Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Genuine tolerance, Ven Jampa Gendun argues, is not the capacity to grit your teeth harder — it is an undistressed mind, a reframing so complete that previously provocative situations simply stop triggering distress. In this 45-minute continuation of his commentary on Śāntideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (chapter six), he first maps the two preconditions for anger — a frustrated desire plus identification of whoever or whatever blocks it — then explains why accepting “what is” rather than demanding the impossible is the practical key to keeping the mind calm. The session broadens unexpectedly into self-intolerance: the violence we do to ourselves by measuring against ideals we haven’t reached. Passages from Suzuki Roshi and Thomas Merton on self-hatred ground the discussion in accessible, contemporary terms.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 23 Tce 1991 04 24.mp3
UUID: 90fc8660-9f3b-4943-b449-e4126e94deb4
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-04-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~4,718
Create some time, some space for ourselves, kind of luxuriate in our own mind, the peace which naturally abides within our own mind. It’s interesting from the point of view of the nature of the mind that it’s that attaining the goal of liberation from our problems is not a matter of creating some sort of edifice, some majestic structure of mind, like getting twenty PhDs or something. In a manner, it is a simplification process, going beyond of our complexities, of our fabrications, of our pathological thinking patterns, and returning to the natural quality of the mind itself. But the very nature I think it’s useful to think about this the very nature of our present mind is peace. At this moment, there is a source of peace residing like a cavern or a cave hidden away by the overgrowings of weeds and vines, our afflictive emotions of hatred and anger and spite and jealousy.
And we can begin to, from time to time, to return to that source at the beginning when there was only peace. And we can create some space and time to get used to that. And this is what meditation means. The term in Tibetan means to get used to, to get used to peace, to get used to yourself, to become accustomed to another way of being, a re identification of ourselves from that of becoming, of having, of coveting, abusing, to identifying ourselves with being, being peace. It’s sufficient in itself.
We stop acting, stop speeding, and do nothing. We can survive very beautifully by doing nothing. So first get in touch with your body. Begin to become aware of any tensions in your body. Just for the moment, we’re going to set aside all our worries, all our plans.
They’ll be there in five minutes. You can take them up again after that. They don’t need to be dealt with for the next five minutes. So become aware of any tensions, any tightness, any knots in your body, And consciously relax those areas. Consciously bring the warmth of your attention, the soothing expression of your awareness, relaxing those tensions, those tightnesses.
Imagine or actually feel that the tension moving out and down of your body into the ground, the muscles beginning to soften and relax. Especially the neck and the shoulders. We carry a great burden in our shoulders and our neck. Relax. And you can begin to focus on the breath and take a few deep sighs.
Really seeing all the care that have been built up over the course of the day. All the tensions. The natural, even breathing. And as it were, rest your mind like you’re ahead on the pillow, resting your mind upon the breath. Just following the natural, even flow of the breath.
Simply bringing the mind back to the breath. Bringing the mind back. Soft body. Gentle breath. Quiet mind.
It’s said that all things in our world arise out of mind. This is one of the foundation principles of Buddhism. Because all things arise out of karma, our actions, and the forerunner of all actions is our mind. And therefore Buddhism is mainly concerned with our mind and its cultivation, its transformation. And this is where our reality begins, where our liberation begins, where our problems cease within the mind itself.
So before any type of action, before teaching, meditation, It’s customary, it’s useful, it’s skillful to cultivate a positive state of mind so that what the actions ensuing out of that practice, whatever it might be, can become a means of solving our problems rather than another activity amongst all our various multitudes of activities. So it doesn’t become simply another complicating factor in our lives, something which simply extends, supports, maintains, increases the force of our problems, the force of ego based existence, neurotic compulsive patterns. We have to we’re trying to go beyond our neurosis. And this is very much dependent upon our attitude of why we’re doing what we’re doing. We can have a neurotic motivation for practicing, or seeking to practice at least, just as well as a healthy attitude.
We can have an unhealthy attitude. With an unhealthy attitude, it’s not going to work. It is simply going to perpetuate our problems. So, therefore, we go through what could be simply a hollow ceremony of going for refuge, it could be a meaningful means of preparing the mind for its unfoldment, for the opening to another mode of being, another more skillful ways of thinking, of fostering wisdom, love, and compassion, creating that opening rather than our present preoccupation, which there’s no space in our mind for any other new mode of being, new way of thinking, more skillful pattern, trying to create some kind of opening for us. Now the Buddha, the word Buddha, in one of its translation possibilities, it means to open.
The mind becomes totally open to the potential of humanity, what it means to be a human being. And this and this becomes our refuge. The idea of refuge is nothing new to any of us. We’ve all been going for refuge our entire lives in one way or another. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we go for refuge too.
That which we see as solving our problems, however we might conceive of our problems. The idea this is a solution to the difficulties of life. It might be sex, it might be drugs, it might be money or status, speed, travel, materialism. In spiritual context, going for refuge is the realignment of our allegiance away from leading our life in terms of fear and hope, but rather in terms of that which aids us in our growth. To grow is painful.
One necessarily must voluntarily enter into difficulties, pain, make effort in difficult situations, which we would, in our normal mode of being, shy away from, avoid. So it takes some kind of determination. You know, we go for refuge to the Buddha, we go for refuge to the Dharma, and we go for refuge to the Sangha, the spiritual community. And the Buddha in the sense of a total open state of being, Whether the Buddha is considered conceived of as either those beings outside of ourselves who have achieved this end and are seeking to influence our own mind and opening up to the possibility of their benign influence? Or the Buddha within ourselves, our own ultimate potential, our own mental health, our own ultimate solution to our problems.
We go for refuge to our own wisdom, to our own love and compassion, and to our own creative energy, which we all possess. We go for refuge to some factor innate within ourselves, rather than superficial refuges towards which we’ve been seeking solace solutions to our problems with up to now. We go we try to work on perhaps a more profound level, on a deeper level, beginning to see our problems in a more profound level, on a deeper level, and therefore beginning to see the nature of the solution on a more profound level. And we go for refuge to the Dharma. You know, the meditation, these books, images, these aren’t Dharma.
Dharma is an experience of the mind. It is experience of reality. It is experience of truth. The truth is therapeutic. It is what heals our wounds.
It is what aids in the flowering of our potential. The actual experience is an entity within our own mind, something which is integrated within our own mind. And we go for refuge to the spiritual community, the social context in which mental health is fostered. Those beings who aid us through their inspiration and their guidance, their blessings, their teachings, whoever they might be, those who have some kind of beneficent influence upon us. Whether we call these people Buddhists or not doesn’t particularly matter.
They’re part of our spiritual community. There are many people who have never heard of Buddha, Dharma in that sense, who are Buddhist in this sense. Because they go for refuge into something beyond the pleasure pain principle, which guides most people’s lives. And they also go beyond the alignment of their allegiance to the total involvement in self concern. But they try to create a shift in the motivation for their growth to that of other concern.
So not only is there a more profound seeking of the solutions to the problems of life, but there begins to evolve a shift in the reasons we seek these solutions to begin with. This is the refuge of the great vehicle. So taking refuge is a ceremony represents a reminder, a reprioritizing of our values, reestablishing of our direction. You know, we get lost. We get confused during the course of our everyday lives with all the various activities that we have to, we are forced to, to deal with.
And so from time to time it becomes necessary to create a moment where you take stock of where I’m going. Unless you change your direction, you are likely to to end up where you’re headed. And where am I headed during the course of this day? What have I been taking refuge in during the course of this day? And is it the ultimate solution to my problems?
And what are my problems on a deeper, more profound level. And everyone has these problems, even everyone in this room. To be a human being is to suffer. It’s difficult. It’s part of our condition.
Much of what we talk about is unfamiliar ground, unless you begin to habituate, at least get the vocabulary, the notions, and sort of become accustomed to them. Because it’s not the way of the world, which up to this point has been our way. It’s another way. And the reason I say that is because to think that what is the necessity of my shifting my motivation to solve my problems away from self concern, away from self centeredness to other centeredness? It’s very difficult.
It sounds like there’s no payoff. The intellect operates on the basis of proof and demonstration. And we should operate on the basis of reasonableness, of logic. But that’s not all of who we are. Whether we want to call it the intuition or perhaps the word soul, these operate on the basis of belief and meaning.
What brings meaning to our lives? What inspires us? How do I feel valuable? How do I respect myself? What can I believe in over and about proofs and belief proofs and demonstrations?
And we have to concern ourselves with this area of our psyche. If it is your desire to go beyond your own self centered needs, your own exaggerated self concern, then you have to make this effort, whether it’s able to prove to you that it’s logically necessary or not to be a happy person. You have to satisfy some inner need. And then once you do that, then there’s some kind of peace. You’re appealing to something beyond the normal level in which we usually conduct ourselves, perhaps.
The Dalai Lama said that we’re naturally selfish, so we should be wisely selfish. And that is to say, begin to concern ourselves with others more than ourselves. We’ll be happier than we could ever have hoped to be. But this is a radical conception, isn’t it? It’s difficult.
We may like to believe it. We may have romantic notions about it. In our sentimentality, we want it to be so, but we have to begin to make an experiment and actually experience the possibility of such a result. But in the meanwhile we can take some solace in the fact that we’re trying to appease something which I think everyone in this room, in their finer moments, feels at some time or another. So this becomes the motivation for growing.
We’re trying to develop ourselves, to follow a new way. I go for refuge until I’m 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 a 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. And the virtuous merit that I collect by by giving any other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So we’re going to continue our discussion of tolerance, which is the sixth chapter of a text by Śāntideva, I think eighth century Indian Buddhist master, the sixth chapter of A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. I handed out some translations to this sixth chapter.
I think I’ll try to get some more. Some of you, I’m sure, weren’t here when I handed out those translations. And I think it would be useful, you know, if you want to look at it from time to time later on. Trying to develop tolerance. I think you’ve been very patient with my discussion of tolerance.
Tolerance is an undistressed mind in the face of problematic situations. If it’s not a problematic situation, we don’t have to practice tolerance. I talked about the main cause of tolerance. Tolerance is an antidote to anger, to aggression, to hostility. The main cause for anger is a distressed mind.
The main cause is the distressed mind. It has two conditions. One is a frustrated desire. The second is identifying something or someone who is frustrating that desire. No, I can have a desire.
I would like a million dollars and a wagon full of spending money. But I don’t get uptight about it. Don’t get distressed about it, so I don’t get angry about it. So, you know, as long as we have desires, we’re going to have frustrated desires. And we’re going to be able to identify someone or something which is frustrating that desire.
Until we get rid of ignorance, this is going to be true. So in the meantime, until we are able to work through our ignorance, our misconception as to the nature of the self, the nature of reality, The way that we can begin to work with anger, and we’ve talked about the great destructive quality of anger, both for ourselves and those around us, is by development of tolerance and love. These are the antidotes for anger. So the way that tolerance is operating is that it is the means, it is the coping mechanism by which the mind does not become distressed. If we don’t become distressed, we will not become angry.
A calm mind, a peaceful mind, a happy mind does not become angry. If we can somehow begin to reframe situations, develop more skillful coping mechanisms, work on situations from a higher order of of thinking, of viewing, then what was a distressful situation previously will no longer be distress distressful. And therefore, what was a potentially angry situation will no longer be an angry situation. And this is what we are trying to achieve. Tolerant mind, it is not tolerance, patience is not simply, you know, gritting your teeth and just holding yourself back as long as you can.
And that, you know, the anger is there. It may that may be a useful technique not to habituate yourself to expressing anger. It may be. But it’s not tolerance. In order to use tolerance, we must use our wisdom.
We must use our understanding. We must use our intelligence. We must develop our mind such that those types of situations are no longer problematic. They’re no longer distressful. Our mind is able to remain undistressed.
That’s the goal of developing tolerance, not simply to be able to repress ourselves better in a more skillful manner. Or what do you say? Suppress? Repress? I don’t know.
So a tolerant person is someone who has developed a coping mechanism whereby they do not become upset when they don’t get what they want, when their desires are frustrated. And they have found some viewpoint, some way of looking at the situation, some way of reframing. They say, Okay, I didn’t get what I wanted. That’s the given. That’s the present situation.
I have to accept that. I can work toward changing that situation, for getting what I want, But for the present, I’m not getting what I wanted. I have to accept that. The distress is demanding that the situation be other than the way it is, which we have which we are we have no control over. The the given is what is.
We have to accept it. We can work for change to change that situation, but it’s simply not in accordance with the nature of the things that to demand that what is be other than it is. Otherwise, we only are able to react with a sense of powerlessness and rage, emptiness, because we cannot do the impossible. You cannot change what is. You can change it you can work you can craft the possibility of change.
But what is is what is. It must be accepted in that sense, in that sense that for the present moment that is what is. It can’t be otherwise. So don’t demand the impossible. Upset yourself.
Become distressed and therefore angry. So somehow we have to find some accepting manner. We have to accept what I call legitimate suffering that life brings to us. One of my first comments that I began with is, Life is difficult. I think this is good.
I mean, I read it that life is difficult. But I think it’s good if we talk in that way. That, you know, that what we see on television commercials is not probably bears very little resemblance to our life where everyone’s running on the beach drinking Coca Cola and everything is fine. That’s not our life. Life is difficult.
It’s a human condition. It’s a human dilemma. Then we aren’t so surprised, we aren’t so shocked when things don’t go the way we would like them to go, when we’re involved in frustration, conflicts, disappointment. We would rather be other than that. But I think we can begin to accept it.
There’s nothing wrong with any of us in that sense uniquely. We all share in this problem. We can take some solace perhaps in that. I don’t know. It’s it’s said that you shouldn’t rejoice in other people’s suffering.
At least I’m not alone. The more I I get to know other people, the more I understand that I’m not unique. I used to think in my the people I used to be called the bubble. I used to live in my own little world. And I I thought I had all these unique problems that others did not share in whatsoever.
Everyone everyone out there looked very solid and concrete. They looked everyone looked like they knew what they were doing all the time. You know, they had it all together. And somehow, over on this side, things were a shambles. Things were very confused.
I couldn’t understand it. Something went something went wrong somewhere. Didn’t know. But no. We’re not very much different.
None. I mean, there’s females, males. You know, we have different histories, but these are pretty superficial. In fact, a great deal of Buddhism is concerned with that which is ahistorical. Has nothing to do with our history.
The very effect of having an ego, which we all are burdened with, the very effect of our feelings of fragmentation and inauthenticity. Whoever, whatever, whether you had a great childhood or a lousy childhood, you had that problem, everyone in this room. So many of the most deep problems in which Buddhism is trying to address itself are completely ahistorical. They have nothing to do with our individual unique upbringing. Everyone has them.
They’re what they say, what? Existential problems, something like that, something heavy like that. You know, we do great violence to ourselves. And I speak out of my own experience. And this is what I talk about.
Hopefully that you know, if we can share my thinking then maybe it will lessen your burden on yourself that you might be applying to yourself. And we do great violence to ourselves because we are intolerant of ourselves. We’re talking about tolerance. One of the one of the last people we’re tolerant of is ourselves because we aren’t the person that perhaps we think we should be. We haven’t attained that attainment that we should have.
We compare ourselves to those, to the masters, to the greats, to those who have made it. And somehow there’s a sense of insufficiency, deficiency. Something’s wrong. And we become distressed with ourselves. We become angry at ourselves.
There’s a quotation from Suzuki Roshi, a great Zen master who lived in the United States for a number of years. Zazen is the sitting meditation practiced in Zen Buddhism. While you are practicing zazen, you may hear the rain dropping from the roof in the dark. Later, the wonderful mist will be coming through the big trees. And still later, when people start to work, they will see the beautiful mountains.
But some people will get annoyed if they hear the rain when they are lying in their bed in the morning because they do not know that later they will see the beautiful sun rising from the east. If our mind is concentrated on ourselves, we will have this kind of worry. But if we accept ourselves as the embodiment of the truth, or Buddha nature, we will have no worry. We will think, Now it is raining, but we don’t know what will happen in the next moment. By the time we go out, it may be a beautiful day or a stormy day.
Since we don’t know, let’s appreciate the sound of the rain now. This kind of attitude is the right attitude. If you understand yourself to be a temporal embodiment of the truth, you will have no difficulty whatsoever. You will appreciate your surroundings, and you will appreciate yourself as a wonderful part of Buddha’s great activities. Even in the midst of difficulties, this is a way of life.
You know, all of us here, we’re all involved in a great struggle. And that’s not easy as it should be. And to, as I mentioned, to grow is I don’t mean to sound heavy handed, but to grow is painful. Involves legitimate suffering. Now I talked about taking refuge, the realignment of our allegiance from leading a life in terms of based on hopes and fears to one which involves growth.
So then legitimate suffering may mean that you are going to have to do what you fear most in order to grow. You may have to go beyond your hopes in order to grow. That is to say, you may have to voluntarily enter into difficult situations. This is a great faith in one’s own mind, in one’s own health, in one’s ability to change. This is real refuge when you do this, this realignment.
You’re afraid, but you go ahead and do it anyhow because you see it as therapeutic, that there’s a possibility for change, for health. That’s going for refuge to your own innate sanity. That’s real refuge. And I I’m a part of a A men’s group, and we discuss, obviously, men’s issues. And the last meeting that we had together, we trying to sometimes we just have a round of what we call a round, and we say a few words about how we found what we had just been discussing, or we answer a particular question.
And the question was concerning what did you find challenging. And it’s a challenge for a man to talk to a man, to be real with a man. And that’s kind of taking a refuge in the sense that I become becoming more and more aware of the conditioned nature of our being. It’s our karma. Conditioning is our karma.
And trying to go beyond the limits of our conditioning, of our past karma to to open up to this opening to new potentials and possibilities. And it’s not easy because we are involved in patterns, our karma, these reoccurring compulsive modes of being, which are quite they’re not particularly satisfying, but they’re comfortable. And to force oneself out of that groove, as it were, and to take a chance, there’s fear. It’s difficult. It’s uncomfortable.
So this is like going for refuge to opening up to other possibilities. That’s legitimate suffering. And if voluntarily take on these difficulties, then we can hope for an ultimate solution. If we never do, then nothing will ever basically change. The same reoccurring patterns will simply unfold and constitute our life.
Now Buddhism, in talking about Buddhism very much emphasizes the uniqueness of being a human being. And we obviously, we take most of us take that very much for granted. We’ve probably never even thought about it. Wow. I’m a human being.
That’s fantastic. You know? That’s probably never occurred to us. It it it tries to foster an appreciation of being a human being. But I think that simply being born with a human body is not to be a human being, or we could say have a precious human rebirth or whatever we want to call it, that we have to earn our humanity, to bring to fulfillment our humanity amongst all the various possible states of being, you know, from the blissful absorptions of the gods, the celestial beings, to the down to paranoia and fear and pain of hell beings.
It is our humanity which presents the greatest opportunity for well-being. This is very significant. It is our humanity. The more that we can become human, the more this very act of becoming human is a pathway to well-being. And to be a human is difficult.
This is Thomas Merton. There is in every weak, lost and isolated member of the human race an agony of hatred born of his own helplessness, his own isolation. Hatred is the sign and the expression of loneliness, of unworthiness, of insufficiency. And insofar each of us is lonely, is unworthy, each one of us hates himself. Some of us are aware of their self hatred.
And because of it, we approach ourselves and punish ourselves needlessly. Punishment cannot cure the feeling that we are unworthy. There is nothing we can do about it as long as we feel that we are isolated, insufficient, helpless and alone. To begin to accept our humanity with all its vulnerability to pain Just a way we can begin to break out of our narcissistic, self centered, pain avoidance approach of these celestial beings, of these godlike beings who only seek trances, who seek numbness. And to become vulnerable to pain, we can begin to develop an authentic compassion toward ourselves and thereby toward others.
There’s some kind of gentleness about ourselves which begins to express itself in how we relate to others by going into the bone our vulnerableness, the pain. Thomas Merton goes on. He’s talking about this quality of self hatred, how much violence we do to ourselves, we commit upon ourselves. Others who are less conscious of their own self hatred realize it in a different form by projecting it upon others. There is a proud and self confident hate, strong and cruel, which enjoys the pleasure of hating for it is directed outward to the unworthiness of another.
But this strong and happy hate does not realize that, like all hate, it destroys and consumes the self that hates and not the object that is hated. Hate in any form is self destructive, and even when it triumphs physically, it triumphs in its own spiritual ruin.