Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche examines anger through a verse from Śāntideva, exploring why we respect the Buddha yet disrespect sentient beings—despite both benefiting us equally. He describes how anger arises: through perceiving harm to ourselves, our loved ones, or our allies. He then walks through anger’s visible faults—loss of inner peace, unpleasant appearance, disrupted sleep and appetite, harmful speech—and its hidden karmic cost: a single moment of anger destroys the positive results of all past ethical practice, generosity, and meditation. The antidote lies in clearly reflecting on both these categories of harm while cultivating tolerance. Suited for practitioners familiar with meditation and Buddhist ethics.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1991-11-16 – 1A – Dealing With Anger – KR.mp3
UUID: f11ef0fc-2abf-4255-8934-9cf96af15a34
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Mind Training
Date: 1991-11-16
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,023
What do we mean by a kind hearted attitude? We mean an attitude which wishes to benefit others which is expressed in acting to eliminate others’ suffering, acting to free others from their suffering, a sense of caring. And this kind hearted attitude also extends to other sentient beings in that all sentient beings want happiness. And so considering those sentient beings who are without happiness and developing the attitude may they have happiness, which is love. So these two attitudes of compassion and love constitute a kind hearted attitude.
And based simply upon the fact that sentient beings want happiness, then if they have happiness, they’re extremely happy. If they have suffering, then they’re not happy. And wishing to free them from that suffering, free them from that suffering and to see them happy. And also this kind hearted attitude has the component of wanting others be happy in the sense that when beings aren’t happy, then they’re experiencing great difficulties. So developing the wish that may they be happy.
So just as in the case of ourselves, when we have some dissatisfaction we think, I don’t want this difficulty. I wish I was happy. And this is naturally the way we think in such a situation. And just as we ourselves don’t like to suffer, that we like to be happy. Likewise, other sentient beings like to be happy.
They don’t want to suffer. So wishing the same for others as we would for ourselves, is a beneficial attitude, altruism. But by a kind hearted attitude, we do not mean merely wishing oneself happiness and to be free from suffering, but to include others that may others be free from suffering and have happiness. This is a kind hearted attitude. Sir, we’re constantly considering how to eliminate our suffering, how to free ourselves from our suffering and find happiness.
When we’re hungry, then we think about some method to eliminate the suffering of hunger. If hot. Then we think about the way that we can get rid of the uncomfortableness of being hot. If we don’t like staying here, then we think about going somewhere else. So we’re always considering methods to alleviate our temporal suffering. So as human beings we have an intellect and we have intelligence and by means of those we can work, we can consider how to go about establishing the happiness that we want, eliminating the suffering that we don’t.
But we simply do not consider to eliminate our own suffering or to bring ourselves happiness alone, but we extend this to all sentient beings, the desire to eliminate the suffering of all sentient beings and to establish all sentient beings in happiness. This is a kind hearted intention and it’s extremely beneficial and extremely powerful. So how are we to proceed in meditating on this kind hearted attitude? It’s reflected in the thought, may all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.
So we’re going to meditate for five minutes in that way. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all sentient beings had happiness and the causes of happiness? I myself will bring all sentient beings happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free of suffering and causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. I will free all sentient beings from suffering and the causes of suffering. Begin with the preliminary prayers which are verse three, then two. Yeah. I Today I’m going to talk about tolerance and anger.
Which was explaining a verse from Śāntideva. The Buddha, these various objects represent of the Buddha, we hold them in high regard, great reverence. We make offerings to them of incense and flowers. We make prostrations to them. But we don’t respect sentient beings. On the contrary, we get angry at beings, we fight with them, we harm them, we don’t practice tolerance with respect to them.
Why is it that we respect the Buddhas so much but we don’t respect sentient beings? That we do fight with them, we argue with them, we harm them, we don’t practice tolerance with respect to them? In light of the fact that they’re both equally as beneficial to ourselves, benefit they give to us is exactly the same. So it’s said that this is a great mistake, liking one and not liking the other when in fact their benefitting is exactly the same. So why is that?
What is it that we want? We want to be happy. We don’t want suffering. And we’re all exactly alike in that respect. Everybody wants happy happiness, nobody wants to suffer.
So in pursuing this in, the Buddhism sentient beings are exactly the same in the sense that they are the same by means of relying upon them. They both bring us happiness. They both can eliminate our suffering. By relying on them, they can bring their benefit to us exactly the same. Therefore, why is it we discriminate liking one and not liking the other?
By relying upon sentient beings, in dependence upon sentient beings we can generate the causes of happiness. That is the dependence upon sentient beings we generate love, compassion, practice generosity, we can develop tolerance. These are causes of happiness. On the other hand, likewise, can, in dependence upon sentient beings, can eliminate the causes of suffering. Our practice of generosity depends upon being likewise our practice of tolerance depends upon being.
In light of this, we should cease harming sentient beings. We should generate a liking toward them and seek to benefit them, help them, not to cause them harm, not to cause them suffering, for example killing or stealing from them. We should try to cease anger and cultivate tolerance because anger is an extremely great fault. It brings great harm. How does anger actually come about, how do we generate anger?
There are a variety of objects with respect to anger, but generally the way in which it’s generated is that in terms of oneself one thinks that this person previously brought me some harm or they are presently harming me or we think in the future they’re going to harm me. Likewise, another cause would be in thinking that this individual has, in the past, harmed those I care about, has harmed my parents, my mother and father, has harmed my friends or my children. Or they are presently harming them or they will harm them in the future. So another possibility would be in terms of those we don’t like, those we don’t get along with, our enemies. And in this sense, we can generate anger toward those who benefit our enemies.
We are thinking that this person in the past has benefited my enemy or this person is presently helping or benefiting my enemy or that this person in the future is going to help out my enemy. So in generating these various states, it’s necessary to have both a cause and a condition. The cause one has already established within one’s mind. So what has been described here are the conditions necessary, the cooperative conditions necessary to generate anger. So how do we go about bringing it into anger?
We have to see the faults of anger, the detriments of anger. Upon reflecting upon the faults of anger then we will not engage in it. Just in general, when we think about some type of work and we think about if I do this, act, all these difficulties will arise, all these faults. And you think, well I’m not going to do it. I’m going and you give it up.
You don’t make effort in that direction. So we have to recognize all the various faults connected with anger. So this is one line of reasoning that we take in ceasing our anger, in seeing the various difficulties that is the foundation of all our problems. On the other hand, try to additionally we try to see the benefits of cultivating tolerance. The advantage reflecting upon the advantages of tolerance, the benefits.
Thinking about all of the detriments and faults of anger and then on the other thinking about the benefits of applying the antidote to anger bringing about its cessation that is tolerance. So if we strongly think, reflect upon these two then this has the ability, it has potency to cease our anger and this is the main method we can make use of. So what are the faults of anger? There are the faults we can directly see and there are the faults we not directly see. So looking at the faults we can directly see, or the benefits of not being angry.
So out of those times when we’re not angry, our mind is happy. We are relaxed. Our facial appearance is very pleasant. We can sleep well. We can enjoy eating.
So these are all when we don’t have, are not experiencing anger. So upon, upon seeing an enemy or hearing some harsh words directed at us or getting into a fight, then these act as the conditions where first we were very relaxed and peaceful and now due to these conditions of seeing an enemy having harsh words spoken at us, all this is lost. Immediately, though previously we were relaxed, immediately we become distressed. And we are no longer relaxed, we are no longer happy, we can all understand that. And not being happy, previously we had a very pleasant facial expression and now we get all red in the face.
So, you know, our own mind becomes unhappy. We get this distorted facial expression on our face and even when our friends see us, they don’t like to be around us when they see us like that. And in such a state when we eat food, the food has no good flavor. When we sleep, we can’t sleep. So we can clearly understand all this and under this, under the influence of this anger, then we say hurtful things with our words, we think hurtful thoughts, we think about have harmful intentions, think about getting into a fight, argument.
And our mind isn’t happy. So these are the effects that we can directly see. That we get in, even with our friends we can get in a fight and with those we don’t like we can go on to, you know, we harm them and kill them. So when we reflect, we can reflect within our own experience about various faults of anger. But there are also faults which are not readily understandable.
What are these faults which we cannot directly see? If we were to become angry at an individual who had many excellent qualities, had great compassion, had great benefit toward others. Then getting angry at such an individual, the consequences of that would be that all of the various positive acts that we have done in the past, through our meditation, through practicing generosity, through benefiting others. Types of acts which have as a result happiness, due to getting angry at such a type of individual, the happy results would be completely destroyed. The result and happiness of these types of acts would be destroyed.
So all of the positive acts that we create, all of our skillful actions, all the benefit which has come about through practicing well, both in this life and in previous life, then even just getting angry in the time of a finger snap, all the positive happy results can all be lost. So this is really a great fault. Through generating anger, anger brings about a suffering result. But on top of that, all of the difficulties that we’ve gone through in meditating, practicing generosity, practicing ethics, that is to say all of these positive acts which normally have as a result happiness, then all of this resultant happiness is lost. So there are these two faults that anger brings as a result of suffering and it destroys the result of happiness.