Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a vivid comparison: practicing patience is harder than the ancient Indian austerity of burning one’s fingers — and, unlike that practice, it produces real realization. He then unpacks anger’s central deception: it presents itself as a guardian of happiness while destroying roots of virtue and generating negative karma. Moving to a section on training body, speech, and mind, he introduces thoughts as figures in water, earth, or stone — negative emotions should be as fleeting as water-drawings; Dharma aspirations as stable as stone. Speech divides into three types: honey (kind), flower (truthful), and filth (harmful) — abandon the last. The session closes on four patterns of rebirth and a blunt reminder that wishing for a good future life counts for nothing without actively creating its causes.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 LF 2004 09 14.mp3
UUID: 3980caa4-3319-4c1e-8911-23f783fa3566
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-09-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~3,765
We should try and strengthen our resolve, strengthen our mind by thinking that all sentient beings, without exception, are exactly the same as us, in that they want to be happy and they don’t want to experience suffering. Even though they try very hard to not create suffering, through not knowing the causes and the process of cause and result in their search for happiness, they actually create suffering. So, in order to stop this, in order for all sentient beings to become truly happy to be established in a state where they don’t experience suffering I’m going to listen to this teaching from Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend and through listening to it develop understanding be able to put it into practice and become a Buddha in order to bring this about. We should try and have a strong mind thinking this way. Last week we were dealing with the verse that talks about patience and said there is no austerity like patience, so do not give way to anger.
By overcoming anger, the Buddha acknowledged one attains the stage of a non returner. Now the commentary to this explains this if someone harms us if someone hurts us in some way for us to practice patience and to not get angry to not respond to that harm in any way at all and to actually practice equanimity despite the fact that someone’s harming us is the most difficult austerity that we can practice it is incredibly difficult to do this and so it’s said to be the greatest the most demanding thing that we can possibly do now there has to be a reason for doing this because it’s so hard we need to develop a reason or have a reason for doing this and there was a practice that used to be around in ancient India at the time when this Nāgārjuna was telling the king giving the king these instructions which was to burn your fingers off one by one, alright, as a way of getting rid of negative karma. It was like a Hindu practice of austerity to burn your fingers in order to purify yourself and he said, well, this is painful but practicing patience is more difficult because it involves a lot more restraint and the other thing is there’s a point to it because if you burn a finger off one by one you’re not actually going to get anywhere And by practicing patience, you will actually develop realizations.
So then Nāgārjuna goes on to instruct the king by saying, When you’re a king, when you’re a person with a lot of power and a lot of people respect you, then actually there’s a lot of times when you could get away with being angry. But if you want to practice patience, you have to divide yourself from anger, not give anger any opportunity to develop and completely abandon even belligerence in order to practice patience properly. If you’re able to do this, if you’re able to completely get rid of anger in this way, it’s said that the Buddha said that you would abandon the causes for being born in one of the desire realms. So you wouldn’t be caused by a karma and delusion to be reborn as most of the types of gods in the other five realms. Now, this is a desire realm because when I said I was thinking, maybe I should ask Geshe-la to explain that.
There’s three different realms in saṃsāra in the Buddhist presentation and they are the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm Now what this refers to is the desire realm you’re born into the desire realm through attachment and desire so this means most of the states of existence that you can be born into The two other realms that it talks about is the Form Realm and the Formless Realm. And these are actually both subsumed within the god states or what’s called the god realm. But there’s also desire realm gods now the difference between the form and the formless realm and the desire realm is that you’re reborn into the form and the formless realm through meditative concentration not through through a desire or attachment so in these states you find people who are absorbed in meditative concentration and they can do so for many years at that stage they don’t experience any manifest suffering Their existence is still suffering, but it’s because it’s not going to last, and they’ve only suppressed their negative emotions. But it’s a state that you can be born into through meditative concentration. So this is saying that you can get rid of being born through desire and attachment by practicing patience.
So in the sūtra, the Buddha actually said, if you’re able to abandon belligerence and anger, you will become a never a non returner. Now what this non returner means is someone who isn’t doesn’t have to be reborn through attachment and anger that is to be reborn into the desire realm. So the next verse then says, this person insulted me. This one struck me or overwhelmed me. This one stole my wealth.
Such resentment generates conflict. He or who abandons resentment sleeps easily. So it says there’s many reasons that we can get angry, and not only get angry, but, hold a grudge against people. So we can think, this person used bad words and described slandered me. Someone else hit me with a rope.
Someone else hit me with a chunk of wood. And someone else hit me hit me with their fists. There’s all sorts of things. It says there’s all sorts of things people can hit you with. And when this happens, we can get can get depressed or we can get very resentful about what has happened to us.
And this hurt and this wrongdoing, we can hold onto, we can nurture, and we end up with a confused mind through holding a grudge. And holding a grudge and projecting resentment means that we experience suffering. If we are able to get rid of our resentments, rid of our grudges, then we’re able to get rid of one form of our suffering and we experience happiness. One of the ways that we experience happiness is it says to sleep easier. If we have no resentments, have no grudges against people, it means we sleep easier.
So in this way, holding a grudge, being resentful to anyone is not appropriate or is not helpful. It doesn’t it doesn’t benefit us in any way. In the Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva said, he who is able to he the one who is able to destroy anger and belligerent is happy in this life and in future lives. And so what this means is if you are not angry and and belligerent in this lifetime, then you experience more happiness. And not only now, but it creates the causes for experiencing happiness in the future.
Patience is very important because we don’t recognize what anger actually is anger presents itself to us as being we get so we get angry because we want to be happy we don’t usually get angry because we want to be sad we get angry because we think something or someone is going to stop us experience happiness or take some kind of happiness away from us And that’s why we develop anger because we feel like someone’s harming us So anger presents itself to us as being something that can help us be happy as something that will ensure our happiness that we’re protecting our happiness But even though it presents itself this, this isn’t actually the effect that it has. But in actual fact, anger does nothing but create suffering, and it creates suffering in many different ways. For starters, if we take our anger out on someone obviously then that is going to create suffering for them but not only that but it creates suffering for ourselves in the short term as well even physically anger doesn’t have a good effect on us it also definitely doesn’t have a good effect on our minds our minds become very disturbed and uncomfortable if we are experiencing anger or we’re trying to hold on to anger and then as well as that we’re creating negative karma that we have to experience the results of in the future in terms of suffering.
So in terms of suffering for the person that we’re angry towards or person or thing we’re angry towards, in terms of suffering for the being who has developed that anger and has to experience negative effects of body and mind. And in terms of the suffering that will be experienced as the karmic results of anger, we really need to recognize anger for what it is, nothing but a cause for suffering and an enemy to our happiness. So we can can see how anger affects other people when they’re overcome by it we can see that they experience suffering and they don’t it’s not a happy state to be in and also if you watch animals it’s not as if they particularly put themselves into situations where they want to be angry they may react with anger but they don’t particularly seem to seek out situations where they experience anger so it’s not a pleasant state to exist in it’s not something that we necessarily want to experience. It’s not something that we want to search out, is anger. We may think that it’s helping us, but if we look at it, if we experience it and we look at it really, then we can see that, yeah, it really doesn’t help us.
Patience becomes a very important practice for everyone, it’s something that we need to try and focus on and to try and develop. And in order to do this we need to know the qualities of patience and then the negative aspects of anger. So we’ve already talked a bit about the qualities of patience how it can benefit your mind, your state of mind and your future experiences and so on but there’s also it’s necessary to think about the negative aspects of karma I mean of the negative aspects of anger so for example, we’ve already talked about how it disturbs the mind but it also destroys roots of virtue so the potential we have in our mind to experience happiness as a result of our positive karma we’ve performed in the past is eaten away at by anger. And it’s something we need to work out because if we don’t examine anger, we don’t try and keep reminding ourselves of what anger really is and what an effect it has on us in the short and long term, then it is a bit insidious because it represents itself or it presents itself as a friend to us.
Anger it kind of is what we rely on or what we turn to when we don’t get what we want. When we want something that is going to make us happy and so anger comes along and goes I can help you get that if you get aggressive or if you if you get angry you’re going to be able to get what you want. So if we don’t watch the way we think if we don’t examine anger if we don’t look at its effects really and keep going over them again and again and again, then we forget and we could keep thinking again that anger is really our friend. It’s here to help us when it’s not. Okay.
So the next thing that we need to look at is the section that’s called the the sixth section, which is training well in three doors. The three doors refer to the three doors of action, body, speech and mind. So the first one refers to mind and it says, understand thoughts as being like figures drawn in water, earth and stone. For an afflicted state of mind the first is best with an aspiration for the dharma the last is best so this means that when we’re dealing with afflicted minds it’s better to have thoughts that are like water and can change their shape very quickly and when we are dealing with the thoughts about the Dharma it’s best to have things that are set in stone and very stable. The second verse says the Jinnah or the Buddha declared a person’s speech as being of three types pleasing, truthful and improper like honey, a flower and filth.
The last should be abandoned and then the last one says persons of four types those who go from light and reach an end of light from darkness and reach an end of darkness from light to darkness and from darkness to light and then it says to be like the first So Okay, so there’s many things that we can think and in thinking many things we sometimes create virtuous actions and sometimes create negative actions And the force of our thoughts here is described as being of one of three types. Thoughts can be as transient and lacking in strength as drawing a picture in water and as a as a little bit less transient and a little bit stronger like pictures drawn in the sand or drawn in the earth. And then the third type of thoughts that we can have are those that are etched out of stone or carved out of rock which are very very stable. So in the same way as we can have these three types of pictures, it says that we can have these three different types of mind. Minds that are very changeable, minds that are a little bit steadier and minds that are very steady.
So from amongst these, we should try and make our negative emotions, destructive emotions to be more like the pictures drawn in water that is fleeting and eventually not to happen at all. So in the same way that pictures drawn in water aren’t very stable, aren’t very enduring. We should practice so that our negative thoughts aren’t very enduring aren’t very stable. Then the mind that wishes for Dharma on the other hand, we should try and make more stable. So the mind seeking to practice Dharma, we should try and make that as steady as a picture a sculpture carved in rock.
Basically what this verse is referring to is that we need to work very hard to abandon destructive negative emotions or thoughts and to encourage positive helpful thoughts and emotions So this is what we need to put effort into doing. This is what this verse is referring to So the second verse we are dealing with is a way to speak. Buddha said that the person’s speech is being of three types pleasing, truthful and improper and these are like honey, a flower and filth the last should be abandoned and so these are three types to extrapolate on them a little bit as it does in the commentary Geshe-la said that if from your heart you want to say something pleasantly to people then this speech is supposed to be like honey because honey is sweet and people generally enjoy the taste of honey then this is used as a metaphor because if people want to hear pleasant things it is helpful to them and you want to speak kindly to them then this is a kind of speech that you should engage in The second type of speech is said to be a truth that is a speech that is true It may not necessarily be like honey, but it is true.
And therefore, it’s described as a flower and pleasing to the people that it will eventually be pleasing to the people that hear it. The last type of speech that we should try and abandon is a negative speech. Speech that harms the people and comes from anger or some other negative emotion. So this type of speech is said to be like, well, filth includes everything from excrement to the slime in drains. So everything that’s included within those is said to be like this because it is pleasant to nobody and it harms beings.
So we should really try not to engage in this kind of speech. So two that are clean and helpful that are beneficial to beings we should try and engage in the type of speech that harms and is unpleasant, we should try try we should abandon. So the next verse says persons are of four types are those who go from light and reach an end of light from darkness to an end of darkness from light to darkness and from darkness to light be like the first of them so what this refers to is the process of going from one rebirth to another and those who go from light to light those that go from one rebirth as a god or human in a state in which they can practice Dharma to another rebirth as a god in a human in a state that they can practice Dharma if someone is to go from darkness to an end of darkness it means that they are stuck in the lower realms the first darkness is that they are born in a hell realm a spirit realm or an animal realm and then they don’t manage to create the causes to be reborn as a human or a god so they continue being reborn in the lower realms that is to go from darkness to darkness to go from light to darkness is to be born as a human or a deity and then a human or a god and then not take advantage of that experience and create the causes to be reborn in the lower realms in the next lifetime and to go from darkness to light is to go from a rebirth as in one of the lower realms and end up as a human or a god and it says to be like the first of them to be like someone who goes from one rebirth in the higher states to another rebirth in the higher states.
He’s saying to the king, you have this opportunity at the moment. You have every opportunity to practice Dharma and to experience happiness. So keep creating those situations, keep developing what causes to be reborn in a higher state where you can continue to practice Dharma and get to progress further and further and finally become a Buddha. So most people, if you gave them the option of being in a pleasant rebirth or being in a negative rebirth, would choose the previous one. It’s not like any of us really want to be reborn in a state where we are cloaked in ignorance or experiencing great suffering.
But it’s not as easy as just wanting something. If we could just want something, then we could we could all become Buddhas just by wanting it. You actually have to create the causes for it. You have to create the reasons for being reborn in a pleasant state. And so this means practicing ways of speech and the thoughts that Nāgārjuna has just explained to the king to make your thoughts positive, abandon negative thoughts and make your speech positive and abandon negative speech.
It also means practicing the ten virtuous actions and abandoning the ten non virtuous actions. And if we behave like this, then we do create the causes for being reborn in a positive state. But we actually have to work at it. We actually have to put in a lot of effort to bring it about. So it’s not just the case for the king that this applies to it.
It applies to us as well. None of us want to experience the suffering of the lower realms. We want to experience a positive rebirth. But it’s not enough just to sit there thinking, I want this to come about. We actually have to put in effort and abandon the causes for experiencing the lower rebirth.
We have to practice mainly the ten virtuous actions and then we can attain a positive rebirth. You sit there, even if you sat there every day saying I want a positive rebirth, I want a good rebirth next time and got very angry about this or spend all your time with a very negative mind and you weren’t practicing the ten virtuous actions at all. You spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to harm people and basically not acting positively. No matter how many times you think I want a positive rebirth, you’re not going to get a positive rebirth. If you behave negatively, the results of behaving negatively are negative rebirth, lower rebirth in these not so nice rounds.
So if we want to experience a positive end, we have to put in the work of creating positive causes. We can’t just sit there wishing it to happen. So this means that we need to be very careful with this life that we’ve obtained now because we’ve obtained a very, very good life. We have created many, many good causes in the past to be experiencing the situation that we are now. Not only do we have a pleasant rebirth, but we also have encountered the teachings of the Buddha.
We have instructions on how to create positive karma and how to abandon negative karma. We know what it is that we need to do in order to create a positive rebirth and we know what we have to abandon, we don’t end up in the lower realms. If given all of this, we were to not take advantage of this situation, if we were to be dismissive of it and not pay attention to what we were doing, then the likelihood of us ending up in this kind of situation again is very slim. And so there is this danger for us. We’re given this great potential because we are given the tools or we have created the conditions to experience the tools to create again a positive rebirth for ourselves to work towards Buddhahood.
But if we don’t take advantage of these and if we are dismissive of them, then it’s highly unlikely that we will create the causes for experiencing that again.