Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 85-minute talk, Khensur Rinpoche opens with a pointed distinction: the happiness of eating when hungry or warming up when cold immediately begins to deteriorate, making it fundamentally unsatisfactory — whereas the love he teaches aims at an unchanging happiness rooted in the realization of emptiness. He then unpacks four graduated levels of love, from simple longing through wishing, exceptional resolve, and requesting, each stage more forceful than the last. Tolerance is treated as love’s necessary companion: tolerance refrains from returning harm; love goes further and actively seeks to benefit. Rinpoche describes anger’s damage concretely — fitful sleep, physical illness, food that loses its taste — then offers two practical antidotes for working against it. A short Q&A addresses whether tolerance permits assertive speech and how many lives the full training takes.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 1991 03 03 PT Tolerance and Love.mp3
UUID: 03dd5873-c022-458c-b2a1-f4d28cef494f
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1991-03-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 85.3 minutes
Words: ~4,387
Cultivating the motivation of the awakening heart, the mind of enlightenment. We begin by cultivating the attitudes of love and compassion, which is that the wish to bring others happiness and the wish to eliminate others suffering. Out of this attitude develops the longing to free others from their suffering, to bring them to complete happiness. In order to actually achieve that end, we must individually train our minds. That is to say, we must remove all our various faults and bring to consummation all our excellent qualities.
And so for the next three minutes, seek to cultivate the altruistic attitude of wishing to benefit others through listening to this present teaching. I recite a few prayers in Tibetan. If you’d like to recite along with us, you’re quite welcome. The first is on page number one and the verse number three. We recite it three times.
And verse number two. Then the last verse is on page four, verse number five. So today we’re going to talk about the paths of love and tolerance as a means to achieve liberation. So the qualities of love and caring, or love and compassion, extremely beneficial. They’re extremely precious and are great blessings.
So, what do we mean by love? It has three levels of forcefulness. It is upon observing sentient beings, people who are bereft of happiness and the causes of happiness, first developing a thought, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they had happiness and the causes of happiness? But going beyond that thinking, Maybe they have happiness and the causes of happiness. And then even more forcefully, I will bring them happiness and the causes of happiness.
But, you know, in talking in this way, we might question and some kind of doubt might arise in our mind thinking, well really there’s no sense of being that doesn’t at least have the causes of happiness. They might not be happy just now, but at least they have the cause. Everybody has the causes of happiness. How about in the instances where, for example, someone’s hungry, so they eat and they fill their stomach and they’re happy. Or they’re thirsty and they drink some water and their thirst is slackened and they’re happy.
Or they’re cold, so they put on some clothes. It makes them happy. Isn’t that happiness? So, I mean, even animals, what to say of humans, they experience this happiness. We might question, well, you know, there’s nobody who really doesn’t have that kind of happiness.
Such types of happiness that we’ve just mentioned, we refer to those as the happinesses of cyclic existence and they’re not satisfactory in that they’re not stable. They have the quality of changeability. They’re evanescent. Transitory. They’re deteriorating from moment to moment.
They cannot remain long. So if we exemplify this changeability of the quality of our happiness, if we were in the cold and we go out in the sun and it’s very pleasant for a moment, but eventually it becomes hot. That feeling of pleasure deteriorates into an uncomfortable feeling of hotness. Then the sun becomes very piercing. And so, type of happiness that we were experiencing when we alleviated our suffering of cold is dissatisfactory in that it’s changeable.
It deteriorates. It can’t remain. The types of happiness we’ve discussed up to now simply have a dissatisfactory quality as to their very nature. And what kind of happiness do we really want? The happiness that we really want is an extremely stable type of happiness, a happiness which is unchanging, such that however much we make use of it, however much we take recourse to this happiness, we still experience happiness.
It’s an ever stable remaining unchanging type of happiness. So many, many sentient beings have this type of unstable happiness and the causes of such types of happiness. So the type of love that we’re speaking of here is directing itself toward this type of happiness, wishing that others have a stable, unchanging type of happiness. A type of happiness that isn’t transitory and the causes for such a type of happiness and that they have the methods to achieve this type of happiness. Specifically, the type of love that we’re wishing for others is that they have an unchanging happiness.
That this unchanging happiness arises out of the abandonment of the afflictive emotion. It is a type of happiness which is completely bereft of all suffering, having abandoned the causes of suffering and wishing them this ever unchanging happiness. And what are the causes of such a state of happiness, an unchanging type of happiness? This is the realization of emptiness and selflessness. It is by means of this that we can achieve such a state.
And there are many, many, many beings who do not have the realization of selflessness and emptiness. So, the love we wish for others is that they have a type of unchanging happiness, that they no longer are troubled by their suffering. And developing this kind hearted attitude which wishes others to have this ever unchanging happiness and the causes of this ever unchanging happiness and the cause being the realization of emptiness and selflessness. And so, we think to ourselves, wouldn’t it be wonderful if they had the causes and the happiness of this unchanging quality wishing that they had the realizations of emptiness and selflessness. And this is the immeasurable love, one of the four immeasurable.
So, in this development of immeasurable love, there are four qualities. We begin with the level of immeasurable longing, the love, and then immeasurable wishing love, then the love of immeasurable love of exceptional resolve, and finally the immeasurable love of requesting. What we mean by longing love is, making use of analogy, would be the type of thinking, Oh, wish I had that. That would be wonderful to have some very nice, precious article that we really value. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that article?
And this quality of thinking, that would be great to have that longing for it. So, if we return that analogy to the actual context, it’s the kind hearted attitude which thinks, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if sentient beings had happiness in the causes of happiness? And there’s a sense of longing for them to have this, thinking how wonderful it would be if in fact they had it. So, if the quality of this appreciative this appreciative quality of thinking how wonderful it would be is increased. And just as in the case where we appreciate some article, think how valuable it is, with I wish I had that.
Likewise, even within, we carry that wishing quality of our mind. Let us say, we actually make prayers. I wish sentient beings had happiness and the causes of happiness. So, this represents an increase of forcefulness of the mind. Initially, in longing love, we simply are appreciative of how wonderful it would be if sentient beings had happiness and the causes of happiness.
But we increase the quality, the forcefulness of this mind into thinking, may they have happiness and the causes of happiness. We actually make prayers to this end, may they have. This is wishing love. So, we increase the forcefulness of mind in addition, additively, to where we develop what is called the love of exceptional resolve. The forcefulness of the mind is increased into thinking that I myself will bring these sentient beings happiness and the causes of happiness.
That when we see a sentient being who doesn’t have happiness, who’s suffering, that we voluntarily and courageously resolve within our mind to take the responsibility to bring this sentient being happiness and the causes of happiness. And this is termed the love of exceptional resolve. This altruistic intention is extremely powerful, extremely forceful mind. And then we even go further than this, this taking of responsibility which is the quality of exceptional resolve, of love. But we increase the forcefulness of our mind and we commit ourselves.
We not only have committed ourselves to helping others, but we ask to be empowered to actually be able to bring this about. I myself, you know, commit myself to take responsibility to help others. Please, whatever objects that we hold as viable, whatever objects we hold as holy, our spiritual teachers, we make requests of them. Please empower me. Know, grant me your blessings and the ability to actually bring this about, in fact.
And this is the quality of the love of requesting. Just to cultivate these attitudes for five minutes, we create an unimaginable quality of positive potential, personal power, the forcefulness of a skillful action is tremendously powerful. And through the skillfulness of this action of having cultivated this quality of love for five minutes, that we will experience in the future tremendous happiness as a result. Though we cultivate such attitudes of mind and though we ourselves create a great deal of positive potential, we haven’t actually increased our ability to bring this about, in fact. In explaining this, we can take the example of a Buddha that previously in India at the place of Bodh Gaya, the Buddha sat and he determined that to achieve Buddhahood and this was done out of the forcibleness of his love.
He made this commitment to achieve enlightenment. And having entered into this determination, he was beset by many obstacles which were personified in the form of many types of enemies and demons and whatnot. They wanted to they attacked the Buddha and they threw various types of weapons, spears, knives, clubs at him in order to obstruct his attainment of what he had committed himself to. But all of these weapons that they threw at the Buddha, upon nearing the Buddha, they were transformed into flowers. And why were these various weapons transformed in nature into flowers until there was a mass of flowers surrounding him?
It was due to the force of his meditative stabilization on love. It was by the power of his love that weapons were transformed into flowers. And he continued in his meditative equipoise and achieved Buddhahood. So, this is to exemplify the great power and the potency of love, the quality of altruism in seeking to benefit others, that if we cultivate this wish to benefit others, it can only serve to benefit ourselves bestowing great power and blessing. Love is the antidote to hatred and anger.
You know, we’re continually becoming angry. We’re always experiencing anger again and again. And it is love which has the power to eliminate the anger from our minds, to cause it to cease. It is the main method to bring to an end the hatred within our own minds. Why is that?
Because the quality of love is the wishing to bring others happiness, you know, may others be happy, may they have the causes of happiness. And it is an altruistic attitude, an attitude of seeking to benefit others. On the other hand, anger is just the opposite. It is an attitude of wishing to harm others. So, these two negate one another.
That is to say, they are incompatible, anger and love. Then the quality of mind of tolerance has a close relationship with love. So, love and tolerance work together in the sense that love is a beneficial intention wishing to bring others happiness, an altruistic attitude. And tolerance is the refraining from returning harm which is brought to ourselves from others. So, however much harm is brought to ourselves, we don’t return harm for that harm.
This is tolerance. But additionally, having that as a basis, we go on not only to not harm them, but by the power of our love, we go on to benefit them, to seek to bring them happiness. It is by the power of tolerance and love that we can live in harmony together, that the husband and wife can find peace together, that they can befriend one another, that friends can get along with one another, that there’s harmony between parents and children and the harmony within the home. There’s a great deal of benefit to be derived out of the development of the qualities of love and compassion. Husband and wife can live in harmony, friends can live together in harmony, parents and child.
But this all come about through the benefits of these attitudes, the harmony that exists around us and in such a situation we can live happily. The goodness that we experience in the course of our life very much arises out of the degree of love and compassion and tolerance that we ourselves have. The harmony that we experience, being able to get along with others, between the various people that we have relationships with, be it husbands, spouses, friends, parents, and child. That warmth that we feel from others, the caring that we receive, the goodness of life, is all very much dependent upon the degree of love and compassion and tolerance that we each as individuals have. On the other hand, if we lack these qualities of love and compassion, then we don’t have a beneficial intention seeking to bring others happiness.
On the contrary, that we will be overcome again and again by our own anger, seeking to harm others. And others will return that harm for the harm that we give them. And in such a situation that we simply cannot live with others in peace, because wherever we go, there’s always this disharmony about us. There’s no peace within us or around us. And as for couples, it ends in divorce.
People split up and they experience great depression and suffering out of this. We’ve all seen this for ourselves. We’ve all had this experience. We all know this, that those who we see as being loving and tolerant people, it seems that they have a happiness about them and things seem to go well for them and they have harmonious relationships. On the other hand, those who lack harmony, lack love and tolerance, they seem to always have trouble.
Have difficulties and anger and things don’t go well for them. We see this for ourselves. It’s quite definite. But not only do we experience happiness in this life if we have cultivated tolerance, but we will have happiness in future So, if we were to cultivate tolerance, then in a future life we would be reborn as a human being. But not just a human being, but in fact a very beautiful human being that people would enjoy looking at us.
They would find us very agreeable to be with, that they would have harmonious relationships out of having cultivated tolerance. But additionally, under the influence of tolerance and love, we will develop wisdom. And the type of wisdom which is able to discriminate what is to be rejected, what is to be adopted, what is the cause of suffering, what is the cause of happiness, and developing the appreciative awareness which understands and distinguishes the causes of happiness and suffering. And by the force of the development of our wisdom, then we can begin to discriminate the causes of suffering and the causes of happiness, and begin the process of abandoning the causes of suffering, which are the various afflictive emotions within our mind, and begin to cultivate the causes of happiness, which are the various paths. And out of this, we can practice the path of liberation, bringing about the causes of liberation until we achieve the end of a happiness completely bereft of any suffering, but moreover is completely stable, unchanging.
So, tolerance is extremely beneficial. If we look at what we experience on the other hand, if we don’t cultivate tolerance, that is to say, if we simply allow ourselves to be continually under the influence of anger. But, you know, we could be in a situation where we’re very happy, very content. The moment anger arises in our mind, we are no longer happy. We’ve lost our peace of mind.
And if this quality of anger continues, then it can actually bring about mental illness. It causes us to get uptight, to be hypertensive, and it actually causes us physical illnesses. So these are all the, you know, looking at the detriments of anger and all the benefit. Anger, we say a great deal of hurtful words towards those beings that in fact have been kind to us, who we care a great deal for, our parents, our relatives, our friends. But even just in mundane facts such as when we’re angry, though we eat, the food doesn’t have any good taste.
And if we’re angry, we can’t even sleep well at night. We have fitful sleep where we’re tossing and turning. We keep churning over in our mind what we are angry about, we can’t sleep. And some people, they get so angry that they see red. Everything about them appears red.
And they’re ready to kill someone. They would even, in such a state of mind, they would even kill their parents or their relatives. They would even kill themselves. Commit suicide and these are just some of the detriments of anger in a person. So, it would be, you know, if we consider the detriments and all the various faults of anger, it would be extremely beneficial.
It’s difficult because we are habituated to anger and it comes very quickly. So, we have to be mindful of all the various faults and detriments of anger on the one hand and all of the benefits of tolerance on the other and try to practice as much as we can cultivate the attitude of tolerance. So, presently we simply aren’t habituated to the quality of tolerance. And it’s difficult for us initially. But if we practice it, then gradually we will improve, things will get better and better.
So they have a saying in Tibet, Though we may not have Though we may not have this healthy attitude at the present moment, it’s just ready to come. Many people were quite uptight and they didn’t have the healthy attitude of tolerance. But through practice, things improved. Things got better and better. It was just ready to come once they started practicing.
So, the mind has a very wonderful nature that we can there’s nothing that we cannot it cannot cultivate. Through training, there’s nothing that we cannot achieve. There’s no reason that there’s no obstruction within the mind which prevents us from the improvement, from developing anything that we purposely cultivate. On the other hand, if we don’t, if we simply leave it aside, then it’s not going to change. What went before will continue, but the mind can be cultivated in any direction that we choose.
So, the bodhisattvas have cultivated tolerance and cultivating again and again. And to the degree where if someone were to actually cut their flesh, not only would they not get angry, but they would develop tremendous Not only will they not get angry at this individual who is very slowly, over a long period of time, cutting at their flesh. But they will develop actual compassion for this individual, thinking, you know, this person is creating a great deal of negativity through this action and out of this negativity they’re going to experience great suffering in the future. May I experience that suffering instead of them? So, not only do they not become angry, but they even go beyond that, the level of tolerance and develop compassion, wishing to take on the negative, the suffering consequences of the negative action of this individual.
So this is a demonstration of the power of the mind, the potential of the mind. If we cultivate the mind, it can be trained to this end. But on the other hand, if we don’t cultivate these qualities, these healthy attitudes, then for us, somebody just gives us a dirty look and we get upset, we get angry. So this is the possible develop the potential and development of the mind through training the mind in the dharma. You get that?
We first started learning how to type, you know, we just one letter at a time, with difficulty. Then after some time, we become proficient, and we don’t even have to look at the typewriter. We just can look around at different things, and we can just naturally skillfully type. So someone was working for the tour of the Dalai Lama, one woman, a volunteer worker, and she was doing some typing work and she was just going along typing very quickly without even having to look at the keyboard. Rinpoche had never seen that before, he just thought that was amazing.
You know, it just was a wonder what the mind can be trained to do. So the mind has a tremendous potential for training. It has this it has this this potency, this ability. So if we were to cultivate these qualities of love and tolerance, that we would be happy in this life, that we would have harmonious relationships, that we would get along well with others, and things in general would go well for us. But not only that, but in future lives that we would be reborn as a human, but not just as a human, but as a beautiful person.
And again, things would go well until we would also develop in our wisdom our appreciative being able to discriminate and this would eventually lead to liberation, a type of happiness completely divorced of any suffering. And these are the wonderful benefits which are to be derived from cultivating love and tolerance. So, we shouldn’t think, Well, I can’t do this. It’s too difficult. But once we can do it and we can understand if we think about it, then we can.
So, I’m going to stop there for this evening, but if you have some questions we can discuss those. If you’d like to ask a question. You don’t have to have a question. Maybe I explained things too clearly. Yeah.
So, the qualities of love and compassion and tolerance are necessary prerequisites to the development of enlightenment, but they aren’t enlightenment itself, but they are the causes of enlightenment. Yes. So, there is a consummation to the development of tolerance. Just like we do some kind of work and we fulfill goal. Likewise, with development of tolerance, there is a point where it’s consummated.
But it’s said this consummation is immeasurable and is achieved at the state of Buddhahood. Do you mean to say Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Would he limit his tolerance? In what way would you?
You mean, in a way, in not saying anything? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s a good question. So, what we mean by tolerance is a mind which is not distressed, that doesn’t get upset. So, in this situation, one would simply say, Oh, I’m glad they’re having a good time.
One would not get angry at all, but one’s mind would not be in the least bit upset due to the force of tolerance. So, within the context of tolerance, would be quite acceptable to not becoming angry, to talk to them in a skillful way, to ask them to cease whatever they were doing. That would be within the context of tolerance, but not to be angry, motivated out of anger. So, yeah, but also in the previous example, we were talking about somebody, you know, being very loud in the middle of the night. You know, if you weren’t able to if you didn’t like the noise, then it would be quite acceptable, not motivate out of anger, but to ask them to please be quiet, but not motivate out of anger.
But that would still be in the context of not being distressed in the sense of telling. So as long as one doesn’t become angry, then we can make use of any methods. So, the time it would take to develop that level of tolerance would be in accordance with the degree of forcefulness that we put into our practice in our meditation, cultivation of tolerance. But additionally, it would be necessary to gain various realizations of the path to help us develop that tolerance. If we were to very forcefully cultivate tolerance, then there’s no reason why we couldn’t develop that level in one or two lives.
If our forcefulness of our cultivation is less, then it’s going to take two or three. If less than that, it’s going to take more than that. Yes? So, some people, I don’t Some people get so uptight that they get angry if they can’t blow their nose right. Anyway, so, you know, they get angry at just about anything.
So, there’s two approaches to dealing with anger. And that is, the first is to contemplate, to think about the detriments, the disadvantages of anger and all its various negative qualities. Action. And the second is that due to the force of anger, all the skillful actions that we’ve created in the past, the various positive actions, are destroyed due to the force of anger. So, there’s two types of detriments.
One is that anger in itself is a negative action and secondly, it destroys the positive actions that we’ve previously created. And thinking, contemplating these, the terrible consequences arising out of anger and thinking about them again and again, this is the approach that we can use to overcome anger. Things will improve in this way. So, you know, we’re habituated to anger, and it comes very readily. And it comes very powerfully.
So, we have to be able to develop the mindfulness which understands the faults of anger such that when it does develop, we immediately are mindful of the disadvantages, the detriments, the faults of anger and it won’t allow it to go any further than simply having developed. It will not increase. If we act in this way, then we will improve. The force of our anger will decrease more and more, less and less. So, we say two concluding prayers, or three, I should say.
The first one is on page ten. And then the two prayers on page five, verses eight to nine.