Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Kahlil Gibran verse about a summit whose only reward is the desire to descend and be with others opens this 43-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun on tolerance and patience. He grounds the session in compassion as the single quality containing all others, then traces ego-based distress to its root: ignorance creates the self/not-self split, which generates attachment and anger as coping mechanisms. Tolerance — an undistressed mind in the face of difficulty — is presented as the practical antidote. The session then focuses on Śāntideva’s third area of tolerance, refraining from retaliation, built around the concept of “other-powered”: people who harm others are driven by conditioning rather than free choice, just as people routinely damage themselves without intending to. This recognition, Gendun argues, turns hurtful situations into grounds for compassion rather than reactive anger.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 Tce 1991 04 10.mp3
UUID: cb1a8e7e-1717-44c1-a384-37e85c2047bf
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-04-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.3 minutes
Words: ~4,565
So we begin with five minutes of mindfulness of breathing. We begin by adjusting our motivation. There’s a quote by Kahlil Gibran. He’s talking about a mountain called the Blessed Mountain. You may have heard of the Blessed Mountain.
It is the highest mountain in our world. Should you reach the summit, you would have only one desire, and that is to descend and be with those who dwell in the deepest valley. That is why it’s called the Blessed Mountain. So The Buddha was asked, What quality amongst all qualities should the bodhisattva, the practitioner, whoever, cultivate? And he said that if the bodhisattva, the practitioner, has one quality, it is as if she had all the qualities in the palm of her hand.
And that one quality is compassion. In the last about two weeks ago, our teacher, Khensur Lobsang Tsephel, made a simple statement, but which is quite profound, that those who seek only happiness for themselves will probably never be happy. On the other hand, those who seek in some small way, at least, to bring happiness to others will be happy to that same degree, to that same measure, to the degree that we seek to bring happiness to others, we ourselves will be made happy. It’s kind of a paradox of life, isn’t it? But it seems like the living of life is very much a living of a paradox, that those who would try to hold on to their life lose it, and those who give it up find life.
And so the motivation and we can do this to some degree, to some extent. As Śāntideva says in his engaging in the bodhisattva deeds, nothing whatsoever does not become easier upon habituation. That is to say, everything simply becomes easier the more we cultivate it. And so the essence of the Mahāyāna, the great vehicle, is simply the cultivation of compassion as a motivating force for whatever we might be doing. The bodhisattva, that is to say someone who has whose spiritual journey is motivated by the thought to help others.
That the more skillful I become, the more I can benefit others. That such a person, no matter what they might be doing, whether they’re sleeping, walking, eating, going to the toilet, everything becomes a practice. Everything becomes a way of ultimately benefiting others. Becomes a very powerful person. And it is if, you know, we want to gain wisdom.
We have to gain, for example, the understanding of emptiness, understanding of selflessness. But without this personal power, we’re never going to be able to remove the hindrances, the obstacles, the impediments to the development of our wisdom. And the most effective, the most forceful, the most efficient method of gaining personal power is the development of love and compassion. The realizations of the lesser vehicle and the greater as far as emptiness, are exactly alike. There’s no difference between the realization of an emptiness of a foe destroyer of the lesser vehicle, or an Arhat, and those of the great vehicle.
But one becomes a Buddha and one doesn’t. The difference between those achievements is simply because one is conjoined with great compassion, with the altruistic intention to achieve highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. That this is like the compassion becomes like the rocket fuel, which propels this wisdom, her wisdom, propels the individual to the state of Buddhahood. And Buddhahood simply means becoming a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. So that’s our direction.
And this process of refuge is simply that. A continual reorientation toward those values, those beliefs, principles, those modes of conduct, ways of being, are going to be most effective in actualizing our potential and helping us to solve the basic problems of human life. And amongst these, the most effective is that of compassion to again and again keep reorientating ourselves toward compassion, becoming a compassionate person. And we can do that. There’s no reason why we can’t do that.
You know, we can be a little bit more compassionate today than we were yesterday, and then tomorrow, and the next day. You know, it’s not as if we have to pretend. It’s not as if we have to measure up to some sort of spiritual gauge. But simply without having to look at oneself, One simply cultivates the motivation of compassion again and again and again, without having to worry about how well one is doing, how compassionate one is. That the force of that compassion will take care of itself.
Simply, again and again, reorientating ourselves, regenerating the motivation of compassion. And then our spiritual journey will take care of itself. Because if we have this one quality in the palm of our hand, then it’s going to act like a magnet. Everything else will come as if by itself. If we don’t have this, then our entire spiritual journey is going to be a huge struggle.
It’s like a panacea. That’s what Śāntideva calls it. It alleviates the sufferings of the world. It cools the heat of the noonday sun. He has many metaphors and similes talking about compassion.
So this reorientation process is reprioritizing our values, our principal aims in life, making the principal inner goal of our life Buddha. That is to say growth, in terms of becoming a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being, of fostering, nurturing the potentials of wisdom, love, and spontaneous action, creative activities in the world. Going for refuge to Buddha, going for refuge to Dharma, that which is the ultimate solution to the to our problem. This is the ultimate refuge, the ultimate means of solving the problems of our dissatisfaction, our loneliness, our feelings of isolation, frustrations, disappointments. These techniques, these means, these realizations.
You know, whatever that might be, the truth, this therapeutic value, and continually availing. You know, this becomes it’s like, you know, one has faith in the efficacy of Dharma in the sense that By committing oneself to the values of Dharma, of spiritual practice, one has a sense that this is going to solve my problems. That other things perhaps can bring about some kind of superficial solution, some kind of temporary solution. So I can make use of these in association with the dharma. But ultimately, the basic problems that I’m having to deal with in the course of my life are within the context of dharma, within the context of reality, of touching the way things actually are, of truth, of realization, of love and compassion.
You know, rather than saying anger is you know, we were talking about higher orders of self correction and what we mean by dharma. That by dharma is simply the highest order of self correction, the way that we heal the wounds of the mind. Anger is a way of working with a problem. It has certain immediate advantages, perhaps. But they are shortsighted, ultimately it’s self destructive.
So rather than going for refuge to anger as a way of dealing with a problem, of solving some difficulty, which we perhaps might normally do, we avail ourselves of the higher order of self correction of the mind, which we call Dharma. And we have faith that it’s going to work in the long run, that in the long run love and compassion are much more effective in solving my problems than anger. Going for refuge, to love, to wisdom, to creative activity, as opposed to low orders or habitual ways of dealing with situations is an active form of going for refuge. And going for refuge to the spiritual community. That mental health is a social phenomenon, that we have to acknowledge our interdependence with others, that we need others and acknowledging this and making it a very important part of your life to avail yourself of the spiritual fellowship of others.
And raising the level of our motivation such that we go for refuge making the inner principle of our life Buddhahood by means of Dharma in the social context of the Sangha, the spiritual community, in order to be able to benefit others out of compassion, wanting to help others to be happy, wanting to free them from their suffering. And this is simply this continual reorientation process. We will change. We won’t be the same person that we were last year, the year before. That our mind can be transformed, that it is dynamic, that the patterns that we are not our patterns, And that we can create more skillful patterns.
And we can live on a higher order of being if we make that consistent choice I’m just reorientating ourselves toward it. 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, 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. So we’re still looking at tolerance. Tolerance, patience. This undistressed mind in the face of problematic situations. Life is difficult.
I don’t mean Be cynical, I hope I don’t sound cynical. Maybe I can somehow counteract the television commercials. Sort of Bring you back to some sort of middle ground, if I keep repeating that long enough. Ego based existence is what I mean. And life is okay.
Life is no problem. Life is beautiful. Should be. We should all be blissed out right now. We’re just involved in a few fundamental errors, that’s all.
You know, it’s no We don’t have to solve the Iraqi situation, the Kurdish situation. We just have to undo a few fundamental mistakes that we’re making in our ways of thinking. So it’s not an impossible task. And then perhaps life would be as it should be, as it can be, as some people do experience it. But ego based existence is problematic.
It’s difficult. And it’s experiences as varying levels and various types of distress. The most subtle, the most fundamental of this distress is simply the burden of having an ego itself. This is traditionally termed the suffering and the dissatisfaction of universal conditionality. This, you know, is like having a bundle of thorns on the back of your they’re tied to your back wherever you go, whatever you do, they’re always kind of poking you.
This is it’s not life. It’s ego based existence. The burden of ego itself. And what I mean by ego is an enduring structure, an enduring system of mind, which is a byproduct of seeking to secure the self in space and time. It’s based upon ignorance, misconception as to the nature of the self.
There’s this constant struggle to secure the self, the I, jampa, whoever, trying to secure that being in space and time. The mental byproduct, the enduring structure which is generated out of this struggle to secure the self, is what I call ego. It’s based upon this entire struggle that we’re involved in is based upon the distorting pattern of ignorance. Ignorance is simply more than not knowing. It’s an act of mistaken knowing, an act of misconceiving.
It distorts the nature of the self. So under the influence of basic ignorance, the world is divided into ultimate parts of self and not self. And what is conventional? Conventionally speaking, there is an I and there is a not I. There is you and there is me.
But these aren’t any problems to anyone. It’s only when they’re absolutized, they’re made ultimates as opposed to conventions, manners of speaking. It makes sense for me to say I’m sitting here, you’re sitting there. But not in any absolute sense. It’s only when we begin to draw a big thick black line around this eye that We create an skin encapsulated ego that problems begin to arise.
The basic split between self and not self. Out of this, how am I going to relate with this newly discovered world out there which is independent of myself, forming ways of reacting, ways of relating? Out of this arises the primary reactive pattern of feelings. Unpleasurable feelings, pleasurable feelings, neutral feelings. This is our initial reaction to this newly created independent other.
Our first way of feeling out the territory. We find pleasurable objects. We find unpleasurable objects. We find neutral objects, feeling wise. Out of these feelings arises perceptions.
Pleasurable objects are associated with are perceived, are distinguished as enhancing, affirming the self. And now we’re beginning to evolve the complex of ego. We’re beginning to extend it to create a fantastic structure which will constitute our world, evolving from this initial primordial split between self and not self, absolutizing that split, And then the first initial reaction of feelings. Then after feelings, those objects which are associated with pleasurable feelings, we perceive them as enhancing, affirming, desirable. Those are associated with unpleasurable feelings we see as threatening, as dangerous, as hostile.
Out of this, what very complicated modes of relating arrive, reactive patterns, ways of dealing with this now perceived threatening object or this now perceived enhancing object. For those enhancing objects we generate attachment, we generate desire. We want to incorporate those into our now newly evolving ego identity to make them a permanent part of ourselves. Through those objects that we associate, we see, we now perceive discriminate as threatening, as hostile, we develop angered repulsion. We want them to remove them, to make them permanently separate from our now evolving ego identity.
So this great fabrication, this elaboration, all from the very basis, that simple misconception of the nature of the self, what we call ego. This gigantic maze that we have developed for ourselves, that we have created for ourselves, this world that we inhabit, is the product of our ego. We continually are recreating it moment by moment. It is a way of relating with what is in a very unskillful way based upon mistaken beliefs, distorted premises, wrong ideas, crooked ways of thinking. Basically, this basic split has arisen, there is distress.
And the rest of our struggle is simply to overcome this basic split, to find union, to return to that state of before the fall, whatever. There is this distress and the mind is doing the best it can to alleviate that distress. The sense of isolation, the sense of having to seek union with oneself, with others, with nature, a sense of fragmentation that we feel, which is experienced in a very subtle anxiety about one’s very being. Out of this most subtle basic distress, all of the various reactive patterns as ways of dealing, coping mechanisms evolve. So both desire and anger are attempted solutions to distress.
In the case of desire, there is stress associated with not having. In the case of anger, is stress associated with having one’s desires frustrated. Something, some object or someone is preventing you from realizing your desire. So in the case of anger, the distress is always associated with a frustrated desire. So the mind is trying to relieve its distress.
It’s in pain, it’s suffering. It’s in a dissatisfactory state. It’s in disequilibrium. And it’s trying to cope with that. It’s trying to remove that.
And the way it sees the possibility is to remove that which is preventing you from gaining the object of your desire. To remove that person, that thing. That way it can achieve the object of its desire. It can remove the distress of the mind. Both desire and anger have as their main cause distress.
Remove the distress, you remove the anger. You remove the cause of the anger. You remove the cause of the desire. Therefore, you remove anger and desire. As we mentioned, the ultimate cause of our distress is ignorance.
This basic misconception as to the nature of the self, which brings about this initial split. So if we can remove ignorance from the mind, then we can remove all distress from the mind. Removing all distress from the mind will remove desire, remove hatred, jealousy, pride, miserliness. All the eighty four thousand elaborations which are termed afflictive emotions cease because there’s no distress in the mind. Therefore, there’s no need for these various types of coping mechanisms to evolve, to develop, to arise.
Removing the basic cause of distress, ignorance, from the mind, then all the coping mechanisms are no longer needed, are useless, won’t arise. They no longer arise. So this is the ultimate method for dealing with distress, the removal of ignorance from our mind. Removal of ignorance from our mind removes all the neurotic patterns from our minds. And thereby the reason, perhaps we can call them neurotic, is that from a higher level of correction they’re seen as ineffective, inappropriate, self destructive, unproductive, counterproductive.
That’s the reason perhaps we can call them neurotic that they’re quite inefficient means of dealing ways of solving the problems of pain. But until we are able to remove the ignorance from the mind, we have to be able to deal with each of the afflictive emotions, each of these coping mechanisms which are self destructive, which are ineffective, which are inappropriate in a remedial way. You know, we have to work on two different levels: dealing with the ultimate solution to our problem, the elimination of ignorance itself, but remedially, on a temporal basis, working with each of the afflictive emotions. Applying the various antidotes to reduce their frequency, to shift, to reframe, to move to higher orders of correction in the context of each of the afflictive emotions. You know, moving from hatred to tolerance to love, from desire to openness, from miserliness to unattachment, from jealousy to rejoicing.
What? From miserliness to generosity, whatever. In this way we can begin to reduce the force of these afflictive emotions, their frequency, their duration. And therefore they begin to short circuit their counterproductive effects. And this involves changing our attitudes.
Changing, that is to say, involves reframing of the problem in such a way that the situation is no longer experienced as distressful. The same facts, the same situation, but it’s now looked upon in such a way that it’s no longer experienced as it was before in terms of distress. This newly developed state we call tolerance. An undistressed mind in the face of previously problematic situations. So, Śāntideva, the author of the text, outlines the areas of concerns of the development of tolerance.
And we talked about these, these three areas of concern: learning to endure difficult situations and suffering with a sense of acceptance and satisfaction. And it’ll be this quality of legitimate suffering, if you like. And accepting the reality of one’s present situation and working with it in a realistic fashion and finding a sense of satisfaction that one is in a realistic way solving one’s problem rather than practicing our usual method of conflict avoidance, which is at best shortsighted and in long term counterproductive. The second area of working with tolerance was consistently viewing problems on a higher order of self correction. And this is just a fancy way of saying in terms of the dharma.
Consistently trying to view situations. You know, being mindful of what is a more skillful way of dealing with this same situation. You know, rather than reacting with anger, perhaps tolerance, perhaps love, compassion. It’s more difficult, But it’s more productive. Now what is the what is the dawn of the there’s a book which is the compilations of the sayings of the Buddha, in which it said hatred is never overcome with hatred.
Hatred is only overcome with love. That is the law and unalterable. This is a Now there’s different ways, there’s different levels of orders of change, like first orders of change in dealing with, you know, if someone is using force against you, then you seek to solve that problem by using more force against them. Using hate to meet hate. But in the end, beginning to see this as counterproductive.
That one destroying oneself in the long run. And the third area of concern of tolerance was refraining from retaliation. So we completed these first two areas of concern and we’re going to begin discussing this third area, refraining from retaliation. Śāntideva begins to discuss this tolerance of non retaliation in terms of the methods for developing compassion, trying to use a hurtful situation as a method for developing compassion. Then secondly, overcoming the causes of anger.
And thirdly, when undesirable situations arise, contemplating one’s own faults. Ways of developing tolerance so as not to retaliate. You know, as we said, in the development of tolerance there are the two basic methods. The first is that we must want to overcome our anger. We must want to develop tolerance.
You know, this involves within our own experience, using our own reasoning, seeing all the disadvantages of anger, its destructive qualities within our own experience, self directedly, not in the sense that one should develop tolerance, that one shouldn’t be angry, but seeing that it’s in your own self that’s interest, that there’s some kind of payoff to the development of tolerance. Then we begin to use that same knowledge that we generated in terms of ourselves. We begin to extend this to others, clearly recognizing in our own experience the destructive qualities of anger. And then that anger simply creates the causes for more suffering. It in itself is suffering.
And now we take that knowledge that we learned and we begin to see it in terms of others. You know, when someone is angry, they are hurting themselves. We know that because we’ve seen that for ourselves, in terms of ourselves. When someone is angry, they are suffering And they are creating the causes for further suffering, for more suffering. An angry person is a suffering person.
People don’t become angry because they’re happy. They become angry because they’re in distress, because they’re suffering. So Śāntideva begins its discussion of the methods for the development of compassion in terms of others hurting us, in terms of others becoming angry at us. I’m quoting from the actual text. Out of mere carelessness I even injure myself on thorns and other objects.
In order to win the hearts of a woman, I deprive myself of food because of my infatuation. People kill themselves, they leap from clifftops, swallow poison and other harmful things, and get into serious trouble by committing crimes. When under the pressure of their emotions, they will even kill their treasured self. How can one expect them not to injure others? We previously discussed the notion of other powered and how this permeates a great deal of what Śāntideva is talking about in many ways in the course of his discussions.
The idea of other powered, that nothing is that all things whatsoever are under the control of other factors than themselves. Everything is controlled by something else. And no one would choose to hurt themselves. No one would make that choice. This is what we mean by pleasure and pain.
It’s not to say that one person’s pleasure might not be another person’s pain. What appears to be masochistic is a type of perverted pleasure from the common point of view. No one chooses pain. That everybody wants to choose happiness. No one chooses to hurt themselves, but still they hurt themselves.
In spite of not wanting to hurt themselves, not seeking to choose to hurt themselves, they still hurt themselves. You know, people hurt themselves out of carelessness. And this is the point Śāntideva begins with. In order to Simply being unmindful. Simply being uncareful.
People hurt themselves to impress others. People hurt themselves in seeking gain, seeking power, seeking status, seeking money. People will hurt themselves. You know, professionals, they will ruin their body and mind in order to for the sake of status and money, for example. Men will beat up on other men in order to prove that they’re cowards.
That they think the cowards that they think they are. Women? What will they do? I know I was thinking many times when I see a woman wearing stiletto heels. I’m amazed at what women will put themselves through.
You know, actually hurting their backs in order that their breasts stick out a little bit further. Or they’ll starve themselves to make themselves more attractive. They don’t want to hurt themselves. Nobody wants to hurt themselves. But we do.
We don’t choose to, but we do. You know, we’re all driven, as it were, by our conditioning, by our greed, by our attachments, by our anger. We don’t choose to be driven. The point is that we’re being other powered. Most men don’t choose to beat up on each other.
They’re forced to. They’re driven to. It’s a terrible situation to be in. Most women don’t think about wearing stiletto heels and the discomfort. They’re probably aware of the discomfort, but they don’t question why they continue to wear them, perhaps.
I don’t know. Most professionals who ruin their body and mind, they’re trying to seek money and status or whatever, they aren’t choosing to ruin their body and mind. They are as if driven by factors other than their own choice, other than their own well understanding, their own wisdom. So we’re all driven by some conditioning factors, whether it be our greed, our attachment, our anger, our hatred, our jealousy, our spite, miserliness. And we are as if forced to commit acts of violence upon ourselves and upon others.
You know, if we’re forced to actually commit violence to ourselves, which we are, then what to say of committing violence to others? That shouldn’t be of any surprise. If we’re willing to hurt ourselves, damage our own minds and bodies without choice, without control, then what to say of without choice, without control, that we’re going to harm others, we’re going to commit violence on others? You know, driven by these self destructive factors within our own minds. Driven by these self destructive factors within our own minds, people will actually destroy the one thing that they cherish most in life, and that is themselves.
People will actually commit suicide. Someone termed suicide as a radical change of lifestyle. And that one simply sees no one is in pain and being driven by that pain and sees no alternative solution than annihilation as a way of annihilating the pain. The person didn’t choose. They were driven.
And if people are driven to the point where they actually will destroy themselves, then how much easier would it be to be driven to destroy someone other than oneself who we don’t cherish as much as ourselves?