’s what’s called the great, great liberation or enlightenment. These come about when we’ve completely gotten rid of all of these negative emotions, hence, don’t experience any suffering. This obliteration of all negativities, of all negative emotions, is the third noble truth, the the truth of the cessation of suffering, and that is within the fourth. We’re up to the third one now.
And what this is is the extinction of all of these negative emotions, and hence, all the all the suffering that comes about because of those negative emotions. So once we’ve gotten rid of all of these negative emotions and they they’ve completely gone and they’re not gonna come back, then that’s the actual truth of the cessation of suffering, which is the third of the noble truth. But usually when we talk about the third noble truth, the truth of the cessation of suffering, there’s two different types of cessation of suffering that I’ve talked about. One is the labeled or the so called nominal cessation of suffering or the so called truth of cessation. The other one is the actual or the ultimate cessation suffering.
Now the first one refers to those beings who have controlled their mind enough that these afflictive emotions don’t arise. They’re in such control of their mind that they have complete concentration and none of these afflictive emotions, are allowed to arise in their mind stream. So we’re talking about people, who, yes, through whatever means, have developed these different levels of meditative concentration. To have the actual truth of cessation, to have developed the actual obliteration of suffering completely, we need to, though, have not only controlled these emotions so that they don’t come about, we need to have completely gotten rid of them, gotten rid of the emotions, gotten rid rid of the seeds that can cause these emotions.