Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Calcutta hospice story opens this 45-minute commentary on tolerance: Ven Jampa Gendun recalls resenting correction from a dying man whose toenails he was clipping, using the moment to expose arrogance hidden inside pity and to separate it from true compassion rooted in shared suffering. He traces karma as an infallible link between actions and their results — illustrated by the optimist and pessimist reading the same glass differently — then argues, drawing on Śāntideva and Carl Jung, that willingly facing difficulty generates wisdom and removes the distress that fuels anger. A close reading of Śāntideva’s verse comparing anger at jaundice to anger at the person who hits you shows how dependent arising undercuts the apparent justification for anger. The session closes with audience discussion on accepting present suffering without collapsing into neurotic avoidance.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 Tce 1991 03 27.mp3
UUID: 0b03e122-2a84-4373-b9b3-e41b86aec538
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-03-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~4,410
What happened to the guy in Calcutta? You know, this guy, this bloke had been, you know, a couple hours before had been laying in the gutter, half way dead. It’s dying. And, you know, they bring them in and they wash them up and they give them a meal. Here I am, this very saintly, sophisticated Westerner has out of his tremendous compassion, has lowered himself to clip this guy’s toenails.
And this guy doesn’t like the way I’m clipping his toenails. He’s telling me, No, no, no, no, this is not the way you clip toenails. Who are you to know? Anyway, so he was pushing my buttons. It was a rather distressful situation, but it was a good way to show where my motivation was.
It was just coming from a level of I had a lot of arrogance, a lot of pride. And so it was a good way to dispel that that pride. You know, if we look at the poor and the needy, if the basis of our relating is not out of a sense of equality and equality in terms of suffering, basically, then we can begin to easily mistake pity for compassion. Pity is one part arrogance and one part sympathy. You know, when we you know, good done to another as if an object is of little spiritual benefit.
There’s feeling of superiority. There’s a feeling of self righteousness, self righteousness about ourselves. There’s arrogance. You know we’re saying, I feel good about myself. I feel warm and I feel good about myself in what I’m able to do for you.
And with such an attitude, beneath the superficial help that we may be giving, being able to bring to another person, on a deeper level we’re undermining their own self worth. They begin to see us as good and themselves as bad. You know, we’re actually maybe encouraging them to feel more worthless than they already feel already. It’s difficult for people in need of help to struggle against the pressing attention of someone who’s trying to do them good, trying to undermine them by doing good to them. And no one needs us to feel sorry for them.
Out of this sense of arrogance, of this sense of pride, the only way that we can develop this sense of equality is by admitting and experiencing our own brokenness. Becoming aware of and this is a Christian term, but maybe it’s kind of a good term. And there’s something of a humbling experience when one experiences suffering. And then, you know, this possibility of true compassion arises. You know, out of one’s own awareness of one’s own suffering, one develops a longing to be free from suffering and the willingness to take responsibility for that suffering.
And generally we call this developing I call this developing the determination to be free. But it’s just another word for compassion for oneself. To want to be free from your suffering and to be willing to take responsibility for your suffering. You know, if we start there, then we can recognize that everyone else is just like ourselves. You know, life is not much different for other people than it is for ourselves.
Life is difficult Just as it is for ourselves. Life is difficult. Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead, they moan, more or less incessantly, noisily, or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and the difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be, and that somehow, and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others.
I know about this, Moaning, because I have done my share. And his suffering reminds us that life based upon self grasping, based upon self centeredness is difficult. So it’s difficult for everybody, ourselves and everyone included. Everyone who lives a life based upon self grasping, upon ignorance, upon self-centeredness is involved in difficulties. Myself and everyone included.
It’s not something unusual. It’s not something unique. Out of this sense of self grasping and self centeredness, we lay everyone and everything at the altar of our own reified self, you know, may witness the ego as if it were deserving our absolute devotion at the exclusion and expense of everyone else. And we create unskillful actions. Śāntideva, in that paragraph, I quote from the text, Evil is avoided and liking is developed for virtue.
So out of self grasping and self centeredness we create both skillful and unskillful actions. Unskillful actions, you know, calling evil, evil unskillful actions, are those types of actions which predispose us to experience feelings of pain, displeasure when we meet with particular types of conditions. This is why they’re called unskillful actions. There is an infallible relationship between unskillful actions and the experience of displeasurable feelings. Only displeasurable feelings arise from unskillful actions.
Pleasurable feelings do not arise from unskillful actions. On the other hand, skillful actions are those types of actions which predispose us to experience pleasurable feelings when we contact specific types of conditions. And there’s an infallible relationship between happiness and skillful actions. From skillful actions pain does not arise, only happiness does. A very simple way we can begin to see this is in terms of this pessimist and this optimist.
They both meet the same objective condition, but their karma, habitual patterns of action, mental action, that is to say their attitudes, predispose them to react with different feelings toward the same objective condition. One experiences a sense of pleasure out of seeing a half filled glass. One experiences a sense of displeasure at seeing a half empty glass. Same object, same objective condition, but their karma is quite different. One experiences that objective condition as pleasurable, the other is displeasurable.
These habitual patterns that we’re laying down continue by our mental actions, by our physical actions, by our verbal actions, these impressions which predispose us to create constructs, to take views, attach meanings to the world, the ways we interpret the world, the way that we react to the world. So both happiness and suffering arise in dependence upon causes. Happiness is a product. It rises in dependence upon causes. It does not arise from no cause.
It does not arise in dependence upon haphazard causes. That means any type of causes. But in dependence upon specific variables, in dependence upon a similar class of causes. Throughout nature there is a strict relationship of similarity of class between cause and result. From apple seeds, apple trees arise, peach trees don’t arise.
There’s always a similarity of class. There is a definite relationship between a cause and a result. Out of this, coming to an understanding of that skillful actions are infallible with respect to giving, producing happiness. Unskillful actions are infallible with respect to producing results and suffering. When we do experience suffering, we’re going to think this has a cause.
The cause of this is an unskillful action. Therefore, if I don’t want to experience this type of suffering again in the future, I had best begin to avoid the unskillful action which is its cause. Therefore, suffering has the positive quality of helping us to avoid unskillful actions in the future. We experience a type of happiness, then this happiness has a cause. Its cause is a skillful action.
Therefore if we don’t want to suffer, if we want to experience happiness, then the quality of suffering is such that it will motivate us to produce the skillful actions which are the causes of happiness. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom. Indeed they create our courage and our wisdom. And we’re trying to develop a sense of the possibility to attach some positive meaning to our experiences of suffering difficulties and difficulties, that maybe there is something worthwhile in them, that they can rid us of our pride, they can help us develop motivate us to want to grow, to develop compassion, to want to begin to cease committing unskillful actions, to begin to cease creating unskillful actions. That maybe they do have this, the experience of suffering does have something potentially useful about it if we’re willing to attach these meanings to it.
Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom. Indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems. Just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve, it is through the pain of confronting and solving problems that we learn.
As Benjamin Franklin said, Those things that hurt instruct. It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems. You know, is difficult, and a great determining factor of the quality of our life is how we deal with our problems, how we deal with those difficulties. No matter what we do, we’re going to have difficulty, we’re going to have problems. But how are we going to deal with those problems?
You know, what is the mindset which we are going to approach problem. Talking about problems, fearing the pain involved, almost all of us to a greater or lesser degree attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate hoping that they will go away. We ignore them, forget them, pretend that they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problem that causes the pain.
We attempt to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them. This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. Since most of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree, lacking complete mental health. Some of us will go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality.
In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. But the substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was designed to avoid. Becomes the biggest problem. True to form, many will then attempt to avoid this pain and this problem, in turn building layer upon layer of neuroses. Fortunately however, some possess the courage to face their neuroses and begin to learn how to experience legitimate suffering.
And they were going to have difficulties, which are, and being willing to confront those difficulties is being willing to accept legitimate suffering. That things are this way and must be accepted, is to accept one’s legitimate suffering. In any case, when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing. We get stuck.
You know, whatever we do we’re going to have problems, at least for a while. And if we accept our problems, we will not compound our suffering. If we accept our legitimate suffering, we’re not going to compound our suffering. You know, through the distress which demands that things be otherwise by not accepting that things are the way they are, by avoiding the problem and trying to revert to some fantasy that the problem doesn’t exist, that our suffering doesn’t exist, that our difficulty doesn’t exist. You know, if we willingly confront our problems, our difficulties, and endure this kind of legitimate suffering that this entails, this confrontation entails, we can find some kind of satisfaction.
I don’t know what word, that’s the word I was thinking about. Satisfaction, self satisfaction. In the fact that we are learning and we are growing, becoming more skillful in working with our problems. And throughout all of this process there is no room for the neurotic pattern of anger to arise because there’s been no distress. One has accepted one’s problems and perhaps even accepted with a sense of satisfaction that one is learning.
And there’s no distress. There’s no refusal avoidance, refusal to admit to working with the situation. As if the distress arises from unwillingness to accept what is. If we accept, then there’s no distress. There may be, there is the legitimate, there is the suffering, but there the compounded suffering of the distress by refusing to accept what is, which is the basis for the anger, which serves as the main cause for anger.
The mind can remain in a sense of peace. People can go through a great deal of physical and mental difficulty, and part of their mind will remain at peace if they’re willing to accept, if they can attach that type of meaning, that they can have that kind of courage. Śāntideva now begins explanation of the second area of the involved in the practice of tolerance. So this was a consistent viewing of situations in terms of Dharma. Interpreting it from that mindset, that viewpoint, in terms of higher orders of self-correction.
How can I be more skillful in dealing with this situation? In terms of development of tolerance. So he goes on, the actual text, and there’s going to be some argumentation here. When I am not angry with things as bile, which are the source of great suffering, for what reason do I get angry with beings endowed with consciousness? For they too are provoked by conditions.
Here Śāntideva begins an analysis of the deluded rationale of anger And it is trying to cut through this sense of rightness that we have, righteousness that we have about our anger as if it were we don’t question it, but we have an assumption that somehow it’s correct, our anger is valid. And we begin to cut through that by a critique which is permeated with a thorough awareness of conditionality or dependent arising, emptiness. The fact of emptiness, the fact of conditionality, dependent arising can completely permeate all of the Dharma. Everything can be seen in terms. That’s why it is the heart of Buddhism.
All things whatsoever are under the power of something else. You know, this is one of significance of what we mean by dependent arising, by conditionality. Nothing is self arising. Nothing is self defining. Everything comes about due to something other than itself.
Nothing gives birth to itself. Everything depends upon something other than itself for its existence. Everything whatsoever, table, myself, Adelaide, whatsoever. Nothing is self powered. All things are dependent upon, for example, causes and conditions.
They do not give rise to themselves. So when a person is sick with jaundice, this person experiences physical suffering. By bile here, some type of jaundice, hepatitis, whatever. When a person is sick with jaundice, they experience some kind of physical suffering. What is the cause of that suffering, that physical suffering?
It is the disease. So, Śāntideva says, We don’t get angry at that disease. Then why do we get angry at a being endowed with consciousness? Why do we get angry at a person, for example, who hits us with a stick? Where does that physical suffering arise?
It arose from that person. So in both cases we experience physical suffering. In one case the cause was the jaundice. In one case the cause was the person. In one case we don’t get angry with respect to the jaundice.
In the other case we do get angry with respect to the person. You know, if physical suffering is experienced as a result of both jaundice and being hit by a stick, why do we get angry at the person while we don’t get angry at the jaundice? So, okay, you know, we can answer that. Yeah. Could get angry at your illness, couldn’t you?
I shouldn’t be sick. I should be well. So what can we be angry at? Okay, so if we were to analyze, if we get angry at the jaundice, well the jaundice has no intention to harm us. It hasn’t decided to bring us harm.
It hasn’t even itself, it has no intention to create itself. Within the body there was certain conditions present. in dependence upon those conditions, jaundice arose. And out of that jaundice we experienced physical suffering. So, now what has no intention to harm us.
It’s simply the aggregation of causes and conditions which brings us harm, due to which we experience harm. Yeah, that’s what we said the two conditions for the arising of anger was a frustrated desire, that you want to go out and play tennis or something, and you can’t because of this jaundice. So you become distressed. And then you get angry. And you get angry at the object which you see preventing you from realizing your desire, which is the jaundice.
Yeah, you can do that. There’s no end to that. There’s no end to where you can get angry or what you can get angry. Yeah. Actually, Śāntideva is going to go, later on he goes through analysis why, about deluded rationale with respect to getting angry at the man who is wielding the stick.
Right now he is trying to get across the idea of that things are other power. None of these factors have the intention to bring us suffering. Someone would argue that the man has an intention to cause me suffering. Okay, the jaundice has no intention to cause me suffering. It just arises in dependence upon specific causes and conditions, upon the state of my body, and the jaundice arises and it causes me physical suffering.
But the man is out to get me. But the man, again, is not self powered, under his own control. He is under the control of anger. You know, with respect to that person, if you want to get angry at something, get angry at his anger. That’s what, you know, that is what he is under the control of.
Everything is under the control of something else. So what is the ultimate cause of our suffering? What do you think? Causes, what’s your I guess why is that? Yeah.
So what what what it’s because yeah. What causes the peace of the mind to be disturbed? Know, Buddhism is coming from the point of view that the mind is naturally at peace. It’s its natural state. Yeah?
Some kind of disharmony. Conflict. What would that entail? Things aren’t the way you want them to be. That’s because we’re, I mean we don’t see things as conditional, as dependent arising, that we see things as absolute, as objectively existent, as inherently existent.
That the you know, there is simply a flow of mental and physical events. And if we begin to for example, on side over here, there’s simply a happening occurring that I happen to call myself. It’s just mental and physical events one after another. And we can give that a conventional term, we can call it I, jampa, self. But if we absolutize that, if we say there’s something which is not simply a flow of events, but something which is solid, concrete, enduring, then out of all this begins the whole process of conflict.
I’ve created a sense of absolute I and not I. I’ve made an absolute division. What is simply a relative convention, which is something which is just a convention that we’ve created, made up, I’ve made into an absolute as if it existed in and of itself in reality. There is me and there is not me. And then how am I going to relate to that which is not me?
And various feelings arise out of that. Out of that arises various perceptions threatening, enhancing, and then various ways of relating with threatening, anger enhancing attachment. And out of that the whole of the saṃsāra is created. So out of this initial impetus to concretize, to make what is simply a convention into an absolute, These processes are going on. There’s this continual flux and flow of causes and conditions, results within the universe.
But then we begin to there’s this kind of a there is this unity. Out of this unity we begin to differentiate and make absolute, what is simply conventional divisions. We make them absolute, real, solid, concrete. And then all the various out of that arises cyclic existence. The harmony of the mind is lost.
And if we are able to go beyond this simply maintaining awareness that all of this is simply conventional, it’s simply a view that is the agreed upon way of looking at what is there. There’s nothing more than that. Then the harmony of the mind is never lost. Then we can maintain the peace of mind. Isn’t it?
So, yeah. Anybody have a comment? I think this is a, yes, life should be easy. It’s a product of our culture, our family, our history. That things should be this way or not be this way.
That’s our karma. Everything that’s made us who we are now, our present, which has made our views, our attitudes, our beliefs. And out of that we create our particular world, our reality. Sometimes it’s not a very harmonious reality. There’s a lot of strife.
Have what? One ought not to be something. I think the idea is one can accept the present and work for change for the future. And the present is a dependent arising, has risen in dependence upon very specific cause and condition. It cannot be otherwise.
And But there’s a sense that this shouldn’t be like this in the present. But even accepting the present, I am like I am with all my hang ups and problems, the bad things about myself and the good things. But I can still create the conditions for it to direct my change for the future. Accept the suffering and that’s what we don’t do. I know you have to you have to accept legitimate suffering.
Yeah. Legitimate suffering. But Mhmm. Yeah. That’s right.
You’ve got to accept it as part of the But this this way of life is difficult. Yeah. But it’s not that we can accept that. But we can at the same time be working to Some people call it Buddha nature. No.
That’s quite nice. That’s quite nice that you recognize. Intrinsic instinct toward wakefulness. Hang ups, blah blah. And yet, can be working towards changing the future.
And yet, somehow, it seems to be this it’s it’s something about the question of what was it you said? Sort of suffering was it? Legitimate suffering. Legitimate suffering. Yeah.
What we’ve been talking about is reframing situations. So, it was striking me early in the conversation that perhaps there wasn’t room for perhaps there wasn’t room to accept the suffering and instead to immediately just reframe the situation which on another level would be just a neurotic response. A way of not accepting legitimate suffering. The, I mean, this particular context, the reframing is in order to avoid generating distress so that you don’t become angry. You you have a difficult situation, which means it’s a suffering situation, but you’re trying to reframe it so you don’t compound the suffering by becoming distressed.
As I said, we have frustrated desires and somebody prevents us from getting that. A frustrated desire is painful. Frustrated desire is painful. We don’t have to compound that by becoming distressed about our frustrated desire. We can see the good qualities of that suffering so we don’t become distressed about it.
So we don’t we don’t compound it. So we accept that suffering as legitimate suffering because it’s we’ve created the causes for it. Yeah. We accept it as legitimate suffering, but does that does that mean that one smiles rather than goes, I mean, ultimately you say, well, I take responsibility for that suffering because I created the cause for it. It’s suffering.
I created the cause for it. I can’t blame it on anybody or anything I take complete responsibility for what that suffering is. And after that point, reframes. Therefore why no, so that’s a reframing itself, taking responsibility and accepting. And then you don’t become distressed about it.
I wish I didn’t have this stuff, but I created the causes for it. Have to accept it. Sure. Oh, no doubt. I mean, if it’s You’ve got to keep on.
How do you the person’s viewing that glass of fluid, that glass of water, how do you convince him to see it as half full? What do you do? And oh, I try. I haven’t been more that successful, but I I I at least can see the two as two separate things now. Oh, that’s good.
But the problem of the difference is still there. Between which? Between what? Between my view and this and my protagonist. Antagonist.
Mean, Rinpoche talked about this a little bit on Saturday when when someone asked, well, if you have the great motivation, but you you still don’t seem to be successful. Yeah. Rinpoche was saying, well, you still have to to work out ways of of of dealing with the problem on on a very practical level. Yeah. Because I’m not you know, obviously, if you’ve got the right motivation, it’s gonna help.
Sounds good. Yeah. Learn the hard way. It’s quite difficult. It’s quite difficult because what we’re trying to do is that’s the reason why you know, a person who has low self esteem, for example, no matter how many times he does something or she does something right, quite often it has no effect upon their