Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of snakes and scorpions — rebirths caused by uncontrolled anger — opens this 43-minute talk by Khensur Rinpoche. He explains that anger distorts the face so badly that its karmic imprint produces fearful, repulsive bodies in future lives, while tolerance produces beauty, intelligence, and the capacity to realise emptiness quickly. The second half turns to why tolerance is so hard to cultivate: Rinpoche identifies three specific hindrances — lack of conviction in karma, lack of compassion, and strong desire — noting candidly that this analysis comes from his own meditation rather than any text. A sustained example about theft then illustrates how harm can only reach us when we have already created its cause, leading into the Buddha’s four properties of karma: infallible, increasing, never wasted, and never experienced without a cause.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 24 1991 11 16 PT Anger c1s2.mp3
UUID: 4b5cbe4d-7e0b-4c09-900a-00a50b43169d
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1991-11-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.4 minutes
Words: ~2,121
But not only that, anger causes the deterioration of our wisdom. Even in the course of this life, we simply cannot understand the way things exist, the nature of the things about us. But even more, the future, will not, again, we will have little intelligence. We will be stupid just like animals. When we become angry, our face becomes very distorted and no one likes to look at it.
Our face becomes very unpleasant. Not only that, it takes on a very fearful appearance. Due to the force of this in future lives, again we will be reborn in a body which is fearful in appearance. Just things which look bad, having an unpleasant appearance, such as being reborn with a very bad complexion, or simply being born as a snake or a scorpion. The results of anger are being reborn such that we have these repulsive, fearful appearance such as that of snakes and scorpions.
Snakes and scorpions are extremely wrathful and they are very repulsive. So there’s a reason that beings are born with this repulsive appearance and that people experience fear just by seeing them. And the cause of being born in this way is due to their bad temper. Presently we can’t see this relationship. There are obstacles to our being able to see this, but eventually we will be able to understand the nature of this relationship.
So we must say that we reflect upon all of these detriments. There are not only the detriments over the course of this life but in future life. That due to anger, all of this, the anger itself is an unskillful action action which will bring about resultant suffering. But additionally, all the skillful actions which normally would bring about happiness are destroyed by the force of our anger. And seeing this very deeply then one determines to, even for a moment, make that effort and begin to cease anger.
So there are many faults connected with anger. With anger there is disharmony between parents, between relatives, between friends, one is not liked, etc. If we were to ask, well what are the benefits of cultivating tolerance? So if the situation could arise where someone who didn’t like us saw us and spoke some very harsh words at us. But we didn’t allow ourselves to be disturbed, that we remained undistressed and were thinking, Oh, it doesn’t matter what he says.
So in that state, our peaceful state is uninterrupted. We remain relaxed and our appearance remains calm and pleasant. If in response to harsh words spoken to us, we were to smile and laugh at this person, then this is a very pleasant appearance and if we were to normally do that in response, then this would act as a condition whereby in the future we would be reborn with a very beautiful appearance. That is contrary to, as contradistinction to retaliating and becoming very repulsive in appearance which would cause us to take on a very ugly appearance in the future. And in the future, others simply by seeing us, they will be well disposed toward us.
They will have a great liking to us. People will act very friendly to us merely by seeing our appearance. Under the force of acting in this way, in the future we will be born with a very pleasant, beautiful body that things will be very pleasant and go well. The fact that we have taken this fortunate rebirth that we have with our beautiful appearances is because we practice tolerance in the past. There’s no other reasons that we can put forth for explaining the differences in the appearances of beings.
Some beings are very pleasant, have a very pleasant appearance. Some beings have a very unpleasant appearance. The reason for this is that through the practice of tolerance there is this distinction in appearances. Those who have practiced tolerance strongly have an extremely pleasant appearance. Those who have practiced in a middling fashion have a middling pleasant appearance.
Those who have practiced minimally have a very minimal pleasant appearance. And the same holds true with respect to our intelligence or wisdom, that additionally through the practice of tolerance that we will have that same degree of intelligence in the future, that we will be able to discriminate that this is a fault and this is an excellent quality. Whatever we want to learn, we will be able to learn. So, we will be able to generate great wisdom. We will be highly intelligent.
We will be able to understand what are faults and what are excellent qualities. And we understand well these faults are to be abandoned and these excellent qualities are to be cultivated. We will be able to distinguish these two and begin ceasing those faults and developing those excellent qualities. We will become expert in being able to discriminate in this way. Again, we can see that there are differences in the abilities of, for example, school children to learn.
Two students can have the same teacher and the teacher is teaching them the same subject in the same way. But the students have learned at an extremely different rate. How can we explain this difference? The reason that we’re positing is that one has, in the past, has not become angry, has practiced tolerance, and therefore in the present situation, has a great deal more wisdom more readily can learn as opposed to the other. If we have great wisdom then we can generate compassion, love, we can generate without difficulty realization of emptiness.
So we can generate all of these excellent qualities and thereby we can attain the liberation of complete cessation of suffering. We can attain this very quickly. So we can see quite readily the great benefits, the temporal benefits to begin through the cultivation of tolerance. Happiness that we experience both physical and mental, the harmony which we create both amongst our friends, between family, husband and wife, the harmony which we create within our ethnic groups within the country as a whole. So these are some of the benefits that we can see but there are also the benefits which we cannot see.
For example, in future lives we will be born with beautiful appearances, will have great wisdom, we will be able to realize emptiness quickly and thereby be able to, without difficulty, attain liberation. Having considered well the benefits of tolerance then we should proceed to cultivate it. This is the main method whereby we can proceed to bring about the cessation of our anger: on the one hand, seeing all the detriments which anger creates, and on the other seeing all of the benefits that tolerance brings. Why aren’t we tolerant? Why is it so difficult for us to develop tolerance?
Even when we meditate on tolerance it’s difficult to generate tolerance. There are three conditions which hinder the development of tolerance. The first of these is that we lack conviction with respect to karma and its results. That is, karma as actions and the results. It’s very rare that people in the West have conviction with respect to karma and the results.
The second is a lack of compassion. And the third is that we have great desire. And so due to these conditions it’s difficult for us to generate tolerance. So I haven’t seen this in any text, when I meditated on this, this is what I’ve come to understand. So you yourself should think about this whether you agree or not.
So, with respect to this first, this hindrance of lack of conviction in karma and the results of these actions. Now, you know, as we spoke about previously, you know, what were the conditions? The conditions whereby we get angry. We said that when we think about, for example, Oh, this person has harmed me in the past, this person is harming me now or this person is going to harm me in the future or my friend, someone I like or this person has benefited my enemy, this person is benefiting my enemy or this person will benefit my enemy. These act as the conditions for anger and this thinking in this way reflects a lack of conviction in the law of cause and effect or karma and its result.
So you can think about this, that the situation arises with someone starts harming you. They really hurt you and they fight with you and you’ve never even seen this person before. I’ve never done anything to this person before. I’ve never hurt this person. And we can’t see any reason why they should be harming us.
Can’t understand, we don’t see any reason. I’ve never harmed this person, why are they harming me? Aren’t there cases where someone picks a fight with you and you haven’t done anything else? You can’t see any reason? You haven’t created any cause for them to be doing what they’re doing to you?
So in thinking this way, then we discount the law of cause and effect because we say that I’m undergoing this experience of being hurt, this person is fighting with me and I have not created the cause for it to happen. It is as if it were causeless and we cannot accept the fact that there can be a result without any cause. Are there results without causes? So in the case of someone being able to steal our money, there’s two factors involved. One that we have money, but additionally the thief has to have the ability to be able to steal our money.
Though we have money and he doesn’t have the ability to steal our money, he may want to, he’s not going to be able to steal it. What gives him the ability, how does that ability come about to be able to steal our money is having stolen money in the past. Without having stolen money in the past, though he may desire to steal our money, we may have money, but he simply won’t have the ability — the potential doesn’t exist for him to steal our money even though we have it. There are times when we have money, others want to steal our money but they don’t have the potential to do it because we haven’t stolen in the past. Without having created the cause, a particular action cannot come about.
In terms of someone trying to steal our possessions, if we have created the cause for this to be possible, for the potential to exist, if we have created that cause, then under the influence of this cause, there is nothing we can do to prevent the theft taking place, that it will come about. On the other hand, if we haven’t created the cause, if we haven’t stolen ourselves in the past, though the thief may come, there is no way that he can steal our possessions. So that’s right. We don’t need it. If haven’t created the karma then there’s no reason to lock our doors.
But we have doubts in our mind. We’re not sure. Therefore we lock our door. We’ve taken numerous rebirths and it would be extremely rare for someone not to have had the experience of stealing in one of these rebirths. So, just as we have said, everyone has been our mother at some time, many times.
Likewise, we have probably stolen from everyone at some time in the past. So, on the contrary, not only is there no reason to get angry, but there will be no anger. There will be compassion toward this individual. This is one of the reasons that was given as to why we aren’t able to develop tolerance because we don’t have compassion. The first being the lack of conviction with respect to actions and the results.
Because we should have compassion for this person because we’ve created a cause for this person to steal from us and now they’re going to suffer. And so rather than becoming angry, should have compassion and we lack compassion. That’s why we wouldn’t tolerate the theft. Additionally there was our sense of great desire that when our desires are frustrated, then again we get angry. So rather than getting angry at this person, to practice compassion and practice generosity and make prayers offering whatever it was to this person.
The Buddha taught four distinct modes of actions and results. The first of these is that actions are infallible. The second is that actions are highly increasing. The third is that actions not created, the results of actions not created are not experienced. And the fourth is actions are not wasted.