Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 92-minute talk with a guided loving-kindness meditation — expanding goodwill from self to loved one, stranger, and enemy outward to all beings — before turning to the analytical core: why anger arises and how tolerance is cultivated. Drawing on Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life alongside cognitive-behavioral ideas, he frames anger as the mind’s homeostatic alarm signal, arising from two conditions (frustrated desire; identifying an obstacle) on the basis of irrational beliefs. Four vivid stories carry the argument forward: a Taoist minister who refuses to wade in muddy water, an empty boat that provokes no rage, a traveler who blesses a misfired match, and Tom Sawyer turning fence-painting into a paid privilege. The session ends with Q&A on rehearsing antidotes in meditation before the heat of the moment arrives.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 1993 02 07 Anger and Tolerance.mp3
UUID: d0bd9b2f-dbea-4acd-8f39-8f7e576f5aee
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Public talks 1988-2010 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-02-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 92.2 minutes
Words: ~10,245
One of the fundamental premises of Buddhism is that it’s not so much what we do as why we do it. The motivation, intentional quality behind the act, and the thinking that goes into it. And so in listening to a talk or meditation, in fact, in some way all the various activities that we engage in, you know, in our everyday life, we try to reorientate ourselves, try to redirect ourselves, get back in touch with some of our more deeply held values. What is important to me? What is worthwhile to me?
What brings meaning to my life as a very unique self actualizing individual? Not what I’ve been told is important, what I’ve been conditioned to believe, but within my own experience, what has worked for me. And to continually to return to some of the guidelines that we have set for ourselves during the course of our life, and the ways that we would like to live our lives, values that we like to uphold in our life, ideas that we like to express through our life. In the context of a Buddhist practice, it’s used that this idea of redirecting ourselves, of reorientating, reprioritizing, is traditionally termed going for refuge. We go for refuge to the Buddha, and you know the Buddha, depending upon the level of our understanding, the level of our motivation, the level of our practice, doesn’t necessarily have to be seen as something external to one’s own self.
You know, our basic sanity, our brilliant wisdom, our native intelligence, you know, all the things that the qualities and the characteristics which constitute an awakened way of being, but perhaps in their seed forms, perhaps a dormant quality. And we go with reference to our own wisdom, seeing the way things are, divorced of our preconceptions, misconceptions, of our superstitions, our biases, our prejudices, trying to see reality directly. There’s an abiding faith in Buddhism that the truth will make us free. And so over and above all doctrines and dogmas, all philosophies and systems of belief, we want to know the way things are. And it’s our own experience, own wisdom which can tell us the way things are beyond our conceptualization, our interpretation.
We go for refuge to love, compassion, the very basis of solving our problems. And we go for refuge, that is to say, we redirect ourselves, we reorientate ourselves to extend, to expand our scope of concern from the narrow self limiting confines of our self centeredness to embrace a wider and greater concern. You know, hopefully, and ultimately to embrace all that lives within the scope of our concern as to their happiness, to their suffering. You know, going beyond our peripheral vision and accepting a greater universal responsibility. And we go for refuge to an exuberance for life, some sort of creative energy, mental, physical, spiritual power.
So these qualities are dormant, are innate, are intrinsic to all of us. And so this process of redirecting is simply a process of reorientating ourselves from seeing our problems and therefore the solutions to our problems outside of ourselves, but beginning to see the solutions in terms of our own capacities to solve our problems with inside of ourselves. And we go for refuge to the Dharma, that which helps us to realize the Buddha within inside of ourselves, that which fosters, which acts as supporting condition, that which allows the space and creates the atmosphere conducive to the expression of wisdom, love and compassion and exuberance for life within our everyday existence. Consciously creating that space, consciously inviting as it were the free flow of the energies which are oftentimes blocked, are oftentimes discounted, which are oftentimes not allowed to express themselves, to manifest themselves, creating that space, that conscious making the conscious effort to get in touch and to find ways to foster in the ways we call dharma. And the dharma is can be translated as truth.
Anything which has the capacity to raise the level of our consciousness, anything which has the ability, the power, the capacity to take our minds from attachment to openness, from desire to generosity, from hatred to love, from self centeredness to other centeredness, from ignorance to wisdom, that’s Dharma. It doesn’t matter whether we call it the Buddha Dharma or whether it comes under any sort of spiritual guide or not. That which works for us to raise the level, to help us to express and give us most potential to become a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being. And we go for refuge to the Sangha. The Sangha is the social context in which all of this takes place.
human beings are essentially social beings and therefore mental health is a social phenomenon. We cannot exist. The traveling of a spiritual path is not the mere gaining of realizations in isolation from others, as if we could. It involves supporting and being supported by others, doing whatever is necessary to facilitate the physical, mental, spiritual well-being of others. And it is the gathering together of individuals who take the principles of awakening, take the principles of justice, nonviolence, love, wisdom, are central focal points of their life.
And they freely associate with one another. Those like minded individuals who who likewise are seeking to foster, to imbue these values in their everyday life. And they come together, doing whatever is necessary to support one another in this process, acting as teachers for one another, as guides for one another, as inspiration, as supports, encouraging, relying on one another, doing whatever is necessary, whatever will facilitate the development of another individual in this movement toward and expressing this intrinsic instinct for wakefulness. And we try to raise our level of our motivation such that we’re not doing this just for our own piece of chocolate cake. Not for our own.
You know, one of the insights to be gained is that one of our most basic problems is that we’re completely wrapped up in our own problems. And in the course of concerning ourselves solely with our own problems, trying to find some sort of solution, we actually inhibit the possibility of a real solution. That is to say, opening our lives for the welfare of others, which is the most basic solution of all. That basic most perhaps to all spiritual paths and all noble ways of being, whether humanistic or spiritual, is kindness. That all religions are probably most basically a way to become a kinder person, whether that kindness being in terms of being kind to oneself, and additionally becoming kind to others.
In seeking to be kind to ourselves and seeking to be kind to others, we have to implement wisdom. So the motivating force behind the direction of wisdom, gaining of realizations and going beyond our present ignorance-driven limited state, is kindness, is love. And so, if we enter into some activity, if our motivation or intention is seeking to be kind, both in terms of ourselves and others, then we can begin to open up to the forces which are presently inhibited by our own self centeredness, own proprio drive for our single point of need in terms of our self. You know there is something much greater than to the totality of our being than the mere concepts that we have of ourselves, that we are not a model that we have of ourselves. We are not any particular conception that we may have of ourselves, whether that conception be positive or usually as it is negative, that we are not some sort of self image, that we embrace a great deal more than what we now conceive of.
And by opening ourselves up to a greater need and at being the motivating force behind our practice, behind our intentional quality of our actions, then we are opening up to a greater possibility of solving our problems because we are opening ourselves up to the totality of our being. In the sense that it is love and compassion, not romantically, not sentimentally, but in fact, which is the greatest force in the world. It is the only force which can bring us to express, to actualize the fullest potential of what it means to be a human being. So this becomes the intentional quality, the motivation, the reorientating process, the redirecting, the reprioritizing that we try to go through before our talk, before our meditation. Ideally before any activity.
And therefore our life becomes a transcendental activity going beyond the the limiting needs of ego. And we open ourselves up to a new way of being. A Buddha way of being, if you like, a new style of being. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. Now we’re going to talk about anger and tolerance.
I hope you can tolerate the heat. If I get boring, hope you won’t get angry at me. We’re going to talk about the basis for anger in terms of belief. You know that we can our behavior, our activities, mental, physical, are very much determined by feelings and beliefs. And it hopefully will be explained, most of our feelings, most of our beliefs are presently inaccessible, that is to say inaccessible to our awareness, to our control, this we call normally that they’re unconscious.
And to some degree it’s our beliefs are more accessible than our feelings. But in terms of the working with anger, working in development tolerance, it’s necessary to make use both of our feelings. Feelings here in the loose sense of feelings of anger, feelings of love. Not in a technical sense, but just something in an everyday way that we use the term. But also in terms of our premises, assumptions, ideas, those systems of belief that we base our behavior upon.
So we can work both in terms of feelings and the development of love as a way to work with our anger, and also with the basis, the premises upon which anger develops, upon which we develop tolerance. So the first in terms of feeling is something that is very experiential, it’s not something which is didactic which we can talk about as a way of building up an atmosphere, conducive situation whereby we can develop a feeling, but the most direct way in terms of meditation. So to begin with, I thought we’d do a short meditation together on loving kindness in terms of developing a feeling. You know the the more loving we are the less angry we can become. Anger and love are very much like hot and cold water.
They cannot exist simultaneously at the same place at the same time. A person who is has a loving mind toward a particular object, while that loving mind is manifest, cannot develop anger toward that same object. The two are like the balance beams of scale. If the love is predominant, then anger cannot develop. So it’s important that we both approach the problem of working through anger, the development tolerance, both in terms of intuition and experience, and not just the intellect in terms of belief and the systems of belief.
Though I think beliefs ultimately are the basis of our activity. But they both are necessary, you know, if we’re going to work in a holistic method, taking in terms of both our intellectual and our emotional lives. So if you’d like to take a comfortable posture, I’ll lead you through a meditation on loving kindness. We’re going to begin with ourselves. Whatever mistakes that you may have created in the past, whatever wrongs you feel you may have done, you can simply develop a sense of regret about them, and as best you can determine not to repeat them again in the future, can begin again.
And however you may feel about yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change, you can become anything that you want to be. But just for this present moment, we want to set aside the past and the future and try to make friends with ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, even perhaps those parts we don’t like very much. Be kind to ourselves and wish ourselves well. So try to generate some caring, kind thoughts toward yourself. May I be happy, may I grow, may I not suffer, may I have all the goodness of life.
Treat yourself well. Wish yourself well. Be kind to yourself. And wish yourself happiness. Now think of someone that you love, that you like, and imagine that person in front of you.
If you can’t see them, it doesn’t matter, just just feel that the person is there. And remember all the good times that you shared, all the various kindnesses that this person has shown you. Begin to to direct, to radiate out the kind, caring feelings which naturally arise when you think of this person in this way, feelings of wishing them happiness, wishing that they’re not suffering. May you be happy, may have all the good things of life, May you not have any problems. Wish them well, wish them happy.
And think of someone that you neither like nor dislike. How many you feel indifference towards, a stranger? Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. We want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually judge people by, Whether they’re old or young, whether they’re male or female, attractive or unattractive, rich or poor, go beneath all of those appearances and try to see that person who simply wants to be happy, who doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself.
And wish them happiness just as you would for yourself. Since basically, they’re exactly the same. Now think of someone you’re having problems with, someone you don’t like, and imagine that person in front of you. Again this person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. Perhaps their methods of finding their happiness, solving their problems has come in conflict with your methods of finding your own happiness, solving your own problems.
It’s just a conflict of self interest. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for. Perhaps this person is on the same boat, and just as you have to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made, you have to begin to forgive this person. So just for this present moment, set aside your hurt, your grudge, your anger, and see someone very much like yourself, doing the best they can to get some happiness out of life, oftentimes being very confused about how to go about it and making many mistakes along the way. And out of the great compassion of your heart, wish them well, wish them happy.
And imagine these four people together, their self and these three others. And though they appear very differently to you, though they have very distinct feelings from each one of them, behind their eyes is someone who wants to be happy, someone who doesn’t want to suffer exactly the same, no difference whatsoever. From that point of view they’re all equal. Without any feelings of bias, they radiate out a wish of well-being to all four equally. And all the people in this room, people who are searching, trying to take responsibility for their lives, for their happiness.
I’m wishing everyone in the room that they find whatever it is they’re looking for peace, love, realization, whatever that might be. I wish that they have it, that they’d be happy, that they’re not suffering. Extending this wish out further and further to all the fortunate people in their homes watching television, cooking, reading the newspaper. Everything that they do, everything they say, they hope it’s going to bring them happiness, hope it’s going to solve their problems. Wish them that happiness.
Wish them the solution to their problem. Further and further to all of Adelaide, the people in the cars and buses, on the streets, in their homes and shops and offices, on the beaches. Further and further extending this wish of happiness and well-being to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects. Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country. New Zealand, the entire Southern Hemisphere.
Taking the entire world into your heart, all the peoples, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects, everything that lives on the earth is touched by a wish that they’d be happy, that they’re not suffering. Extending this wish, radiating this wish in all the directions of space. Further and further. Without any sense of limits or limitations. Until finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all of infinite space, I wish may all things be happy.
May all be happy. I think that practically the whole human race is out of its goddamn mind and could use therapy. All are biologically prone to think crookedly. All humans are somewhat nutty because they refuse pig headedly to accept reality, and therefore make themselves depressed, anxious and enraged. I think this was a quote from an American psychotherapist.
I think Buddhism would totally agree with that idea. You know, we have various anger arises in dependence upon distorted beliefs, distorted premises. We have a particular activating event, and generally we experience some kind of emotional consequence of that event. Someone says I’m going to come over and help you to paint your house, and you make all the necessary preparations and they don’t show up. They forget they go to the beach, and you get angry, you feel very justified, made an agreement and they didn’t live up to There’s a sense that the anger is dependent upon their action, this activating circumstance, and as a consequence they caused your anger.
But what we fail to see is that there’s an intervening process between the activating event and the consequence, the emotional result. And that is our system of beliefs. And our beliefs are both Our life is based upon systems of beliefs, assumptions, ideas, premises. Most of these beliefs, these assumptions, these ideas are as I mentioned previously are below the threshold of awareness. We quite often don’t understand what our beliefs are and we fail to note that it is our beliefs which determine the experiential result in terms of our emotional life.
There is an intervening process, and our beliefs upon which these consequences are based can be both rational and irrational. In an in dependence upon irrational beliefs, we have, as a result, experience inappropriate consequences. One type of inappropriate consequence is anger, the idea of rage, anxiety. The same activating condition, situation on the basis of rational beliefs might bring about an appropriate type of consequence, though you might not like it. It would not be anger, it might be something of irritation, it might be sadness, feeling of being let down, it was unfortunate, but it wouldn’t be anger.
So we’re going to look at anger in terms of anger as being a symptomatic behavior. The mind is a system, a self correcting system. If we had air conditioning in this room, we could have a great example of a self correcting system. There we go. It’d be nice to.
There’s a certain calibrated, you set the thermostat when it goes beneath a certain threshold, circuit is closed, the air conditioner comes on, and the room begins when it goes below. The circuit is opened, the air conditioner shuts off, and the temperature of the room begins to rise. When it goes above a certain threshold, the circuit closes, the air conditioner comes back on, and in the air conditioner, the temperature in the room is lowered. And there’s a certain steady state which is being sought, a homeostatic balance, an equilibrium. Experientially this is experienced as a sense of well-being or peace, this steady state in terms of the system of the mind.
Anger is a symptomatic behavior. It is the way the mind is beginning to adjust to some deviation, to some imbalance, internal imbalance within itself, terms of some sort of distress. It’s a way a person calls attention to themselves, that they’re It’s a way of calling attention to the attention of others, that there is an inability to cope with the present situation, and it’s causing distress. You know, the anger is saying, you know, I’ve been wronged, I am hurt, I am afraid. That’s the basic distress.
An angry person lacks the coping skills necessary for their mind to remain undistressed in a problematic situation. You know that the mind is constantly continually trying to bring itself back to some sort of equilibrium. It’s constantly being thrown off balance. So it falls back on those skills, no matter how unskillful they may be judged to be in practice. But that’s all it knows, that’s all that’s been taught, that’s the way it’s been conditioned.
It meets a situation where it’s in distress. So it enacts, just like the air conditioner, some sort of coping mechanism to bring it back to some balance, to remove the distress. One of these, to relieve the pain, one of the mechanisms that we’ve been taught, the patterns of alleviating our difficulties to remove the distress from the mind. The mind is in distress and it’s trying its damndest to remove this distress. One of those patterns and methods that we’ve been taught, we’ve made use of over the course of our lives, is anger.
On the other hand, tolerance is an undistressed mind. A mind which remains undisturbed in the context of normally problematic situations. So in working with anger, it becomes, you know, we have to I think we have to respect ourselves and understand our mind is trying to do its best. We might find anger as being undesirable. It is undesirable.
But it is part of who we are. It has a certain intelligence about it. It’s there. It has served a function in the past. Perhaps it hasn’t worked well.
Perhaps now we have to go beyond that dysfunctional pattern, begin to use our exercise of wisdom and to readjust, to move on to a higher order of self correction. But we can’t do more violence to ourselves than we already have. Anger is an indication of pain, and we should quit causing ourselves more pain simply because we’re angry. You know, working with anger, it’s necessary to become appropriately responsive to what the anger is trying to tell us. It’s trying to tell us something about it.
You know, the wound is like a mouth, and it’s in which we have to listen. When we become angry, we have to listen to why we’re becoming angry. So in a rather than reinforcing the pain, We have to intervene in such a way as to allow the mind to heal itself, and this we can do through wisdom. So this inability of the mind to cope is found founded on various levels, hierarchies of distorted premises, which is the irrational beliefs. The more fundamental premise, the more fundamental a belief, the less accessible it is to consciousness.
And often we know more than we know, because a lot of our knowledge is inaccessible to our awareness. The more habitual, patterned, ordered a way of cognitive function is, the less accessible it is to our awareness. You know, when you first learn how to ride a bicycle, you have to think you’re overloaded with information, you have to be totally aware, you have to have to be conscious of every movement of your feet, of the balance of the bicycle. Eventually it becomes natural. This is the after we’ve learned it, it becomes a habit.
We don’t even have to think about it. We don’t have to think about the laws of physics governing the motion of the bicycle, for instance. The knowledge of the bicycle becomes an unconscious part of us. Our very body has tremendous knowledge. Most of that knowledge is below the threshold of our awareness.
Most of involuntary nervous system operates unconsciously. There are yogis for example, you know, the homeostatic balance of the temperature of the body, the way it when the body becomes hot, it begins to sweat and cools down, etc. Some types of some yogis who are able to to bring to gain access and gain control of what are normally involuntary reflexes of the body, such as being able to adjust the heartbeat, being able to raise the temperature of the body at will. So we can begin to access what are presently unconscious beliefs. Beliefs which have become habitual over our life upon which we base a great deal of our emotional internal life and a great deal of our external behavior.
And upon which, in this specific case, we generate anger, in terms of irrational beliefs. One of the basic assumptions of Buddhism is that irrational beliefs or distorted premises or whatever you want to call them are pathological. That is they are characterized by varying levels of disease, suffering, dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, whatever. Some sort of dis ease. And they will precipitate symptomatic behaviors such as anger, such as attachment, such as jealousy, pride, miserliness, as a ways of coping with that dis ease.
Now the most basic irrational beliefs that we possess are termed self centeredness and self grasping. Self centeredness being the misconception of the effectiveness of self-centered activity, this exaggerated self concern, behaviors which are engaged in at the exclusion expense of others as an effective means to find one’s own happiness. On the one hand, on the other self-grasping, which most simply is the misconception as to the nature of the self, believing that we are an unchanging, independent I or self. These are the most basic fundamental distortions irrational beliefs in which we operate our lives. Anger is is less basic.
It’s on a hierarchy of misconceptions. We can the fact that we get angry is an indication that we have self grasping, for example, that we that we practice self-centeredness, just like smoke is an indication of fire. But anger is an expression of these hierarchies of beliefs which are more accessible. So Buddhism would say, okay, if we’re going to deal with anger, it’s necessary to approach it from two levels. One is in terms of getting at the root of the problem, self grasping, removing ignorance from the mind.
The other, and that’s going to take time because it’s the most it’s the least accessible of our distorted premises of our irrational beliefs upon which we’re operating. But on another level, a remedial level, we can begin to work on anger itself. We can begin to work on attachment itself. We can never go completely beyond anger. We can never go completely beyond attachment desire jealousy and spite without removing its fundamental root.
But we can begin to lessen its duration, its frequency, its strength in terms of remedial measures. So the goal One of the fundamental texts for working with anger, for the development of tolerance, is a Bodhicaryāvatāra by the Indian master Śāntideva. And here he’s trying to in the development of tolerance to activate a feedback process whereby the many irrational beliefs that we’re operating on are shown for the absurdity of what they are. I mean we keep feeding back this understanding to ourselves, allowing the mind to correct itself. The mind is a self correcting mechanism in the development of tolerance.
And we will simply not persist in holding an absurd belief once it becomes self evident to us. You know we can have tremendous belief in our own basic sanity in this way. But it’s because we have not perhaps investigated, It has not become obvious to us the nature of our belief system, its irrationality, it’s not working, counterproductive That we continue. It is as if you know we have all had the experience and we continually miss or dismiss the lesson. We keep overlooking.
So Śāntideva in his text, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, tries to help us to point out, to show us the absurdity of the many beliefs upon which we are operating, in which anger, dependent upon which anger arises. And then the mind itself, you know, the very diagnosis of the problem becomes intervention. So you know looking at the problem of anger, beginning to diagnose it as a means of intervention, there are two conditions and one main cause for the arising of anger. Anger is a product. It is a particular pattern way of thinking, a state of mind of your life.
All products have causes. Anger has cause. It does not inherently exist, it’s not self existent. It arises in dependence upon causes and conditions. The two main conditions are frustrated desire and identifying an object which frustrates us from realizing our desire, from attaining our desire.
These are the two necessary conditions. The main cause of anger is a distressed mind. So if we don’t want a particular result, then the most skillful way to go about removing that result, that end that we find desirable, is to get rid of the cause. But no cause, no result. So we’re approaching the problem of anger in terms of removing the two conditions and the main cause of a distressed mind.
And most importantly in terms of removing the distressed mind, a happy mind does not become angry. That’s because that we’re frustrated, that we’re unhappy, That induces anger in itself. If we can keep our mind happy, if we can reframe the situation such that our mind does not become distressed, we won’t get angry. You know, to to illustrate these two conditions and this single main cause for the development of development of anger. This is a quote I’d like to read.
There’s quite a lot to cover actually. When Kütsugen was dismissed from office, he went to Khotan and sat signed by the river. He looked like a skeleton so pale and emaciated was he. A fisherman seeing him there said to him, are you not the prime minister? What are you doing here?
Kutsugen replied, the whole world is filthy, I alone am clean. Everybody is drunk, I alone am sober. This is the reason I would dismiss, the fisherman said. The fisherman said, a sage is not bound to things, is not the slave of circumstances, but follows them, acts in accordance with them. If the whole world is filthy, you must jump in the muddy water and splash about in it.
If all men are drunk, drink with them. What is the good of meditating so profoundly and idealistically? Kütsugen said, I have heard that when a man has washed himself, he dusts his hat. When a man has bathed his body, he shakes his clothes. How can he who has purified himself put on his old dirty clothes again?
I would rather jump into this river and feed my body to the fish. I will not allow my purity to be sullied by the defilements of the world. The smiling fisherman gave a chuckle and rowed away, he sang keeping time with his oar, if the water of the water is clear, I will wash the ribbon of my hat. If it is dirty, I will wash my feet in it. This was all he said and was gone.
So, you know, it is as if this is illustrating the first condition, that of a frustrated desire. Until we remove ignorance from the mind, we’re always going to have desire, to the same degree or not. But if we can begin to lessen our desires, then we lessen the possibility of anger to arise. You know, it’s as if the fewer desires, the fewer opportunities that we have for desire to be frustrated, we’re able to flow to go along with the situation. We have we have fewer preconceptions about what needs to be done, how it should be done, how awful it is if I don’t get what I want, and therefore less chance for us to be frustrated and therefore angered to arise.
In terms of the second condition, you know, identifying some object which prevents us from gaining the object of our desire, realizing our desire. If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff, and even though he has a bad he is a bad tempered man, he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear. If his shout is not heard, he will shout again and yet again and begin cursing, in all because there is someone in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty, he would would not be shouting and angry.
If we cannot see anyone who is actually if we cannot identify anything or person who is preventing us from attaining our desire, then we’re not going to have the condition, let’s say, for anger to arise. On the contrary, if we can begin to view those who in normal circumstance would be seen as preventing us from realizing our desires, realizing our desires. If we can begin to transform them, if we can begin to look at them in a different way, reframe the nature of their interaction with us. You know, have one of the primary goals of our life is happiness. In a book which I just recently read, the Dalai Lama said that it is if the very nature of the mind is to seek happiness.
This is our primary goal. In the course of seeking our primary goal, you know, that’s almost a generality. We have specific secondary goals in order to realize that primary goal of happiness. If we’re able to maintain some sort of perspective in terms of what constitutes our well-being, what is our ultimate welfare, then even though we are what our initial attempt at achieving some sort of secondary goal is frustrated, is blocked, we can see that this is a way in which it as a means to achieve a higher type of happiness. That those, you know, for example when, you know, Christ said love your enemy, good to those who hurt you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who maltreat you.
Give to all those who beg from him such that you can be compassionate as your father in heaven is compassionate, that you can be perfect like your heavenly father in heaven is perfect. The idea that I can get across here is that at one level of our perception, our immediate goal gratification may be blocked. But if we can see that it is the it is that those individuals who we don’t like, those individuals who prevent us, who appear to be frustrating us from gaining us what we want, who in fact begin to show us where we are in our spiritual practice, begin to test us, begin to those people who push our buttons are actually can be seen as bringing about a higher welfare in terms of development of tolerance, in terms of development of being able to develop a flexibility in dealing with situations and people. And that those who are initially seen to obstruct our well-being can become our teachers. It is a beautiful quote by Kahlil Gibran, where he said, I have learned silence from the talkative, I have learned tolerance from the unkind.
Why am I not grateful to these teachers? If we can begin to develop this attitude, though our initial immediate goal may not be gratified, we can transform that individual into someone who is not in fact blocking our achievement of happiness, but someone who is in fact facilitating our ultimate happiness. They in fact are assisting us. It is only people who give us a hard time with whom we can develop tolerance. Those people are helping us all the time, those people we like who are always doing good to us.
It’s not possible to practice tolerance. It’s not we’re not able to see who in fact we are. And then finally in terms of this last quality, the main cause for the development of anger, a distressed mind. A little story. One day there was a traveler in the woods in California in the dry season when the trade winds were blowing strong.
He had ridden a long way and he was tired and hungry, and dismounted from his horse to smoke a pipe. But when he felt in his pocket, he found but two matches. He struck the first and it would not light. Here is a pretty state of things, said the traveler, dying for a smoke, only one match left and certain to misfire. Was there ever a creature so unfortunate?
And yet, thought the traveler, suppose I like this match and smoke my pipe and shake out the dottle here in the grass. The grass might catch on fire for it is dry like tinder, and while I snatch out the flames in front they might evade and run behind me and seize upon the one bush of poison oak. Before I could reach it, that would have blazed up. Over the bush I see a pine tree hung with moss. That too would fly up in fire upon the instant to its topmost bow, and the flame of that long torch.
How would the trade winds take and brandish them to the inflammable forest? I hear this dale roar in a moment with the joint voice of wind and fire. I see myself galloping for my life and the flying conflagration chasing at my flank behind me. I see the pleasant forest burned for days, and the cattle roasted, and the spring dried up, and the farmer ruined, and his children cast upon the world. What a world hangs upon this moment.
With that he struck his match, and it misfired. Thank God, said the traveler, and put his pipe in his pocket. So there’s a good reframe. Even his mind, even though he was able to see the same reframing means to see the same facts and give them new different meaning. You know that the meaning is not inherent in the fact.
Reframing we the situation has not changed at least, but we changed the meaning that we attribute to them. So the same situation, match went out. But he was able to reframe it in such a way that his mind remained unstressed and he wasn’t upset. He didn’t get angry about the match going out. You know whenever we have to put up with some sort of difficult situation, something that we would rather avoid, we immediately feel unhappy.
This uncomfortable feeling is the fuel of anger. This is what the context in which anger arises. So to overcome anger we have to learn a way of responding to frustration skillfully. The full the sole function of anger is to make us miserable. The more clearly we understand this, the more motivated we will be to to train in tolerance.
So there’s a twofold approach in working with anger. One is developing the motivation to overcome our anger and to cease resorting to anger as a means of dealing with stressful situations on the one hand. And the other is beginning to to deal with the distorted beliefs or the irrational premises upon which it arises. Without seeing within our own experience the pathology, the destructive quality in our life of anger, we’re not going to become serious about dealing with it. We’re not going to be motivated to work with it, nor are we going to be mindful in our everyday life not to resort to it as a means of dealing with situations.
Once again, it’s the matter of our basic sanity. Once it becomes apparent to us and we repeat the lesson again and again so it becomes continually obvious to us that anger doesn’t work. It is counterproductive. It is not in our own best interest or the best interest of the solution to the problem or the welfare of others. Once that becomes overwhelmingly obvious to us, we will cease to resort to it as a means of dealing with situations more and more and more.
This is the basic sanity of the mind. Once it is seen, once it has become clear, nothing more needs to be done. The insight is the change in the behavior. We have to see it within our own experience. You know if there’s a there’s a method whereby we can solve our problems, then what is the use of being upset and worried?
On the other hand, if there’s no method whereby we can solve the problem, what is the use of being upset and worried? Those are fine words, but it’s difficult to put those into action, isn’t it? And if we can begin to train our minds well such that we look upon frustrating situations with a more realistic manner, then we can free ourselves of a lot of unnecessary suffering. You know, there is legitimate suffering and there’s totally unnecessary suffering. A great proportion of our suffering is illegitimate, unnecessary, self induced.
You know there’s the the quotation in the prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I like very much. God grant me serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Being upset with what we cannot change is futile. And if we and if we can change it, what is the use of being upset? You know it’s more productive to direct our energies and thoughts to bring about that change rather than simply to worry about it.
As I said, we resort to anger because we think there’s some payoff. We wouldn’t still carry around this dysfunctional pattern if if we didn’t believe that there was a payoff. So we have to begin to look in fact, is there some sort of payoff? Is it working? You just as in the on a gross level, you know, a person in an uncomfortable social situation may reach for a cigarette in order to to feel a sense of security, you know, a sense of A sense of well-being.
Likewise we reach for anger in a distressful situation in order to remove what is seen as the object of our distress. You know just desire and anger, desire and hatred are very similar in the sense that the are for example, desire is based upon an awareness of something that we lack. We become aware of a lack, a sense of not having. There’s a frustration with not having. So there is a sense of distress, the mind is in distress.
If I can get that object which I associate, which is seen as necessary to my well-being, then we experience the fulfillment of desire as pleasurable. But in fact all we are doing is alleviating the tension, the sense of distress and not having. This is another very basic assumption of Buddhism that that these are not real happiness. Tension reduction is not real happiness. You know, again the mind is simply trying to bring itself to a state of equilibrium, a sense of peace.
You know, and desire drinking, fulfilling of desire is very much like the drinking of salt water. It’s simply the more we drink, the more we need to drink. Now we have to ask ourselves which is better, not to have any desire or to have our desires filled. The fact is that our desires can never be filled permanently, they will always be returning. We associate this, you know it’s like the idiot in the corner, you know hitting themselves over the head with a hammer and someone comes up and said, why are you hitting yourself over the head with a hammer?
And the idiot said, because it feels so good when I stop. This is the nature of a desire. It does feel good when you stop compared to what it was before. There’s a tension reduction, there’s a removal of pain. And this is the same case with our hatred.
We have a sense of pleasure. It becomes, you know, our goal is frustrating. There’s a certain So we our secondary goal which we were trying to achieve has been blocked. So now we automatically revert to another goal, secondary goal, and this is to hurt. You know it is if There’s a vindictive attitude which because the pain of not fulfilling desire is temporarily alleviated by redirecting the mind and the bringing of hurt to that which is blocking our desire.
So there’s a certain sense of pleasure because we remove the pain of the frustration of not fulfilling our desire. We’re distracted from that temporarily by our anger at the object of what we see obstructing our desire. So there’s a sense of pleasure, but it’s not real happiness, isn’t it? And moreover, it’s self destructive. It doesn’t work.
No one likes to be around a person who’s angry, that you that you you bring about an alienating atmosphere. Nothing good can come out of anger. Our mind, you know, during while these distress patterns are operating, such as anger, such as desire, the mind is not able to think rationally. We cannot actually deal with the problem realistically. We cannot solve the difficulty in the throes of anger.
Your anger will will inhibit a speedy and effective resolution to the problem, whatever it was that you’re angry about in the first place. You know anger is a very strong emotion and tends to overlap or extend into other areas of your life. So it’s just not this difficulty which is going to be frustrated, is going to be made problematic, but it’s going to carry over into all your other relationships and activities. When you come home, had a hard day at the office, and you take it out on your spouse. So it creates unnecessary tension.
Produces an overall sense of uncomfortableness, an atmosphere of hostility. You know, the the there from an increased tension, is the feelings of depression, anxiety. One’s performance in life is diminished. One is not able to act effectively, think effectively. People become highly critical of you.
They simply do not have it’s difficult to trust an angry person, someone who there’s a lack of sense of safety, that they are seen as a threat at some level. You know, it’s very necessary that we look to see the destructive quality of anger within our own lives and see how it isn’t working. Perhaps the most destructive quality of anger is that it prolongs our unawakened state. All the various constructive qualities of mind are destroyed through anger. Constructive qualities of mind are generosity, ethics, tolerance, joyous effort, concentration.
That is to say, types of mind, patterns of thinking, are conducive to sanity, well-being, actualization of potentials, are inhibited, are actually destroyed as a product of anger. It’s simply not that anger exists in this moment doesn’t carry over, its effects doesn’t carry over into any other moments of our life, but it has consequences of destroying our overall well-being. You know, if you really want to be of service to yourself and you really want to be of service to others, then to direct your activities at dissolving your anger is a real statement about what it is you really believe is worthwhile. It’s a practical application of caring about yourself and others. So we can begin to So the method we are using is to change our attitude towards previously distressful situations, such that they no longer in a previously problematic situation, such that they no longer felt to be distressful.
You know, we try to look at things from another angle and try to come in contact, to gain access to the irrational beliefs that we’re operating on. You know, the two people can look at the same objective fact and have very different points of view. You know, there’s a there’s a now what is the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? An optimist says that a glass is half full. A pessimist says it’s half empty.
It’s the same objective fact, but they see the same objective fact from two different points of view. You know, presently we’re very much locked in to our habitual opinions. And we think we’re we self righteously think we’re right. You know, this person said they were going to come over and paint my house, and they didn’t show up. And that’s an awful thing to do.
You know, if I took this to the world court, they would agree. They would say, Yes, you’re right for feeling angry. This person deserves your anger. But what we’re trying to do is to reframe the situation and to get in touch with our irrational beliefs, such as thinking that this is awful, and to reframe the situation such that it no longer appears distressful. You know, we think, for example, you know, awful it is that that was treated this way.
Now these are some kind of irrational thoughts that we might have. This person said that they’re going to come over and help me paint my house, and I got all the tools, cleaned the brushes after they’ve been laying in the garage drying up for three years, and I went through all this trouble, and I set aside this day and they didn’t, they went to the beach. I think that’s pretty awful. It’s not fair. What we are saying is that this is one hundred percent bad.
It couldn’t be worse. That the house couldn’t it wouldn’t have been worse if the house burnt down or something like that. This person could not have treated any worse. They more than just inconvenience me, more than just that it’s more than it’s simply unfortunate. I simply cannot I can no longer enjoy my life.
You know, it’s simply more than simply the expense I went to, more than simply disadvantageous, more than unfair. I can’t I can’t stand it. I can’t I can’t bear it. It shouldn’t be like this. Everything in life should go as I want it to be.
I must always be treated fairly. That’s a real good premise, isn’t it? That it’s wrong for this person, and that this person must do as they agree. You know, there’s kind of some kind of gold letter, a plaque somewhere, that says, this person must treat me fairly at all times. People have to treat us fairly.
There’s no rule. It be preferable that they did treat us fairly, but they don’t have to. People don’t have to do what we want them to do. And to say that something is it’s really inconvenient, when it’s really disadvantageous, is not to say it’s awful, that we can’t live with, that it’s terrible. You know, it’s not to say that this person is a terrible person.
They simply acted in a way which was not to our best self interest. So we have to, as it were, begin to challenge our interpretations. Out of the sense that this person must treat me fairly, that they must live up to their agreements, that this is the way people should act, must and should, as if these were absolutes, comes a sense of distress. This person should be punished. This is awful.
I can’t stand it. I’m not going to allow it to to be. Out of this comes a sense of distress, and out of this distress comes anger. The basis of these many irrational beliefs that this is awful, that I can’t stand this, that this shouldn’t happen, it must not continue, that this person is terrible arises the inappropriate response, the consequence of anger. On the other hand, on the basis of rational beliefs, I can see no reason why this person must live up to their agreement.
It’s inconvenient that that didn’t come. It disappoints me. I feel bad. It makes me sad. It’s I went to a lot of trouble for nothing.
And these are what we would call appropriate responses, but there is no anger. Let’s think that we’ve you know, there’s a saying, Why get angry at the darkness? Because it prevents you from seeing what you want to see. We have to acknowledge that the present condition does not support what we want, what we desire. And so we, as I mentioned, we go with reality of our situation, we go with the flow.
At the same time we look for the light switch and try to work with the present situation. That’s the given. We have no choice. We have this idea that things shouldn’t be like this, but they are. So you can either live with that frustration, that distress, or accept and work with what the present situation as it exists on the basis of rational beliefs.
I’d like to read you just let’s see what we’ve talked about. Anger is self destructive, it’s not of any use, it doesn’t solve the problem. It harms both ourselves, our situation, the ability to solve the problem, and the people about us. Trying to see this within our own experience is primary to developing the motivation to actually not to resort to anger, but in addition to be motivated to work with the antidotes, the methods for working through our distorted beliefs which act as a basis for the arising of anger. That anger arises in dependence upon a main cause, which is a distressed mind, and two conditions: frustrated desires and identifying an object which acts to prevent our realizing our desires.
So we can lessen our desires, therefore be less angry. We can begin to see that the object, that those individuals and things which seem to prevent us from realizing our desires, can shift up to a higher level perspective and see that they though we cannot meet this initial goal, it’s going to facilitate us helping us to develop, to realize higher goals, our ultimate well-being. Possible. But mainly in terms of trying to say that the main cause of anger is a distressed mind. They are trying to, above all, keep our mind in a happy state, and this is done through reframing.
Facts remain the same, but we look at it from a different perspective. I’m going to finish in just a few minutes, but in terms of reframing, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the story of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. There’s a great little incident which illustrates reframing very well, how skillful he was at reframing. It is Saturday afternoon, holiday time for all boys except Tom Sawyer, who has been sentenced to whitewash thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Left to himself, life to him seems hollow in existence but a burden.
It is not only the work that he finds intolerable, but especially the thought of all the boys who will be coming along and making fun of him for having to work. At this dark and hopeless moment, writes Mark Twain, an inspiration bursts upon him. Nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration. Soon enough boys come in sight. The very boys of all boys who ridicule he has been dreading most.
Hello, old chap. You got work, Why, it’s you, Ben. I wasn’t noticing. Say, I’m going to swimming. I am.
Don’t you wish you could? But of course, you’d rather work, wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Tom contemplated the boy a bit and said, What do you call work? Why ain’t that work?
Tom resumed his whitewashing and answered carelessly, Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain’t. All I know is, it suits Tom Sawyer. Oh, come on now. You don’t mean to let on like that. You like it?
The brush continued to move. Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day? That put things in a new light.
Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth, stepped back to note the effect, added a touch here and there, criticized the effect again, Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said, Say Tom, let me whitewash a little. By the middle of the afternoon the fence had three coats of whitewash, and Tom is literally rolling in wealth. One boy after another has parted with the riches for the privilege of painting a part of the fence.
Tom has succeeded in reframing drudgery as a pleasure for which one has to pay, and his friends to a man have followed his change of his definition of reality. So trying to reframe the facts of our situation such that our mind does not become distressed. And whenever we sense an anger to arise, whenever there is a sense of frustration, questioning what beliefs am I holding to which are acting as a basis for the arising of this anger, this sense of frustration. There must be a belief, an irrational belief as a basis, otherwise anger would not be arising. The sense of frustration would not be arising.
One of the most pervasive is that things shouldn’t be like this. That is a very generality, a universal belief. Things ought to be different than they are on the basis that we get uptight, we get frustrated, and we get angry. And we have to begin to look within our own experience is on the basis of what irrational premise is my mind becoming angry, and begin bringing it to the light of day and challenge it, debate it, say why should this why should the reality conform to my wishes? Why must my friend come even though he agreed to?
There’s no logical basis. And we begin to weaken the influence of these irrational premises upon which anger arises, and thereby anger begins to diminish. So there is a lot more we could talk about, I think maybe we can discuss or have some questions about anger and how to work with it. Anybody have any questions? Any comments they would like to make or experiences?
Something they like to share? So one of the difficulties is that we have to you know, like they have military exercises. They play, you know, shoot they they don’t use they use blank bullets and things like this, and they go through the motions of having these hostile activities. And so that they’re able when the actual situation comes up, they’re able to think clearly, they have a plan of action, they know what they’re doing. Likewise, we have to, in the laboratory of our meditation and laboratory of everyday experience, begin to analyze, begin to work with our misconception, begin to cultivate antidotes such that as a preparation for the actual situation.
Because in the throes, as you well bring out, in the throes of the heat of the moment, it’s difficult to apply an antidote. We’re lost. We’re overcome. So it’s necessary, as it were, to make preparations. So this is what we could be doing every day.
So the way that we can begin to approach the situation, it’s important that you begin to see that, you know, and it doesn’t have to be in your experience, but this is most powerful, but it can be in terms of watching about you, reading the newspapers, looking at television, the disadvantages of anger and the advantages of tolerance and love. Know, beginning to see more and more how the dysfunctional quality, the pathology of anger, in terms of how it ruins people’s lives. You can see when read the newspaper, you watch television, what anger, the consequences of anger, you know, all the fighting in Yugoslavia, all the horrors that are going on, are simply a product of anger. Nothing more than that.