Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun introduces three models of bodhisattva motivation — the king who leads subjects to liberation, the oarsperson who rows alongside them, and the shepherd who waits until every being goes first — noting the paradox that willingness to be last brings one there sooner. He connects this resolve to the two bodies of Buddhahood: the truth body as fulfillment of inner peace, the form body as compassionate engagement with the world. He then walks through the first four of the six perfections: generosity as inner letting go rather than outward giving, with a Buddha likened to a wish-granting tree that bears fruit without intention; ethics through the Sanskrit Śīla, literally “cooling” afflictive emotions; tolerance as the skill of reframing adversity so the mind stays undistressed; and the opening of a discussion on effort. Suited to practitioners already engaged with Mahāyāna study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 HMA 1997 06 25.mp3
UUID: 9c219a9f-4ea9-49ec-a08b-a876eae8816a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-06-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~6,295
So a process of can you hear me okay? Reorientating ourselves. Redirecting breaths. Getting back to some priorities that we might very much like to see our lives an expression of, the way we might like to lead our lives. But oftentimes we get out of touch, lose sight of, set aside for one reason or another.
Anyway, whatever the reason, kinda creating the space and time for ourselves to take stock and see where is where we’re going. Unless we change our direction, we’ll probably end up where we’re headed and trying to trying to determine where where is it that we’re in fact headed. Seems like it’s very very practically useful exercise to take up once in a while. Sometimes we might be headed in the direction that we we would rather not like to go if we never had never perhaps have taken the time to take stock and to see exactly where our overall behavior patterns and ways of thinking are in fact taking us, where we’re investing our attention and our energies. So, you know, this is very much a process of readjusting our motivation, The why, the purpose behind what it is that we do which is going to very much determine the outcome in spite of the outward appearances and outward forms that our behavior takes and and the surface gloss over our life.
The inner lived experience is very much determined by our motivation. Yeah. We were in a discussion last Wednesday We we got on, you know, the the notion of of, you know, the fact that, you know, to become a Buddha or, you know, this paradigm is kind of this this this orientation that we’re trying to continually be reestablishing ourselves for ourselves. This this this idea of the embodiment of the good life in terms of being. This happy, healthy, tremendously loving, sane human being that we’re perhaps trying to use as a model for ourselves to emulate and to direct ourselves toward where we’d like to be heading.
Give us something to orientate around. Intelligence and decency and caring in some way or another. And, you know, the the fact that, well, do we have to give up everything? And does the Buddha have to give up everything? Know, just and the the fact is that a person that can become such a person, a healthy tremendously healthy person.
I mean, there is still poverty in the world even though people have achieved Buddhahood. There are still people suffering in the world even though there have been people who have achieved Buddhahood. So I think, you know, again, it points to the inner intention, which is all important. A willingness to alleviate the poverty poverty of the world. A willingness to alleviate the suffering of the world.
Whether we it hasn’t been done up to now. Theoretically, there will be a time when it will be achieved. But there might be some time off. And so I wouldn’t wait with too great of an expectation that moment. But we can work toward it.
We can have that willingness, that intention in mind. That’s the that’s what is all of importance. And then we’re going talk about that tonight in a bit more detail when we talk about in the Awakened Heart, the intense resolve, the resolution. That’s why it’s important for ourselves as individuals in the quality of our life. You know who we are as a person and what we determine to become.
Whether we achieve our goals in life. Maybe there’s another question altogether. You know, the bodhisattva idea whether it’s practical or not, whether it’s achievable or not. Some of the logic is transcendental logic at best, I think, and some of the goals. There’s a a lot of it in a way is paradoxical.
There’s a notion of a in a way, guess I’m jumping ahead a little bit, but I’ve never been very good around staying on any single train of thought. In development of the awakened heart, this bodhisattva is hero with regard to awakening. It’s said that there are three motivations. There is the kingly motivation. Like a real noble king or queen, leading your leading your your subjects in procession to to the city of liberation to Buddhahood.
And then there’s the there’s the oars person motivation that you’re gonna go together. You’re on the same boat and you’re gonna row, but you’re all gonna get to that other shore simultaneously. And then there’s the shepherd like motivation in which, you know, the shepherd leads its flock ahead of him or herself. You go first, after you. Until all living beings have achieved Buddhahood, I’m going to remain within cyclic existence.
And there’s that intention or attitude of mind. And this latter motivation is paradoxical. Then the point of view is that the greater your willingness to lead all, have all others go before you, the faster you’re going to arrive at your goal. And it’s like the last shall be first. The more willing you are to be last, the more likely you’re going to be first.
So, you know, it’s in this attitude of you know, whether we’re first or last, it’s the attitude of willingness to be last or willingness to put up as welfare above our own. This this intention of mine, this motivation behind what we do, which is all which is all important, which is very much going to determine the success of our life and how we might determine what a good life might look like for ourselves. You know, we were talking so, you know, last week we were talking about moving from what might be called a deficiency motivation to a growth motivation. And with growth motivation, the two levels of growth motivation primarily for our own welfare and growth motivation primarily. And the word primarily is quite important, I think, for the sake of others.
Because, you know, it is not as if, in fact, we are forsaking our own welfare by practicing altruism. And it’s not an aestheticism. I think we can have the attitude that I would want all living beings to be well, that I would be willing to take the sufferings of others upon myself in order to achieve that. We can have that attitude, but that attitude doesn’t mean to say it’s actually going to come about in fact that way. That attitude is tremendously powerful wish and aspiration.
And in fact, I think it will have beneficial result. It’s not a wasted thought or pure delusion as it were a fantasy. It’s going to bring about the welfare of both yourself and others. Through altruism, as I’ve mentioned and Dalai Lama has said that altruism is the way to be wisely selfish. You know, selfish people so why not be wisely selfish if we’re going to be selfish and begin to practice altruism.
In bringing about the welfare of others, benefiting others, our own welfare as a byproduct. I mean this is what is emphasized, that becoming this person that is the aspiration of the awakened heart, we will bring about our own welfare, our own ultimate welfare. Not just the superficial, not just the temporal, but all of what we could ever hope to be, ever probably can’t even imagine ourselves to be, will be achieved automatically as a byproduct from wanting to work with others in helping them to achieve their welfare. I mean it’s a it’s a different mindset, isn’t it? Totally contrary to our usual way of thinking in relating to the world.
Usually, it’s, you know, it’s me first, mine, mine, mine. You know, where has all our blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over life or our lifetimes, they were as they gotten us. They’re really you know, we’re pretty much in the same patterns of of thought and thinking and behavior and and therefore quality of life in terms of suffering and happiness. You know, all of our worry, all of our planning through it all really hasn’t gotten us very far. And you know this is trying to point out an alternative.
You know, I’m not saying that I think this is an evolution. It’s not something that we can probably bring about at once. But at least we can point our cart in that direction, you know, if that’s where we would like to go, if it looks desirable to ourselves. You know, the prayer that we recite together at the beginning of our sessions where we remind ourselves of possible alternatives and other values that we might to see our lives be led in terms of, you know, Buddhadharma and the Supreme Community, for example. And we try to raise the level of our motivation.
And we say, you know, by by the creative potential, some kind of power that we’re able to accumulate through our practice of, for example, generosity, you know, enlisting the six perfections. You know, the the bodhisattva actually does something. He doesn’t sit around and say, oh, I wish I could achieve Buddhahood. I wish I could achieve the Buddhahood. Nice thought, but it doesn’t get you very far.
It doesn’t put food in other people’s stomachs. We actually have to do something in practice. You know, traveling a spiritual path involves, you know, putting one foot in front of the next, actually doing something. There’s no substitute for actually beginning and make in order to make a difference a difference that’s gonna make a difference, So he practices or she practices something, does something, some kind of work is involved. And this is called the six perfections.
You know, where they’re going and what they want to achieve. Can achieve the welfare of their own welfare into its ultimate end, but also the welfare of others. And uh-huh. Yeah. I’m going to go through them.
But okay. Generosity, ethics, tolerance, effort, meditative stabilization, difficult to say. Stabilization, difficult to say, and wisdom and wisdom. Okay? Sixth perfection.
You know, I said that by doing what we’re doing, we’re gonna we’re trying we’re trying to bring about. It’s not as if we’re gonna be, in fact, left behind. We’re gonna bring about our own welfare. The intention is to bring about the welfare of others primarily and as a but as a product, you know, without having to do much about it at all. We didn’t even think about it and get hum up in it.
We’re gonna bring about our own welfare. And this point, you know, how what does that look like in terms of in ultimate terms, in terms of what we in the as a Buddha. How do we describe that? How does that fit into our actual life? You know, the Our existence is is encompassed or expressed in in in terms of our own inner lived experience and in terms of our of our outward relationships with the world.
That’s that’s how we live our life, more or less. There’s two dimensions of being. The the dimension the experiential dimension of being. We’re in that part of ourselves which is very inaccessible to others, our privately inner lived world as it were. Something that’s, know, we can’t really share with others.
But we it’s very intimate to immediate experience of our life. But there is the part of ourselves, that dimension of being which is lived out, which is constituted by relationships with others, by how we be in the world, you know, however however forms it takes. So, you know, this is so this is in terms of bringing in terms of the goal of what we’re working toward. If we achieve our own end, what is our own end? We could say maybe peace.
I mean, by peace, I mean, absolute peace. A state where the the mind is we could call it bliss. Sometimes in other practice, they call it bliss or peace. And we call it the cessation of suffering. There is a there is enoughness.
No more needs is needed to be added. There is sufficiency, a wholeness, a completeness in terms of how we feel. I don’t know if you you know, sometimes we feel these peak experiences that we have from time to time when just to be alive is enough. Just to see colors and see shapes and hear sound. And that we’re pleading moments that we you know, I kind of like taste on our tongue of what maybe awakening might be like or just simply what peace might be like, a liberation, whatever.
You know, that that is seen as a fulfillment of our own welfare. We we have enough. We have we are complete. We are filled. We are awake.
But that’s the the the fulfillment of this of our private self, the inner dimension of our being in terms of our experience. But then the in terms of how we relate with the world, we relate with the world in terms of of skillful activities motivated by motivated by great compassion and working with others. And developing that relationship that relationship relation relational aspect of ourselves, that part of ourselves which exists in relation like being in the world, we are social beings. You know, if we didn’t if we aren’t our mothers didn’t hatch us or, you know, leave us on a on a on a tree limb, and we hatched out by ourselves, and we got on with our life. And I was watching I saw Microcosmos the other night.
And then all this and some of the you can see that there there were some who were, you know, like the ants, you know, they were coordinated in their actions, and there was a lot of interact there was a lot of organization in order that they they survived together. Their interdependence was and working together, each having a particular function was necessary for their survival of their species. Others they just kind of hatched out and got on with their life in one way or another. Their particular survival wasn’t necessary each individual survival wasn’t necessary to the species. But anyway, so, you know, if we didn’t have caregivers, if we didn’t have some kind of social structure which maintained us in something, whether however adequately or inadequately, we would we wouldn’t have survived.
You know, we and we we survive in terms of language, shared community of discourse, and our life derives meaning in that way. And so we exist within the world. Even if we were to run off into the mountains, that the way our particular unique way of relating to the world. It’s hard to say, you know, what function that might be performing. It could be performing something of an altruistic nature.
It could be just a way of isolating oneself for one reason or another. But anyway, it is in relationship. That is a way of relating to the world even in ice even in isolation, with withdrawing from the world. So in terms of fulfilling the welfare, by the it’s developing a skillful way of relating the world as motivated by compassion. And we call these in terms of, you know, Buddhist doctrine, the truth body and the form body.
The truth body or the dharmakaya. This is the experiential dimension of awakening. It’s like, you know, it’s like space without beginning or end. Total simplicity, then it’s beyond all logical determination, you know, free of all limitations, of all obscurations. You know, it’s an inevitable or inexpressible state.
Our experiences are very much like that in their essence. So it manifests as all knowing and the experience of absolute peace. So it represents the fulfillment of our own personal welfare. But then there is the expression of our awakening in terms of the social dimension of our being. And this is the form body, the Rūpakāya.
And this is the it represents the fulfillment of the welfare of others. And it has two parts. One is complete enjoyment body. This is the these figures that you see of many of these figures of these paintings are representations of enjoyment bodies. They’re, pardon?
Enjoyment. Complete enjoyment bodies. They enjoy or sometimes they refer to it as communicative. It’s embodiment of the communicative aspect of awakening and within but in a very pure land realm. And they only relate directly to high level bodhisattvas and bodhisattvas who have realized emptiness.
So if you don’t meet them on your way home, don’t feel like they have something against you. They’re trying from their side. But then there is another level of form body and that’s called the emanation body. Emanation body. Kaya.
And this is the this is the domain is this world of ours, world of ordinary beings like me. And they reveal their awakening through a variety of ways where they inspire beings to to seek freedom, and they and they they guide them by a variety of skillful means in achieving that end. So this is this is what we’re trying to achieve. I mean, and it may it may not appear that way. We don’t talk in these terms quite most of the time.
But we’re trying to achieve the the trying to actualize the fullest potential in terms of our inner experiential dimension of our being and the social dimension of our being. And these are expressed in in technical language as the truth body and the form body. And we achieve these. I mean, you know, one thing that people do appreciate about Buddhism is that it says, okay, everything has a cause. If we can create that cause, we can achieve that end.
And so we can go about if this is a desirable end, can analyze and see how to bring it about and implement the practices which are the causes for bringing this end about. You know, this is the walking, the walk, the spiritual journey, putting one foot in front of the next. And these feet, one foot in front of the next, are the collection of wisdom and the collection of creative potential. The collection of wisdom and the collection of creative potential. Sometimes creative potential is kind of my own made up well, it’s not quite made up.
Maybe these quite often it’s called merit. Merit? So this is how we achieve these ends. This is how we’re going to walk the path. And mainly by by the accumulation of the collection of wisdom, we will achieve this truth body.
That is to say, we will experience the actualization of our the fulfillment of our potential in terms of the inner experiential dimension of life. We will experience peace. And took by means primarily or mainly by means of accumulating the the collection of creative potential or merit, we will be able to actualize the potential of the social dimension of our being. That the the the relational aspect of who we are, how we be in the world in most skillfully and most profoundly. So but we we we we can actually we can actually do something.
And even at our level, we can do something. So, I mean, it’s not as if, you know, all we only realize the results of our practice by achieving Buddhahood. We the practice results of our practice are being realized day by day in some in some lesser to less some lesser or greater degree. Not in its fullest expression of possibilities, granted, but but it’s still there. We do experience some peace.
We do experience some more way functional ways of relating with people around us, more skillful, more more more of what we want in terms of the social way in which we act in the world and being in the world. So, you know, it’s a matter of degree, not of quality. It’s a matter of quantity in in implementing these practices. But there is something that we can do. And there are these practices, and these practices are called the six perfections.
This is like what a bodhisattva does for a living. They they this is they want to achieve buddhahood for the sake of all living beings, and they’re going to do something about it. And to achieve buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, to achieve Buddhahood means to actualize these two bodies. We call them bodies, but dimensions of being, whatever works, whatever kind of image works for you. You know, the the six perfections.
The perfection in Sanskrit is paramita. And paramita, you know, generally translated as perfection. So that’s that’s kind of what I stick to. But it also literally, it means gone over there, gone beyond, or in other words, transcended. It has you know, these six primary practices of a bodhisattva, they transcend ordinary spiritual practices through the force of the wisdom and the compassion to which they are conjoined.
So, you know, the Bodhisattva accepts sole responsibility for bringing about the welfare of all others. Maybe we can’t get our mind around that at present, but we can to a degree and we can extrapolate from what our present understanding, think it is possible. Anything becomes easier upon accustoming, upon familiarity. There’s no reason why we can’t do it. And if we can accept responsibility for one person, we can accept responsibility for two.
If we can accept responsibility for two, can accept responsibility for three, and so forth. I mean, theoretically it’s conceivable. It’s not something otherworldly or outlandish. It’s quite plausible, though it may be difficult, granted. So having awakened his heart, the Bodhisattva accepts sole responsibility for the welfare of all others.
So the implication of this commitment is, if it’s to have any real meaning at all, is that the Bodhisattva must be able to practically respond to the needs of others. And I’m going to talk about this later, that the word responsibility and respond have the same root. Responder, which means to answer. If you’re going to take responsibility, then you have to answer be answerable to the needs of those for whom you’ve taken responsibility. You have to develop the ability to respond, in other words.
So, you know, but not just respond in terms of the world, in ordinary attitudes of the world, in terms of attachment or aggression or pride and so forth, but in ways which transcend those ordinary attitudes of the world, to respond to others as a primary act of compassion. Further, when these practices, these six perfections of generosity, ethics, tolerance, etcetera, when they are conjoined with the force of wisdom, always this is emphasis on the development of both wisdom and compassion, or sometimes in a broader more encompassing term, method method and wisdom. Somehow, you know, that bringing these to a union, developing wise hearts and loving minds, integration of our emotional and intellectual rational potential, you know, to create some kind of unity and total totality in realizing our complete potential. So when when these practices of generosity and ethics, etcetera, when they’re conjoined with the force of wisdom, that is to say, and here, it’s described in a peculiar fashion. We’re talking about the ultimate wisdom which we’re going when we come to the third of the three principal aspects the path, the awakened mind, we’re going to go in a great detail.
But here, it’s talked about in terms of the agent, the object, and the practice. You know, for example, that in terms of generosity, that the person who’s who’s giving the gift, the person who’s receiving the gift, and the actual act of giving, they’re all empty of inherent existence. They’re all empty of independent or true existence. And what these words mean, we’re going to discuss ad nauseam in the future. But anyway, for now, that the things do not independently exist to one another, that the dependent arisings in various ways.
Once the once the Bodhisattva understands this, you know, that that that his or her practice of generosity and those who receive are recipients of his or her practice and the very act of giving are are all empty. And this is a wisdom which recognizes this fact. Then then their practices of generosity transcend ordinary practices, no matter how forceful their motivation might be in terms of compassion, because it’s been conjoined with wisdom. So by means of conjoining their wisdom with compassion, by means of joining their compassion with wisdom, their various practices, their giving, their ethical conduct, the way they practice tolerance, etcetera, they transcend ordinary practices. Therefore, they’re termed perfections.
So very briefly, these six perfections. Is this useful? Don’t know. Because we we we talk about this quite a lot. The the first of the first of the six perfections of generosity.
You know, I think it’s useful because, you know, in all of this, we’re going to see the emphasis is on the internal mind, not on outward activity. It’s not to say that, you know, if if the mind is real, if it’s genuine, then there will there will come it will be expressed in our outward activity. You know, it’s not to say, well, it’s enough to to think generous thoughts and leave it at that. If you are genuinely thinking generous thoughts, it will be evident in your outward behavior. It’s you know, there’s we don’t there’s no doubt about that.
It will follow quite organically and naturally out of that. So it’s not as if we’re it’s a mind trip, and we don’t have to do anything in the world. It’s just that we don’t have to prescribe particular ways of being in the world because they will find our inner attitude will naturally flow out into in productive ways in how we be in the world. So the first of these six perfections, that of generosity. So it’s not so much a and this is my point that we in this last week’s discussion where we talked about the fact that people have achieved Buddhahood, but there’s still poverty in the world.
It’s not so much the perfection of generosity is not so much a matter of becoming more and more charitable and actually giving away whatever it is that we may have, whether it’s money or materials or time or energy, whether it’s protection from fear, whether it’s the giving of teachings. Example. The emphasis on the perfection of generosity is in our willingness to give. That is, in our developing the capacity to give up what is mine, my possessions, my territory, my privacy, my security, my knowledge. The practice of generosity lies it doesn’t lie so much in the outward act of giving as it does in the inner act of letting go.
The letting go which is associated with non attachment. You know, letting go of our need to hold on to ourselves and what are whatever it is that we identify ourselves with. You know, the giving up of kind of a centralized approach in our relationships and and generously communicating and participating with in the world of others. You know, the a spontaneous act of environmental generosity. And this is what a Buddha I mean, it’s hard to imagine.
And this may sound strange to you, a Buddha a Buddha has no conceptual thought. They have they don’t have the thought to help anybody. You know? They that they’re quite oftentimes, they’re likened to a wish granting tree. And this is an image.
It’s nothing worth to help us to give us some sense of of what what is going on for our Buddha, you know, what they’re about. You know, a wish granting tree, it doesn’t have it it grows fruit. That’s that’s a natural outcome of its nature. Now people can come along, and they can pick the fruit. It’s available.
It’s waiting there to be plucked. And they they can eat it, they can enjoy it, and they’ll be nourished by it. But but the tree but the tree grows. It’s simply there. And and and there there come there’s something coming from the side of sentient beings from the people who are going to do the plucking, you know, the picking from the tree.
The tree has no intention of helping anybody, of nourishing anybody, of causing pleasure to anybody. Strange when we think of it in that way. But still, it is let us say, by our very being of who we are, we naturally are beneficial. That’s expressed just by our existence. We don’t have to contrive, you know, make a you know, have committees draw plans, work out government policies.
It’s really I I mean, it’s really I find it very inspiring and wonderful to think I you know, you could just buy who you are. You’re you’re continually benefiting others spontaneously just like this wish granting tree. You know, the the fruit is always just kind of dropping off you and people can you know, there there’s some kind of opening takes place, communication, and some kind of space is open and maybe some benefit happens. Generosity, you know, the the giving up of a centralized approach and this kind of letting go of what is mine. Ethics.
Second perfection. So again, more than just it’s not simply a matter of just restraining ourselves, you know, putting ourselves in some kind of moral straight jacket, you know, a set of moral principles in regulating our conduct, being good boys and girls in one way or another, whether we put those in sophisticated ways or words or not. That’s what it has the notion about it. The emphasis in the perfection of ethics is aligning ourselves with our own basic sanity, you know, our own basic decency that we all have. And in doing so, cultivating positive states, skillful actions.
It also involves thinking and speaking and acting in ways that are conducive to pacifying the mind. And this is interesting because the Sanskrit word for what is usually translated as ethics, sometimes translated as morality, is Śīla. And Śīla means literally cooling. The literal meaning of the Sanskrit word Śīla is cooling, cooling the afflictive emotions, the heat, the fire of our own afflictive emotions. So ethics becomes, in this way of thinking, the discipline of not indulging in our dysfunctional patterns that normally dominate our thinking and behaving.
Then finally, ethics involves bringing about the welfare of others. So in Buddhism in general, general to Buddhism is the ethic of non violence. And that’s basic. In particular to the universal vehicle, the Mahāyāna, the ethic of benefiting others. You know, the Dalai Lama has said that, you know, in a way we can sum up all of Buddhism in two sentences.
If you can help others, help them. If you can’t, at least don’t hurt them. And for the bodhisattva, this means the root ethic of committing themselves to alter altruistic activity and helping others, and the restraint of self centeredness so they don’t harm others. There’s a there’s a there’s a lot of profundity there. Third perfection, the perfection of of tolerance, sometimes called patience, whichever works for you.
This, again, maybe going beyond the simple minded notion of what how we usually think of of patience or tolerance, know, like gritting your teeth, you know, trying to overlook, trying our best to overlook what what what is actually going on or what we’re actually feeling. You know, try, you know, so so that we don’t lose our temper. You know, this isn’t really happening to me. In one way or another, you know, maybe, you know, maybe there there there may be times when it comes down to that, but that’s not particularly skillful. It’s not particularly I mean, it’s better probably than to allow ourselves to be overcome with anger and whatever.
But still, can we can maybe we can do better than that in terms of of of working with methods and antidotes in the development of tolerance. The perfection of tolerance has more to do with developing coping skills necessary to maintain an undistressed mind in the face of adversity? An undistressed how can we how can we keep our mind from becoming distressed when we meet difficult situations and people? In life in general. So in the absence of irritation, in the absence of annoyance, then anger and hostility and aggression simply will not arise.
The main cause of anger, of hatred, is it is an unhappy mind. It’s a distressed mind. This is I think that’s interesting, isn’t it? I mean, you know, many of my teachers, Khensur Rinpoche for example, you know, when when you leave, they say, be happy. And it’s great.
But it’s really a very profound advice. Really, to habituate your mind to happiness. I think it’s a it’s a useful practice. It’s useful from in a very productive way in that we will begin to incorporate a sense of of happiness into our own self identity, into how we think of ourselves in terms of our life qualities. I’m a I’m a happy person.
But also it lessens the possibility for anger and irritation, anger and aggression, hostility. The main cause of anger is a distressed mind. People who become angry are distressed. They’re hurting in some way or another. If we can remove that distress, anger will not arise.
The main cause is absent. So the practice of tolerance is particularly directed toward developing the abilities to accept the harm inflicted upon us by others. Useful in a very practical and mundane sense. It’s also needed to be developed in terms of enduring enduring the hardships that we that are undergone in serving others. So, you know, this is very necessary We’re actually going to get out in the world and, you know, get dirty like the Bodhisattva does in working with others.
And just in difficulties of life in general. And to be able to forbear the legitimate sufferings of of a spiritual practice, you know, that that a that a spiritual journey inevitably entails. And they’re working, you know, trying to not allow these dysfunctional patterns to overwhelm us, to begin to apply antidotes to to try to tame the wild elephant of the mind involves some kind of difficulty, some kind of hardship. There’s no getting around it. And so developing a tolerance with regard to that.
So the skill of tolerance lies in our ability to reframe. You know, this this is a well, not maybe not so much recently, but it was a a real kind of buzzword in family therapy in the last ten, fifteen years or something, reframing problems. Reframing them in such a way that even if even if the external facts remain relatively unchanged, they no longer are seen as problematic. And therefore our minds are no longer distressed by them. Right?
Our minds no longer are disturbed. The same facts, the same situation can remain. But we have transformed our way of looking at it, and therefore our way of experiencing it and relating to it. We view the situation in a more skillful and functional way. You know, what was once a problem difficult to to bear begins to find some kind of natural resolution to to practice a tolerance.
So and this is this is one of the premises of of mind training, an area of practice, working directly with the mind, very practical problems. For the bodhisattva, there is no person, no situation, there is no task which cannot be tolerated because there is none that he or she cannot skillfully transform into a contributor on their spiritual journey, which is central to their life. Now for the Bodhisattva, all circumstances, both good and bad, assist them in awakening. If you’re sincere about your spiritual practice, if you really want to grow, then both good and bad conditions are fodder for the mill. They’re they’re a way of they’re they’re all able to be adapted to benefiting ourselves.
The enemy becomes your best friend if you have that ability and that that that willingness to work with the situation. Just Through the practice of reframing, through the practice of the development of tolerance. So the fourth perfection, the perfection of effort. Again, maybe it goes, you know, effort. Makes me tired to think about it.
You know, the that maybe the again, it goes beyond the simple you know, maybe the simplistic notion of, you know, diligence diligently keeping our nose to the grindstone, you know, you struggling against all odds, you know, storm, hurricanes, all the obstacles which are thrown up against us, you know, and seeing our goals through to the end persevering. You know, there may be times when we have to, you know, operate in that way, persist and exert ourselves in just such ways. But the emphasis in the perfection of effort. And see we’re trying to use we’re trying to develop some wisdom, some skill in all of these. You know, it’s it’s it’s not, you know, will is not enough.
Brute force isn’t going to get us to enlightenment or mental health. We have to use our intelligence in in some way in working with these practices and in getting what we want in life. The emphasis in the perfection of effort lies in not only generating the will. Will is important. Will is important.
Not only generating the will and the energy necessary to achieve our goals specifically, but