Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 41-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with Śāntideva’s blunt logic: if you can change a situation, change it; if you cannot, worry only compounds the pain. From there he develops a less obvious argument — that suffering is not merely an enemy to escape but a signal worth heeding, drawing on Rabindranath Tagore and the Buddhist concept of dukkha as the subtle “not-quite-right” quality pervading ordinary life. He uses Olympic athletes as an analogy for the effort spiritual practice demands, and explains the Tibetan word gom — meditation as habituation — through a story of a miserly student who begins practising generosity by passing a single coin to himself. A Q&A follows on how afflictive emotions distort perception by hiding an object’s unwanted qualities, whether sadness counts as an afflictive emotion, and why some people relish their own anger.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 Tce 1991 03 20.mp3
UUID: d6d36c10-0148-4ef7-beb5-1cd80137c4bb
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-03-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.9 minutes
Words: ~4,711
Almost seems an unnatural way to think. As Śāntideva said in the above part of the text, he says, if there’s nothing that we can do about this situation, why worry about it? If there’s something that we can do about this situation, why worry about it? That is to say, worry? It has never done anyone any good.
Why become distressed? If If there is something you can do, get on with doing it. Why be distressed? Use that energy in a more direct that energy along more effectual lines without causing yourself more problems, more pain. If there’s nothing you can do about it, what is the use of your distress?
What is the use of your worry? You’re just causing yourself more pain. If we can simply reorientate our attitude to a more accepting attitude, a great deal of our distress, suffering would be ended. If we begin to alleviate our distress, we’re going to alleviate our anger. Because the main condition for the rise of anger is distress, frustration.
If we can begin to become more accepting, we’re going to be less anger-prone. Śāntideva goes on. Yet without suffering there is no renunciation. Therefore, mind stays firm. Yet without suffering there is no renunciation.
Therefore, mind stays firm. So not only are we to accept our suffering, but maybe we can even, some corner of our mind can begin to appreciate something. Maybe there is some, you know, if we have to undergo suffering and we have no choice in it, at least maybe we can find something good to say about it. You know, it’s like if you have to you have to what, sit next to somebody on the bus or something, maybe you find something good about them to relate with, some subject that you both are interested in. Make the best of a bad situation perhaps.
So even though we don’t want to go through this suffering, but maybe there is some attitude that we can begin to take toward it which will help us to accept it, which will help us to even appreciate it. A quotation by I don’t know. Indian poet, name I cannot recall. Rabindranath Tagore. The religion that we get acquainted with from outside, from books of scripture, can in no way become our own religion.
Its association with us is only a matter of habit. To unfold one’s religion within one’s own life, to unfold one’s religion within one’s self is the lifelong aspiration of every human soul. It has its birth in acute suffering. There may be in our spiritual journey, in this movement toward totality, may be two forces at work. One is suffering, or the awareness of suffering, is more to say.
Awareness of suffering and also our intrinsic drive toward awakening. But also it’s like the pain pushes us and the light draws us That’s the two forces operating within our life. There’s a quote by an English teacher by the name of Sangharakshita. If one is unhappy, one wants to know the reason why. But it never occurs to one to ask why one is happy.
It is therefore unhappiness rather than happiness that causes us to reflect upon our condition. It is unhappiness that makes us think. The moment our mind experiences pleasure, it becomes superficial. It simply dwells upon the surface of things. It is the moment we experience pain, we want to know why and we begin to question.
Mankind progresses for the same reason that the amoeba evolves, from irritation. There was never any flower of human achievement, but some great sorrow lay at its roots. Now all of the great I’m not an authority on aesthetics, it would seem that great literature and art, music, the great achievements of humankind have in some way been born out of some sorrow, some acute awareness of suffering, of some kind of pain. That somehow this forces us to penetrate beyond the fantasy world of ego and try to get in touch with reality and try to express what we find in art, in literature, however. It’s a deepening process.
We don’t want to suffer, but we’re going to. We’ve created the cause. We’re going to suffer. So it seems rather than compounding your suffering by coming to stress, since we’re going to suffer anyway, maybe we can begin to find the attitude of appreciation for it in some small way. This is more of a skillful way of reacting, responding to your suffering.
Now, can work to get rid of the suffering altogether. We should do that. But in the meanwhile, as a remedial measure, so that we don’t compound our difficulties, our problems, beginning to accept it and hopefully beginning to appreciate it. Suffering brings us back to reality. It makes us sincere.
It reminds us that we have to keep working. And if things go along fine, the sun is shining, you forget. And then some suffering arises, some difficulty, some problem. It’s like a string around your finger reminding what’s important, what the work that needs to be done brings us back to our self, our deeper values. Without a deep awareness of suffering, there’s no there would be no consistent determination to be free.
There will only be the maintenance of the status quo who will try to hold on to what exists because it seems to be satisfactory. And there is going to be no compassion, neither for yourself nor for others. You know this question of suffering, this word suffering sounds pretty heavy. Quite often you use the word dissatisfaction. It’s just the quality, the feeling that we want to get.
I talk about the basic sanity of mind, That it will move toward more satisfactory states as it conceives them to be. It will move from dissatisfactory states. This is the intrinsic quality of the self correcting quality of any system, a living system, it will seek to heal itself. It will continually move toward the unconditioned, the mind. And it’s this quality of suffering that all of what we normally are experiencing is not quite complete completely satisfactory.
That’s all that’s what Buddhism is saying mostly. You know, we don’t suffer all that. We don’t most of us most of us don’t have tremendous growth suffering. You know, starvation, deprivations of all kinds. But still so it it becomes difficult for us to to for our mind to find a direction.
Because the quality of our suffering is simply a matter of it’s not completely satisfactory as compared to this. There’s something which is completely satisfactory, which we call beyond sorrow, the unconditioned state. This, what we’re experiencing is is always what Ajahn Buddhadasa used to call. There’s in all of our pleasures, all of our experiences, there’s always a fishbone in the fish. It’s not you know, it’s hard to put your finger on, isn’t it?
You know, we can put on our it’s easy to point to huge suffering, breakups in your life, deaths, huge disappointments. But the theme of not quite being satisfactory, that’s what permeates our life. We have to become aware of that. If we become aware of that, then the mind will begin to tend toward that state which is satisfactory. Naturally, it will tend toward the unconditioned state, which is not conditioned by the afflictive emotions such as ignorance, hatred, spite, miserliness, jealousy.
It will tend toward those. It will tend away from dissatisfactory states. If we don’t see our present mode of being, our neurotic compulsive patterns as dissatisfactory, then we’re never going to tend away from them. Mind is tremendously sane. Very intelligent.
It’s trying to heal itself continually. But it has to become aware that it’s ill, that this state of being is diseased. Then it will move toward a healthier state of its own accord. So the idea of suffering, dissatisfactoriness in the Pali Dukkha. This is what is really meant by Dukkha, a sort of disharmony, a jarring quality that we experience in the course of our everyday life in the world.
Things are never one hundred percent right. There is always something, even if it’s a little something that goes wrong. Even in the course of the most beautiful day, it seems only too often a cloud has to float across the face of the sky. Something goes wrong. Maybe you’ve prepared expectantly for a beautiful day.
You’ve gone to meet somebody whom you like. Things are going to be so lovely, so beautiful. But then some absurd incident happens and it all goes wrong. Then you feel completely out of tune, completely tangled by whatever happened. And very often this is our experience of life.
Most of the time this is how we go through life, feeling like this. We find that everything from which we expected so much fails and doesn’t live up to our expectations. This sort of experience is what is called dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. There’s a feeling of simply being a bit out of tune. Our life isn’t quite fulfilling as we had expected it.
There’s always a certain subtle disappointment, a feeling of disharmony, imbalance, unease. If we use our we use our wisdom, then a little bit of suffering can go a long way. If we use our wisdom, in the sense of developing a consistent, firm mind of determination to be free. But we don’t use our wisdom very well. You know, it can be raining reality, but it it kind of washes off like a water off a duck’s back.
You know, how many times do we have to have experiences before we learn the lesson? You know, we’re really pretty thick sometimes. Let alone talking about these these subtle the most subtle type of there’s three types three levels of suffering that are talked about. Three types of suffering. Suffering of pain, the suffering of change, and suffering of universal conditionality.
And this universal conditionality is basically the suffering of having an ego. But it is said that for us, for ordinary people, that suffering is like putting a hair in the palm of your hand. And you can’t even it makes no difference to you whatsoever. You can’t even feel it there. But for someone who has, what, appreciates, has insight into the nature of suffering, is aware of suffering, it’s as if taking that same hair and putting it into their eye.
They just can’t stand it. It’s that acute. The simple basic fact of having the ego is experienced as that much suffering. What does say of the possibility of transcending the ego, the drive, the motivation, the impetus of the mind. Without that, there’s no way.
Without that impetus, which is born out of an awareness of suffering, of dissatisfactor. Śāntideva goes on to say, For no good reason followers of Durga and the inhabitants of Kannata endure the sensations of being burnt and cut. So for the sake of liberation, why should I be timid? So Durga is a Hindu deity, and the followers of Durga practice self-immolation as a means of propitiating that deity. And the people of Kannata used to enjoy the sport of mortal combat, you know, just like the gladiators in Rome.
Know, risking their life, killing each other as a spectator sport, as a spectacle. So the point that’s being made is that many people are willing to go through great pain and even risk their life for what amounts to be meaningless purposes. What amounts to be meaningless purposes? You know people are willing to go to war and even give up their lives for a cause, but they cannot give up the cause of their own suffering. Now that’s beyond the pale of most people.
As a Bertrand Russell said, many people are willing to die for an ideal, but very few people are willing to live for one. You know, why you know, if people are willing to go you know, you you watch the I was thinking, you know, you see, you know, when you watch the Olympics, it’s really beautiful to watch the especially the gymnastics or whatever. You know, the swim, all the various to get up to that level of competition, the amount of work, effort, time, energy that goes into it, this is amazing. And how much what could be achieved? You know, maybe you’d have to really do something with your motivation.
But then that energy, that effort, that time that went into that, that it was put into development of one’s mind. With the correct motivation, it would be amazing results, I’m sure. We perhaps most of the world have misdirected goals. Why shouldn’t we be able to accept voluntarily accept some sort of difficulties for the sake of growth, for the sake of freedom, our own ultimate freedom, our own ultimate happiness, developing the abilities to be able to benefit others. The course of that, if people are to develop the Olympic level of competition, are willing to spend hours upon hours each day for years and years and years to go through that, why can’t we go through some difficulties in order to find freedom and the ability to benefit others.
If voluntarily accept some degree of hardship, and it doesn’t have to be heavy handed, but some degree of hardship, if we voluntarily accept it, then our problems can be ended. If we never do, then there’s never going to be an end to our problems. And what to say of developing the ability to help others? And Śāntideva goes on, There is nothing which cannot become easier through practice. There is nothing at all which cannot become easier through practice.
Through acquaintance what was once difficult becomes second nature. We have all had that experience. What was once a problem can eventually pass unnoticed. We no longer realize it’s of any difficulty at all. This factor, there was a a story about a a Tibetan teacher, a master who had a had a disciple who found it terribly difficult to give anything away.
It was really miserly. Couldn’t give away any. And so this idea of anything can become easier if we become familiar with it. So he used to say, well, you take a coin and you give it to yourself. And give it to himself.
And he said, give it to himself. Just to get used to giving something over. And that’s the beginning of getting used. You know, meditation in Tibetan, the word is gom. It means getting used to, familiarizing, becoming acquainted with.
And studying, getting used to we offer water bowls. You know, the Buddhists don’t need water. They need water for they got their own water. But it’s getting used to, giving, letting go, getting used to a little bit here. Anything we do, if we can begin on almost a humorous minute level, that we can begin to get used to the states of mind.
Even if we fake it, even if it’s artificial, we can begin to get even just to say the words compassion, love is helpful in our society. To at least begin to create some kind of context to get used to this idea eventually, maybe ultimately to develop love and compassion. We can begin somewhere to acquaint our minds, even if it’s with words, even if it’s with gestures, even if it’s with giving things which are of no worth. Whatever. There’s nothing which does not become easier.
This is the nature of the mind, the dynamic quality of the mind. There’s nothing which does not become easier upon acquaintance, familiarity. That all of the various states that we talk about are not beyond our pale if we’re willing to become work with the extensions of what is within our present capacity to do and habituate ourselves to that, to where that becomes as if second nature, and then move on from there. And there, from there, from there, and on and on. The Śāntideva goes on to say, By getting used to slight discomforts, I can learn to tolerate greater hardships.
Who has not seen this to be so with such trifling pains as insect bites, pangs of thirst and hunger, and itching. Thus do not be faint hearted in the face of heat and cold, wind and rain, sickness, imprisonment or even death. If you are fainthearted, then the suffering will only increase. Now this also works the other way. I noticed that I did come in India where I lived for a number of years.
You know, you get used to familiarize with situations, types of food, living conditions that now, having lived in the West for four years, would find extremely difficult to bear. I know that in my mind. And I look back and, well, how did I ever do that? But I it was quite acceptable back then, but now I’ve become accustomed to luxuries like hot showers and things. Yeah.
So, anyway, I could probably get reaccustomed to it. Some people become especially brave and resolute at the sight of their own blood, whereas others faint upon glimpsing the blood of someone else. This is due to their having either an intrepid or timid disposition. So the same situation, two different people take extremely different attitudes towards it. And this is simply that they have been habituated to particular attitudes.
There nothing objective about it which determines what attitude they will take, just what they habituated their mind to. Thus one should try and disregard the injury and not be affected by the pain. When the sage experiences suffering, his mind remains clear and undisturbed. For while waging war against the emotions, there is considerable pain at the time of conflict. And it is those who ignore the suffering and seduce such enemies as hatred.
They are truly the victorious heroes. The others are slayers of corpses. It is easy to make the mistake that Buddhism is concerned only with the removal of suffering. And it is a mistake which certain Buddhists frequently make. Just as the particular kind of pain incidental to bodily existence is a sentient beings of physical ill health, so is the wider and more inclusive pain of existence itself a sign that there is something radically wrong with life as a whole.
In both cases we are confronted not simply with the straightforward task of releasing pain, but also with the infinitely more difficult and complex one of readjusting the unbalanced somatic and psychological condition which caused it, thus rendering the patient spiritually healthy, hale and whole. Suffering is not important for its own sake, but only because it is a sign that we are not living as we ought to live. Buddhism does not encourage morbid obsession with suffering as though it is the be all and end all of existence. What really have to get rid of is not suffering but the imperfections of which suffering warns us. And in the course of getting rid of the imperfections and attaining perfections, we may have to accept paradoxically enough the experience of suffering as indispensable to the achievement of final success.
True it is that by the experience of pain we are compelled to enter upon the path, and true it is that when we arrive at the goal there will be no more pain. But if we think that following the path means nothing more than the studious avoidance of painful experiences, we are making a mistake of astronomical dimensions. The essence of Buddhism consists not in the removal of suffering, which is only negative and incidental, but in the attainment of perfection, which is positive and fundamental. The Bodhisattva is not afraid of suffering. He accepts it joyfully if he thinks it will assist him in the attainment of his great goal of enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.
The Christian mystic would not continue to love God. The Christian mystic would continue to love God even though cast down into hell, for he loves God for his own sake, not for the sake of his reward, not even happiness. It is only the spiritual individualist, the typical Hinayanist Buddhist tradition, who loves God for the sake of escaping the pains of hell. Not for our own sake, not even for the sake of others should we seek to attain the divine, but simply and solely for its own irresistible sake. You know to to answer the call of our own conscience, to listen to the inarticulate whisperings of our own heart, to resolve to be all that we know that we can be.
You know, in our hearts of hearts to be that person that we know we are. The person that we’ve always wanted to be. You know, to make our life an authentic expression of our own truth. To become a happy, healthy, loved, sane human being Means to fight the hardest fight that we can ever fight and to never stop fighting. But that battle, this fight, is not something which takes place within our own selves, within our own minds.
But we have to do it. You know, we are too awake to go back to sleep. Our basic sanity won’t let us. So I’ll stop there. Anybody have a comment?
How do you depreciate desire and ambition? To distinguish them? One. So there there are there are reasonable desires. A reasonable desire for enlightenment, right?
Desire to be happy. So these desires have a reasonable basis. They can they whereas the afflictive emotion which is the desire, the desire which is the afflictive emotion has an unreasonable basis. Yeah. I mean, first off, all the afflictive emotions exaggerate or depreciate their object.
They don’t see the object. The object as it exists does not exist. The object as it appears does not exist. The object of our desire, as said, the object of afflicted desire simply does not exist. When you see a desirable object, you see a when desire, for example, see a beautiful plate of food, whatever, at that moment, none of the the moment that the desire arises from the mind for that food, none of the undesirable qualities will appear to the mind.
That object appears to only have desirable qualities. You know, we don’t see the cholesterol when there is desire for that. We don’t see the calories or what, I don’t know, the chemical residues. Otherwise the desire would not arise because you would be seeing it in a balanced way. You would be seeing it’s good points and it’s bad points.
But desire, hides any negative qualities that the object might have. And it only allows the positive qualities and even exaggerates those. But only the desire only the desirable qualities appear to the mind at that moment. Yeah. So the object is unreasonable.
We are seeing the object in an unreasonable way. We are seeing it as only having desirable qualities. We aren’t seeing it in a balanced way as it actually is. So this would also extend toward any object of the afflictive emotion. The same is true for hatred.
We only see the undesirable qualities. Can’t when you hate somebody, you can’t think of the nice things they just did at that moment. They can’t appear to the mind. Otherwise, your hatred would disappear. You couldn’t hold those two thoughts in the same mind at the same time, thinking how nice this person was to you and wanting to hurt them at the same time.
We couldn’t do that. So there’s always an exaggeration and a depreciation of qualities. It’s not so we’re not seeing the object in a reasonable way. Other objects we can see compassion. Various states of mind are reasonable.
People don’t want to suffer. They want to be happy. Therefore, just like ourselves, therefore it’s reasonable to have compassion for them. The thought that may they be separated from their suffering. So the skillful states of mind have a reasonable basis.
Unskillful states of mind have an unreasonable basis. They don’t have They don’t have logical support. The yeah. So is suffering an afflictive emotion? Suffering is not not an emotion.
It’s a feeling. Suffering is a feeling. Feeling pain? Is that suffering? Yeah.
Feeling pain is a suffering. Then the emotions arise as reactions to suffering, in reaction to feelings. You don’t like that feeling. You hate the person who’s giving you that feeling. So it’s a reactive pattern to feelings.
It’s a change. See it gets down further along the line. There’s just feelings and there’s some position you make a judgment about that feeling and then you begin to develop ways, patterns of reacting to that situation. Begin to develop. Emotions are further along.
Yeah. There’s an unfoldment, a sequence. There’s a bifurcation between self and other, self and not self. And there’s how am I going to relate to that self, to that other. It entails some kind of feeling, good feeling, undesirable, bad feeling, neutral feeling.
Now that arises perception or discrimination, threatening, attractive. And then all the right all that rises in various emotional reactions, hatred, attachment, and all of that rises in the entire context which would place this situation So sadness isn’t an afflictive emotion. Sadness. No. I mean, the word afflictive emotion is just coming from.
Drive to. No. It’s not. I mean I mean, there’s a list of fifty-one secondary afflictive emotions. There are six basic afflictive emotions and forty-six secondary afflictive emotions.
They said it’d be eighty four thousand. But anyway, if you were to condense them, there’s six basic six basic and forty-six secondary. Sadness is not amongst those. Six. On the basis of this self regulatory pattern, self you explained, how do you account for the very confused notion of loving to hate?
My own experience every time missus Thatcher comes on the television. I mean, I just this really strong I mean, I’ve never met the lady. I’ve never even lived under the government, but it’s just this reaction comes up. I I guess I I derive a certain satisfaction from that. Yeah.
There’s no doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a certain yeah. Many many men do, especially, because there’s very few feelings that are open to them.
And one of the few feelings that they’re allowed to experience is is anger. And it gives them a sense of, you know, usually very dead, kind of hollow inside. But when they get angry, they feel alive. They get all this energy running. It’s really high.
They enjoy getting because it’s a chance to get high. So, you know, what is that? That’s the alleviation. Know, so, I mean, people get attached to getting angry, you know, like you said, because it does make them feel good. I mean, but what it is, it’s just the lessening of this low level of feeling of boredom or feeling of numbness that they have.
It’s strange that I’ve never met anybody in real life that’s made me feel like that. I don’t know. The image on the television. Fortunately, I suppose. I mean, this is just my my this isn’t particularly Buddhist, it’s my own personal observation that men are the very I mean, what is most allowable in our society for men is anger, And for women it’s caring and mothering feelings are most acceptable.
And so there’s socially, I mean to some degree, within limits are allowable. We’re taught. So men are they they find it difficult to pick up a baby, don’t they? And cuddle it in front of other people. I don’t.
No. So so we have to widen our range of possible emotional responses. I guess women women get angry, don’t they? It’s not very seemly, is it? May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions.
May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has risen rise and grow, and may that which has risen never diminish but increase more and more.