Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Deliberately stepping outside Buddhist framing, Geshe Pema Tsering offers this 65-minute talk as a plain human inquiry into what actually makes us happy. He opens by naming compassion — defined precisely as wanting others free from suffering — and loving kindness as the essential guides that give all other qualities their direction. He then traces the deep self-cherishing habit, showing through concrete examples — business dealings, the failure of the War on Terror, daily arguments at home — how focusing purely on ourselves produces the opposite of satisfaction. He introduces patience not as passive endurance but as a strength that dissolves conflict, illustrated by the “one hand can’t clap” image, then closes with contentment as the antidote to endless wanting. Requires no Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 PT 2005 07 30.mp3
UUID: cef55d1d-dc09-49a9-ad5a-80d25d1cdb35
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Public Talks (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-07-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 65.3 minutes
Words: ~7,107
Oh, Oh, Mhmm. Mhmm. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
First of all, Geshe said, what am I supposed to say? And then I said, it’s not that’s not my job. That’s yours. And then he said, oh, well, if it’s my job, then I’m going to try and talk about things that I think are good qualities without making it necessarily a Buddhist talk. So I wanna talk about things that are generally good qualities for all beings without thinking about it necessarily being tied to one religion.
So, he said that if we want to be good people, if we want to develop a good heart, then he thinks that there’s certain qualities that are really important for that development. Probably the most important one, he thinks, is compassion. Compassion is a he said, to be considered or in order to be a good person developing compassion, we can always consider it like a sacred task. And also, he said this idea gentleness or loving kindness, feeling well disposed towards others is a really good thing. And then also then, if we we want to develop a good heart, there’s two other things that are really important, and that is satisfaction, developing contentment with what we’ve got, and practicing patience.
Tony, were you supposed to say something in the beginning? Oh, okay. Alright. So the reason, first of all, if we look at compassion, why compassion is important is because without talking about Buddhism or talking about Dharma, even just in a general sense, we can recognize that we have a good opportunity as humans to do good things. We have ability to make decisions between doing something that’s going to help, that’s going to be constructive, and doing something that can harm people and be destructive.
We have the ability to decide which one of those we’re going to do. So having this ability as humans, we have this ability, and having this ability means that we can we can really get a lot from this lifetime. Mhmm. Mhmm. So the the these ideas, compassion, or these ways of thinking, to have compassion, to have loving feelings towards others, they are the basis for us to be able to behave well, for us to be able to make the most of the opportunity we have in this lifetime.
If we don’t have those, no matter what other qualities we have, we won’t be able to use those qualities positively. So we could go to university or we could go to schools and study a myriad of different subjects. We can become experts in any one of a multitude of different fields. We can become thoroughly well renowned for our activities in that field and respected for our understanding of it. But if we don’t have compassion and if we don’t have love, if we don’t have a sense of feeling kind towards other beings, then none of those qualities that we have will be put to their best use.
None of the qualities that we have, we will be able to make the most of, because the qualities won’t be guided by a sense of being of benefit to other beings, by a sense of helping others. So these these ideas of loving kindness and compassion in this way become very important. They become like a guiding focus or a guiding a guide for all of our qualities, all of our other qualities, all of our other activities. If we are guided in those other activities by loving kindness and compassion, then those other things that we do, the other qualities that we have are going to be beneficial, going to help others. Because in Tibetan Buddhism or in Tibetan culture, the ideas of loving kindness and compassion aren’t just vague ideas.
They’re very specific, a very specific mental state. So the idea of loving kindness is described as being the thought intention to make others happy, to do something that’s going to benefit others. And the idea of compassion is described as wanting them to be free from suffering. So they end up being the two sides of this similar way of thinking. On the one hand we want to alleviate other suffering.
On the other hand we want them to be happy. So by alleviating their suffering we make them happy. By making them happy we alleviate their suffering. So we know that we have these tendencies, we know that we have these states of mind, we experience these states of mind. And if we watch the way we think, we watch the way our mind is, then we’ll be able to recognize them.
So the thing then is to start focusing on what focusing on what the experience of not just ourselves, but other beings is. Because this idea of developing compassion and this idea of developing a sense of love for other beings is based on the idea that we can do something for them. That there’s an attitude that we can develop that will benefit others. So we need to try and find out what other beings want. When we talk about other beings, we’re not just talking about other human beings although we may have an easier time understanding their experiences, but all other animals and everything as well.
Even if we start examining the smallest of bugs, we’ll watch them try and do things to make themselves happy, to make themselves full and satiated, make themselves comfortable. If we watch them carefully, we’ll see that. And if we watch other beings, then we can start to see this as well. We can start to see that all beings, no matter what their misguided methods are, are trying to make themselves happy. And in that they’re trying to make themselves happy, they’re exactly the same as us.
Because if we try and understand our own minds or if we look to our own minds, then we’ll see that this is what motivates us most of the time as well. We want to be happy and we do many things in order to try and make ourselves happy. And so if we focus on this idea that just like us, all other beings want to be happy, it develops an empathy within us for the plight of other beings, for the situation that other beings find themselves in. Then we may come to this idea then, well, if those beings are exactly the same as me in this type of situation, they’re in this situation, then it’s really not okay for me to just think about my own happiness. Why is my own happiness more important than the happiness of so many other beings?
They all want to be happy as well. So maybe think, if we go through this process and we think on it this way, we may come to the conclusion that it’s a good idea to work for the benefit or to try and do things to help other beings as well as helping ourselves because they want to be happy just like us. Developing in this idea though, developing the idea or the way of thinking that leads us to focus on other beings happiness, other beings contentment, other beings, well-being, instead of focusing on our own is something that actually takes a bit of work. It’s not something that we necessarily do instinctively. It’s something that we need to develop.
Because in general, if we leave our minds do whatever they want, if we let our minds or our desires and attachments, if we follow them completely, we’re going to do things pretty constantly for our own end to our own ends for our own benefit and not take much notice of other beings. Now, in terms of the Buddhist tradition, they’d say that this is because we’ve developed a habit in many, many previous lifetimes. But if we’re not talking about Dharma today and if we just look at this lifetime instead, we can still see this habit. We can still see that one of the first things that we do when we’re born is to cry out for things for ourself. To say, I want food.
I want comfort. And even very little children will scream out for attention, for help, even the slightest discomfort they may experience. So even if we just focus on this lifetime, we can see a very distinct pattern where we are thinking about ourselves. And without training ourselves to think about others, it can be sometimes difficult for us to do that. We tend very strongly to focus on our own happiness, own comfort, and to not spend so much time focusing on others’ comfort and happiness.
Important to try and introduce children from a very early age to this idea of working for others, of trying to be of benefit to others, of trying to give back to others. Because if we don’t do that, then it’s their natural and our natural inclination to work for ourselves. And most of the education that we receive, of the information that we’re given actually enforces our ideas of working for ourselves. Most of the education or the information, the things that we’re exposed to, tell us how we can make ourselves happy, what we can do to improve our own life. Most of the studies that we do are focused on making our own lives better, making sure that we get more money, more things, more prestige, all of these material or profane goals.
So they encourage us to develop those things and no one’s telling us to focus on others as well. Not as many people are telling us to focus on others, to try and give back, to try and be of benefit to others. So it’s very important that not only that if we are influential with regards to young children and people growing up, that we try and impart the importance of this, but also that we remind ourselves of it. We keep reminding ourselves how important it is to try and benefit others, to try and work for others. Another reason that compassion and and loving kindness are so important is actually because all of the happiness that we experience comes from our development of compassion and loving kindness.
So this may not make sense to us if we don’t think about it clearly, because it may seem to us that the happiness we experience comes about when we put ourselves before others. But that’s because we’re thinking about it in a shallow way. We’re not thinking about it clearly or in a in a a more logical or I’ve forgotten the word. Anyway, in a better way. We aren’t thinking in a very, good way.
We’re thinking it in a in a, as an overview of, oh, okay. Do this. I make myself happy. But if we look at it in a more detailed way, that was the word I was after. If we look at it in a more detailed way, then we’ll come to see that by focusing on ourselves, by trying to make ourselves happy, that we are creating patterns of desire and attachment and habits that aren’t actually going to make us happy.
And that any of the experiences of happiness that we have come about because of our ability to develop compassion and loving kindness. If we think about it very superficially, it may look like we make ourselves happy. But if we look at it in more depth, others make us happy. We make ourselves happy by developing these ideas of loving kindness and compassion that lead us to focus on others. So if we have this idea where we’re focusing on others, we’re working for the benefit of others, we’re working to help others, to alleviate their suffering, then every time we’re able to do that, we make ourselves happy.
And we make ourselves happy by alleviating the suffering of others. While we’re doing that, the happiness that we experience through doing that is something that can sustain us. Where if we’re trying to make ourselves happy, then we’re in a constant battle because we can’t find satisfaction from just focusing on ourselves. Even if we see it in a very superficial way, we know, and we tell from our experiences that if someone’s a very selfless person, they’re trying to work for others, they do things to try and help them, this becomes known. People know, Oh, that person really tries to help others.
They try and work for others. So when something then happens to that person, all the people that they’ve helped, or most of the people they’ve helped will want to try and help them. So, in this way, by giving, they also receive. By giving, then we also get back. So, in this way then we can see that the happiness in terms of a pattern, the happiness that we can experience can come from others.
But even if we talk about things that we try and that we generally think that we’re doing for ourselves, I’m doing this to make myself happy, I’m doing this in order that I can get that. The things that we even the things that we think we’re getting to make ourselves in that way depend on others. Even the things that we generally think I did this, I did this for myself. I got that for myself, depend on others. All of the happiness that we experience even in just in one lifetime come about through others.
If it wasn’t for others and we had to depend on ourselves completely, we’d have difficulty in this day and age even having a meal. Our meals are prepared by others. Our meals in some form or another are put together by others. So this means that even the food that we eat comes from others. So we can see then that that that even the simplest things that we have come about because someone else took the time to make it to put it together.
And then we, even if we are purchasing it, are still reaping the benefits of their work. And if we had to do that by if we had to do that without any other being existing, that would be very difficult. It would be a very difficult thing to do. So, if we’re going to start developing this attitude, we’re trying to work to think of others, to look to benefit others because, that’s a more positive state of mind to have, a more helpful state of mind to have, then the more others that we can include within that word, the better. If we just have this idea of I’m going to help others being a few people I know, then that’s not a very strong motivation, very strong thought to have.
If we try and develop the idea I’m going to work to do what I can for all other beings, as many beings as there are, I’m going to work for their then that’s obviously going to be a much stronger motivation, a much stronger idea than if we’re just trying to help a few people. So, this is the way that developing this mind can help us. If we’re focused on all other beings, we get much more reward from being able to help them. And the more beings that we can focus focus on, the more others that we can focus on, the stronger that motivation is going to be. But it’s not easy for us even though we know that it can be very beneficial for us to think like this.
It’s not necessarily easy for us to start thinking like this. And the reason it’s not easy for us to start thinking like this or to develop a strength with this motivation, a strength with that that idea or or an intensity, sorry, to this idea. An intensity to this idea is because of what we were talking about before that is this self serving attitude that we have had with us intuitively since we were very young, since the time we were born. So we may not necessarily recognize that and it’s actually difficult or sometimes painful for us to admit that that is our motivation. That we are that we work for ourselves pretty constantly.
But if we start paying attention to the way we think and we don’t just ignore our motivation for things, then we can start seeing it. We didn’t just start off saying, I want my food when we were a child. We kept on and we always said, I want, I want a good education. I want that house. I want that car.
I want that husband. I want that wife. I want that partner. I want those materials. I want a better job.
I want more respect. And this is a is a pretty constant call in our mind. We have this we’re constantly working from this attitude of I want, I need, this is what I deserve. So the problem with this idea this idea that I’m doing things for me, I want this, I need this, I need that, I want that, is that that attitude, that way of thinking is actually the direct opposite, or the antithesis of the idea of working for others. As long as we’re thinking of ourself and how to make ourselves happy, we’re not thinking of how to make others happy.
We’re thinking about what’s best for us, not what’s best for others. And it may be more rewarding and more, uplifting to work for others, but we have a very strong habit of working for ourselves. And so because these two ideas, because this idea of, thinking of ourselves as being the best, cherishing ourselves beyond all others, and the idea of working for others, those two ideas are contradictory. In order to develop the idea of working for others, we have to get over or work to lessen the idea of ourselves being the most important thing. So what happens is because we don’t look at things clearly and because we don’t remind ourselves of how things are clearly, that we keep having this idea that this constant wanting, this constant working for our own happiness, constant trying to satiate ourselves with new things and new experiences or the things that we have.
We think that that’s going to make us happy, but we don’t take into account that all of the happiness we experience, if we look at it, actually comes from other people, other beings. The experiences that create happiness in us come about through others. So we’re under the delusion that by working to make ourselves happy, by getting everything we think we want, giving into the or following the I want, I need, I want, I need line of thought is actually going to make us happy when it doesn’t. And if it had made us happy, we would be happy. So the one part of this then is that we’re thinking, I made myself happy.
You may have a house. You may have a car. Geshe-la said, a lot of people in Australia seem to have houses and cars. You may have a house and you have a car and you have this idea. I did that.
I worked for that car. I got the money together to pay for that car and by making that car, I made myself happy. So it’s it’s my, doing that I have that car. It’s my doing that I have that house. I put in the effort, I made the money, I did the business in order to get that.
So, yeah, I made myself happy by getting those things. So we have this idea then I made myself happy because I bought my car and my house, and I did that myself. But if we look at it again, even if we’re starting with this idea of I worked hard for that car, so I worked hard to make myself happy. But who did we work with? How did we work to get the car?
And it wasn’t as if we, had a job that we did by ourselves which wasn’t interacting with anyone in any way. In order for us to have a job, we have to have someone give us a job, or we have to have someone give us business that we can do. We can’t just make a job appear that doesn’t have anything to do with anyone else. And if we have work, we have work because of other people. We have work because other people have bought things from us or employed us or pay given us a paycheck.
So the reason that we had the ability to work is because of other people. It’s the same with business. You don’t end up doing well in business if you don’t provide a service that people want. So if you are doing business then you get things from business by giving in business. You get things in business by creating a relationship with others.
If you have a good relationship with others then they’ll know that they can rely on you for their business and you can rely on them for their business and this is the way that you develop things. If you were trying to do business by yourself, you would not get very far. If there was no one to interact with, you wouldn’t get very far. So we may think I worked myself on my way up in this business. I did all this trade by myself.
It was just my hard work. And we have this idea that it’s about us. It’s because of us that we’re happy. But if we look at it in a more balanced way, then any business that we engage in has to be about a relationship, has to be about an interaction between others. It can’t be just a business that’s based on one per that’s solely based on one person.
So in that way then, this idea of giving and having that relationship with others is a very basic form of compassion or loving kindness or at least a good feeling towards others. Because if you don’t have a good feeling towards others, you’re not going to want to do any business with them. So on this really basic, that’s the most like one of the most basic levels of good feeling that we can have between with others. And it’s on the basis of that that idea of having someone give us a job, having someone give us a a trade in some way or another that we can can get even the really basic material things that we want. So we may think that I got those things because I was looking out for myself.
But we actually get those things because we’re having interactions with others. On the other hand, we may have this idea that by working for myself, I’m making myself happy, but every time that we do things that are just based on us, that are are only focused on ourselves, then that can only actually lead to some form of suffering. So if we look at wars, if we look at arguments in in our in our workplace or in business, if we look at partners fighting with each other and the harm that that can do to children, all of these things come from this idea of putting ourselves first. All of the fighting in the world comes from this idea of I’m more important than them. So this idea of ourselves being more important in this way leads to so much suffering.
So we can look at it in terms of this this idea and how it works in terms of in in of international politics as well or the connection or the the way that countries work with each other. If countries have the idea of working with an external person or an external sorry, an external other country and they work for each other’s benefit, then both countries improve. If countries have this idea of trying to destroy something that they see as other, then that acts as a drain on their resources and in fact, usually it doesn’t work. The more that you try and destroy something, the more that you kill, the more that you’re left with this idea of, hatred towards something. And so and, for example, if we take the, what, George Bush is doing at the moment.
So he’s he’s decided that in order to get rid of something that he sees as a threat to his country, that he is going to use all of these methods to to destroy what he perceives as the enemy. But the more that he destroys, the more the the antagonism seems to come up towards towards that activity. So the thing that he that he doesn’t seem to be understanding and that actually, I guess Geshe-la said that the Dalai Lama wrote him a letter trying to explain it. It was that it was that that you don’t get rid of hatred by hating. You get rid of hatred by dealing with hatred.
The more that you hate, the more that hatred grows. And the less that you hate, the less hatred grows. So by by sowing hate, you don’t you don’t dissolve hate. So if you try and do something to help beings instead of trying to harm them, then that’s obviously going to have much more beneficial for you than if you try and harm them. So, for example, the War on Terror has cost an awful lot.
If they were to take all that money and try and build infrastructure in poor countries where the people who were so angry with them came from, how much more of a positive result would have come from that? Geshe-la thinks it would have been all over by now? So, I guess, to say, don’t even have to think about it in terms of international politics. We can think about it in terms of something that we can actually do something about, like our relationships with our parents, our children, and our partners. If we have a we try and change our attitude about that and stop thinking about what’s best for us all the time and try and look at what could help other people, what we can do to try and make other people happier, then that can relieve so much of the tension that we have with other people.
So a lot of the time when we are arguing with someone it’s because we have a different view or because we have a different goal. If we can try and see that it’s not always our goals that are most important, that we can try and look to see how we can facilitate other people’s goals and other people’s views as well. Then this is a much more constructive way to deal with situations rather than forcing our views or considering our ideas goals to be much more important than others. So all of the good things that happen happen because we try and when we have this idea of working for the benefit of others. And all the bad things that happen come about when we have this idea of ourselves being the most important thing and forsaking everybody else and focusing on ourselves.
So if we start we may not naturally think like this, but if we start investigating, we start looking at our experiences and take becoming aware of the way that we think and how the way we think affects the way we act, then we’ll come to this this is quite easy to come to understand. So if we think about this and if we keep reflecting on our experiences and we keep reflecting on the the way that our mind works or the way that we think, then we may come to develop some understanding of that. And if we don’t reflect on it and we think it’s a lot easier to focus on what we want and not to help anyone else, that we can make ourselves happy and don’t worry about anyone else, then we are just gonna keep going on making ourselves miserable thinking that we’re making ourselves happy. So it’s up to us whether we wanna investigate and try and change the way we think or to keep going the way we are. Mhmm.
Mhmm. So the so the plan in terms of either way you can work to develop a good heart is to start focusing on developing the attitude to benefit others, to work for others, and to start looking at or trying to decrease the idea of selfishness or wanting to work for just our own ends. Mhmm. So one of the most important things that we need if we actually want to do this is patience or forbearance. If we don’t have patience, we’ve got no hope of doing that.
So so this word that Geshe-la is using, it kind of translates into English to cover all of the area of forbearance and patience. Alright? So we separate the those two theories out or those two ideas out into two words, but in Tibetan, it’s covered there’s one word, covers the whole thing. So I’ll just keep using the word patience and if it doesn’t quite make sense, you have to bear with me. So the the first thing then is that we know about patience already.
We know about having forbearance. We know about it because we do it almost every day. It’s just that the reason that we usually practice patience and the reason that we usually practice forbearance isn’t necessarily a positive one. How hard and how long and how much do we put up with in order to get a paycheck? How much effort do we put in in order to get our wages?
And that’s all for we’re all being very patient and bearing a lot in order to get that check. Alright? So we know about the state of mind that’s involved here. We know what it’s like to put in a lot of effort when we think a lot of and put up with a lot when we think what we’re getting is worth it. Right?
We know about that. We we already have a lot of experience of it. So if we can turn the attitude that we the patience that we display around and start developing that kind of patience when we were when we’re thinking about others, instead of just about what we’re going to get out of a situation. Then it becomes a very powerful tool because obviously, we’re going to encounter all sorts of situations if we’re trying to work for others. We’re going get yelled at.
We’re going to people even get beat up when they’re doing these kind of things. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the reason that we’re going to get beat up or the reason that that we’re getting yelled at isn’t because we’re working for others. The reason that we get these things are happening is because of other people self-cherishing or whatever the causes are. It’s not because we’re necessarily working for others. And that by working for others, we can create happiness, we can create a good state of mind.
So therefore, putting up with the hardships that we may encounter when we’re working for others is actually worth it. If we can convince ourselves or if we can come to understand that it’s worth putting up with things in order to work for others, then this is how we’ll come to practice patience, this is how we come to able to bear things. So most of the time, if we aren’t doing this, if we are if we are if we aren’t practicing patience, we can find find ourselves reacting to situations and and getting angry about all sorts of things. But if we do become if we do practice real patience Sorry. I just realized something that there’s a distinction between what we may have as an idea of patience and what Geshe-la is saying.
The reason that I double check with Geshe-la is because in English the word patience can have connotations of becoming a doormat and that doesn’t have the word in Tibetan doesn’t have those connotations like, I’m just going be patient. They can walk all over me. It’s not that the way they can walk all over me isn’t in Tibetan. It just means that you have the ability not to react in any way, including a negative I deserve to be beaten up kind of way to a situation. It means being able to recognize that suffering happens, happiness happens, and not getting too involved in either of those things.
Not getting too caught up in either of those things. Word that I’m translating is patience implies a strength that you will not react in a negative negative to others or negative to yourself way to a situation. So most of the fighting that we engage in means there’s two sides thinking that they deserve more or that they they deserve more than the other. That they’re better than the other. Someone if you’re having a fight with someone, there is implied that you, they’re not giving you something that you deserve or they you’re seeing them as worse than you when they’re trying to oppress you or whatever.
In order for there to be a fight, there has to be two sides. You can’t have I didn’t make this up. He actually said, you can’t have a hand clapping one hand can’t clap. In order for there to be the noise from a clap, there has to be two hands. So in order that for there to be an argument, in order for there to be a fight, you need two opposing, views.
You need two opposing attitudes. You need two opposing, ideas of what is right. If you only have one person saying, I’m right, and the other person going, whatever, there is no fight. And if if you have two people saying that they’re right and the other person’s wrong, you have a fight. In the same way as you if you have one hand clapping, it doesn’t make a sound.
I can’t believe you used that example. Alright. So the the the idea of patience then, the idea of forbearance is to be able to recognize that this person just wants to be happy. They’re trying to make themselves happy. They’re not necessarily going about it in the best possible way, but that is their motivation.
So by reacting thinking that it’s more important for you to be happy than that person so you’re going to do what it takes to make yourself happy even at their expense means that you end up with a fight. Alright? So if you’re able to if you’re able to practice, maybe if I said like strong patience is the best way to put it, very like patience coming from an understanding and then that dissolves any arguments. So the main thing that you we usually talk about is being the opposite of patience is anger, but we also need to practice patience when things get hard and we also need to practice patience when we feel ourselves overwhelmed by our desires or attachments or obsessions as well. Patience needs to in order to be effective, be a strong sense of coming from how things are going to be, because those actions aren’t beneficial and not engaging in anger or not coping with difficult things.
Mhmm. So for example, if you had two people two two different groups fighting over where a border went, and and the people on one side were saying, we have to have that part, that bit that you’re living in is our bit, and if you don’t get out of it, we’re gonna fight you. And the other people go, oh, well, you know, they really want that and, you know, if we if we can give to them, if we can help them in any way, they are the beings, then we’ll give it to them. There is no fight. If on the other hand they say, Well, this is our land, they start fighting with them, then there’s a fight.
So this is why this idea of there needs to be two hands in order to make a clap comes in. If the other people say, Here you go, then the anger disappears. There is no agitation if you don’t have two sides fighting with each other. Because anger is very, very negative, awful thing. So one of the reasons that anger is so nasty is because it doesn’t come up to us and say, you know, I’m a really nasty emotion.
It presents itself as being our friend. Anger presents itself as being something that can help us get what we want. Something that’s going to protect us. Something that’s going to help us out. It doesn’t it doesn’t show us what its real capacity is.
It tries to pretend to be our friend. So anger says that it’s like, yeah, if you engage with me, if you if I if you let me have have charge, then I can get rid of that person. I can I can I can scare them away? I can get let you get what you want. Right?
This is the way that anger works. But is anyone ever happy when they’re angry? Right? So it presents itself as this way of saying, if you let me take charge, then we can get what we want. But then when it does take charge, we find ourselves unhappy.
So it doesn’t actually tell us the truth. Anger doesn’t present itself as being something that’s going to make us unhappy. It presents itself as something that’s going to make us happy. But we may not understand what is being said in that case, but if we spend a bit of time watching the way we are when we’re angry and trying to let ourselves experience what it’s like to be angry situations as opposed to blocking it out, then we we may come to the understand this. Okay.
Alright. So this idea of patience is something that acts as or forbearance acts as an antidote to anger in most situation in in all situations. Sorry. If we find us being angry, then we can say, okay, what am I angry about? And start using patience to dissolve that anger.
So in this way, is really important in a number of different situations and acts as a way for us to experience our calmness and happiness within ourselves. Another thing that’s really important and that can lead us to developing a good mind is this idea of contentment, of being content with what we’ve got. If we’re not content with what we’ve got, we are we can never satisfy, through getting what we think we want. Alright? So if we think what I’ve got is okay, yeah, then we have contentment.
If we think what I’ve got is okay, but if I just get one more thing, we’re not gonna experience contentment. Because the more you get, the more you want. The more if we own the world, we’d be looking for another one. Alright? There there is no end to that experience of wanting and thinking that you have to possess something.
But if you can start to practice contentment with what you have, then you can become happier with less and not be chasing after what you don’t have. So the contentment acts as this way for us to find by practicing contentment, by thinking, you know, what I’ve got is okay. Then we enable ourselves to be happier. It also means that this is a bit why I was pulling the face at Geshe-la because there’s this word in Tibetan and I’m not sure it translates properly into English. But it means that we’re not like, I don’t know.
They have this word that means kind of like, we’re basically not an annoying prat. But it means in terms of being someone who’s saying, you know, I want this, I deserve this, is very proud and saying, you know, all this should belong to me and is really Oh, that’s There’s a man that used to park this is only I can think of describing it. There’s a man that used to park his car right in middle of the road, in this village I lived in in India so no one could get past. And everyone would look at him and go, Yeah? So it’s the same same word.
So so we’re not like that if we’re content. Yeah? We’re not like that if we’re content because we’re not trying to just think every we deserve everything and just because I’ve got a shiny car, I can park it wherever I want, you know? We’re very if we’re content with what we’ve got, we’re not pushing onto other people. And this makes us happier as well because other people will relate to us better.
So Geshe-la said that he’s trying really hard not to to teach Buddhism at the moment. He’s just trying to he’s just trying to say a few things from experience and hopefully, are things that you can know from your experience and use in everyday situations. Okay, so Geshe-la said that some of these qualities, if we think about compassion and love and patience and contentment that they are good qualities that anyone could seek to develop, that anyone through developing could become a better person from. And they don’t have to be specific to someone who always wants to be a Buddhist. He thinks anyone can use those ideas and work with them.
He said he thinks it’s easier if you start when you’re younger. Because he said, When you get to his age, it’s hard to change. And he says, for me, it’s hard to try and be a better person. Yeah. So we can start there and and we can start there then and if