Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The claim that criticism is more like the Buddha’s blessings than praise gives this 63-minute session its sharpest edge. Geshe Pema Tsering works through the perfection of patience, and drawing on Āryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses he argues that anger should be directed at anger itself — never at the person — illustrated with a doctor’s needle: if harm always justified retaliation, we would attack our surgeons. He traces most anger to thwarted attachment, takes couples’ arguments as a case study, then turns to reputation: attacks on our good name are chances to sever samsaric chains. The session closes with a verse prayer for the strength to bear any harm without retaliation, followed by Q&A on self-grasping and on purification as the Buddhist path to self-forgiveness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 2005 04 17 MT.mp3
UUID: 56b2310e-78e7-4a29-88e2-cae3b8b82bf5
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Mind Training (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-04-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 62.7 minutes
Words: ~5,843
Yes. So please develop a good motivation for listening to the teachings. That is to say that in order to separate all sentient beings from suffering, we ourselves need to become a Buddha in order to show them how to become Buddhas. In order to become a Buddha, need to able to know the path so we can put the path into practice and then by putting it into practice we can attain the results of Buddhahood. If this is the motivation for listening to the teachings then the results will be enormously beneficial.
Today we are up to the session that is dealing with patience. From amongst the six perfections, the perfection of patience is obviously very important. So we should think that by listening to these teachings on patience, we’ll know how to develop patience. Okay, so the way to meditate on patience or to familiarize ourselves with patience One way to familiarize ourselves with patience is described by Āryadeva in his four hundred verses. Now in these four hundred verses, Āryadeva says that when anger arises then we need to apply an antidote.
But in applying antidotes, we shouldn’t be focusing on the person or the thing that made us angry because problem isn’t the person or thing that made us angry, it’s anger. So if we were to get angry at the thing that’s making us angry, that means that we are characterizing someone or something as being being a truly existent thing that is constantly a cause for anger. And we are characterizing ourselves as being anger as opposed to being who is angry. So if we think that thing has made me angry, I m angry, then we are seeing ourselves as being an emotion as opposed to a person. Alright?
So we are focusing on ourselves as being an afflicted, destructive emotion as opposed to a person who this has developed in. Now, if this was the case, there wouldn’t be any moment when we weren’t angry. And there wouldn’t be any moment when that thing that was making us angry wasn’t making us angry. But as that’s not the case, as this only happens sometime, we have to separate this out and say that made me angry. I feel like we think that hurt us in some way so we become angry as a response to that.
But if this was the case that this one solid thing always made us angry and we were angry and that was making us angry, That would mean that, for example, if we went to the hospital and the doctor was going to give us a needle and the needle was going to hurt, that we would have every reason to beat up the doctor to start a fight with the doctor because if, this if Okay. So if if this if the idea is that there is one instance where someone does something that makes us angry, someone hurts us that makes us angry and we have a justified response to be angry at that person, that means that every single time we were going to be hurt, we would be angry. We would have justification to be angry. So we look at these, not all the times when someone gives us something that we don’t like, like a needle or an operation, then do we have a reason to get angry? So if that is the exception, if we look at it from that point of view, then we really don’t have a reason to get angry at other people either because it’s not so much the harm that the problem, it’s our response to the harm that we need to deal with.
I’m sorry. I was struggling with this, but in Tibetan, you say that which is the cause of the anger is one word. And that that person being angry is another word, so it comes out a lot So what we’re trying to actually understand here is what the problem is and the problem is the anger. It is not whatever it is that is harming us, it is our response to it. If we isolate how we respond to some situations and not others, then we can we can get a closer look to or we can better understand what it is that is actually the problem.
So if we investigate further and we figure out that it’s not the person that is necessarily the problem but our response and then we would recognize that it’s not the action that’s the problem, it’s the reason that they are doing it. So the doctor was doing something to us to help us and the other people we perceive them as hurting us because they want to hurt us. So therefore, it’s not the action that’s the problem, it’s the reason that they were hurting us that would make us angry. Now the reason that someone would hurt us is an afflictive emotion, is a negative state of mind. So if someone is hurting us through a negative state of mind then it doesn’t make sense to say it’s that person that’s the problem because that person could be doing the same action with a positive motivation and we wouldn’t get angry at them.
You would have to say it’s the emotion that’s in their minds that’s the problem. And as that person as well isn’t pure negativity, they have different states of mind, then we have to see that it’s the emotion, it’s the negative emotion that if we want to get angry we should get angry at. So we should be getting angry at anger or anger at hatred. Angry at hatred as opposed to a person. So if we look at our experiences, then we can see how this works.
And Geshe-la said he seemed he’s noticed it particularly with couples. Alright? They seem to have fights a lot. But if you look at what they’re fighting about, there’s really no reason to fight. So basically what’s going on is either one person, take for example, a husband getting angry at a wife.
Now, The only reason a husband will get angry at a wife, no matter what they say, is because they re not getting something they want. They re not as comfortable or happy as they want to be. So by being attached to what they wanted or being attached to some pleasant experience, when something comes along to interrupt that, they get angry. If they look at it, it s not so much whatever their partner is doing that s the problem, it s that they are attached to being always happy or they are attached to having things their own way. And he said that if they turned around and looked at their wife, then they would see that no matter what they are doing, the problem isn’t the person, it’s that they too are attached to a certain thing and they as well want things a certain way and when they don’t get them the way they want them, then they will respond a negative emotion.
So what you have here is not a problem between a person and a person. It’s a problem between two sets of wanting things a different way and wanting things a certain way. Then when we don’t get what we want, then we respond with anger or frustration in both ways. If someone is angry at us, they are angry at us because we are interrupting what they want. And if we are angry at someone else, it’s because they have interrupted what we wanted.
They have managed to curtail what we wanted. This is basically what happens in our arguments. So if we look at it more closely and we examine what’s going on, it’s not the person that’s a problem, it’s either their negative emotions that’s causing them to be angry at us or our negative emotions that are causing us to angry at them. So if we’re looking at it in this way, then the problem isn’t the person or ourselves. The problem is their negative emotions.
The problem is anger. The problem is attachment. The reason that we would be arguing, the reason that we feel either angry towards someone else or they’re angry towards us is that afflicted state of mind, that confused state of mind that creates anger. So what we need to do is deal with the negative emotion or the confused, afflicted state of mind. We don’t do that by getting angry ourselves.
By getting angry ourselves, we’re just making more afflicted states of mind. We’re creating more problems. In order for us to deal with the problem, in order for us to resolve the situation or to get rid of the real problem, we need to get rid of afflictive emotions. We need to get rid of anger. We need to get rid of attachment and so on.
If this was not possible, then there would be no point talking about this. We’d have to find other ways of doing it. But getting rid of afflictive emotions is possible. We just need to work on them, to apply a lot of antidotes. It’s said that the strongest, most direct antidote to afflictive emotions is to look at their emptiness and to look at how they’re not inherently existent, to see that the person who’s doing it isn’t inherently existent.
The object that they’re angry at isn’t inherently existent. So if we take things apart in this way, there there is nothing to be angry at. So this is said to be the most direct antidote to to anger. Mhmm. And so, again, in the Jātaka tales, the Tales of the Previous Lives of the Buddha, there is a quote where the Buddha says, “Not knowing Dharma.”
So if someone gets angry, at that moment they don’t know Dharma. They don’t understand it at that moment. Not knowing this, then getting angry, says creates negativities that will need to be purified. It’s saying that if you understood the dharma properly, then you wouldn’t do that, knowing you were going to experience suffering or create something that you would then have to purify again. Not knowing this, not understanding the consequences of anger.
People don’t practice patience and think of what is actually going on and then they get angry. Without knowing their antidotes, without knowing how to practice patience, without knowing the faults of anger, it then becomes very strong in them. The other thing that they don’t do in becoming angry is think of others. If you’re angry, it’s a it’s it’s a response to something that you’re cherishing and not on how you can help other beings. So and and on even on top of that, on top of the fact that we could know how to practice patience, know the faults of anger, know why we shouldn’t get to know what the real problem is, the afflictive emotions of others and not them.
We should be thinking about these things and not be getting angry at the other person. And on top of that, haven’t remembered if we getting angry at someone, we haven’t remembered the kindness that they’ve showed us either in this lifetime or in other lifetimes. And even if it’s at that moment, being kind and giving us an opportunity to practice patience. It’s not often that teachers will give us an opportunity to practice patience. It’s usually our enemies.
It’s usually the people that are trying to hurt us that will give us an opportunity to practice patience. So in this way, these people that are trying to hurt us are peculiarly kind in that they are giving us the opportunity to practice patience and without practicing patience then we can’t develop ourselves as a person. We’re not thinking of their kindness. And there is another thing that may cause us to become angry. Not just someone trying to harm us personally and hurt something that we hold dear personally, but it could also be that we are getting angry because someone has harmed our reputation or the respect that we feel we deserve.
If we get angry because of this, this is obviously not going to help us much. And at the same time, if we feel like someone is harming our reputation or the respect that we think that we deserve, then that gives us an opportunity to work with abandoning attachment to those things. Because by being attached to reputation and by being attached to fame and by being attached to respect, we’re going to stay in saṃsāra. So if someone’s trampling our good name, then we can we can have the idea that by doing that, then they have, wiped off one more thing that I could be attached to and one more thing that could keep me in Samsāra. And that’s probably very difficult to think like that.
So if we watch the way that our mind works, then we will notice that we don’t behave like this. We don’t have this idea of someone attacking our reputation or saying bad things about us and thinking, oh great, now I have an opportunity to stop my attachment to the way I consider myself and get out of Samsāra, we’ll notice that that’s not usually the way that we respond to being criticized. Because of our to fame and respect and our aversion to being attacked or having our faults brought to the forefront and having a bad name, then if someone starts saying things about us, our response is to see them as an enemy. So if someone goes around saying nice things about us all the time, we like them and if they say bad things about us all the time, we don’t like them. That’s our pretty instinctive response to people speaking like this.
If we can actually learn to practice patience with people who are saying negative things about us, see that as an opportunity not only to practice patience and not get angry but to sever our attachment to those things, then we’re get further than if we are stuck in that worldly Dharma of liking to hear nice things about ourselves and not liking criticism. Okay. So that’s why it says in the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, if people are flattering me, if people are singing my praises, then, I’m likely to become attached to that. And if I’m attached to that, then this acts as a cause for me to be reborn in lower realms or to continue in saṃsāra. So I shouldn’t be too happy when people are praising me.
If on the other hand, I’m struggling for liberation, I’m working towards liberation, and then need if I’m struggling for a liberation, I need to cut the chains of attachment respect and fame. This means that the people who are going to help me the most are those that are going to attack me, those that are going to get angry at me because that gives me more opportunities to cut those chains than if someone, if everyone keeps praising me. So if I m being criticized, it s actually better for me than it is to be praised. Because if you re praised, you re more likely to become conceited and have, problems than if you are criticized and then you are more likely to develop humility. This is if you are practicing Dharma and then be able to stop being attached to fame and having aversion to criticism.
In this way, someone criticizing me is like the blessings of Buddha. It s developing ability in me to practice patience. It s developing my capacity to stop attachment to fame and respect. And in this way, criticisms are actually more like the blessings of the Buddha. So then it basically says, So if you’re going to be angry at me, bring it on.
It’s like, however much anger, however angry you can get at me, bring it on. One. Yeah. Yeah. I just didn’t know if you’re just walking past and getting Geshe-la dragged you in or not.
I was like, he doesn’t have to come. Sorry. No. That’s alright. That’s alright.
Oh, cool. Mhmm. Mhmm. So keeping this in mind then, we should see that we should try and remember that because of other beings that in past lives have been our mothers, we experience happiness. It s only through performing positive actions that we can experience positive results.
It s only through doing things for others and not being selfish that we can experience happiness. This means that any moment of happiness that we have comes about through other beings, through helping other beings through their kindness. Considering this then, even if other beings seek to harm us, this is also giving us opportunity to do something positive. This way, beings seeking to harm us, because they give us the opportunity to practice patience, are actually like great teachers to us. They’re teaching us how to be patient.
And by teaching us how to be patient, they’re showing us how to develop positive qualities. So even beings who we may perceive as trying to harm us are actually giving us an opportunity to develop a positive quality and even then there’s no reason to get angry at them. Being angry at them is going to have negative results and is going to cause us suffering, the mere act of being angry at ourselves. There’s no real point in getting angry. It doesn’t help anything.
If they are trying to harm us, if they are doing something to us, if we are able to practice patience, then that gives us an opportunity to purify a negative karma that we may have accumulated in the past. If we don’t get angry at that situation, we’re creating positive karma that we experience positive results of in the future. So in this way, even in the moments where we feel like we’re being harmed, there’s really no reason to get angry at other sentient beings. We look at in terms of karma, then any negative experience that we have, any suffering that we may experience, doesn’t actually come through other sentient beings. It comes through the fact that we’ve created negative karma in the past and we’re experiencing its results.
So other beings can’t actually create suffering for us. We can only create suffering for ourselves. By performing negative actions, we experience negative results. Other beings can’t perform negative actions for us. We can’t experience the results of other people’s negative actions, only our own.
In this way, if we want to experience happiness, we need to do something about it and if we don’t want experience suffering, we need to do we need to stop doing whatever it was that was causing us to suffer. Mhmm. So so any experience that we of happiness comes from other beings. It comes courtesy of other beings. In the past, if someone is hurting us then we’ve created causes to experience that by harming someone in the past.
In the past we have created causes for experiencing what we experience now and in the past we have to remember that all sentient beings have been very kind to us in many different ways. Based on their kindness and based on the suffering that they must be going through in order to seek to harm us, then we should try and develop compassion for them those moments instead of anger. And if we are able to develop compassion towards those that are harming us, then the people that are harming us are actually showing us even greater kindness because they are acting as a cause for us to develop compassion. By developing compassion, then we create more happiness for ourselves. This process can go on and if we think about this again and again and again, it means that every time that we may have seen someone else as harming us, we would develop a habit of perceiving them as being a cause for us to develop patience, cause for us to develop compassion and therefore a cause for us to experience happiness.
Then we won’t view anyone that’s harming us as an enemy or we won’t view anyone that’s talking about us as an enemy. We see them as a chance to practice Dharma, a chance to practice patience compassion. Okay. And then in the end, when we’ve learnt how to practice patience properly, when we’ve practiced the other perfections and become a Buddha and we’ve developed the ability to have great compassion and great love and kindness towards all beings and the strength to work for their liberation from suffering. Then, if we look back to what the cause for this will be, one of the causes will have to be the first time that someone harmed us and we were able to practice patience.
The first time that someone harmed us and we started the development of patience is the root cause for the perfection of patience which can only come about when we become a Buddha. Way, when we do become Buddhas, then we will have to remember the great opportunities that we had to practice patience from these beings and then we see that opportunity as being like a amrita or nectar that is the blessings of the Buddha that enabled us to to develop patience and proceed along the path. Okay. So, obviously, we don’t have this ability at the moment. So that’s why that this is a prayer.
It says that in the next paragraph that we’re asking for blessings or you ask for the ability to transform your mind or you’re focusing on developing the ability to transform your mind by making this prayer. The prayer is to the Guru and it says, verse one hundred and three, Should even the myriad beings of the three realms without exception become angry at us, humiliate, criticize, threaten or even kill us, we seek your blessings to complete the perfection of patience, not to be distraught but to work for their benefit in response to their harm. This idea of being able to bear or be patient with any negative things that can be thrown at us, any negative things that people can do to us or destructive things they can do to us is the practice of the perfection of patience. So not becoming angry in those situations is the practice of the perfection of patience. So the I guess I said that that’s the section on patience, but we should if he thinks that it that that our our experiences may go along with what it says here.
If we watch the way that our minds work, we get angry, we don’t practice patience because of other afflictive emotions in our mind or in the minds of others. So it’s never because of some really real situation or person. If someone is getting angry at us and we respond by anger, then the problem isn’t actually the person, it’s their anger. So if someone getting angry at us, if we’re going to really try and find out what the problem is, the problem is anger. So if we’re getting angry at someone for getting angry, that doesn’t really make sense.
We want to get angry at to get angry at anger is a a circular thing. And if we really want to be clever and get angry at anger, then we get rid of anger. Yeah? So if we really wanted to deal with the problem, then we would get rid of anger as opposed to making more anger. So if we watch what the way the things that really usually annoy us, if we watch the way that we usually respond impatiently to things, then we’ll notice that most of the time it’s because of our attachment to things.
Most of the time it’s because we don’t get our own way. Most of the time it’s because we don’t get what we want. What the problem there is from our point of view isn’t that we’re not getting our own way, it’s that we want our own way, that we want things to be the way in a certain way and we can’t be patient when they’re not in that way. So if we learn not to be so attached to things or attached to situations, then we’re not going to get angry when they don’t go that way. If we learn not to be so desirous of certain things, situations or things, then when we don’t get them, we won’t get angry.
So the way to deal with anger isn’t to get angry. The way to deal with anger is to rid of the reasons why you’re getting angry. And by getting rid of the reasons why we’re getting angry, then we’ll experience real happiness. So the reason that we get angry is because we don’t want our we don’t get our own way. We don’t get the things that we want.
We don’t get the things aren’t exactly the way we want. And if we get angry at people, we’re usually angry at those people because they are interfering with our wish to make things the way we want them to be, to have things that we want. And the reason they’re getting if these people are angry at us, then the reason they’re angry at us is because things aren’t going their way. Because they aren’t getting everything that they want. So this means that if we look at the source of anger, and most of the time the source of anger is attachment or desire.
Most of the time, the source of anger is people wanting to hold on to things in a certain way and for them either not to change or to come out the way that they want it. Fact that we get angry at people when we don’t get our own way and we don’t get things that we want, we don’t have our own happiness all the time, shows us that the things that we are holding onto as being true causes of happiness aren’t. Experience happiness all of the time, that we don’t experience contentment all of the time. It’s showing us that Samsāra’s happiness doesn’t work. It’s not permanent, it’s interrupted by all of these different experiences and it ends up causing suffering because we get attached to the happiness and it changes.
The thing that would actually give us happiness is if we were able to get rid of the root causes for these experiences of suffering. That is to rid ourselves of our ignorance and from all of the other afflictive emotions and attain nirvana. And if we had attained nirvana, then none of the other things that other people would do to us would make us unhappy. We’d be constantly happy without it relying on whether people are angry at us or not angry at us or whether we have what we want whether we have what we want and don’t have what we don’t want. Would mean that we were truly happy.
But not knowing that that would be the way to be really happy and not knowing that Samsāra doesn’t bring us happiness, we grasp onto things that are ultimately going to not make us happy, are going to make us miserable and we ignore situations that could act as an opportunity for us to develop true happiness. So we grasp onto praise and fame and we have people speaking pleasantly to us and we hold onto that with attachment. And when people criticize us, instead of using that as an opportunity to develop patience, to break through the chains of attachment to reputation and fame. In this way, we continue on in saṃsāra. If we could view the things that people, criticisms and the anger that people were directing towards us as a way to develop patience and to deal with negative emotions and get out of saṃsāra, then we would actually experience true happiness.
So the irony is the things that usually we find most pleasant are the things that chain us to saṃsāra and the negative situations, if we learn how to deal with them, could be our way out of saṃsāra. So you can stop me if you have questions. Uh-huh. She had a couple of questions. Oh, yeah.
To No one’s got any questions? It It’s not like it’s sometimes other people and sometimes us, it’s always us because it’s us going, I’m important, I’m holding on to I, the Ātman really strongly and thinking this is me, this is who I am and this is attacking me. That’s the problem. So, whether they are hurting us or whether whether there’s no one there, it’s always us. That’s the problem.
So the problem is that we have this idea of I, I and we grasp onto this idea of I and by focusing on the idea of I or me all the time, then everything we do becomes a way to make that I happy, to make that I okay, to make a me feel alright. And then by creating, by always protecting the I, by always holding onto this of eye, we perpetuate saṃsāra and we experience more and more and more suffering. So if someone harms that eye, we’re going to attack them. And if someone tries to help that eye, we hold them as friends. We consider them friends.
So it’s always that struggle based on the I that perpetuates themselves and creates suffering. It’s always holding on to self. Yeah, thinking of self first that is the problem. So in order for us to get out of saṃsāra, we have to recognize that this idea of there being a solidly existent self that needs to be protected against other beings or needs to experience happiness all the time at the expense of others and so on, we have to recognize that that doesn’t actually exist. It’s an idea that we’ve come up with by ourselves.
And if we able to reverse reverse our clinging to the Self and recognize the lack of a solidly existent, independently powerful Self that can fix things, then are able to work instead of perpetuate Samsāra as we do if we hold onto the Self really tightly, we are able to work towards achieving nirvana or Buddhahood. You can’t achieve nirvana or Buddhahood without understanding that this idea of the Self, that we have the idea of an inherently existent person that autonomously exists, without reversing that, we can’t attain nirvana. So without letting go of holding onto the self or creating problem of focusing on making yourself happy, we can’t actually attain happiness. Sorry. Is.
Geshe-la said he looked at you and he thought, this person looks like they’ve done some some reading. And so he just launched into Buddhist philosophy. Said he looks like he’s done some reading. And Geshe-la said, that’s probably a bit tricky. The Buddhist philosophy starts straight away and he goes, Yeah, but he looks like he’s done reading. Yeah.
Hang on. Okay. I because I think I got it in yeah. Anyway, Okay. So in Buddhism, you don’t talk so much about forgiving yourself as this practice purification of negative things that you’ve done in the past.
He would think that the way that you would forgive yourself would be to practice purification as opposed to just saying I’m sorry for what I’ve done. He said that in that way what you would do is if you ve done something negative in the past, it’s recognising that, taking responsibility for that and then thinking that was bad, I can see the consequences of that now, I’m not going to do it again. If you regret what you ve done, you you refrained from doing it in the future and then you try and say, Okay, purify the negative actions that I’ve done, I’m going to do something positive. You do that positive action with that motivation. And this acts as a way to purify the negative karma that you’ve accumulated in the past.
So let’s say, for example, if you killed a sheep I don’t know why this example is so far. If you killed a sheep and then you say, oh no, what have I done? I killed a sheep. That was really bad. I did it out of attachment to eating the meat or whatever it was I did.
And then you think, It was really bad. I can see that the consequences of killing are negative. I will refrain from doing that in the future. I will do something to try and help sheep. If you have the regret, then that stops you from doing it in the future.
So if you regret something that you’ve done in the past and then will be less likely to do it in the future if you keep that regret there. Then he said also that at the end of that process of you saying, Okay, I recognise I did something wrong, refrain from doing it in the future, I’ll do something to positively make up for the negative things that I’ve done. And then the last thing is this idea of asking for help in order to bring that about. Buddhists do prayers to the Three Jewels of Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, or any other thing that you have belief So this process of developing strong regret, making a vow a promise to refrain from doing it in the future, then putting something as a remedy, doing an action as a remedy to that and then praying that you’ll have the strength and the courage to see that through is something that is said to purify even the most negative of sins or the strongest of negative actions. S a story about that at the time of the Buddha, there was a man who was a prince and he wanted to become the king and so he killed his parents in order to become the king.
This is a very serious negative action to kill people who’ve looked after you and brought you into the world and so on. After he’d killed them, he met the Buddha and became a disciple of the Buddha and he was overwhelmed with enormous regret for what he’d done. The Buddha gave him purification practices. And the strength of his regret for the negative actions he’d done enabled him to practice and meditate so strongly that he was able to become an Arhat, which is someone who’s completely gotten rid of, who’s attained nirvana in that lifetime. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s okay?