Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun pauses mid-series to note, with dry wit, that his audience must already be practicing tolerance just by listening patiently through twenty-five of a hundred and twenty-five verses. In this 31-minute talk, he then delivers the session’s central formula: anger arises from two conditions — a frustrated desire and an identified obstacle — plus one root cause, a distressed mind. Tolerance, he argues, is not suppression but an undistressed mind in those same circumstances, cultivated through reframing: giving a situation new meaning without changing the facts, illustrated by the half-full glass example. He grounds this in the Three Jewels as a framework for reorienting one’s life, and closes with a tantric perspective that afflictive emotions are misdirected expressions of Buddha nature — a view that makes anger workable rather than shameful.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 Tce 1991 04 03.mp3
UUID: d5c3a423-9d27-472d-9a7c-1af66c2f6c15
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-04-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 30.9 minutes
Words: ~3,753
Again, we’re beginning with adjusting our motivation so that what we do is not simply a matter of it doesn’t become a means of complicating our life, extending and supporting the problematic qualities of our ego, neurotic compulsive patterns, but in some ways serves to begin to redirect us in higher orders of self correction in terms of seeing our problems and solving them on perhaps a more effective, more appropriate level than perhaps the way we’ve been dealing with them up to now. Know, traditionally called refuge, this continual reprioritizing, redirecting. In Buddhism, ordinary existence is viewed as being fraught with suffering, fear, misery, and pain. And the initial spiritual urge is expressed by the phrase going for refuge. Refuge then implies an abandonment of allegiance to ordinary criteria of what is meaningful.
You know, we’re trying to deal with our problems on a more meaningful level, recognizing, acknowledging our problems, that life is in fact difficult. Readjusting our orientation to deal with them a more meaningful way. We aligning our allegiance from the ordinary criteria of the pleasure pain principle or the fear hope principle, which simply serve to support and extend our problems. And the way we can begin to deal with our problems. One begins to entertain the possibility of awakening and derives inspiration from the fact of the enlightenment of Śākyamūni Buddha.
You know that someone has done it before, has solved the problems, it’s not something that we have to discover ourselves in terms of a path. But there are others who have actually and are actually engaged in the process of growth, of solving the problems of ego, of neurotic compulsive patterns, and can help us. And we can take an inspiration from their example. Going for refuge means orientating oneself toward the attainment of enlightenment, this awakening, reprioritizing our direction in life. If we keep going in the same direction, we’ll probably get to the place that we’re headed and where are we headed.
And redefining where we’re headed from day to day in the course of our life is where we’re going, where we actually want to get to. The problem in our life is not so much that we don’t get what we want. It’s oftentimes when we get what we want and we find out it’s not what we wanted at all. Beginning to find out what it is you want and to continually reorient yourself in your various activities. And it becomes sort of an inner guiding principle of your life, the direction that you want to take.
And in this sense, taking refuge in Buddha, but not the Buddha outside of ourselves, but the Buddha within ourselves in terms of the awakened state of being is the solution to your problems. It can serve you anywhere you go, in any situation, under any condition. It will serve you to your best interest, your own awakening. There’s nothing other than that that can have that potential to become a happy, healthy, loving human being. Taking refuge in Buddha, the Buddha inside of oneself, but also taking inspiration from those who have done it already, those who have gone before us.
In addition, one takes refuge in the Dharma, the teachings and the experience of awakening. So in this respect there is the verbal Dharma and there is the Dharma of realizations. Verbal Dharma are the various teachings, the various books that we can read, what we get from outside. But our ultimate refuge is the experience of Dharma, the realization Dharma, the actual attainment of various states, realization, the abandonment of various neurotic patterns from our own mind. This is the ultimate refuge, what we create within our own mind.
And taking refuge in the Sangha, the spiritual community, These are the teachers and the other practitioners, people who provide guidance and support along the path. So this journey is very much a social phenomenon. Have to create a therapeutic atmosphere in which the social quality of the path can be made use of. We can avail ourselves of the inspiration, guidance and support of others who are like minded individuals who have made awakening growth the central principle in their life. It’s a difficult proposition to foster such qualities as love and compassion, other centeredness, generosity, ethics, tolerance.
Our society places little value upon these qualities. And so it can be very much a lonely task. At times it seems that there’s very little support. So it’s important that one seek out and create situations where these small flames of inspiration can be gathered together and create something like a bonfire, which we can all gather together and warm ourselves, take away some sense of inspiration and guidance from one another. These three, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, are known as the Three Jewels.
And the point of view of Buddhism and the end of suffering and the solution can be found only through awakening to a true understanding of oneself and the world. We need wisdom. We need love, compassion. We need creative energy. You know, in terms of wisdom, it’s not something which we have a consumer mentality in the sense that somehow we see all these various things outside of ourselves.
And we expect to be able to achieve these and perhaps simply by being a passive receiver rather than active participator in this process of growth. And in terms of wisdom, it doesn’t matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself, he said. Everything we do, everything we are rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered at us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don’t have enough of it, if we don’t have enough of our own personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won’t make a damn bit of difference.
So the Dharma is true. I mean the Dharma is, I’m not saying the Buddha Dharma, but the Dharma. That is to say the reality of our situation and the world about us. This is truth. It is the premise of Buddhism that the truth is therapeutic.
Then it has a healing quality. The closer that we come to truth, the more obvious it becomes, until it becomes so obvious that we can no longer deny it. We have to accept it. Whereas falsity on the other hand, the closer we come to it, the less obvious and more obscure it becomes until it vanishes altogether. But we have a sense that we must bring something to this process.
That is that we can’t simply be fed the truth. We have to discover it from our own side. And this requires no matter how wise a teacher might be and how clearly the teaching might be presented. And though he or she might hold your hand in meditation, it’s very much your own responsibility to discover what that teacher is trying to tell you, what that teacher is trying to show you. And this requires a great deal of personal power on one’s own side.
We call this merit, positive potential, skillful actions. So these are the in developing oneself as an initial practitioner, we end throughout the path. We have to be concerned with the development of personal power and the purification of negativities, purification of obstructions to coming to an understanding. You know, personal power through the various ways that we can create personal power, but the central most, the most powerful means is by the means of the awakening heart. This is the only way that we can achieve a complete awakening, the awakening of a Buddha by the power of an awakening heart, by beginning to go beyond our own neurotic self centered needs and create a shift in the psychological center of gravity toward other centeredness so that more and more we see our development in terms of others’ needs and being able to serve others’ welfare.
Last weekend there was a retreat with Khensur Rinpoche and he made the comment that if someone is only concerned with their own needs, working toward their own ends. They probably will never be happy people. On the other hand, those who work for the benefit of others may not worry about becoming happy. They definitely will whether they want to or not. And this is not obvious to us at present.
But we have to review the course of our lives and all the blood, sweat and tears that we’ve experienced and how far, what has it gotten us? And maybe there’s an alternative method and a reorientation that needs to be worked on, looking within one’s own experience. Where does one’s happiest moments come from? Where does personal power come from? What does it mean?
And then the teachings have a power to move our mind. Something there’s some shift, something clicks, a penny drops, and then we grow in the context of personal power. And the verbal teachings, realization arises, And we solve our problems and we have the ability, the skills, the understanding to help others to solve their problems. So in this course, the course of things, the course of practice, the inner principle of our life becomes Buddha, awakening, by means of the technique of Dharma and in the social context of a spiritual community, the Sangha. And we seek to raise the level of our going for refuge, of this reorientation process, such that we do all of this as best we can in all our honesty and with all our neuroses in some small way for the benefit of others.
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 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 highest assembly. 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 highest assembly.
And 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. So this is taking quite a long time, isn’t it? You people are very tolerant. I thought it would be quite useful for myself, if not for anyone else, to go through this. And there are about one hundred and twenty five verses, and we’ve gotten through about twenty five.
But I thought, well, what to do? Maybe you’re practicing tolerance just by listening the way you do so patiently, without getting angry at me, without getting distressed. So this has been on my mind. Anyway, keep going. So we’re learning how to work with anger.
Know, anger, you know, we emphasize again, anger has two conditions and one cause. This, I think, that’s really great. I mean, you already know something really useful. Anger has two conditions and one cause. Its conditions are a frustrated desire and identifying something or someone who is preventing you from realizing that desire.
And a distressed mind as the main cause. Main cause, distressed mind, plus two conditions. So already we have some handle on our problem of anger, I think. I think it’s quite wonderful to just have that knowledge and to see it maybe operating in your everyday life when you do become angry. Because it may give you some feeling that the situation is workable.
You know, there’s not this kind of a great deal in general, but in Western psychology there’s a sense that there’s a thing called anger in us and it’s just waiting to be erupted. It’s like some solid entity. It’s just a reactive pattern. When certain causes and conditions aggregate, a certain pattern of mind is expressed. That’s all.
If those conditions don’t aggregate, there’s no anger there. It may be latent. It may be non manifest, but it won’t arrive. It’s not waiting like some big boogeyman to jump out at you at any moment. So we don’t have to perhaps be so paranoid.
We just have to be aware when the situations begin to aggregate, when frustrated desire arises, when you begin to identify someone or something preventing you from realizing that desire, and when you begin to become aware that your mind is distressed, then you must become aware, the conditions and causes for anger are aggregating. I’d best be careful because a reactive pattern may arise, which I would rather is not in my best interest, is not appropriate, is not effective, is self destructive. Until we abandon anger, going to get angry. Until we abandon ignorance, we’re going to get angry. Why? Because we’re going to have desires.
And we can’t order the world according to our wants. It’s out of control. So we’re going to have frustrated desires. There are going to be people, there are going to be things which are going to prevent us from realizing our desire. We have to expect that.
It shouldn’t be surprising. It’s in the nature. Sometimes it’s quite nice, but we don’t appreciate the fact Buddhism or whatever, the various religions, the various spiritual paths, psychology, whatever, they are trying to tell us the nature of our world. And somehow we pig headily, stubbornly refuse to accept these truths that life is difficult. If we understand that life is difficult, then we aren’t surprised when difficulties arise.
We compound our suffering by saying it shouldn’t be like this. Life should be easy, but life is not easy. It is difficult. So it’s not that we become fatalistic. That’s not the point.
It’s just that we don’t compound our suffering by not being willing to accept it by acknowledging the quality, the tone of our ego based existence. So with ignorance we’re bound to have desires, with desires we’re bound to have frustrated desires, and therefore the conditions for anger. But we can begin to work with those conditions and with that cause, especially the cause, the distressed mind. If we lessen, if we eliminate the distress associated with difficult conditions which result, which arise in situations where we experience frustrated desires, then to that same degree we’re going to decrease and eliminate our anger. And this is what we call tolerance.
Tolerance is an undistressed mind in situations in the context of a frustrated desire. It’s an undistressed mind. It’s simply not holding your anger in as best as can. It’s not repression. It has nothing to do with repression.
So tolerance arises through a process of reframing the situation. This means to change the conceptual or the emotional setting or viewpoint in relationship to what a situation, in which the viewpoint in which the situation is experienced and to place it in another frame, which fits the facts just as well, if not better. We try to give the situation new meaning. The situation hasn’t changed, the facts of the situation haven’t changed, but we try to imbue that situation with new meaning, to see it in a different light, in a different way than we previously did from another perspective. Reframing the situation.
We’re given this situation, the same situation, new meaning. Meaning is not just a matter of intellectual objective understanding, as if things had inherent meaning. And we should all know that this means this, that the enemy is to be hated. Everyone knows that. That’s a fact.
And this is the way that we usually defend our particular point of view. As I mentioned last week, in many of the ideas being set forth by Śāntideva, is initial reaction, Well, that’s all very nice, but I have to deal with the real world and real people. What you’re saying in a sense is this is kind of phony. This is unrealistic. I thought, maybe unrealistic.
You’re not willing to see that all views are relative. There may be a hundred different valid ways of viewing the same situation. Just as valid. Buddhism is simply one valid way of viewing reality, whatever that might be. There are many different viewpoints.
And all of these viewpoints are relative. And even the relativeness of viewpoints is relative. Nothing is absolute. And we talked about, you know, we’re trying to you know, meaning is not just a matter of intellectual objective understanding. But it’s the entire personal significance that we give to a situation.
And this comes out of your own history, the significance that you give a situation. You know, I used the last week the example of the half glass of water. You know, it’s a simple way we can begin to see that a pessimist views the glass as half empty. Optimist reviews the glass as half full. And out of these ways of viewing that same situation, each will imbue the situation with a distinct personal significance and meaning and will react to that situation out of this meaning that they’ve given the situation.
And the objective fact is the glass is half full. The objective fact is it’s half empty. But which way are you going to view it? And what meaning do you give that? And they’re both realities, the way we can approach the same situation.
So in working with reality, we are trying to change the way we previously we are trying to change the view, our view of previously difficult, distressful situations, and develop tolerance. That is to say, undistressed mind toward these same previously difficult situations. And the area that we’re trying to develop tolerance in were three. We’re trying to learn to endure difficult and suffering situations with a sense of acceptance and satisfaction. To endure difficult and suffering situations with a sense of acceptance and satisfaction, this idea that life is difficult.
We have this mentality that it should perhaps should be otherwise, but this only compounds our problem. And this is not to say that we are to be fatalistic and simply accept our problems. We are to work with them, but we have to first accept them, that this is appropriate to everything that has gone before. You know, if we could look at all the various variables which this particular situation is outflow from, it’s perfect. We can understand it couldn’t be any other way.
I couldn’t be any other situation. I couldn’t be any other type of relationship than the way it is now. It’s very appropriate. I have to accept that. Now I have to begin to work with it.
And accepting these difficulties and bearing with them and actually gaining a sense of satisfaction that out of this willingness to accept legitimate suffering, confronting conflict, issue, problem, you’re going to grow. And in that there’s a sense of satisfaction. And in that way of viewing this situation, you won’t become distressed. And therefore you won’t become angry. So we covered that last week, some of the thinking behind that.
The second way, consistently viewing situations in terms of Dharma. Consistently viewing situations in terms of Dharma. I read something very interesting in terms of I can’t remember what it was, but it struck me that the nature of a student teacher, the relationship is quite profound within a spiritual context because it’s something much more than simply the passing along of information. But one begins to adopt the reality of one’s teacher. One’s own reality begins to be shaped by one’s teacher such that as I think G.
M. Popo said in a book called in his text on the graduated path, he said his realization of Guru devotion, or that is to say his way of depending upon the spiritual teacher when he realized that his own mind and his teacher’s mind were not separate. That this is involved in the process of transmission, the reorganization of one’s reality in accordance with this lineage of realities which are being transmitted through Śākyamūni Buddha. A particular way of structuring, interpreting, experiencing this world about us. In terms of the abharma, and what I mean, and I came across a nice term which I’ve been using, in terms of higher orders of self correction.
Higher orders of self correction, which is kind of a nice, of, it’ll be my fad for the next few weeks. The mind is a self organizing system. As all self organizing systems do, they have a mechanism of self correction. I think this may be what we might term as Buddha nature. There is a tension in the mind and the mind seeks to relieve that tension, tension reduction mechanisms, coping mechanisms.
There’s a tension born out of the primordial split induced by ignorance between self and not self, inside, outside. And out of this, the whole fabrication of cyclic existence, all of neurotic compulsive patterns that we experience are simply an elaboration on this basic primordial split. Prior to this, though there was no such time, there was only peace. There was an equilibrium state. Though there existed a conventionality between inside and outside, self and others, there wasn’t this thick black line drawn, self, absolute other, and now how am I to relate with the rest of the world.
And this tremendous what, edifice of conceptual fabrications that we have developed in order to deal with that simple little split between inside and outside that we first grabbed hold on as absolute. So this mind is continually working, trying to correct itself, to eliminate distress from its own mind, this initial distress. Distress. And I said the qualities of desire. Desire is distress.
Anger is distress. Anger is the way the mind is a coping mechanism by which the mind is seeking to relieve distress, of frustrated desire, rising out of situations of frustrated desire. It is an expression of Buddha nature. And this is one of the teachings of one of the viewpoints of tantra, that the afflictive emotions can be used on the path, that they are an expression of Buddha nature, of our basic sanity gone wrong. That’s a negative energy which has taken the wrong.