Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “A lover’s cup is never dirty” — a Tibetan proverb Ven Jampa Gendun quotes to show how afflicted emotions distort their object until reality breaks the spell. In this 45-minute commentary on Chapter Six of Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, he traces the chain from jealousy to anger: envy arises from a hollow, insecure self that treats others’ praise and possessions as a threat to its own scarce supply. He works through Śāntideva’s verses on why a rival’s good fortune is none of your business, introduces rejoicing as envy’s specific antidote, then opens into the eight worldly preoccupations — hope and fear around pleasure, gain, praise, and fame — closing with Milarepa’s remark that giving up hope is where freedom begins. Suited to practitioners already working with this text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 26 Tce 1991 05 01.mp3
UUID: ee83d780-1cae-4faf-b9aa-4fe222aa4da9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-05-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~5,381
Which normally provoke a reaction of jealousy. And concomitant with jealousy, the mind is distressed. Out of this distress acts as a main cause for anger. As a means Śāntideva is going through all types of various situations which causes distress to help us to be able to reframe the situation such that we no longer become distressed in those same type of situations. And therefore, no distress, no anger.
A calm mind that doesn’t become angry, doesn’t develop hatred. So we’re going through all of these various possibilities. Now we’re going through types of situations where we normally become jealous and therefore in distress. And therefore out of this context of jealousy and distress, we become angry. With this idea of a sense of jealousy, there’s a sense of poverty about ourselves, a sense of insufficiency, a sense of lack.
One is not secure within oneself. One is not centered within oneself. There’s a sense of that the good things, all the goodies of life are somehow limited. That these are limited resources. That others having these are somehow going to detract from your own well-being.
Your well-being is very much dependent on factors outside of yourself, on goods, on praise from others, on status, position. You know, you’re very externally oriented. So one dependent upon all of these various external factors. When these and seeing these assuming in some way that these are limited resources. When we see others partaking of them, we get worried.
My well-being is in threat. One is not sort of centered within oneself, finding well-being within one’s own basic sanity, the very ground of one’s being. Whatever it might be. You know, though you might be beautiful, you resent another person’s being beautiful, because it may detract from your own beauty, you know, a sense of comparison. Though you may have enough material things, possessions, you resent another’s gain because there’s a sense that you might run out.
There’s always that possibility, whatever it might be. And when you go to find some more, it’s going to be gone. This other person used it all up, whatever it might be. You know, this is the way the kind of the mind is in these emotional states. There’s a mark of these emotional states that it acts it’s like a it’s more of a there’s no clarity.
There’s this vague, un analyzed impression, assumptions. There are always vague, un analyzed assumptions. The mark of truth, of fact, is the closer you get to it, the more obvious it becomes. The mark of falsehood is the closer you get to it, the less and less clear it becomes until finally it disappears. And these all of the afflicted emotions, their object is always nonexistent.
They are holding on to a false object. So the we have to the only way they can operate is an in unexamined fashion. We’ve never really looked into deeply the nature of the object to which we are reacting to, whether it’s hatred with respect to that person that we hate. And that person we hate doesn’t exist. The person the person as it appears to hatred doesn’t exist.
The person as it appears to attachment does not exist. We’re not seeing that person in their actual way they exist. We’re fabricating something which has never existed. The person you hate only has bad qualities. At the moment you’re holding at the moment you’re angry at that person, you’re not thinking in a balanced way.
That person only has bad qualities. It’s only a threat. No matter what good qualities they may in fact have, no matter what kindnesses they may have shown you in the past, that does not appear to the mind at that particular moment. The mind is completely focused upon one narrow selected quality or area of qualities of that object, completely exaggerating, completely discounting. It’s out of balance.
It’s out of control. That object doesn’t exist the way it appears. So it has to remain unexamined. Otherwise that object would disappear because it’s false. That’s not the way the object really exists.
A person wouldn’t normally have many qualities, both good and bad qualities, a balance, a mixture, but those don’t appear at that moment. You know, the the the the object of our attachment. There’s a a Tibetan saying, a lover’s cup is never dirty. You know? At that moment, when you’re completely overwhelmed by love by by love, I mean romantic love attachment.
At that moment there’s no flaw. Your lover is perfect, clear, beautiful, radiant. You don’t see any pimple, you don’t see any there’s no bad breath, there’s no sweat. That comes later when you become disillusioned, when your projection when she’s now when he or she is no longer able to serve as a basis for your projections, your illusions, when you really begin to see a human being out there with real qualities, with good and bad qualities, with beautiful and not so beautiful qualities. So, you know, though though, you know, these these objects can be abstract, like praise, and though you receive your your fair share of praise, you resent another being praised because you may be absurd as an object of praise.
All of this has a sense mean, jealousy would not arise unless if one were not uncentered, if one was centered within oneself, in one’s own being. There’s a constant sense of judging, of competing, of propping up one’s own self image about oneself in terms of something other than oneself, of position, of praise, materials, power, status, whatever. And one’s self image is pretty shaky, in such it’s very stressful. We can’t afford to allow others. We simply aren’t rich enough within ourselves to allow others to have happiness and praise and status.
I compare myself with the saint, the master, the great musician, the man who knows, the man who has arrived. In this comparison, I find myself wanting and insufficient. I have no talent. I am inferior. I am not real I have not realized.
I am not and that man is. So out of measurement and comparison comes the enormous cavity of emptiness and nothingness. So with respect to this, the sense of there’s nothing in here, it’s all out there. With respect to this sense of hollowness, of inauthenticity, we either free either flee from this cavity out of fear, or we try to fill it up with our resentment, with the resentment of jealousy. And talking about jealousy, there a technical definition of jealousy.
Here they call it envy. It’s the same word being translated two different ways. Envy is a distinct mental factor that, out of attachment of to respect and material gain, is unable to bear the good things others have. It thus brings about deep mental turmoil. It is the basis for immediate arrival of unhappiness in the mind and has the function of causing one’s own good things to become exhausted.
Envy often contains an element of fear. It sees, for example, that someone may be about to gain a position that one wanted for oneself. Desirous to position and afraid that one may not gain it, one starts to dislike and even hate the person who appears to be the cause of the problem. There are two kinds of envy: that which arises with regard to material possessions, and that which comes from such things as talk about profit and loss. So, you know, the specific antidote to jealousy is rejoicing, admiration, empathetic joy with respect to another.
It’s a state which is not only able to bear that others have possessions, that others are praised, not only able to bear that, but actually finds joy in that, in others having possessions, in others happiness, in others being praised. Finds it it’s very positive state of taking delight, a genuine delight. You know, usually we delight in the happiness of people we’re attached to. Know, we’re able to Out of our attachment, we include them within our ego boundaries. So the good things that happen to them, the praise that they receive, the possessions that they have, the happiness that they experience, we’re able to vicariously share in that.
But this is not real rejoicing because it’s always self referential. It’s always referring back to oneself is being aggrandized in some manner by this person being happy, by this person being praised, this person being rich, having possession. It enhances one’s own existence. There’s always a sense of, I’m better off for this person being happy. I’m better off for this person gaining this praise.
It’s not other referential. It’s not concerned with the actual happiness of the other person in and for themselves, valuing that person and their happiness in and for themselves. But in terms of what their happiness can bring you, what their being praised can mean for you. So it’s not to say that we can sort of begin on our imperfect models that we do experience, and as a template to begin to gain a sense of what the more perfect attitudes of, in this case, of rejoicing might be experienced like, the actual feeling. We have to have these feelings.
We have the feeling. We have to begin to distinguish our feelings. Quite often our feelings are kind of nebulous. We have quite often a sense of numbness. We have these feelings but we don’t quite know what they are.
So we have to begin to become more discriminating with respect to our different feelings and say, oh, that’s rejoicing. Or that’s caring, that’s mothering, that’s resentment, that’s spite, that’s jealousy, whatever, rather than just having this kind of numb ache or whatever in the case of negative emotions. Identifying and using these imperfect models to be able to expand upon that feeling and be able to direct it toward more people. Simply we have the feeling. We have these feelings, these positive states.
If we can get in touch with them and be able to evoke them with respect to more and more objects, They naturally rise with respect to a limited number of people, those people to whom we’re attached, and they’re mixed with that attachment. But if we can begin to distinguish the feeling of rejoicing, which is mixed with self referencing, and begin to expand that even though it’s not exactly what we might want at the moment, and begin to generate that same type of feeling, be able to identify and generate with respect to other objects, with neutral people, to people you aren’t attached to. And it’s going to the quality of rejoicing is going to become more and more predominant, and the attachment element is going to become less and less. Because we aren’t attached to these people, but we can rejoice in their happiness. Obviously, in talking about rejoicing as a means, as an antidote to anger, a mind which is rejoicing is a happy mind.
And obviously, a happy mind, there’s no room for anger. And even if we’re presently unable to delight in another, you know, perhaps we can’t. But why begrudge them the happiness? We can begin on that level. Why you know, that somebody finds a little bit of happiness, some small happiness, why begrudge them that?
Why you know, if not only makes yourself miserable, bitter, isolated, but how are we ever going to develop love? You know, love is the wish that others be happy. And when others are happy, if you begrudge them that happiness, then obviously we’re never going to develop love. There’s no way. So now Śāntideva goes on to ask, and we’ve been talking about jealousy, the situations of jealousy as a context for developing distress, the various possibilities of objects of situations, objects towards which we might become jealous.
And why get upset with situations which are none of your concern? So we’ve talked about various situations up to now. There are types of situations which are not our concern. So why get upset? That is to say, not rather than becoming upset, becoming why not mind our own business?
Anyway, Śāntideva was going to explain. He’s explaining a situation. Whether he gets something or whether it remains in the benefactor’s home. In both cases, you will have nothing. So what is it to you if he gets anything or not?
Suppose some rival of yours was going to be given a great present. The jealousy and the unhappiness that we get filled with doesn’t change the situation in the least. Whether that person receives that present or whether they don’t, it’s not going to affect you, in all practical terms. Your jealousy, your unhappiness at their receiving something is not going to affect the situation. It only harms yourself.
It only hurts you. You know, on the contrary, not only do we become unhappy, but the anger that we generate will destroy getting the happiness that we want in the future. So a situation arises where a rival, someone we don’t particularly care for, we feel competitive with, is going to receive a present, we we we dwell on it. We begin to churn it over in our mind. And what difference does it make to us, practically speaking?
It’s really, in a way, none of our business, but we can’t let go of it. Like like a hook, it’s caught our mind. It only makes us unhappy. It only destroys our happiness. Why waste your goodness and virtue as well as faith of others?
Tell me, why do you not get angry at the person who has not acquired prosperity? Jealousy, on the one hand, in states such as generosity and rejoicing, which will bring you happiness on the other, are mutually contradictory. They can’t exist in the same mind at the same time. If you yourself would simply create the causes for the things that you want, for the happiness that you want, then you would have them. That you don’t have happiness, why don’t you get angry at yourself for not creating the causes of your own happiness?
You know, you’re only depriving yourself of happiness. You are not creating the causes of happiness. Śāntideva goes on to other types of situations. You know, this is a situation like, you know, the well, we have a I don’t know what you call a a saying, yeah, a saying, the pot calling the kettle black, something like that. Not only have you no remorse for the evils that you have committed, but you struggle to compete with those who have done good.
So not only do we not regret our own unskillful actions that we have committed over the course of our lifetime, but we resent other skillful actions, you know, when we see someone else acting in a very constructive way. Keeping in mind in a healthy, balanced manner our own negativities that we’ve created over the course of our life is a great vehicle to prevent oneself from developing pride, a sense of humility about oneself. It’s a great vehicle to forego judging people, condemning them. You know, what do they say? That he who is without sin casts the first stone.
And how we’re constantly judging people as if we have never done anything in our life which was wrong. We continually overlook or aren’t mindful of, don’t remember all that we have created. Before you talk about the speck of the splinter in your brother’s eye, remove the log from your own. And this quality of mind, this sort of humility which keeping in mind your own negativities can help you with, help you develop. This helps us to appreciate when we and others actually do something positive.
And it helps us to cease competing with others, helps us to quit judging others, condemning others, sitting in judgment. Śāntideva goes on, Even if your enemy suffers, why should this make you happy? For a mere wish in your mind could never have caused him to be harmed. You cannot take credit for another suffering simply because you wish them suffering. Your thought that, oh, may you suffer, is not the cause of their suffering.
So why take credit for it? But Śāntideva goes on, and are you pleased when his suffering is actually brought about through your intentions? There could be nothing more ignoble than to find satisfaction in that. But we do find some kind of subtle satisfaction when someone we don’t like, when they have problems, when things aren’t quite going right for them, there’s some kind of Or maybe more than subtle dissatisfaction, maybe we actually have this rejoicing quality, you know, they’re suffering. We’re glad, we delight in their suffering.
It’s a state completely divorced of any compassion, which wishes another to be free of suffering. Completely opposite. And really very strongly reinforces our habitual self centered attitude. The self centered attitude in the sense that seeking happiness at the expense or the exclusion of others, seeking happiness for oneself at the expense or the exclusion of another. And this is this along with self grasping, the ignorance of self grasping, are the two most basic problems.
The root of all our problems are these two, self centeredness and self grasping. So continually reinforcing our self centeredness and therefore our problem, and therefore our suffering. It’s a terribly unskillful state. The deeper that we the stronger that we are self centeredness. This willingness to use others, to manipulate others, to exclude others in the course in the seeking of our happiness.
That tendency of mind destroys whatever happiness that you can create for yourself. And I just mentioned about how we are continually recreating our reality, And the quality of our reality is dependent upon our actions of mind, speech, and body. The intentional quality of our actions and the intention to harm, the self absorption of ego, the moving, the closing in upon oneself, the folding in upon oneself destroys the possibility of seeing a benevolent world, seeing a trusting world. It destroys the possibility of an open, fluid way of relating. One is at odds with the world.
One is in conflict. The even within oneself. And one Tibetan master has said the essence of cyclic existence is to be held within the jaws of conflicting emotions. The internal conflict of our own emotions is the essence of cyclic existence. One is in internal and external conflict out of one’s own self centeredness, one’s own self-cherishing.
Thus cut on the intolerable sharp hook cast by the fishermen of emotion, it is then certain that the guardians of hell will boil you in their hellish cauldrons. So caught on the hook of jealousy, we generate states of resentment. Vengeance, spite, cruelty. And from these destructive elements within our own mind arises the guardians of hell. And a quoting from an introduction to this text, This is the sixth chapter called Tolerance from Śāntideva’s the Bodhicaryāvatāra.
And from the introduction, Śāntideva’s use of the term hell must be seen in the light of conditionality and emptiness, for no matter how real a hellish state may seem to those undergoing it, it comes into being solely on account of self destructive elements within one’s own psyche. In the fifth chapter of his book, Śāntideva asks, Who intentionally forged the weapons in hell? Who constructed the burning iron fences, the burning iron floors? The Buddha taught that all such things arise from an evil mind. It is not to say that these are hallucinations any more than this world about us are hallucinations.
That’s not to say that these are illusory any more than the world about us which we take to be so real are illusions. All of what we experience arises out of factors within our own mind, from the From the beauty of a flower to the boiling iron cauldrons in hell, that they all arise from factors within our own mind. But an adversary complains to Śāntideva. He says, you know, if I don’t retaliate when I am harmed, others are going to think less of me. I am going to lose my fame and reputation, and therefore their praise.
So now Shanti is going to look at the drawbacks of attachment to praise, the jealousy connected with when others are praised. If we can remove the necessity of the distress at others being praised, then we aren’t going to become angry. And as an aid to help us to remove that stress, we are seeking to overcome jealousy. As a means to overcome that jealousy, rejoicing. So working with mind all in the direction of seeking to reframe situations that we no longer become angry and develop tolerance.
So this person is saying, essentially, you know, if someone hurts me and I don’t retaliate, it’s going to look bad for me. I’m going to lose all my good reputation, my praise, things that people are going to start putting me down. And I don’t want that to happen. Śāntideva answers that we should really examine the value of these things. So he’s talking about the value of praise.
You know, going to lose praise, this person essentially is worried about losing the praise which is being showered upon him. Such honors as praise and fame cannot be converted into goodness, life, strength, health, or physical comfort. If you know what is truly meaningful for you, what possible value could you find in them? And if you are merely concerned about having a good time, you would do better to devote yourself to gambling, drinking, and the like. So, you know, with respect to praise, there are eight, what I call, eight principal preoccupations of ego, eight principle concerns of ego-oriented existence.
These are the coarse types of patterns which perpetuate our neurosis. They are. They’re all basically they all work on the basis of hope and fear. Most of our life is run on the basis of hope and fear. These are our this is the driving force behind most of our actions.
We hope for pleasure, we fear pain. We hope for gain, we fear loss. We hope for praise, we fear ridicule. We hope for fame, we fear notoriety. And this is what this is the impulse.
This is the driving force behind most of what we do in our life. The eight principle preoccupations of ego based existence. And we lead ego based existence. And this is what I mean by cyclic existence. And when we when they talk about renunciation, they say, give up this life.
Give up this life. Give up this life. Let me give up these eight principle preoccupations of ego. If you want, this is you know, when we say to be free, to be liberated, we are liberated from we are liberated from something. We’re only liberated from some type of bondage.
If there’s no bondage, there’s no liberation. And the bondage is the completely caught up in these eight principle preoccupations of ego based existence, these fears and hopes. We are freed from these fears and hopes. We have to become enlightened with respect to something. We become awake or enlightened with respect to these eight, these fears and hopes.
These are the primary patterns that we which are expressions, manifestations, the byproduct of this enduring structure we call ego, this continual seeking to secure the self in space and time. These are the expressions, the mental behavioral expressions of seeking to secure the self in space and time, which constitutes, of which the byproduct is ego. By hope, hope involves the setting one’s priorities in terms of ego, in terms of what enhances, what affirms ego, what strengthens this structure, this process of securing the self. Setting our priorities in terms of whatever will strengthen ego’s structure, secure the self in space and time. This is what I mean by hope.
It is what keeps this perpetual struggle. Know, Milarepa, one of the great saints of Tibetan Buddhism, said, I have given up hope, and I have found freedom. I have found peace. You know, generally we talk about hope as being something positive, and it does have that connotation. There is that usage.
But here we’re talking about the way in which we’re setting our priorities. Hoping A great deal of our hope is an unwillingness to look at the reality of our situation. We live in our hope, through our hope, unwilling to see the actual fact, unwilling to deal with the reality of our situation. Because it does not fit into the priorities of strengthening our ego structure, of securing the self. You know, it deals with illusion, with hallucination, fantasy.
The ego is the primary fantasy in which we live. We very seldom touch reality. Our world is very much a projection of our hopes and fears. We don’t see what is. Perpetuating this is our hopes and fears, this process.
And this perpetual struggle for is of gratifying future needs. Fear, you know, limits Out of fear, we limit ourselves, but we simply play out what has gone before. This fear of an open fluid way of relating, we revert back to past reactive patterns, the way we’ve dealt with similar situations in the past. We as if take the present situation as the same as the past situation. We don’t see the present situation.
We see it in terms of what a past situation is, and we react to it in a very similar We react to it, and we become restimulated as if this were a past situation, and we don’t see the reality of the present situation. So we continually react, acting out of past modes of behavior, and this perpetuates this cyclic existence. Stepping out of this, out of out of not stepping out of this, out of fear. And we simply don’t go beyond this is the inertia which forces which is the resistance to growth. Fear of the new, of of the unknown.
So we have to ask the question, in terms of getting back to Śāntideva’s discussion, what benefit are my hopes and fears? My hope for praise and fame? This is two of the eight principal preoccupations of ego. What use, what benefit are my hope for praise and fame. Do praise and fame help me to grow?
They help me to develop more skillful attitudes, more healthy states of mind? Do they prevent my sickness? Do they actually bring me Do they fill my stomach? Do they bring me a longer life? Can I drive it on the road?
This praise and fame. Then why do we get so distressed when our hopes for praise and fame are unfulfilled? And we’re beginning to analyze. You know, we are so what we are not saying oh, goodness. What we are not saying is that we shouldn’t have praise and fame.
That’s not the point. And none of this. You know, in talking about these hopes and fears, these eight principle preoccupations of ego, they were in terms of pleasure and pain. Not to say that you shouldn’t have pleasure. Pleasure is no problem.
Never been a problem to anybody. It’s your hope for pleasure that’s a problem. Your attachment to pleasure that’s a problem. It’s your fear of pain that’s a problem. You know, we should go beyond pain.
So, a good reputation, high position, wealth, all can be very beneficial. But like all of our experiences of pleasure, they come as a result of our actions, of karma, not because of our hopes and fears. Our hopes and fears are simply superfluous to the finding of happiness. Whatever happens that we experience is a result of our past actions, not because we hope for that pleasure. If you haven’t created that past action, no matter how much you may hope, no matter how many times you may pray for happiness, it’s not going to come.
On the other hand, if you’ve created the skillful past action, even if you say, I don’t want to be happy, it’s going to force itself upon you without your choice. It’s not, you know. Whatever we hope, whatever we fear, our reality will still be the same. We will have various experiences in accordance with our actions. And all the various things of life, whether they’re concrete or abstract, are in some way neutral.
For example, a knife in the hand of a surgeon can be very beneficial, can be life giving. That exact same knife in the hand of a thief can be very destructive, can take life. So all of the various things about us are in essence neutral. It is the attitude that we bring to our relationship to them which is determined. And this attitude is shaped out of our karma.
It’s not something other. All of the conditioning factors in our mind are our karma. Whether these conditioning factors were placed there by our culture, by our particular history, whether they come from past lives, There’s like all of this information which is determining the various patterns of our mind, the way it reacts, the way it moves, to what objects, and how it conceives of them. This is our karma. So this is what we bring to all of our events of life, to all of the things about us and to our relationship.
And it’s this which has determined the quality of our experience of all these things. All of these things are more or less neutral, this knife, depending upon what we bring to that knife, to these situations, to these events, in terms of our conditioning factors, our karma, our attitudes, our patterns are going to determine whether they’re going to be experienced as happiness or as suffering. And the mind is in its place and in its way. It can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. You know, what is getting back to praise what is the use of things, including praise and fame, if out of attachment for them we cause harm to ourselves and others.
What is the use of all our possessions, all the things that we try to gather about us, that we try to hold on to, if they’re only bringing us suffering and bringing the people around us suffering? We lose sight. You know, this idea of going for refuge, checking up, resetting one’s priorities. You know, we get lost. We lose our orientation.
It’s quite easy to get out of touch with what you do feel. The emotion becomes an in and of itself, your activities. We no longer question why I’m doing them. I’ve just been doing them so long. It seems like it’s quite natural that we’re doing these things.
But is it, you know, supposedly you’re doing them because they’re going to bring you happiness. I mean, you’d be silly not to. But maybe stopping and taking a look. If we can develop skillful, healthy states of mind, then everything about us can become a source of happiness. This is what a Buddha experiences.
He lives in this world. There’s no other world than this one. The Buddha doesn’t go somewhere else. But his reality, his shared reality is such that everything within that reality acts as a source of happiness, of bliss. That’s the type of world that he’s constructed for himself, that we can construct for ourselves.
And the world can become predominantly sources of happiness. For many, it’s predominantly a source of suffering, problems, that life is problematic. I mean, you see this. People’s lives in chaos. Everything becomes a source of confusion, pain.
Other people, their lives are simple. There’s a certain simplicity about them. Things go well. Their minds are smooth, not rough, you know, like dragging a piece of silk across a smooth surface like marble, polished marble. Other people, their minds are like hooks.
Just it gets caught on everything. They can’t let one word go by without it evoking some distress, becoming angry, bitter. They’re miserable.