Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun works through Śāntideva’s chapter on tolerance by introducing what he calls “unidentified flying desires” — hidden motivations we haven’t named that explain why we so often misidentify who is obstructing us and why anger then misses its mark entirely. He distinguishes tolerance from mere endurance, traces anger back through a distressed mind to the irrational beliefs driving our evaluations, and sets Śāntideva’s opening verses on hatred’s destructive reach alongside Albert Ellis’s observation that anger “totalizes” a person from a single behavior. Three domains of tolerance practice are then outlined: accepting the difficulties of daily life (anchored in the First Noble Truth), enduring the hardships of Dharma practice — illustrated vividly by Olympic athletes — and cultivating non-retaliation in the face of harm. Suitable for practitioners already familiar with Mahāyāna ethics.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 Bod 1997 03 30.mp3
UUID: 8f8b693c-0d8a-485a-a603-ced9282978c9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Bodicaryavatara (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-03-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~6,047
To look at some ways of perhaps devising other means of reevaluating our deactivating experience. The activating experience being some kind of frustrated desire and identifying someone or something which is obstructing our desire. So the whole intent of the development of tolerance is not to, I guess it’s not to do a lot of things. But one of the things it’s not meant to do is not to prevent us from fulfilling our desires. That’s not the point.
The intent of the development of tolerance is to help us to not become angry. Angry is being looked at upon as a terribly destructive element in our life and in our mind, both in our present in terms of ourselves and causing difficulties and suffering for others about us. Not only in the present, but also in the future. So it also acts as an obstacle to the development of love and compassion, which is in the context of the development of the awakened heart is obviously something which needs to be worked through in spite of everything else. So when we talk about the development of tolerance, it doesn’t mean gritting our teeth and putting up with difficult people or difficult situations and just doing the best we can and just letting the situation continue.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t try to actually fulfill our desires, what it is that we want in some way or another. That’s not the point. The point is to not allow a distressed mind to arise with access to cause of anger, which has all these destructive qualities and which is in fact counterproductive in getting it getting what it is that we in fact do want. I think I think that’s usual. I’m sorry.
I’m actually clarifying a lot of these ideas for myself as I go along. So I’m just sharing my current thinking with you. During the break, I’m going through all these little notes here. As I mentioned, I haven’t read these notes for a long time. They’re kind of jumbled up.
Anyway, so you have to have tolerance with regard to me. I you have some kind of desire, and I’m probably frustrating that desire. So don’t get distressed around me. Don’t as best you can. So the two conditions.
We want something. I think this exercise we did before was probably quite useful. And also during the debriefing, this discussion occurred afterward, even when I was explaining what I had gotten angry about, I actually discovered that there were some of hidden agendas, desires that I was actually trying to fulfill. And I had thought, well, this is my desire. This and this person was obstructing me.
But there were some other desires which were going unnoticed, unidentified desires. UFDs. Unidentified flying desires. And, you know, how can you ask somebody to fulfill unidentified desires? You know?
And maybe, you know, if you don’t even know what you’re desiring, but you had in the first place, and you sort of have misidentified what it is that you want, you don’t know what your true motivation is, what you’re actually looking for, and you only see this person, you identify this person rightly or wrongly as obstructing you from getting what you want even though perhaps you haven’t identified what you want. And then you have misidentified what is in fact obstructing your desire because and there’s no one in the world that’s going to be able to do that for you. To get it as what you want not knowing what it is. And therefore we get upset. We get distressed around it.
So, you know, what was the desire? In fact, you know, it’s probably, you know, like in terms of our positive, our motivations are mixed. It’s just not unit one monolithic desire or one monolithic motivation. It has probably many it’s a composite of a diverse number of different motivations and, you know, why we do what we do and also what we desire, what we’re actually looking for. It’s a public composite of lots of small desires.
So maybe it’s useful to be able to analyze those. This process of analysis, I think, can help us to get a handle on. You know, to say control your anger, it may sound simple, but it’s probably probably not possible without being able to analyze into its various components and causes and conditions and working with each one of those. So beginning to break down the problem into smaller bits that are workable. So analyzing what it is that you desire and then, okay, then there’s the condition of somehow that desire is being obstructed.
How is it being obstructed? Is that person actually obstructing your desire or are you just, you know, when you’ve identified an object which is obstructing your desire, is this person actually the one, the obstructor of your desire that you’ve identified or are you just, I was thinking of the, yeah, are you just simply placing the blame on a convenient hook? This person, the situation is. Is this a valid, you know, have you used a valid criteria for determining what it is that is obstructing your desire? And then the main cause.
So those are the two conditions. So if we can prevent those two conditions arising, anger will not arise. But the main cause, a distressed mind. Now, you know, we can use, in this exercise that we do, we can, you know, the distressed mind. We have distress, this is not a monolithic, again, feeling.
Know, reach, this could be broken down into very subtle variations and nuances of feelings which we experience in some way that we might call distress, irritation or annoyance or frustration. For me, it’s a sense, for me powerlessness in a sense is very much that quality that acts as a as a main cause for anger for me. So I’m trying to be very aware when I when this feeling is coming up for me because I know the next step is anger. So, you know, being able to identify that feeling. What is it for you?
And, you know, it’s not to say it’s always gonna be the same for sure, different situations. But anyway, okay, then having identified it, that feeling doesn’t arise by itself. And this is, Śāntideva talks about this with regard to anger. Anger simply doesn’t decide, I shall arrive. And brings itself into existence.
It too has causes. Also the distressed mind has a cause. And we’re saying that this distress comes about due to the way we evaluate the situation, due to the way we evaluate our desire being obstructed. That evaluate, that evaluation also can be analyzed a level further down. And that is what beliefs are we holding?
Which are the criteria for our evaluation? What standards, you know, what are we going by by means of which we evaluate, our methods of evaluation, the rules by which we evaluate. So a great deal of the thrust of the text, of Śāntideva’s critique of anger, is directed at this level of belief. The rules by which we evaluate our activating experience. He’s saying that most of these rules are invalid.
They make no logical sense. They aren’t rational. Indeed, they’re irrational. They have no valid basis. And being able to see that for yourself and working through all the various areas in which this can occur.
So first, we have to be motivated to do that, to want to work through. And it’s not easy to change deeply seated beliefs. It it it requires a great deal of work and a great deal of analysis and penetrating insight. We have to actually begin to be aware of them and then begin to contradict them. And begin to intervene, to diagnose and then begin to intervene.
And this requires some effort. And unless we see, and this is the very first thing that Śāntideva tries to bring out, unless we see the destructive nature of anger, we aren’t going to make the effort to do it. And why should we? There’s something I’d rather not get rid of anger because it’s useful. Repertoire of emotional responses.
It gets me what I want. So the first step, and Śāntideva tries to introduce the whole notion, is to look at the advantages and disadvantages of anger. And unless we begin there with our own experience to see this destructive quality in our life and the advantages of tolerance, then we’re not going to go any further. So the very first verse in this section on the development of tolerance. Whatever good such as acts of generosity and worship of the Sugata. Sugata is an epithet of the Buddhas.
It means when those gone to bliss, I have a master in a thousand eons will be destroyed by a moment’s anger. Pretty heavy going, ain’t it? There is no evil comparable to hatred and no practice as noble as tolerance. In all manner of ways will I earnestly learn to be patient. If my heart is tormented by hatred, my mind will never be at peace.
I will find neither joy nor well-being neither sleep nor repose. So guess Śāntideva is trying to introduce some of the disadvantages of anger and hatred at the very onset if we’re to develop the motivation to work with the ideals he’s to go on to present and work with these methods and to intervene in this process. So we have to do that within our own experience. Did my anger serve the purpose of getting my desires filled or not? Or on the contrary, did it in some way obstruct?
Did it in fact complicate? Did it in fact hurt the situation? What to say of getting what I wanted? Did it in fact, did I get what I didn’t want from becoming angry? You know, is one of the, in all the various afflictive emotions, this is the first step.
If you want to change behavior, the first step is within the area of pleasure pain to see the disadvantages of continued behavior and the advantages of discontinued. And then the mind is motivated to, that in itself is going to begin to calibrate the mind, the behavior, and going to arouse some kind of will. We need, there’s Will again. But the will is not enough. Sorry, We need wisdom.
I think in all of Buddhism, simply wanting something to occur and seeing the necessity is is initial. The motivation is the forerunner of all change. But then we have to bring in the factor of intelligence and analysis to actually assist in bringing about what it is that we want. So having I’ll just read you this is from a book called How to Live With and Without Anger. And it’s just talking about some of the detriments of anger.
This is by Albert Ellis, the father of what we call rational emotive therapy. Talking about anger. This this chapter that this is from is called the insanity of anger. Anger stems from your irrational and illogical belief that a person’s actions equal the same thing as the person himself. So this is a notion that Śāntideva has mentioned.
The notion of totalizing the person, taking a specific behavior, a specific attitude that the person may have and generalizing that to the entire person, that this person is a hateful person because they generated hate. And we do this with ourselves. We extrapolate from peculiar instances of emotions and ways of behaving. And we evaluate our total self worth in terms of those particular instances. As a human being can be a failure, for example, because we failed in a particular instant.
Just as your evaluation of the person turns thereby one side in the negative, so does your response to that person. Your irrational premise thus results in the alienation of a full person. You know, is getting at the notion that I might not like that attitude that you have or I don’t like that harmful intention. I don’t like what you did but it doesn’t mean I dislike you as a person. Yeah.
We don’t totalize the person from a particular behavior or particular attitude. Your irrational So long as you maintain this alienated atmosphere, no good probability for openness of all points of view exists and your anger will importantly inhibit a speedy and effective resolution in the problem. And he has another point. Anger, a rather strong emotion, tends to overlap or extend in other areas of your life. Most people, when angry, express themselves in a hostile manner to associates with whom they do not feel anger.
This often creates unnecessary tension in an overall uncomfortable counterproductive atmosphere. The depression and anxiety that result from increased tension stemming from anger inhibits your effective performance in other areas of your life. Combined conditions of point two and three. So creating unnecessary tension for yourself and this anger tainting your relationships, your atmosphere general, the way they relate with other people even though you’re not angry with them. All know that.
Someone takes their anger out on us even though they’re not particularly angry at us. It has carried over from a previous episode of anger. And many people may create negative responses from other people that may in turn cause you to feel highly critical of yourself. In many people, this criticism takes the the more elaborate form of self downing and added greatly to the extent of anxiety. So, you know, feeling pretty bad about ourselves because we got angry.
The repetition of anger compounded with a combination of the above mentioned side effects can create difficult tension both within yourself and your relationships with others. These relationships can involve such complications that you have difficulty realizing that you felt your anger towards some person wholly unconnected with the present situation. Hence any resolution of the original problem will still fail to resolve the new difficulties that anger has created. So this is just from contemporary analysis of anger. He’s a psychotherapist.
Śāntideva is trying to point out in a very, first, a mundane manner that a person who is angry is suffering and their mind cannot be happy. They ruin both their health physically and mentally. And he goes on to say, you know, they can’t sleep. They can’t enjoy themselves. But then the more far reaching, you know, anger, you know, kind of poisons the entire atmosphere around someone.
No one likes to be around an angry person. No one it’s a difficult person even to live with. But even in the future, as I mentioned previously, latencies of past skillful actions can be destroyed due to the force of anger. So looking at the, there’s a quote from the Dhammapada, which is a which is a collection of sayings by the the Buddha where he says, look how he abused me and how he beat me, how he threw me down and robbed me. Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
Look how he abused me and beat me, how he threw me down and robbed me, abandoned such thoughts and live in love. So, you know, just trying to This is like the work of changing our mind. If we want to know how to change our mind, this is how. This is the work that needs to be done. Actual analysis of our experience in terms of in this context, in specific instance, of the destructive qualities of hate in our life, of anger in our life.
And this is the way, this is the initial step in changing our mind in this particular context. Know? People want to change. And we can’t make huge generalizations about, you know, this is the actual work. This is the actual small little steps that we take in bringing about this change.
So we begin this process by by becoming mindful of the destructive quality if in fact it is. And and we from the point of view of these teachings, anger is is terribly destructive. One of the most destructive emotions that we can generate. And the way we can begin to change that is begin to see its destructive quality. So we actually look at our daily life and how it’s affecting our relationships, how it affects our own mind, and beginning to see how it affects our future.
This is kind of the work that needs to be going into if we’re going to actually develop the motivation to change. And then we go on to look at if we’re going to overcome this anger, seeing this destructive quality, then we can look at, well, what is the counterpart to anger? We’re calling that tolerance. Mean, sometimes it’s spoken of in terms of love and compassion. But I think I think this is more applicable.
You know, without this this without this platform of being able to remain undistressed in the face of harm, it’s going to be terribly difficult to develop universal love and compassion obviously, isn’t it, if we’re honest? People always how can you develop love and compassion for all people when you find that the world is really hurting you? People are hostile. People are, you know, people are causing you suffering all the time. I think that would be illogical to assume that you could.
So we have to at least develop as an interim, as an intermediate step, develop tolerance where you no longer see others in that light that you might and how do we do that? You know, how do we go beyond this this this sense that others are harming us and reacting by hate? Well, we have to change our well, first, we have to remove the causes for anger, this hostile way of relating with others. As long as there’s anger in the mind, there’s no room for love. They’re the antithesis of of the quality of mind that we’re trying to develop toward others.
Love most essentially is wanting others to be happy. Hatred most essentially, anger most essentially is wanting others to suffer. They cannot exist. They cannot coexist. You know, we can’t have the same two minds toward the same object at the same time.
So if we’re going to develop this in universal fashion, we’re going to have to change our disposition toward others in general. And have to and we can’t do that because as long as we are continually as long as we have desire, as long as those desires are being frustrated, as long as we we see these various people about us as being obstructors of our desires and go on to develop the stress, we’re never going to develop this universal attitude of caring for others. So we can work at the level of developing tolerance by removing the distress, the underlying cause for hatred. There are three areas. So the focus of development of tolerance is in developing the skillful means whereby the mind no longer becomes distressed in these problematic situations.
And there’s three areas that we can develop tolerance in. And we went we went through these. The problems of everyday existence. Specific for the bodhisattva, his everyday existence is very much bound up in the welfare of others. Maybe maybe that’s not our everyday existence.
So we have to be perhaps generalize it a little bit more. So developing tolerance around the problems of everyday existence, accepting the difficulties and the hardships of everyday existence without getting distressed about it and therefore getting angry about it. The second area that we can develop tolerance around is in our practice of Dharma. In developing in terms of the Dharma, not just in worldly ways but in terms of what it is that we’re trying to achieve ultimately, our goals of Dharma. The ways of practicing Dharma and the ways of the world aren’t the same.
They overlap but the goals are quite different. And so the methods and what it is that we aspire to can be quite different. So we have to develop a tolerance around the difficulties, not just in general in the world, the difficulties in getting in terms of our practice of Dharma and evaluating the difficulties in terms of Dharma. And then finally, the third area is the area of non retaliation. So, you know, this book is entitled the Bodhicaryāvatāra.
It’s a training manual for becoming a Bodhisattva. So one of the main obstacles to development of an awakened heart is harmful intention, anger, hostility, aggression. So if if if we want to awaken our heart and become a Bodhisattva, then we’re going to have to find a way to skillfully work when it appears when harm is being brought to ourselves by others. Now we can’t control others, but we can we can control our attitude, how we evaluate what others do to ourselves. So developing the attitude of non retaliation or nonviolence, undistressed in the face of adversity or harm by others.
So those are the three areas that we’re trying to develop tolerance in. We talked about the problems of everyday life. We some belief around this that somehow our world should be other than the way it is. I should not be suffering. This should not be happening to me.
Something that has gone wrong temporarily and it be set right. You know, is one of, you know, we all have our various premises, our beliefs around this. But perhaps this overlaps with some of yours if we make a broad generalization. But the Buddha said that life is suffering. And again, this means a particular approach to life, an ignorance governed approach to life, a particular approach to life which we we call cyclic existence.
And we should not be surprised that we suffer. And therefore, it should not and we shouldn’t think that things should be otherwise. As long as we are governed by ignorance and karma, as long as the truth truth of the origins of suffering prevail in our life, we are going to continue to suffer. And it just manifests in various forms. You know?
It can be manifest in this form or this form and this form and this form and this form, but it’s going to manifest nonetheless in all these multifarious ways. But it’s gonna manifest. And, you know, just another manifestation of cyclic existence. It’s the nature of our situation. This particular suffering is simply our situation dressed up in another form.
Tomorrow it’s gonna take this form. Tomorrow the next day it’s going to take this form. So not being taken by surprise or bewildered and thereby distressed as if this shouldn’t be happening. So I guess, developing that perspective. I mean, Geshe-la says this all the time.
I don’t know if he says it to you. You know? When we we you know, he talks whenever he he’s been sick quite often recently. He said, what can I expect? You know?
This is the nature of cyclic existence. You know? As long as you have this type of body, you’re gonna get sick. This is very delicate balance. In Tibetan medical system, they have the notion of humors, h u m o u r s.
Not humors, but like bile and phlegm, wind energy. And there’s a health is when all of these humors are in a very delicate balance. But they’re always it’s like they’re always in it’s they’re always in perpetual they’re not static. They’re they’re always there’s always fluctuations. There’s very few times when when we’re perfectly healthy.
Usually, there’s a tolerate there’s a toleration zone or comfort zone where they’re all in that kind of comfort zone or one’s just a little bit of a comfort zone but the others aren’t, the other humors aren’t. But more than that, there’s this continual fluctuation of humors. And only when they’re all within a certain zone that we feel, ah, I’m good, feel healthy. We don’t just think that. We just take it for granted that’s the way it should be.
But that’s not necessarily so. So this is like our health is a dynamic process seen from this point of view. And these humors aren’t, we don’t have control over them. We don’t have control over the process of being healthy. And as long as we don’t, there’s no reason why we think that we somehow should be healthy.
Now they they have this at Tibetan, they have this saying that said, again and again, you hear it all the time, it’s in the nature of cyclic existence. You know, it’s like saying, you know, I don’t think it’s particularly cynical or pessimistic, but it is a way of, it is a perspective which makes which doesn’t lead to passivity or fatalism, but it does lead to a way of being able to accommodate difficulties in your life in more skillful fashion. I think it’s helpful. So anyway, the first noble truth, life is a problem. And confronting that.
I think it’s difficult. I don’t think we want to. Perhaps I’m projecting on you my own problems. We would hope that we could just find happiness without having to change. But in my more rational moments, I don’t think it’s the case.
That and that I would hope that I wouldn’t suffer without having to change. But in my more more rational moments, I don’t think that’s the case. Until I change, don’t think I’m going to stop suffering in my emotions when I think about that more rationally. So then in terms of the practice of Dharma, in that area of development of tolerance. You know, it’s interesting, isn’t it?
Last year when the Olympics were on, and you find out how much effort these athletes put in to their training. From from, you know, you see these almost children doing, you know, like gymnastics. And and from the age of four or five or or the swimming that they do, you know, their parents drive them to the swimming pool at five o’clock in the morning before school or they’re they’re at they’re at the school doing gymnastics for two or three hours in the morning, two two or three hours at night. Six days a week for years and years and years. Training, training, training, training, training.
All that effort that goes into that. I mean, it’s just amazing. And often, if only I put that much time and energy into my practice of Dharma, there would be a Buddha sitting here. For sure. I it’s a yeah.
But it gets us back to the eight worldly concerns. I mean, we don’t see the payoff, theory. It’s not something we can grab hold of like fame, like a nine point eight on the rings. That I understand. Buddhahood, don’t.
That’s kind of out there somewhere. So we don’t and in all the glory that goes with that nine point eight and whatever it is. Or, you know, or what’s Getting your name on a liter of milk. Like Kieren Perkins. Anyway, so, you know, the people are willing to really suffer, and they do suffer.
I They hurt their bodies and they and they all that energy. Anyway. But we don’t. We do. We we don’t.
What is the value suffering in terms of our practice? You know, we have to we’re trying to gain some kind of perspective on suffering such that it no longer distresses us. And also the hardships that we endure in our practice so that we aren’t distressed about it. We’re able to put it in a higher it doesn’t act as a disincentive any longer. Know, suffering makes us stop and think.
You know, how many how many people and I again, you know, the old the old you know, you you how many people run out, you know, and look up in the sky with their their arms flung wide open and say, why, god? Why me why does everything always have to go so right for me? Why, you know, why am I so happy all the time? I I can’t go on like this any longer. I have to find out.
None of us of us do that. It’s suffering which makes us think, which which can deflect us momentarily from from from our habitual ways of of acting and thinking and behaving and make us take make us pause and perhaps reflect upon our life and what what it is we’re doing, where we’re going, that’s where we want to get to. Pain is behind all change whether it’s the evolution of the species or the evolution of ourselves as individual. There’s always been some kind of necessity behind it to remove pain or some kind of undesired stimulus. So the pain, the difficulties can be seen as a challenge.
The one definition of love that I like is interestingly enough, it’s by Scott Peck, American psychiatrist. He says, and I’ve adapted it slightly, that love is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. The will to extend oneself. To extend oneself is to work.
To extend oneself, you know, to extend, it means to go beyond your present limits, your own boundaries, your present comfort zone, your area of safety. You have to go a little bit, you know, press the envelope a little bit even if only slightly. You know, just like, you know, when you love someone, you’re willing to take that extra step for them. You’re you’re willing to go out of your way for them. You know, I I today, I was going I I would have liked to had, you read this this novel.
I was looking forward to all week, but you need me to help you clean out your garage. Okay. I’ll give you two hours. It’s an expression of love, isn’t it? You do something for somebody else.
So it is in loving ourselves, our expression of loving ourselves is in our practice. This is how our self love is expressed. It can be done in other ways perhaps. Self caring and like, you know, maybe doing a nice warm bubble bath or something, making yourself a great meal or something like that. But to extend ourselves is really an expression of love for ourselves in terms of something which is going to make you ultimately bring change you and help you to grow.
So our practice is an expression of our self love. The abbot of the Zen temple in Bodh Gaya, he once said, meditation is the way that we show compassion for ourselves. And the same idea I think. It shows both love and wisdom and understanding. Have to, in this we change these minds of ours, this crazy elephant elephant which is dragging us along towards suffering.
Unless we remove the you know, begin to reduce the force of attachment and jealousy and pride in our life and most basically ignorance. Unless we begin to create skillful actions which bring about happiness and begin to purify and not to not to involve ourselves in further unskillful actions which bring us suffering, we’re going to continue to suffer. That’s the nature of the situation. So we and this goes against most of our habitual ways of acting and being. Habitual you know?
So we have to extend ourselves. We have to do some work to tame this wild elephant of the mind. And this is the way, within the context of this wisdom, the actual hardships are an expression of our self love, the way that we care for ourselves. I care enough for myself to be willing to put up with the difficulty of sitting still in meditation and my restless mind, to be willing to forego a lot of more immediate sense gratification and deal with the issue the deeper issues in my life. That’s how much I love myself and how much and that that is in the context of wisdom.
That’s the way we express love for ourselves in that context. And this can be extended, can’t it? This is the way I love others. This is my present way of expressing my love for others by sitting here on this cushion and dealing with my mind and my problem so that eventually I can be a real significant benefit to them in some practical way. This is the way I express my love for others through this hardship, through extending myself, making that choice.
You know, will is a choice. If there was no choice, there would be no love. If without suffering, there’s no renunciation. If we could just deaden ourselves. You know, a stone feels no pain.
It feels nothing at all because it’s not alive. We, on the other hand, are alive. But alive and aware to the extent that that only to the extent that survival is necessary. Probably that much and no more. So if but that is that enough to be alive?
Simply to survive. Like, know, vegetable is in a way alive. But to be a human vegetable is that to have lived. So, you know, most people pass their lives in some way as a human vegetable having never really lived. And so it is only pain that that by means of pain that that we are not willing to put up with such a way of life.
I’m talking about if there were no pain, we might be able to fall back into some kind of comfort zone of unfeeling quality of life. But I don’t think that would be I don’t think that’s a viable alternative to the possibility of living to its fullest. You know, what could we what life could the potential of ourselves and what life could be experienced as. So even a kind of life where there was not much happiness, not much pain, just kind of go along and then you die. That doesn’t look very appealing to me either.
So the pain has some benefit. It’s going to act as a means to to make me, live to much more to the in some way. It’s going to motivate me to do that. Whereas a life of some kind of middle ground is never going to do that. Finding some kind of nice niche for myself, some kind of comfort zone where I can hide from the reality.
Can I ask a question? Okay. Well, I mean, a great deal of what we We have the accumulation of eons of karma within our mind. So the karma that our our future lives are not purely determined. They’re not solely determined by what we do in this life.
What we do in this life can make a great deal it can make a significant difference. It can be the determining factor, but not necessarily so. If one were to not have a very create any particular strong karma in the course of this life, then some of the more powerful karma which was collected in previous lives would be the determining factor. So not doing anything is not good enough. So challenge, you know, suffering, you know, the challenge of the hardships of suffering seen in terms of our Dharma practice.
So, you know, we’re trying to gain some kind of perspective. Put these experiences which are inevitably, you know, we’re going to go through in some kind of context where they still are difficult but we’re willing to make the choice. It’s not, you know, there’s no morphine shot. It’s not that it’s going to be, know, there’s still the difficulty. But we can evaluate that difficulty in a more skillful fashion.
Difficult people still looking from the point of view of our Dharma practice.