Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Drawing on Śāntideva’s sixth chapter, Ven Jampa Gendun argues in this 19-minute commentary that recognizing anger’s harm is itself the remedy — no extra step required. He works through Śāntideva’s verses on what anger costs: peace, sleep, relationships, and rational judgment, until habitual hostility cycles into what he calls “a crocodile feeding on its own tail.” He contrasts this with loving-kindness, showing how deliberately appreciating others reshapes perception while hatred dehumanizes until one’s world becomes a kind of private hell. The central practical instruction: rather than sitting in formal emptiness or deity practice, examine anger’s actual toll within your own experience — that direct recognition alone weakens the pattern. The session ends unexpectedly when the teacher, on the verge of revealing anger’s causes, stops mid-analysis and calls for five minutes of silent meditation instead.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 Tce 1991 02 27.mp3
UUID: 3dc56285-863f-4b5a-bcf7-bd9ca63c7970
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-02-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 18.8 minutes
Words: ~2,088
And without developing tolerance, there’s no that there’s no way that this process is simply going to continue on and on and on, and there’s not going to be any any growth. There’s not going to be any evolution. We keep destroying the factors, the the evolutionary factors which are conducive through our anger and through our hatred. Then now becomes, you know, we’re talking about we have to become aware of the destructive quality of anger. And Śāntideva begins to list goes through a few verses of different types of, you know, the destructive quality of anger, different types of dissatisfaction and frustrations and pain that arise out of anger.
You know, as I I’ve stressed again and again that we have to see all of these destructive qualities within our own experience. It won’t it won’t do much good. You know, Śāntideva is just sort of giving a few point and a few ideas that you can work with. But it’s necessary to actually, you know, make this the subject of your meditation and review your life, your your everyday occurrences, and begin to see the effects of anger on the quality of your life. If we don’t, then we’re never really going to become sincere about change, about overcoming anger.
We’re never going to to be motivated to make that consistent creative wholehearted effort necessary. You know, we’ve all had the we’ve all had experiences but we missed the lesson. So if we use our intelligence we can begin to draw the lessons out of our experiences. We don’t have to keep going through the same experiences again and again. Because this very process of diagnosis is not separate from the from from intervention.
You know, it’s not like two things. It’s simply becoming aware, as I mentioned, of the destructive quality of anger within our experience will begin to reduce the force and the frequency of anger in your life. No extra step is needed. It’s a simple fact of awareness because we begin to see that it’s not in my best interest. It doesn’t have the payoff value that I assumed.
I mean, that I assumed mistakenly that it did have. You know, we have to see it’s it’s like a higher order of viewing our situation. That our anger is counterproductive. And we have to continually feed that back into this system, this negative feedback. We begin to feedback this correct understanding.
A way as to begin to correct this distorted premise, to begin to break it up, this this system that we are caught in, this recursive patterns which keep going, repeating themselves, your reactive pattern. Somebody pushes our button and we react. You’re getting to create some space and you’re beginning to introduce new variables, understanding, intelligence, wisdom. So then beginning to create the necessary context for change. So Śāntideva begins to list a few destructive qualities of of anger.
Then the next verse, he says, if my heart is tormented by hatred, my mind will never be at peace. I will find neither joy nor well-being, neither sleep nor repose. There’s a moment that we become that anger arises, hostility, aggression, resentment arises, and whatever enjoyment we might have been experiencing, the moment before is lost. Whatever peace, whatever good feeling, it’s gone. An angry an angry mind is an unhappy mind.
It cannot be a happy mind. It cannot be a peaceful mind. It’s a distressed mind. And as long as we’re experiencing that aggression, that resentment, that anger, the mind can never cannot be happy, cannot be at peace, cannot be relaxed. Everything is immediate lost and cannot be regained until until that anger subsides.
And even and the point that even our sleep becomes fitful. We can’t even we toss and turn our bad dreams maybe. It’s like it’s like twisting a knife in your in your own heart, the way we keep churning over anger even in our sleep. The Śāntideva goes on. A worthy man, when possessed by hatred, will be murdered by those very people who honor his benefit, his beneficence with wealth and acclaim.
Such a person distresses his friends. Although he draws them to him with his generosity, they do not trust him. In short, no one lives at ease with anger. It is an enemy which only creates suffering. But whoever makes an effort to overcome it will be happy both here and elsewhere.
So, you know, in talking about this, the qualities destructive qualities of anger in in the sixth chapter of the same text, Śāntideva mentions, you know, who intentionally forged the weapons in hell? Who constructed the burning iron floor? The Buddha taught that all such things arise from an evil mind. You know, that hell is pervaded by hatred, by aggression, by hostility. You know, it’s based on this perpetual condition of anger.
You know, we we begin to build up a complete environment complete environment of hostility, of aggression. And we this of hatred, there’s there’s a we’re not even sure that who we hate any longer, of who of towards whom our hate is directed. It becomes as an undirected hate, a self consuming hate, like a a a crocodile feeding on its own tail. The more it eats the more it’s nourished and the more its tail grows. And it becomes begins to recycle.
It’s hate. It’s just this recycling of hate. And there’s there’s no end to it. You know, the the fact that hatred begets hatred, love begets love. The more that you destroy, the more that you see the need to destroy.
This is the way and this is back to karma again. For example, if we talk take the opposite for an instant. And one does a meditation called loving kindness where you begin to appreciate people. That is the word appreciation. There’s a there’s a term called katharsis.
Katharsis. You you imbue with value. You, for example, you can see you begin to see how kind they are. And if you work at this, then they actually begin to appear pleasant to you. You that is to say, you’ve developed the karma, the predisposition to interpret their appearance as being pleasing, pleasant.
This is what we mean by development of loving love, that they really look kind of shiny to you, inviting, appealing, cordial. You like them. Hatred has this opposite effect. We devalue, dehumanize. We create the types of predispositions out of our hatred where people, things, situations appear repulsive, uninviting, unpleasant.
If you carry this to the extreme, your life becomes hell. Literally. You know, you you everything needs to be destroyed, even yourself. You become you become consumed by your own aggression. Everything.
Everything becomes fire. You yourself become fire. And the experience of this is continuous unremitting mental and physical pain. So we aren’t in that difficult situation as of yet. But this is the tendency.
We’re we’re creating these tendencies during the course of everyday life. Now this is the extreme illustration of what we call hell. But the the the everyday hell that we all experience, that we all go through, being the creating the the dispositions to to cause things to appear ugly to us, unattractive, unpleasant, repulsive, uninviting, unattractive. It’s created out of hatred. You know, these little touches, tastes of hell.
You know, no one who is angry is happy. An angry person is suffering at that very moment. This is one one helpful way to develop compassion, to deal with anger, is to realize that this person is suffering at that very moment. Not only is the person himself or herself angry, they’re suffering, but they make they make the people around them miserable. Nobody likes to be around angry people.
You know, and the things that we can do under the influence of anger. You know, we lose our ability to discriminate, to be rational. The the anger is irrational. You know, we we lose our ability to keep it to keep an eye on what is important, what is of value to us, what is most important to us, to ourselves? We we are as if out of control.
We lose all freedom. We’re just kind of driven by this this hatred, this anger. You we’re quite willing to hurt even people who have been kind to us. We lose sight. We can’t we we cannot keep the the positive quality of an individual in front of our mind while we’re angry.
Otherwise, anger would not arise. We we do we have to depreciate them. This is the quality of all the afflictive emotions, that the object of the afflictive emotions do not exist, that we we either depreciate or exaggerate their qualities. In in the case of anger, we depreciate any good qualities they may have. We see only despicable qualities, only dislikable quality.
And so we’re quite willing to hurt people who have been extremely kind to us because at that moment we simply cannot be mindful of kindness that they have shown us in the past. We’ll hurt even people that we love. We’ll hurt even ourselves. We’ll even commit suicide out of our self hatred. It’s as if we don’t care.
It is as if we don’t care. It’s at the moment you don’t care. So, you know, it begins to appear to everyone that you don’t care. And we begin to poison the atmosphere that all around us. And we find ourselves eventually isolated and alone.
All the various in the various separation, you know, the separations within families, difficulties arising out of anger. Losing sight of how much we value each other, losing our ability to appreciate each other, forgetting, and hurting. Now our habitual hostility is a projection. You project it onto others. And we begin to to live with the vision of paranoia.
World paranoia to some extent that, you know, we’re surrounded by enemies of our own creation. Through anger, people become our enemies. They appear to be our enemies due to the force of our anger. Know, this is trying to to give some feelings of of the qualities of anger. But, again, that it’s very necessary that you go, you know, that you rather than meditating on emptiness or or some meditation on deity, meditate on the destructive qualities of anger within your own mind.
How much it cost you? I mean, how much love? How much peace? The destructive qualities of separation, of loneliness, self hatred, to see it within your own experience. And then maybe you it will be some feeling will come.
There’ll be some movement of the mind. So on some level in which we hold anger as being inappropriate mode of behavior will be weakened. That structure, that that pattern will be begin to slightly be dissipated, and we won’t quite get as angry as quickly the next time, as frequently, or as powerful. Traditionally, people, you know, they’re talking about in terms people who become angry take on a very unattractive appearance. They become red in the face.
Faces get all contorted and twisted. And this serves as cause to be born ugly in the next life, which makes sense, doesn’t it? And they or they they’re they’re they’re reborn as beings like snake, scorpion, spiders. That is the types of beings that people naturally throw stones at. They they they instantly dislike.
You know? You see a spider, wow. That’s, you know, that’s kind of a a neat thing. That’s because of that was your anger. You know?
It’s coming back that people don’t want to be around you. Naturally repulsive. I don’t know whether I believe in that or not, but it’s interesting. On the other hand, you know, tolerance. Through tolerance, the happiness of the mind is maintained.
And future existences, one will be born beautiful. If you want to be beautiful, be tolerant. That’s the cause to be born beautiful. So then, Śāntideva. So, you know, again, I don’t know.
We could we’ve briefly gone through Śāntideva has briefly gone through some of the the destructive qualities and experiences that arise out of hatred. And then he begins to go into what are the causes of anger. I thought maybe There are two conditions and one main cause. Right? Won’t tell you.
Let’s maybe I think I’d worthwhile not to go any further. Maybe a good time we can sit and meditate for five minutes.