Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 45-minute commentary on Śāntideva’s sixth chapter — on patience — with a crisp question: what separates an optimist from a pessimist? Using the half-full/half-empty glass, he builds the session’s central argument that anger is not a reaction to facts but to the meanings we habitually attach to them. He explains the mechanics of reframing — citing Epictetus that troubles arise from opinions, not things — illustrates it with the Tom Sawyer fence-whitewashing story, and maps three areas of tolerance: enduring difficulty with acceptance and self-affirmation, viewing situations through a dharmic lens, and refraining from retaliation. Śāntideva’s counterintuitive claim that suffering has good points closes the session, illustrated by the teacher’s own story of humbled pride at Mother Teresa’s House of the Dying. Suited to practitioners engaged with thought-transformation teachings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 Tce 1991 03 27.mp3
UUID: 82add2a0-a796-42bd-8a8b-ab956d781f64
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-03-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~5,447
Reminding ourselves of the priority of growth in our life as the basic method to solve our problems. Life is difficult. We have many problems. The solution to our problems is our own wisdom, love, compassion and creative energy, which is personified as Buddha, our own Buddha within ourselves. So this becomes the inner principle, inner goal of our life.
And by means of the Dharma, This is achieved in the social context, the therapeutic atmosphere of a spiritual community. And raising the level of our motivation says that we are trying to develop ourselves not only for ourselves but to be empowered to be able to be of significant and actual benefit for others. And as a motivation for listening to this this present discussion of the sixth chapter of Śāntideva’s Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds, there might be something said, perhaps there might be something to learn which will help me along this journey, along this path to to the solution to my own problems, to my own development for the sake of others. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. See, you know what I’ve been talking about, anger and tolerance as coping mechanisms, way we the way the mind is able to deal with stress or situations which are usually stress related, which there is usually stress associated with them.
You know, we’re trying to develop the mechanism of tolerance in relating to presently stressful situations as opposed to our usual habitual reaction of anger. So initially It’s necessary that, you know, that we begin to look for, you know, anger is the way the mind is trying to deal with the stress. It is a learned reactive pattern of the mind. But initially it was important that we begin to see it as ineffective, inappropriate, and shortsighted. That there are higher orders of coping mechanisms which are more effective, more appropriate, and which are ultimately in our own more of our in term more in our own self best interests.
Become more skillful. Develop more skillful patterns in mind such as tolerance as opposed to to anger. You know, ultimately, the the high the highest order of self correcting mechanisms of the mind is the wisdom understanding selflessness and other-centeredness. This is this mechanism of the mind, this way of way in which the mind can operate is such that it can alleviate all stress permanently from the mind. It’s the most effective, most appropriate, the most profound of of, methods for dealing with suffering.
But until we are able to develop those types of mechanisms that leading ourselves toward them, that we’re seeking them out, we have to make use of some more remedial types of measures such as tolerance. All the various types of mechanisms of the mind such as generosity, ethics, tolerance, joyous effort, all support these, the ultimate attainment of these two highest orders of self correction of the mind. your wisdom understanding emptiness, wisdom understanding selflessness, and other centeredness. All of these are supportive. You know, they empower these two states.
By means of these two, we can achieve the fullest potential of the mind and the fullest potential of being by means of the wisdom, understanding, selflessness and by means of the method of other centeredness. And we use all of these supporting mechanisms of the mind. We use in ways of behavior, modes of being, generosity, ethics, tolerance, joyous effort, meditative concentrations are all supportive to these types of mechanisms of the mind. Anger destroys these supportive mechanisms. Anger destroys the possibility for development of generosity, of ethics, of tolerance, of joyous perseverance.
It also reinforces the basic premises of the ignorance conceiving of self. It also reinforces the basic distorted premise of self-centeredness. So anger is completely self destructive. You know, aside from the lesser destructive qualities of anger, this most devastating effect, this most devastating quality is that it prolongs our state of unawakenedness. You know this is if there is one evil in the world it is the length of time until we achieve Buddhahood.
You know, if we become Buddhas, if we become healthy people, we’ll say, happy, loving, healthy, sane human people, then we can be of real service, of real use to ourselves and to others rather than our present situation whereby even when we want to be of service, it’s difficult to ourselves and for others. And what to say even those times when we don’t want to be of service, when we don’t care, You know, we unintentionally cause ourselves harm. We unintentionally cause ourselves others harm. And even when we want to attend intentionally to bring benefit to ourselves and others due to our unskillfulness, due to our habitual neurotic patterns, we still cause harm. Now this this lapse of time until we’re awakened, we’re continually causing harm, though we don’t wish to.
And the basis of this is our own anger. It’s prolonging the time until we’re awake, until we can stop harming others and be a benefit to others. So, you know, if you really want to, in a way, if we really want to be of service to others, if we really want to bring peace into the world, then we have to begin by lessening the influence of anger within our own mind. This is really a service to the world. The most practical way we can be at service right now is by overcoming our own anger.
You know, we’ve mentioned that anger arises in dependence upon the cause of a distressed mind. The cause of a distressed mind and the conditions of frustrated desire and identifying an object or person which is preventing you from realizing your desire. So that one cause of a distressed mind and these two conditions. So we can begin to lessen our anger if we lessen our desire. The less desires we have, the less often our desires will be frustrated naturally enough.
But until we completely eliminate ignorance of the misconceiving the nature of the self, misconceiving the nature of objects about us, then desire will continually arise. We will always have desire. But we can begin to lessen it. But as long as we have desire, as long as we have ignorance, we’re going to have desire. It’s going to continue.
And we cannot order the world such that we always get what we want. That’s not within our control, not within our power. We’re always going to have until we rid ourselves of ignorance, we’re always going to have desire. We cannot order the world to get what always what we want, therefore we’re always going to have frustrated desires. That’s for sure.
So in working with anger, we’re seeking to develop a tolerance such that our mind will not become distressed when our desires are frustrated. You know, this is the main cause. The main cause of anger is this distress. If there is no distress, anger will not arise because there is no cause for it to arise. There are always going to be objects which prevent us from getting what we desire.
We will always have frustrated desires until we rid ourselves of ignorance. Therefore, the way we can realistically begin to work with remedial measures of ridding ourselves of anger is by developing a tolerance. That is to maintain a non distressed mind with respect to frustrating situations When desires are frustrated, we develop coping mechanisms whereby our mind does not become distressed. It remains at peace even when our desires are frustrated. This is tolerance.
So the method that we’re using to change our you know, basically we’re just trying to change our attitudes so that we don’t become distressed when our desires are frustrated. We’re always going to have frustrated desires. If we can begin to reframe the situation, transform our attitude toward that situation, such that we don’t develop distress, we’re not going to become angry. So we’re trying to change our attitudes toward previously stress producing situations. So we’re to look at them in another way, from another another angle, other than the one we’ve been looking at them from up to now, this unskillful approach that we’ve been using.
You know, two people and we can do this. You know, two people in transforming our attitudes. You know, two two people can look at the exact same seemingly objective situation and have very two different attitudes and therefore react to that same situation. For example, there’s a question here. What is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?
The optimist says of a glass that is half full. The pessimist says of the glass that is half empty. So we have the same seemingly objective situation, a glass. But these two individuals have two very radically different attitudes toward that same object. They see it in very different ways.
So we’re trying to reframe our attitudes toward the same objective situations. We’re still going to have people who frustrate our desires. But if we can change our attitude towards this situation, if we can reframe the situation such that it doesn’t cause us distress, we’re not going to become angry. To reframe, reframing the situation. To reframe then means to change the conceptual and or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a situation is experienced, and to place it in another frame which fits the facts of the same concrete situation equally well or even better, and thereby changes its meaning.
We’re not trying to brainwash ourselves, we’re not trying to see black as white or good as bad or bad as good. The facts remain the same as it were. In conventional terms we can talk about an objective world. We can talk about a glass of water that’s half full. But the attitude we take towards that objective fact we can work with a level of what is called meta reality.
The mechanism involved here is not immediately obvious, especially if we bear in mind that there is a change while the situation may remain quite unchanged, and indeed unchangeable. So it’s not the situation that we are changing, it’s our attitude towards the situation. What turns out to be changed as a result of reframing is the meaning attributed to the situation and therefore its consequences, but not the concrete facts. Or as the philosopher Epictetus expressed this as early as the first century AD, it is not the things themselves which are troublesome but the opinions we have about these things. Presently we are locked into habitual opinions which serve as the basis for interpreting situations.
You know we have our beliefs, our attitudes, our opinions about things. And we’re locked in, we hold very tightly to our opinions about these things. And these serve as the basis of how we’re going to react to these things, these events, these situations, these people. You know we’re quite sure of our rightness of what we believe. And usually it never occurs to us that there may be another way of looking at the same situation which is just as valid as our own.
And we develop an inflexibility, we develop a myopic viewpoint. We are convinced I am right, this is the way it is. We become locked into that and therefore all of our various reactive patterns flow from that particular opinion, that particular type of belief. The two or more people can have, can attribute radically different meanings to the same situation. And this is, you know throughout Buddhism, the foundation of Buddhism, the heart of Buddhism is emptiness.
And this has a lot of ramifications. It has a lot of varying levels of significance on different levels of the Dharma and our conduct and our behavior. But one of them is, is the relativity of all views whatsoever, even the view of Buddhism. And all views are completely relative, all meanings that we attribute. There is no absolute right view.
Absolute, only relatively speaking. From the Buddha taught his view relative to suffering and happiness. He developed a system of views, which if consistently worked with, develop a an environment of peace, which is not contradicted by the way things are. You know, in terms of these two people, this optimist and this pessimist, that they have the same objective fact, seemingly objective fact. And we can talk about objective facts because we talk about conventional reality.
There’s a glass. The fact is the fact of that glass is the glass is half full. The glass is half full. And the glass is half empty. That’s the object.
The glass is half full and the glass is half empty. Meaning is not a matter of intellectual objective understanding. Meaning is not something which can be proven or demonstrated. It is simply something that we attach, we have become habituated to, attributing specific types of meanings to what we we call objective facts. The glass is half full.
It is. The glass is half empty. It is. But which of those meanings are you going to attribute? Which which viewpoint are you going to take?
Are you going to base your life on? You know, there’s no sense in arguing with a pessimist that the glass is half full. He’ll say, yes, I agree, it’s half full, but and that big but is what determines his life. He’ll agree, the glass is half full, but it’s half empty. And this is he he’s going to, you know, approach his life on it in terms.
He’s going to ascribe meaning to life in terms of it being half empty. Something’s missing, insufficiency, loss, not quite everything is there that I need, rather than what we might consider more positive meaning, more effective, more productive, more healthy, more more all the good things that we would like to attribute to life, that it’s half full, that there’s something there’s something there’s something to be made use of. There’s possibilities, there’s potential. It’s just two different meanings. They’re both we can’t argue between the two because they’re based on the fact.
But we attach meanings out of our beliefs along you know, the intuitive faculty works on the basis of intuition on the basis of belief and meaning. The intellect works on the basis of proof and demonstration. And quite often they don’t alter each other. Just because, you know, the fact that the glass is half full doesn’t mean that I don’t approach the world as if it’s half empty. That’s the meaning that I become habituated to.
Some people approach the world as if it’s a benevolent universe. Some people approach the world as if it’s a malevolent universe. That’s the meaning that they have become habituated to. And that’s part of their story. And that’s going to determine very much the quality of their life.
So we have to reframe our story. Reframe the meaning that we’re attributing to situations, to events, toward more pragmatically productive types of meaning. We can’t say that they’re wrong. We say the glass is half empty. We can’t say it isn’t.
We just can say maybe there’s a more productive meaning that we can attribute to the same fact. So, you know, this reframing takes place at the level of metareality. That is to say, changes take place even if the objective situation, the objective circumstances of a situation are quite beyond our control. We’re trying to change our attitude at that level. The meta reality is the level of once we moved from the objective fact, the way that we approach that fact we’re trying to change.
There’s a story, there’s a Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, an American author. This is an example of reframing. It’s a very famous example. Part of it is a dialogue, of it is taken from an article about the story itself. It’s Saturday afternoon.
So this is going to give you a very practical application of reframing a situation. Very skillful reframing of a situation. It’s Saturday afternoon, holiday time for all boys except Tom Sawyer. This takes place probably in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is Saturday afternoon, holiday time for all boys except for Tom Sawyer who has been sentenced to whitewash thirty yards of fence nine feet high.
Life to him seems hollow, an existence but a burden. It is not only the work that he finds intolerable, but especially the thought of all the boys who will be coming along making fun of him for having to work. At this dark and hopeless moment, writes Mark Twain, an inspiration bursts upon him. Nothing less than a great magnificent inspiration. Soon enough a boy comes inside, the very boy of all boys whose ridicule he had been dreading most.
Hello, old chap. You got to work, hey? Why? It’s you. Ben?
I I weren’t noticing. Say, I’m going to swimming. I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d rather work.
Wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Tom contemplated the boy a bit and said, What do you call work? Why, ain’t that work? Tom resumed his whitewashing and answered carelessly.
Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain’t. All I know is it suits Tom Sawyer. Oh, come now. You don’t mean to let me on like that, do you? The brush continued to move.
Like it? Well, I don’t see why I ought to like it oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day? That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple.
Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth, stepped back to note the effect, added a touch here and there, criticized the effect again. Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested and more and more absorbed. Presently, he said, say Tom, let me whitewash a little. By the middle of the afternoon the fence has three coats of whitewash and Tom is literally rolling in wealth. One boy after another has parted with his riches for the privilege of painting part of the fence.
Thomas succeeded in reframing drudgery as a pleasure for which one has to pay and his friends to a man have followed his change of his definition of reality. So yeah, I guess it’s kind of self evident. I don’t know if maybe it’s hard to follow the story. Normally the whitewashing of a fence would be all the boys would consider it drudgery. But if we can reframe it and say how often do you get to whitewash your fence like this?
And that’s really something unique. It’s really something special. Begin to look perhaps you can begin to change your attitude toward it where it’s not dredging, maybe it’s a unique occasion to something pleasant. Anyway, it worked with Tom Sawyer. So, you know, we’re trying to reframe situations in which our desires are frustrated, in which we normally feel distress and out of the stress become angry.
We’re trying to reframe them so that we can peacefully work on our own neurosis and others neurosis. So trying to reframe the situation, types of situations which our desires are normally frustrated and we become distressed and out of distress become angry. To a type of situation where we no longer become distressed. Just simply by changing our attitude toward that. And we have to admit, we have to develop the flexibility, open up to the possibility of change.
That we have a view and that we self righteously hold on to a view as being the only view. We have to begin to open up to the possibility that there may be other meanings that we can attribute to the same situation. Other ways of looking at it which are just as valid as our present way of viewing it. Now allow some space, some little glimmer of doubt, some little bit of confusion. But maybe this isn’t the only way to look at this situation.
Presently, we hold very tightly to the rightness of our opinions and that the way we see reality, And this is expressed as resistance. We have a resistance to attaching any other meaning than the one that we now hold to. Just we have an inflexibility. You know, for example, people hear what Śāntideva is talking about here, they come out with things like, Come on now, let’s be honest. Or, I’ve got to deal with real people and real situations.
I’ve got to deal with the real world. I don’t have time to play Dharma games. Let’s get serious. This was my own experience. When you hear when you many of the things that you hear in thought transformation teachings and many of the you know that to begin to appreciate suffering for example, to be able to transform actually invite suffering.
That sounds like they’re playing some kind of mind game. Let’s get serious. People don’t really do that. Because I was I was holding to my own opinion about the nature of suffering. It’s something I don’t want at all.
It could never be something that I would invite, that I could find any satisfaction in. I wasn’t open to that possibility of attaching that type of new meaning to an old situation. You know when people talk in this way, let’s get serious, let’s stop playing dharma games. What they’re saying, they’re saying that my view of reality is honest and real, and yours is phony and unrealistic. And I’m being honest.
I’m being sincere. Know, I talked about these different levels of, these six levels of within the desire realm. One of them is the animal, the animal mentality. And the animal mentality is associated with the mentality of being tremendously sincere, tremendously honest. A sincere pig, you know, which just, know, don’t bother me with details.
I know what reality is about. And that they have to they find a means to justify everything that they do in terms of this is the way, this is reality, this is the way it is. Self justification. And this gets serious. This is the way that it is really kind of a sincere it’s hard to argue with a pig.
They’re the bureaucrats. You know, they go by the letter rather than the spirit. They’re like these huge tanks that just kind of roll along. Don’t look left or right. They’re very sincere about what they do.
Have people who are on a mission to save the world. Don’t bother me with details. So an important step in this process of reframing, of changing our attitude basically, is the creation of the possibility of doubt. Doubt is a very creative state. Confusion is a very creative state.
It’s when we’re not sure of our opinions, of which way is up, which one is right, that there’s a possibility of alternative structures developing. Perhaps more productive, more skillful. The old is not operating and the new is yet to be born. And there’s a sort of gap which we experience as doubt, confusion. We don’t like that state.
It’s uncomfortable. So we jump to hold we grasp to something to reconfirm our position, secure ourselves in some idea or belief. You know they talk about, for example, that doubt in Buddhism is a very profound state. There are two types of doubt. One is called afflictive doubt and the other is we say healthy doubt.
And Śāntideva in his text on the Four Hundred Verses says just to doubt the whether objects truly exist or not. Just that doubt shakes the very foundation of cyclic existence. Just that doubt when your mind opens up, hey, maybe I am wrong. Maybe things wow. And the mind gets a little bit shaky there.
It’s not quite as sure as it once was about the way things are. And this can and a lesser level as to our approaches, the meanings that we attach to events, situations. If we can create that sense of maybe there maybe maybe there really is another world. And it’s not that’s not I’m using words, but it’s like kind of a an opening, a gap opens up. You’re not continually holding on to your past habitual ways of relating, attaching meaning, your various attitudes.
So creating some kind of doubt. And one becomes aware that one’s view is not the only possible view. That we all have our own reality in a manner of speaking, in more than a manner of speaking, probably in actual fact. And that there are many possible meanings, many possible attitudes we can take toward what is seemingly the same object or fact. This is all that this is one of the basis for all conflict.
People oh yeah, that’s you gave me that article. That’s right. An article. The basis for all conflict is that people’s realities are so very different and they’re all approaching what they see as the same fact from the two different realities. And if we are to, what we have to do is harmonize our realities if we’re going to come to agreement in resolving conflict.
You know, we can’t just like a pessimist and an optimist arguing back and forth. There’s nothing to be argued about because if they are arguing meaning and the meaning is not demonstratable. There’s no resolution. So but if they could harmonize their meanings, their way they’re attaching their particular attitudes, then the problem is resolved. Are other possible ways of looking at the same situation between other people but also in training our mind.
That we ourselves can begin to adapt, reframe situations to attach different meanings, more productive meanings. You know, it is simply through a process of habituation that we are being attached to the meaning that we now apply. And these meanings have as to up to the present have not been questioned. That we feel a sense of rightness and righteousness about our opinions. That he deserves my anger.
I was wronged. No doubt about it. If I take this to the world court, they would say, Yes. You’ve been wronged. You deserve it.
You have given ten years of anger. Sentence him to ten years of anger. That’s there’s something we have this sense of rightness and righteousness about. There’s some kind of like this is situation which is deserving of anger objectively. But there are alternative ways of looking at the same situation which are just as valid, just as valid as our own.
And perhaps even more productive than our own. More pragmatically beneficial in terms of pleasure, pain, in terms of, you know, all the values which we’re trying to realize, trying to foster. So out of this kind of opening we can develop more of a fluid and open way of relating. And we involve some kind of change in the way we look at things, in the way we can change. So in terms of tolerance, the practice of tolerance.
So we said there were three areas. Learning to endure difficult and suffering. Learning to endure difficult and suffering with a sense of acceptance and satisfaction. I was trying to look for a better word than satisfaction. I don’t know.
Learning to endure difficulties and suffering with a sense of acceptance and satisfaction. But satisfaction, sometimes I use the word joy, but that’s sort of it. It’s like, you know, if you really feel like you’re doing something worthwhile, feel good about yourself. You confront an issue even though it was difficult, you gain a sense of what? Affirmation.
Self affirmation, self sense of self satisfaction in that. Something like that. Learning to endure difficulties and sufferings with a sense of acceptance and self affirmation or self satisfaction. Secondly, consistently viewing situations in terms of the dharma. This, by, in terms of dharma we can mean in terms of higher orders of self correction.
Is there a better means to deal with this particular situation? Skillful, effective, appropriate? And then the third area of tolerance is refraining from retaliation. Refraining from retaliation. So with respect to this first time, learning to endure difficulties and suffering.
Sufferings with a sense of acceptance and satisfaction. So is a new attitude that we can develop toward old situations which normally we simply react with aversion. Dislike, non acceptance. With respect to the first, we’re trying to reframe our immediate reaction of distress and aversion to difficulties and suffering into those of satisfaction and acceptance. The same situations that we previously reacted to with distress and aversion, trying to now react to them with satisfaction and acceptance.
And in the actual text, Śāntideva says, Yet suffering does have its good points. So right now, people say, This guy obviously a know, wears hair shirts, sleeps on beds of nails. One of these kind of guys. But anyway, that’s our initial reaction to when we hear such statements, at least from me. Yet suffering does have its good points.
Through humiliation conceit is dispelled. Compassion is aroused for those in Samsāra. Evil is avoided and a liking is developed for virtue. So, you know, it’s been mentioned that awareness of suffering is the driving force behind change. Otherwise we’re going to maintain the status quo.
Why should we change if everything is okay? It is suffering more than not which makes us think. Pleasure doesn’t make us think. It is suffering, or I should say the awareness of suffering which makes us begin to think about our situation and what we’re involved in. So you know we’re trying to reframe, trying to see the value of suffering, aren’t we?
That it does up to now we’ve never reaction is to suffering is I don’t want it to get it away from me. Perhaps we can change our attitude just a little bit to begin to open up to the possibility, maybe there is some good quality to suffering. Maybe it does have some points. You know, with respect to this idea of suffering, Śāntideva is going to list some possibilities. Says, Through humiliation conceit is dispelled.
I don’t know if I told this. I don’t know, I’ll repeat it. When I was in India, I did a retreat for about a month. In a retreat, the situations are quite artificial. You have, you know, that quite controlled.
So it’s quite easy to get a very peaceful mind, at least after some time. Or maybe your first retreat might be a little difficult. Anyway, after you do a few of them, they get you can get a nice kind of spaced out place and you feel good and nobody’s bothered. You’ve got nobody pushing your buttons, you’ve got nobody to deal with. You’ve created this nice temporary artificial situation.
So it’s quite easy not to develop anger. It’s quite easy not to accept toward the food you eat. When you cook maybe. But it’s not you don’t have a lot of pleasures coming in. There’s not so much attachment.
It’s quite easy to get to the feeling, well, know, must I’ve gone beyond. I’ve become something of a saint. And you can develop this kind of pride. It’s quite easy to do in retreat. And I did that.
I’m not above that, that’s for sure. And I went, I thought well, you know, I’ll go down to I thought well now that I’m a saint, I’ll go down to Calcutta and I’ll visit the House of the Dying and do my saintly stuff there. So I went down to Calcutta and was working in the House of the Dying, Mother Teresa’s place. And I was cutting this old man’s toenails.