Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Tolerance is an undistressed mind” — Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 91-minute commentary by reframing patience not as gritted-teeth suppression but as genuine inner peace. Working through Chapter Six of Śāntideva’s Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, he traces anger to its root: distress arising whenever reality fails to match our wishes. He explains anger as symptomatic behavior grounded in unconscious distorted premises — chiefly self-grasping and self-centeredness — and argues that willpower alone cannot uproot it, using an alcoholic’s sobriety cycle as illustration. The AA Serenity Prayer, verses from the Dhammapada, and the bicycle-riding analogy all appear as he makes the case that lasting freedom from anger requires insight into how the mind actually operates, not behavioral control alone. The session closes with open discussion on anger’s evolutionary and developmental roots.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 Tce 1991 03 13.mp3
UUID: 6668eb1e-0a91-4b7a-990b-c1827ee09e6a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-03-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 91.2 minutes
Words: ~8,403
Establishing our motivation. Traditionally, it’s said that an object of refuge has four qualities. Fearlessness, skill and means, compassion, and equanimity. There’s various reasons for stating that something which is worthy of our Something which is actually going to solve our problems embodies these qualities. If we think of it in terms of not so much an external refuge, but the fact of our own future Buddhahood, our own future solution to the basic problem of the human dilemma or the human condition.
Now it’s going to reflect its four qualities. Fearlessness. What does it mean to be fearless? Perhaps it doesn’t mean so much that we don’t have any fear. Not having any fear is quite needed to be fearless.
When we’re in deep sleep, we probably don’t have any fear. It’s doubtful that we’re fearless. So the essence of cowardice is not to acknowledge one’s fear. And acknowledging, confronting our fear, but in spite of that fear, acting is fearless. Skill in means.
Ultimately, we want to understand how our mind operates. We don’t operate our minds very well because we don’t know how they operate. Ultimately, we want to understand the emptiness of the mind, its ultimate nature. But as a basis, as a platform, that ultimate realization, that ultimate insight. This is meant to say that we become skillful, we become knowledgeable, have insight into all of the conventional facets of the mind, the way it’s operating, the way it’s creating its reality moment by moment.
The quality of a deluded mind, that is to say the nature of our own ego. The ego is the mind’s misguided attempt to secure the self in space and time. And beginning to see how this is operating so we can finally transcend the necessity of this tiresome activity of having to reconfirm who we are, having to prop up a particular self identity, a particular image of ourselves, having to guard our territory. All of the dissatisfactory qualities which flow out from an ego based existence, which is the human dilemma, our human condition. They need to understand our condition, the nature of our situation, and how it’s arising, and how it can be transcended.
Skill in means. Compassion. Quite often we use the word renunciation. Perhaps conjures up images of hair shirts and laying on beds of nails and feeding on one grain of rice a day. Renunciation is essentially mostly to have compassion for yourself.
To care enough about yourself that you want to solve your problems. There would be one, I think, excellent definition of the word love by an American psychiatrist. The will to extend oneself in order to nourish the spiritual well-being of oneself or another. And I think in this sense it’s interesting to note that love here is not a feel a feeling. It’s it’s an act of choice, a volition.
We choose to love ourselves. We choose to love others. We all want to be loving people, but we aren’t loving people. And why is that? Because we don’t choose to.
We choose, we all want to grow, but we don’t. And why is that? Because we don’t love ourselves. We aren’t willing to extend ourselves to make those changes. I think there are many more choices open to us than we are willing to acknowledge.
Somehow we want to be swept away by our emotions, by some outside force, by something we don’t have to want to not take a stand, not stand calm. Support our truth, answer the call of conscience, listen to the inner articulate whisperings of our own heart, which means that somehow we may have to exercise our free will. I’m not interested particularly in getting into a discussion of free will versus determinism. But we have choices open to only if we begin to exercise those choices. You know, this idea of freedom.
Everybody wants to be free. But it’s very much the exercise of choice which is freedom. It’s an act of dynamic thing. A slave can conceive of themselves to be free if they never want to make any choices outside of the boundaries of what they’re forced to do. So we are only free to the degree that we make choices, the choices of going beyond our previous bounds.
That requires It requires there to be courage. That’s practiced Dharma, I think, is rather the most courageous act that we can hope to perform in the course of our life. To grow is to be a warrior. There’s a verse by the Buddha saying, I’ll have to paraphrase it, I don’t remember. Those who slay the enemy upon the field of battle are but slayers of corpses.
But those who slay the enemy within are the real heroes of battle. To stand behind, I don’t know, to support our own truth and to make those choices, to exercise one’s freedom, to extend oneself for oneself, to nourish oneself, to have compassion for oneself, to care about oneself enough that one chooses to change. And the fourth is equanimity. Equanimity is essentially an acceptance. We have to accept who we are and what we are, even the parts of ourselves that we perhaps don’t like very much, that we’d rather not know about.
If we’re ever going to know, very much what we see on the outside is simply a reflection of our own selves. To see an enemy on the outside is to see something in yourself that you don’t like. To see a friend is to find a part of yourself, what you feel comfortable with, what you can communicate with. Ultimately, the bodhisattva wants to have unconditional positive regard for all sentient beings equally. If we could only have that for ourselves, unconditional positive regard for all the various facets of our own personality, of the totality of our psyche, then we would be integrated human beings.
We wouldn’t be carrying on this war within ourselves, these conflicts. So, you know, we can begin the idea of stating what is a real refuge, that is to say, what is a real solution to problems is begin to have some orientation in our lives. We begin to create some kind of a direction. The direction is that to grow is to acknowledge my fears, but to act in spite of those fears, reasonably, in a healthy way. There are perhaps healthy fears.
If you’re standing on top of a tall building to jump off, might have some fear. That would be absurd to think, well, now I have to extend myself and overcome this fear. One of the great masters of this century in Thailand, Ajahn Chah, he said to find out what you’re afraid of and that’s what you should do next. Becoming aware of what it is you do fear and choosing to act in spite of that fear. I want to talk a little bit about this tonight in terms of what is called the eight worldly or the eight principle preoccupations of ego based existence, which some of you might know as the eight worldly dharma.
The eight principle preoccupations. And these are our various hopes and fears which govern our lives. Our lives are run on the basis of hope and fear, hope and fear. Trying to go beyond these hopes and fears. You know, this would be a direction toward growth, a direction to where we can begin to solve our problems.
Hope of gain, fear of loss, hope of pleasure, fear of pain, hope of praise, fear of blame, hope of fame, fear of notoriety. Becoming aware of these fears, our hopes, and not basing one’s conduct, one’s behavior on those ego based principles, worldly dharmas. Becoming fearless, becoming skilled in the operation of our mind. We have to understand the way our mind is operating, both its conventional and its ultimate nature. This is the way that you’re going to help you to solve your problems.
We have to develop compassion for ourselves, the willingness to extend ourselves in order to nourish ourselves, to care for ourselves. We have to develop equanimity toward ourselves, an unconditional positive regard. It’s not that we we don’t try to change what it is that is there, but we do accept what is there without the sense of this constant violence which we’re always perpetrating upon ourselves, of this constant judgment, of this constant guilt. An unconditional positive regard, accepting ourselves. So these become an orientation, a direction that we can continually begin to become aware of and act as like guiding signs, guideposts to work against our fears, to go beyond our fears, to understand the nature of our mind, to extend ourselves to alleviate our problems, to grow, and accepting ourselves with unconditional positive regard, knowing that you’re going to change.
And this becomes a way of actually solving our problems. We call this the ultimate paradigm of the solution to our problems is personified as Buddha, a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being, Someone who has solved the problems of ego based existence, of the human condition, of the human dilemma. And this becomes the inner guide of our life, inner principle of our life. And we do that by means of the Dharma, the various techniques, truth, the teachings, whatever assists our mind, whatever acts as a key. Think it’s too bad that that I have noticed that we don’t think very well.
We haven’t been taught how to think. I think we have this tremendous education. Go through this long process of being educated and we’re never taught how to think. Everything is simply shoveled in. We’re spoon fed all this information, to the degree that you can proficiently regurgitate it, you’ll achieve some measure of success.
But in this process we have never really learned how to think. There is no limit understanding ourselves and our world and our relationship to the world that we cannot go deeper toward. We can always understand things on a deeper level. And we have to make that effort. We have to somehow make what is being said our own.
We simply cannot be satisfied with anything less than that. Together, where is the wisdom we have lost in information? Where is the knowledge we’ve lost in information? Where is the wisdom we’ve lost in knowledge? Know, nearer to death but no nearer to God.
Otherwise nothing is going to change. You know, talk about the dharma. The dharma does not exist independent of one’s own mind. It’s only the dharma. It’s only a solution to your problems when in terms of it actually acting to solve your problems.
It doesn’t exist objectively from its own side as a solution to your problem. You have to have the creativity, the skill to make it a cooperative cause, a condition for your own insight to arrive. The main cause of the solution to your problems is your own Buddha nature, your own potential, your own capacity, your own basic sanity. The Dharma is simply like putting earth and water around a seed. Nothing more than that.
No matter how many shovelfuls of earth and how many bucketfuls of water you put in one place, if there’s no seed there, there’s going to be no flower. Nothing’s going to grow. So somehow we have to make the way we can make the Dharma a condition for growth is to make it relevant to us. It’s not enough to listen to the teachings. I mean, that’s a necessary context.
But the second step in the process is reflecting. How is this relevant to me? What’s this guy actually talking about? What’s he going on about? Is he talking about my problem?
Is she talking about my problem? Or is it some abstract? Or maybe people on the moon or something. Maybe people in east, in India or Tibet. We to learn how to think.
We have to learn how use our intelligence. Sincerity is not enough. It’s extremely important. The motivation is like the fuel, but the wisdom is the rocket which is going to get us to our destination. And how are we going to develop?
How are we going to think? Beginning to question, even the words, what does that mean? What does that mean? I don’t don’t know what that means. What could that mean?
Finding out, making your own Dharma. You know, our ultimate refuge is Dharma. Not Buddha, not the spiritual community. But it is and there are two aspects to Dharma. There’s the verbal Dharma and the Dharma of insight.
The Dharma of insight is our own realization. That’s our ultimate refuge. That’s the ultimate solution to our problem. And nothing else like that. Whoever fulfill your needs over a continued period of time, in all situations, in all places, under all conditions, your own insight, your own development of your skillful attitude.
Then everything’s okay. We go for refuge to the spiritual community. You know, those who support, who act as examples, who teach, who we share with. We have to have some context of opening our hearts. We often hear about the necessity to develop an awakening heart.
An awakening heart, the love of all sentient beings. Awakening heart, the altruistic aspiration to achieve highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. We’re isolated people. We’re lonely people. We have these skin encapsulated egos, which we form for ourselves, have become a kind of prison for ourselves.
And then how can we ever learn to love all sentient beings when we find it difficult enough to really love one other person, to be able to set aside, to create some crack, some opening, and be able to touch one another, communicate with one other person, let alone all sentient beings. It’s a noble aspiration, and it’s quite important to be continually being inspired toward that ultimate aspiration, that ultimate goal. But somehow we have to make it relevant to our present state. We have to have be able to have context. Enlightenment is a social phenomena.
It occurs within the context of other people. Within our spiritual community, we have to create the context where our heart can open to one, to three, from time to time in certain situations. And this acts as a source of inspiration to go on from there. So this is a refuge of the people, our spiritual community. Those set that context, that social environment, which we can an unthreatened situation, environment, where we feel safe and we allow ourselves to get in touch with another order of being, which is more often than not hidden from us, which is more often than not forced down by necessity of the way our society interacts on the whole.
So we have to create like an artificial greenhouse where we can nurture these seeds of sanity and love and compassion, and caring, warmth. And this is the solution to your problem. And then it makes sense to think, well, I can do this for the benefit of all sentient beings. I can do this, I can grow for the benefit of others. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha and the Dharma in the highest assembly.
And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the 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 in 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. 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.
We’re discussing the sixth chapter of Śāntideva’s text, the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, the section on tolerance. Tolerance is an undistressed mind. Patience is an undistressed mind. So maybe this is a new way of thinking about patience. Say, you should be patient.
Should be don’t get uptight. Be patient. You know, like you’re just ready to blow up. You just really want to hit this person. Be patient.
Be patient. That’s not patience. That’s repression. It’s suppression. Patience, tolerance, which we’re aiming at.
The mind remains undistressed in the face of a frustrating situation. We simply don’t get uptight. Our mind remains at peace. If we don’t get uptight, if we remain stress, we won’t get angry. Anger arises, as we’ve been talking about and we’re going to continue to talk about, arises in the context of frustration, of distress.
Without this unhappiness, anger would not arise. If there’s tolerance, anger cannot arise. When you’re happy, you’re not angry. When you’re at peace, you’re not angry. Anger is seen as a symptomatic behavior, that somehow ineffective.
It’s on the basis of suffering. The Buddha taught on the basis of pleasure and pain because this was the most relevant aspect of our life. Everybody, whether they’re Christian, whether they’re Buddhist, Islam, whether they’re atheists, whether they’re philosophers or work in a factory. They want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer.
It’s almost you know, this is beyond speculation. It’s almost an immediate experience. And then there may be different strokes for different folks, different methods to find this particular happiness as you can see there, to be, but it’s still happiness. This is what we almost mean by life form, avoidance and approach. Avoiding what is conceived of as pain, approaching that which is conceived of as pleasure.
On this basis, anger is seen as symptomatic behavior. An angry person is an unhappy person, is a distressed person, is suffering. It is a type of behavior that It’s the way our mind is adjusting to distress. If the mind is distressed, it wants to move out of that state. It wants to move into a state of equilibrium, peace.
So it has adapted certain reactive patterns, behaviors, coping mechanisms, in order to relieve its own distress. One of these which we have learned is anger. It’s very intelligent, isn’t it? The ego is very intelligent. It’s symptomatic because it’s not effective, but it is a method.
Anger is a way a person calls attention to themselves. The mind is calling attention to itself, saying, I’m in distress. It’s an inability to cope with the present situation. There’s something Anger is saying, I cannot cope with the present situation. I have to change the situation.
I have to act upon the situation. I cannot tolerate the present situation. My mind cannot remain peaceful. I’m distressed in the present situation. That’s what anger is saying.
Like, there’s something wrong with the present situation. This inability to cope is founded on varying levels of hierarchies of distorted premises. Distorted premises, wrong ideas, mistaken notions, false assumptions, our story. We have to try to make sense out of this world, this thing that we are continually creating about us. Out of this, we form beliefs about it.
We have assumptions about it, ideas about premises. On the basis of these, we act. We perform behaviors. One of these behaviors is anger. We have anger is All of our various expressions of behavior are founded on various premise, ideas, assumptions.
The more fundamental our premise, the more inaccessible it will be to consciousness. The more fundamental our premise is, the more inaccessible it will be to consciousness. Oftentimes, the more one knows, the less one is aware of that knowledge. You know, for example, when you first learn how to ride a bicycle, you have to be extremely conscious of every movement that you’re making. That’s very awkward.
How to guide the bicycle. The idea of you some understanding of the nature of gravity, the laws of physics, learning the various motor skills. But after a while, you learn. That is to say, you begin to know how to ride a bicycle. And the more that you know how to ride a bicycle, it is as if it becomes second nature.
We don’t even have to think about it. Less conscious of it that we are. And this works all the way down to our involuntary nervous system. It would be terrible if we had to be conscious we had to consciously breathe, consciously beat our heart, consciously digest our food. We wouldn’t have time to do anything else except survive.
All of these bodily knowledges are on an unconscious level. And for most of us they’re completely For yogis who are trying to bring to conscious awareness, the complete what we call unconsciousness, they can actually access this knowledge. They can actually control the beat of their heart. They conducted some experiments in Dharmasala, where I used to live, on some of the yogis who lived in the mountains. And one particular meditation called Tummo meditation or psychic heat.
And they can actually, they actually measured the heat that they could generate. And I think, I don’t know on a centigrade scale, but on a Fahrenheit scale they could, on the fingertips, they could generate up to a hundred and eight degrees on the fingertips. And normally it’s ninety eight point six. It’s quite an accomplishment, mean an accomplishment, but it’s quite a significant ability that control, able to access that knowledge and be able to make use of it, bring it to consciousness. By unconscious, I mean Deeply habitual patterns, deeply habitual beliefs, and types of beliefs, patterns, premises, are normally inaccessible to consciousness.
This is what I mean by unconsciousness. So most of us, most of our mental life exists on an unconscious level. That is to say that most of our behavior, most of our mental processes are deeply habitual patterns operating. That most of these processes, our beliefs, our premises, our assumptions, our ideas about the world and ourselves, are to the greatest extent inaccessible to our awareness, our conscious awareness. Therefore, we call them unconscious.
Through training, we can make the entire content of our psyche conscious. We can bring it to conscious awareness. These unconscious orders of mind, these beliefs, they’re not dealing with specific instances, with particular situation, you as to having flame on the stove, then it’s necessity to pull away your hand. But we have premises as to the nature of fire, which are unconscious. So our behavior is to a large extent unconscious.
It deals with specific situations. But these behaviors are expressions of underlying patterns, unconscious patterns, premises, assumptions. So we have particular instances of behavior. I like this. I don’t like this.
Reacting with love, anger, approach, avoidance, whatever, which are expressions of unconscious relationships, unconscious patterns, premises. So our conscious behavior arises in dependence upon unconscious general premises. I’ve been reading some cybernetics. Our beliefs, our assumptions, our story, how we make sense of this world. I talked about this before.
We have the different areas that we are concerned with, both in psychotherapy and Buddhism. Buddhism is probably psychotherapy is branch of Buddhism, I guess, a subset of Buddhism. You know, have beliefs about the about the world. For example, whether the world is benevolent universe, whether it’s a hostile universe, whether it’s orderly, whether it’s chaotic. So we have these beliefs.
Out of this, we’re going to relate with that world certain specific behavior, modes of behavior. This is our story. It’s a beautiful universe. It’s It’s supporting my existence. It’s orderly.
And out of that, there are certain types of behavior, like a going forth, an opening, a movement toward, however they might specifically express themselves. It’s a hostile universe. It’s out to get me. I’ve got to take care of myself. It’s chaotic.
It’s frightening. Out of that specific modes of behavior are going to find expression. How we relate with other people, how we relate with the things about our environment, for example, whether we see it as part of ourselves or whether we see it as something to be conquered, exploited. You know, we have unconscious beliefs about how we ought to relate with others, relate with the world, whether, for example, our relationship with the world is characterized by domineering qualities or submitting qualities, whether it’s loving or hating, whether it’s clinging or non attachment. And out of this, out of these premises, our view, our story, our beliefs, our assumptions, we’re going to obviously express certain behavior patterns, certain specific modes of reacting, relating.
We have unconscious assumptions, ideas about our self, the nature of the self. Whether we are illusory, whether we’re real, whether we’re mortal, whether we’re immortal, whether we’re created by God, whether we were created by chance. There’s random we arose out of the primordial goo. And out of this, out of this assumption, beliefs that we hold, we’re going to relate in specific ways, with specific behaviors. Now the point I’m coming to is that some of these assumptions, beliefs, premises are distorted.
They’re wrong. Or pathological, unhealthy. That’s a good word, unhealthy. That out of an unhealthy premise will arise varying levels of dis ease. Ease.
Ease. It looks better in print. Dis-ease. And out of this dis-ease, this dis-ease will precipitate, will catalyze symptomatic behavior. Behavior which is ineffective, inefficient, inappropriate, such as anger as a way of coping with this disease.
Our two most fundamental distorted premises are the patterns of self grasping and self centeredness. These are the two most fundamental distorted premises upon which we base our lives. These are the fundamental causes of all dis ease. Are the fundamental out of these fundamental premises, all of the various afflictive emotions arise. Anger, hatred, spite, jealousy, pride, eighty four thousand.
The fundamental cause of all of this is the pattern of self grasping, this particular premise, mistaken conception as to the nature of the self. The pattern, the premise of self centeredness, which is expressed in types of behavior of apathy, of indifferent towards other, of a sense of unrelatedness, expressing itself in types of behavior, unconcerned, uncaring, exploitation, exclusion, seeking of happiness at the expense and at the exclusion of others. So both of these are operating on an unconscious level, But they all find conscious expression in these symptomatic behaviors. They all are giving rise to our various ills. In order to get rid of anger ultimately, in order to let the mind not be distressed ultimately, we have to remove, we have to bring to conscious awareness and contradict and go beyond these two most fundamental distorted premises upon which we base all our behavior, which are presently unconscious, inaccessible to normal consciousness, are deeply rooted patterns, habitual modes of relating, of reacting.
So ultimately, in order to go beyond anger, we have to understand the nature of the self. We can work on anger itself, but until we completely uproot the ignorance misconceiving the nature of the self, this most fundamental basic distorted premise, we can begin to work at less distorted premises, less deeply rooted patterns as a way to decrease the force and the frequency of anger, seeing anger as pathological, as unhealthy. Śāntideva, his book is concerned with this, the ultimate uprooting of all the afflictive emotions, including anger. But in the sixth chapter, he’s seeking to help us to develop tolerance. That is coping mechanism whereby the mind will remain undistressed in frustrating situations such that anger will not arise.
So it’s like a remedial measure that we have to make use of. The mind is trying to correct itself. What Śāntideva is trying to do is activate a feedback process so the mind can begin to heal itself, to correct itself, which will begin to disrupt these distorted premises, these distorted patterns, these mistaken beliefs of why our anger is justified, why we feel that there’s some payoff to our anger, why our anger is mistakenly seen as an appropriate reaction to a particular situation. You know, beginning to bring into question these assumptions and reduce them to absurdity. In fact, have no rational basis whatsoever to again and again bring them to light these assumptions we have and see how absurd in fact they are.
And to create a context for the development of tolerance, to begin to develop alternative structures, the structure of tolerance, will help the mind to remain at peace in what were previously situations which the mind found frustrating. Śāntideva, in the actual text, which I think some of you have, he goes on to say in the text, Fueled by the discontent which stems from frustration of my wishes and the occurrence of what I do not want, hatred flares up and destroys me. So I must overcome the fuel of my enemy. There is no other foe who can hurt me as much as this. So here, Śāntideva is setting up the main cause and the two cooperative conditions for the development of anger.
What I wanted to I wanted to speak without interruption to you. Somebody’s preventing me. Am I preventing that from happening? Obviously. And I got uptight about it.
It’s frustrating from frustration unhappiness came into my mind, and therefore anger. So these are the three main cause is distress, frustration. The two cooperative conditions are a frustrated desire, a want to wish, and something which is preventing you, which is obstructing you from realizing, gaining what it is you want, your wish. Whenever we have to put up with something that we don’t want, whenever we want the situation to be other than it is, We will become unhappy. There is distress.
And the non acceptance of the present situation is experienced as distress. We want it otherwise. There’s some kind of uncomfortable feeling. Obviously, this is what we mean by uncomfortable. We don’t want the present situation to be as it is.
It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t conform to the way we want it to be. It’s unconforming. And therefore, out of this, this is the fuel of anger. This inability to not the inability to it is the wanting things to be other.
You know, to be other what do we mean? It’s a dishonesty in a way. To be dishonest basically means to demand that reality occur according to your wishes. And we’re all involved in this basic deception and this basic dishonesty. It’s a way that we respond to uncomfortable situations.
The way that we respond by our unaccepting behavior, not accepting the way things are. We respond with anger. The sole function of anger is to make us miserable. You know, the more clearly It’s been a long day. The more clearly we understand this, the more motivated we’re going to be to train in tolerance.
We’ve covered this ground. The two levels that we’re going to have to work on. One is seeing the within the context of one’s own experience and reason, intuition, the disadvantages of anger. This will serve as the motivating force. Otherwise, we won’t There’s no reason to to seek to develop tolerance.
Why should we? There’s no reason. Tolerance is an undistressed mind, a mind which remains at peace, undistressed, undistressed, the face of one’s wishes being frustrated, being blocked, somehow prevented. As long as our mind remains undisturbed, it will not become angry. Śāntideva goes on, Whatever happens, I will not allow my inner contentment to be disturbed, for I cannot accomplish that I wish by becoming upset, and my wholesome qualities only disintegrate.
You know, if we recognize, we appreciate the benefits of tolerance involved in voluntarily enduring difficult situations. Then we can maintain a peaceful mind in the face of whatever pain and suffering we might be experiencing. Nobody’s promising you a rose garden. You’re going to have difficulty. But we compound our difficulties by becoming distressed, by not accepting, by not being able to tolerate the difficulties, the pain, the hurt.
You know, we add suffering onto suffering. And why? Yeah, we’ll come to that. If we can begin to learn how to develop this skill with our mind, learning how to generate a happy mind, this is interesting. I think people can become skillful.
We are quite skillful at becoming depressed. We know how to do that very well or becoming upset. That’s part of our story about ourselves. We attuned ourselves to be able to we’re quite skillful how we operate our mind to develop stressful states. If we can begin to develop that same degree of skill in developing happy state.
You know, to be able to change your state and not have to hang on to a particular state of mind out of gaining some kind of security and having that as part of one’s identity. There’s no reason why we can’t if we can shift our perspective and learn how to shift and not have to hang on to prolong unnecessarily or at all distressful states of mind. If we can learn how to generate happy states of mind and maintain them through the force of our mindfulness, then there’s no chance for anger to arise. Anger cannot arise in a happy mind. If we can develop the skill to generate and hold on to a happy mind within a frustrating situation, towards which we normally reacted with frustration and thereby probably angry, then we’re not going to be angry any longer.
On the other hand, you know, if we allow our mind to dwell in unhappiness, know, are we As Śāntideva says, how are we going to fulfill our wishes? We’re going to destroy our own personal power to these negative states. It says in the Dhammapada, if you know, we we do this. Look how he abused me and beat me, how he threw me down and robbed me. Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
Look how he abused me and beat me, how he threw me down and robbed me. Abandon such thoughts and live in love. But maybe there’s a choice that we have. I don’t know. I mean, most of us cannot stop thinking.
I don’t think anybody in this room can stop thinking. And we’re we’re you know, then we use this as a self to to ensure that we’re still existing, as a sort of a self referencing. Why cannot we become more skillful with the types of thoughts we do think? Habituate ourselves to positive states as opposed to negative one. You know, keep And it was like we turn a knife in our own hearts.
You know, he did this to me. She did this to me. Again and again, going over every last minute detail and every detail, and really twisting and twisting. And we hurt ourselves. Strange that we hurt ourselves so much that we’d have so little mercy for ourselves.
But if we can simply begin to shift our attention and begin to replace negative trains of thought with more positive one. We can begin to become habituated to more the more positive trains of thought, more positive state. I mean, you know, I I I laughed there. I was thinking, have you ever heard the the idea, I bet you can’t walk around this block. I bet you can’t walk around this block without thinking the word fox.
Can anybody do that here? You have to you have to be very know, watching. Am I am I saying the word fox? So Śāntideva goes on, If something can be remedied, then why be annoyed by it? And if it cannot be remedied, what good is it to be annoyed?
So if there’s a method whereby our wishes can be fulfilled, then there’s no use in being distressed. Get on with it. And if there’s no way that our wishes can be fulfilled, what is the use of being distressed? It would be nice if we ran our life on the basis of logic, but we don’t, do we? But at least maybe this rationale can begin to penetrate this at some level.
If we train our mind so well that we can look at a frustrating situation in a more realistic manner, we can begin to free ourselves of unnecessary suffering, this quality of compounding our suffering. And in that way, the context of anger cannot arise. Actually, was thinking about it. I called up Alcoholics Anonymous the other day because this reminded me of their prayer, the prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous. God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
That’s pretty good, I think. Now, what we can, you know what? If we can begin to discriminate between what we can, what we do have control, and what we don’t, and what we do to get on with it. If there’s something we can do, what is the use of worrying? If there’s nothing we can do, what is the use of worrying?
Being upset with what we cannot change is futile. We have to accept it. And if can change it, what is the use of being upset? Actually, it acts as an obstruction to being able to operate effectively, efficiently. And it’s more productive to direct our energy and thought into bringing about the change than just to be worried about it and just to be annoyed about it.
You know, throughout this process of working with our anger, we are working on two levels. The first is the level of our behavior. I’ve already touched upon this. At which we begin to see that anger is self defeating. And we have to see this, a self defeating response to frustration.
We see that within our experience. We see it within our own reasoning and in our intuition. We have to see the destructive quality of anger for ourselves. Even in those situations like the week before last, there are situations where it appears that anger is somehow superficially useful, beneficial, even. And we have to see, but maybe we have to look at our anger.
We have to step back a level, gain a little more perspective. May be able to gain Anger may have some short term payoff. But what is the long term quality of our life which that anger supports? You know what I mean? We might get what we want in an immediate situation.
But how does that affect the overall quality of our life? Resorting to anger as a coping mechanism for frustration. I think it’s probably the returns diminish. Yeah. I think it’s I think so.
You know, have to It’s a very sad world. Most people are unhappy. I think we have to acknowledge that fact. And no matter what, they might gain the various material objects, various all the various levels of status power, they am. I don’t know.
I don’t think they’re very happy people. But the the certain fundamental qualities would support a desirable type of life which I wish to experience are expressed in terms of love and caring and communication, understanding, wisdom. These are prime values in my life. And anger not only doesn’t support those prime values, but in fact works against them. It destroys my potential for real happiness, for real meaning.
It may not destroy the potential. You may get power, you may get status, you may get material wealth using anger as a means. But I don’t think you’ll get happiness. I guess that’s what I’m saying. And maybe we have to see this for ourselves.
Know, did an example that was used two weeks ago and I thought about, you know, the example one of the examples was that it would help someone to leave their home and a wife was being bashed. If she got angry enough, she’d finally make that leap and leave that situation. It may be true. So it’s I mean, that’s why I say about we have to really try to understand, you know, maybe dig deeper because it there may be some immediate payoff to anger. I remember the last time I got angry.
I felt rough. I was really alive. Really energy. You know, all the energy was like felt really really made me high. It’s crazy, you know.
But I think it’s gonna cost me in the end. You know? It’s like a, you know, heroin. It’s great, but it cost you. In the end, it cost you your life.
But okay, so we begin to see within our own experience hopefully, we have to. Otherwise, there’s no motivation, there’s no will, there’s no choice. That’s the destructive quality of anger in our own life. But that in itself is not sufficient, merely seeing the inappropriate quality of anger. We must also recognize that anger is symptomatic of a distorted premise, that it’s based upon some misconceptions, mistaken beliefs.
This particular type of behavior has an unconscious foundation, a pattern from which it itself is an expression of. If we simply try to control our anger, we’re going to reinforce other distorted patterns. For example, alcoholics. An alcoholic’s challenge for self control provides he challenges himself to control himself. I’m not going drink anymore.
So this provides a motivation for sobriety. He quits drinking. He dries up, gets himself together. But the achievement of that sobriety destroys the challenge that generated his sobriety. And so in other words, the more an alcoholic tries to stay sober, the more likely he is to get drunk, and vice versa.
Simply trying to control behavior, in the case of an alcoholic, he simply oscillates between bouts of drunkenness and bouts of sobriety. Simply, if he only tries to control his behavior, he’s going to fluctuate back and forth. Without changing his story about himself, without changing the premises, the beliefs upon which his alcoholism is based, this is going to be his perpetual mode of behavior going back and forth. He’ll get so far down, he’ll hit rock bottom, and he’ll go back up. And he’ll get sober again, and he’ll go back down, because the story hasn’t changed.
The premise upon which is alcoholism is an expression hasn’t changed. So we cannot simply control our behavior. We can’t simply say to ourselves, be good people. Don’t get angry because it’s bad for you. That’s not enough.
We have to use our intelligence. It’s not a matter of will. Mental health is simply not a matter of will. It necessarily must be accompanied by intelligence, awareness, wisdom. If we could control our anger, we would, but we can’t.
So in the face of not being able to control our anger, we have to either say, I’m a self destructive person. I want to hurt myself. Or I don’t have complete control over my actions, over my emotions. Sometimes my anger powerful than me. Sometimes my anger is more powerful than me, which in a way doesn’t make any sense, we’ll leave it at that.
As if there’s something outside of you which is controlling you. Or what is being said, the message which is being gotten at is that I am under the control. I am under the control of other. Anger. I am under the control of anger.
That self control, in fact, may be an illusion based upon, you know, some kind of unconscious distorted premise, self control. We simply cannot control our behavior without changing our underlying story, our beliefs. Unless we change these distorted premises upon which our anger is based, we will continue to be angry more and more, over and over. Essentially what’s being said here is that to be a healthy person is more than simply a matter of will power, or simply more than just adjusting our behavior to conform to some standards, whatever. That it must be accompanied by insight, wisdom.
We telling our story, we structuring our beliefs about ourselves and the world and how we are to relate with it. Use our insight, use our intelligence. So wisdom. Simply knowing how things are, Knowing how things are, getting in there, penetrating beyond the fantasy of ego, the dream of ego. Getting in touch, touching the way things in fact are, contact in the real world.
So this is a self correction process. And this is why the truth is therapeutic. Truth is therapeutic. Getting in touch with the way things are catalyzes a self correction of all of these mistaken premises. It’s not as if, again, the idea of gathering more information, earning twenty PhDs, but simply getting to know where things actually are.
Penetrating beneath our habitual conception. So, you know, we’re distressed, We’re in pain. We want to alleviate that pain. We want to alleviate that distress. And so we are always trying to move to a higher order of self correction.
By that I mean, one way of alleviating our pain is anger. That’s a lower order. But we’re trying to gain a wider and wider perspective on the appropriateness of responses. The Anger is a misguided attempt of the mind to relieve its distress in the face of frustrating situations. Why is it misguided?
Because it doesn’t resolve the situation. We’re going to become distressed again and again and again and again. We haven’t accomplished anything. We’ve dealt with a particular instance, but the very cause, which is the basic distorted premise, will still remain. So we’re going to have to get angry again.
We’re going to become distressed again. And we’re going to have to get angry again. But wisdom removes the very basis of the call. It’s such that we’re never going to have to become distressed again. We’re never going to get angry again.
Stop that. Is it okay? What can I say? Anyway, hope you aren’t getting too frustrated. I don’t want anybody getting angry at me.
We’re going very slowly. Initial conception was to go through this and finish it. Śāntideva is going to present many different rationales to reduce our distorted premises to absurdity, to show how they are completely irrational, or justifications for our anger. And so he has many, many, many arguments he sets forth. So maybe I can speed myself up.
To the to one’s personal awareness and to one’s own mind as an analyst. And one of the immediate things that comes to mind is, right, given that sort of if we believe the primordial slime sort of thesis, then what purpose, what original purpose has anger, envy and jealousy served the human organism in the past for its own survival. This is what an anthropologist might come up with. I’m not interested in knocking the Buddhist perspective, which I support myself. Yeah.
I’m just wondering if anybody behind me got that answer as well. Yeah, . I mean, really, it’s very much a matter of the perspective. You know, if you take the instant of sometimes anger seems to have a very immediate payoff. But if we step back another take a longer term view, a longer term In terms of an anthropologist or a biologist, he sees how has aggressions served the survival of the species.
Has it served it? And I think I don’t know. What do you think? It’s interesting, most boxers, street fighters, they want to get angry. But a professional boxer doesn’t want to get angry because he loses his efficiency, his effectiveness.
He wants to keep his head. So it’s kind of more sophisticated not to become angry. Think it’s Bowlby and Winnicott’s that the concept of the infant being one with the mother initially and then at the point of separation wanting at all costs to become one again with the mother. So anger, jealousy, all of those things cause the mother to respond and to and give the infant back the notion of being at one. What do you think?
Have you perceived me. Is there a difference between assertive assertion and aggression? I mean, you know, the words the words do have effects. Yeah. There’s a difference between assertion and aggression, but I don’t know at that at that point that it’s sort of three, six months.
At the the the baby expresses aggressive behavior in order to I don’t know any. Oh, sorry. I don’t. Mean Well, I actually no. Well, they’re in probably.
Yeah. If they go through another. I don’t know. It’s not a three Traditionally, it’s defined as appropriately compulsively retaking contaminated aggregates. But if you were to look at what we mean by that, the contaminated aggregates, it’s a mode of relating.
I mean, from the initial split between self and not self. This to the basic misconception of the nature of the eye, ignorance arises this way of interpreting, the way of organizing our reality, such that it is experienced as dissatisfactory. So it’s a particular mode of relating, is experienced as dissatisfaction, know, the various alienation, inauthenticity, fragmentation, all of these requirements. Repeating compulsive patterns of particular inappropriate modes of relating, which are experienced as bondage. You know, pattern exists as opposed to spontaneous, creative existence.
No. No. No. No. Every moment every moment’s no.
There’s no reason to get angry. You have no desire. I mean, there’s no oh, let’s see. One is completely living in the present moment, and one is not bound by past memories. We’re trying to repeat past pleasures and hold on to them, those things which we associate with pleasure.
And therefore one’s desire to repeat past pleasure, hold on to past pleasures, objects which are associated with these past pleasures are never frustrated. There’s no desire or anger. A desire or anger in the sense that desire and wanting to incorporate objects which are associated with pleasure in order to make them a permanent part of our ego identity, our ego territory. And anger, wanting to make these objects associated with displeasure a permanent part of outside of our ego boundary territory, aversion and attraction.