Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “What kind of person would you like to be in five years?” — Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 45-minute commentary on Śāntideva’s tolerance chapter with that question, anchoring the teaching in personal aspiration before laying out the four qualities of a genuine refuge: fearlessness, skillful means, compassion, and equanimity. He argues that the mind’s natural state is already peace — afflictive emotions are adventitious, like silt in still water — then uses a strawberry cheesecake example to show how dormant seeds of desire or anger activate on meeting conditions. Ignorance is identified as the root of all affliction, and deep concentration that merely suppresses emotions is critiqued as insufficient. The session closes with the eight preoccupations of ego-oriented existence — pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and ridicule, fame and notoriety — framing Dharma practice as actively dismantling these as life’s operating criteria.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 27 Tce 1991 05 01.mp3
UUID: c3fdb72f-e768-417f-ad2f-861392ab1987
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-05-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~5,467
Question, what what kind of person would you like to be five years from now or ten years from now? As Buddhism often emphasizes that we are our ultimate refuge, we are the creators of our problems and the solutions to our problems. And the type of person that we wish to become is hopefully a solution to our problems. And this solution to our problems, what we take as our model of sanity, our paradigm of the optimal mode of being, we call Buddha, one who is awake. And this represents a refuge, this optimum mode of being, this model of sanity.
And it says something which is worthy of refuge, which we can begin to consider what type of person we would like to be, and what qualities this solution to our problem should possess has four characteristics. It is an object which is worthy of our refuge, whether we conceive of it external to ourselves or that to which we are becoming. Has the qualities of fearlessness, skill and means, compassion and equanimity. This is the optimum quality of that which is able to protect us, that which is able to help us to solve our problems. The first quality is that of fearlessness.
Just in worldly matters, in the mundane situations, we can’t rely upon someone who is full of fears, because if we ask for their help out of their fears, they might be reluctant, hesitant, they might not be able to, even though they might want to, but they’re afraid. And the essence of fear, the essence of being a coward is not to acknowledge our fear. You know, to I was talking with someone, and we were discussing what it what it might mean to be vulnerable. And she said it simply is to let down one’s defenses. But I I I didn’t think that was quite enough.
It seems that it’s letting one’s down one’s defenses in the face of one’s fears, in spite of one’s fears. Now that one goes ahead and tries to make a leap onto fresh ground, into fresh air, in spite of one’s fears. That you know, coming there’s an interrelationship between these four characteristics. By becoming aware of our fears, we become skillful. We develop skill and means because we begin to understand our own minds and how they’re operating.
Not to understand our fears is not to understand ourselves, and not to acknowledge those fears is to live in bondage. You know, that I myself and all my various fears that I experience. The fear of what it might be to be a child completely abandoned and lost, it’s very painful. But I have that fear, and from time to time it becomes more or less manifest, and it influences my behavior, it influences my view of the world and the way I relate. And if we hope to open our hearts, if we hope to go on to develop compassion, then we have to go beyond our fears.
And we have to learn that we survive quite beautifully in spite of our fears, that we don’t have to be we don’t have to live under the domination of our fears. Now, the acknowledging of fears and being willing to still, in spite of those fears, to open our hearts, to be vulnerable, develop compassion. Becoming aware of our fears, becoming aware, understanding our the way our mind is operating is the way we can develop skillful means. And even if a person was fearless, let’s say they were willing to help us. If they didn’t have skillful means, then it’s very much like a blind leading the blind.
We might sincerely wish to help someone ourselves or another might wish to help us, but there’s not much we can do. But to the degree that we understand our own problems, and we develop the skills to be able to deal with them realistically and find real solutions, then to that same degree, we become a refuge not only for ourselves, but a way to we develop the skills to be able to benefit others, to help others. So is essentially to study Buddhism is to study your own mind, the nature of your mind, both on its its mundane features and its ultimate nature. It’s a it’s conventional patterns and its ultimate nature. But without compassion, we might be fearless, we might have skill and means, we might understand our nature, but we just don’t have a sense of the necessity to become involved.
We can develop a sense of indifference. But essentially, we begin with ourselves, having compassion for ourselves. Once the abbot of the Zen temple in Bodh Gaya said that meditation is an expression of compassion for ourselves. We care about we care enough about ourselves to take our problems seriously. And we want to solve our problems.
And there is a compassion necessarily begins with ourselves. If we can’t have compassion for ourselves, if we can’t sincerely wish to end our own problems, which we know directly, then how can we ever develop sincere compassion to end others’ problems when we at best only know their sufferings vicariously, second handedly, indirectly. We can’t. So, you know, the it’s necessary that we begin to love, push ourselves well, and have compassion, that we devote ourselves to freeing ourselves from our problems, that we determine to grow. And then we can begin to develop you know, we can begin to come become a refuge for others.
And all this this entire process of becoming a refuge for oneself, to solving one’s own problems, one indirectly becomes a refuge, a means of helping others to solve their problems. And the Buddha solved his problems, and in the course of that, he became a refuge for others. You know, that this optimum mode of being, we call Buddhahood, is the ultimate means of bringing about one’s own welfare and the welfare of others. And finally equanimity. You know, begin with to develop a sense of equanimity toward ourselves, sense of accepting quality.
Though we necessarily must change, though we might see qualities within ourselves that are unskillful, but we can begin to accept them for the present moment. We don’t have a sense of refusing to acknowledge or acknowledging a sense of denigrating ourselves, a sense that a sense of feeling of self hatred, that we can accept who we are now, that we couldn’t be any other way than we are now, given our past history. And though we’re going to change for the moment, developing a sense of equanimity toward all the various facets of ourselves, even those parts we don’t perhaps like very much. And then we can become friends with ourselves. We become our best friends.
We can hang out with ourselves and wish ourselves well. So this is what the characteristic of something which is worthy of one’s direction. That’s good. One’s direction. In the sense of a lifelong orientation, of becoming fearless, of becoming skillful, of becoming compassionate, and becoming equanimous.
And thereby, one becomes one’s own refuge. But in turn, we become a refuge for others, and this is what we mean by Buddha. So one can go to refuge towards such a being, having these qualities. And we develop our refuge by means of the Dharma, the techniques, the realizations, the methods. And this is done in the social context of a spiritual community.
And we raise the bodhicitta bar, the driving force behind this aim, such that we are not only seeking to become a refuge for ourselves, but become a refuge for all of sentient life. And then there’s a purposeful evolution. You know, we what type of person you would like to become five years from now, ten years from now. You can become that person and you can go on. You you can hope that your life you won’t die with the same delusions that you were born with or worse.
That there’s going to be some carrying on of this process. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and 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. 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’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. So in the we’re discussing the sixth chapter from Śāntideva’s text, Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds, or the Bodhicaryāvatāra, and specifically to the chapter on tolerance. Tolerance as the antidote to anger. There are six fundamental or root afflictive emotions.
Attachment, hatred, ignorance, pride, afflictive doubt, and wrong view. So amongst these six, one of the most fundamental is anger, and it’s considered one of the most destructive. It’s one of the most destructive because it not only creates suffering for oneself in the present, not only creates oneself suffering for the future, but it destroys all the creative potential that we create, all the positive actions that we have created in the past, and therefore destroys our causes of happiness. But, you know, all of these are various afflictive emotions. When when we begin to if you begin to examine them, their nature, they’re they’re just as their name indicates.
The the the word afflictive emotions. They they afflict, they disturb the mind. You know, from the point of view of Buddhism, the very nature of the mind is at peace. This is referred to as natural nirvana. nirvana means beyond sorrow, beyond hassles.
The mind is no longer involved in conflict or struggle. The mind is naturally at peace. This is naturally abiding beyond sorrow, naturally abiding nirvana. This is a we don’t have to fabricate the peace of the mind. It’s not something which needs to it is the unconditioned nature of the mind.
If it were not for this fact, then we could never achieve a state of eternal peace. We would continually have to be to be reconstructing some kind of peaceful state, keep creating the causes. You know, even all products are impermanent. Causes are products. Therefore, they are impermanent.
They will arise, will abide, and they will cease. So we would have to, in some way, keep recreating this state of nirvana, the state of peace. But it’s in fact is an unconditioned state. It does does not arise dependent upon causes and conditions. It is the very nature of our minds.
The very nature of our minds is peace, something which we do not need to fabricate, something we do not need to create. It’s an uncreated state. But the mind within the mind are these various what we call adventitious factors, Adventitious in the sense that they are temporary, temporal. They are incidental to the mind. They are not in the nature of the mind.
If I try to remove heat from fire, I have some fire, and I don’t want the characteristic of heat, of it being hot, so I pour water on it maybe, whatever. I have to destroy the fire. The hotness of the fire is fundamental nature. It’s intrinsic to the fire itself. By removing that characteristic, by destroying that characteristic, I must destroy the fire.
The wetness of water, the solidity of earth, These are the intrinsic qualities of each of these. In order to remove those, in order to eliminate those qualities, I must eliminate the thing itself. But the various afflictive emotions, you know, the six which I just mentioned, for example, of desire, hatred, you know, whatever, pride, jealousy, spite, miserliness, they’re said to be eighty four thousand. These are said these are adventitious. These are factors which are not inherent to the mind itself.
But they are afflictive, that is to say, they disturb the natural peace of the mind. The mind is in itself at peace, if it were left to itself. You know, it’s like a dam with a muddy bottom. If you leave it, if there’s no wind and nothing disturbing the water, and the mud will settle out. And the water becomes crystal clear quite often.
I don’t know. Will be it it will the mud will settle out. The silt will settle out. You know, the the nature of water is is clear. The dirt particles are not in the nature of the water.
They are something extraneous to the nature of the water. And likewise, with respect to the mind, if we can filter out, as it were, these afflictive emotions, if we can make use of methods, You know, it’s like most of the waters of the world are polluted. And though you have a molecule of H2O, and no matter how many molecules of water, of pollution, of garbage, you may surround that H2O with, the H2O is unaltered. It’s still water. And if you can devise some filtration, anti pollution device to remove all of those pollutants, then you’re left with crystal clear water.
The integrity of the water has remained unchanged, is unaltered. It might be a tremendously expensive process requiring great technology. But aside from that, we can find a method, then we can return that state to its natural clarity, its purity. And likewise with the mind, we can return the mind to its natural state of peace and of natural beyond sorrow. If we can make use of methods to remove these disturbing factors from the mind.
I presently may not be manifesting desire, for example. But if you, you know, if you maybe I’ve been I use this example sometimes. People think I’m hung up on cheesecake, but anyway, will. Know, if you put a piece of what? I say strawberry cheesecake.
Usually, say blueberry, but I’m changing strawberry cheesecake. I don’t have particularly any desire in my mind at present, but if you put a piece of strawberry cheesecake in front of me, some kind of desire arises. So this is an indication that though there is not a manifest pattern of desire within my mind, there is a potency, a seed, as it were. That when just like when a a a flower seed comes in correct in contact with the correct conditions of water, earth, etcetera, something arises, a result, a flower arises, a plant arises. Likewise, there are these various seeds within our mind, these these potencies, these capacities of, for example, desire, of hatred, of jealousy, of spite.
When they meet specific conditions, my eye through my eye contact with the strawberry cheesecake, When that when my seed of desire meets that piece of strawberry cheesecake, desire arises in my mind. And lo and behold, I begin to reach out. And I want try to make that strawberry piece that piece of strawberry cheesecake a part of myself, you know, to make a permanent part of myself, to make all that permanent pleasure. So the mind, when meeting these conditions, what happens when I meet that strawberry cheesecake, desire arises. The mind is in a state of disequilibrium.
There’s tension within the mind. The only thing which can release me from that tension is after a piece of strawberry cheesecake. You know, this sense, we can begin to see pleasure arise. You know, that this this satiating of desire is like drinking salt water. The satiating of desire, we we term happiness, but in fact, it’s only a release from tension.
Reduction it’s tension reduction, a release from a sense of deprivation. This is why called contaminated happiness. It’s not real happiness. It’s simply compared to suffering, it’s okay, relatively speaking. So in this state, the mind is unrelaxed.
It’s lost its equilibrium. It’s no longer at peace. Once one of these seeds ripens, these patterns desire, hate, spite, jealousy, miserliness, whatever, the mind has lost its peace, this disturbing factor. The mind was at peace, and it’s been destroyed. And then we have to cope with that tension, with that ill at easeness, that disease of the mind.
And then we all these various actions ensue, you know, from these desires, from hatred, all these various actions come out. You know, we hit we steal pieces of strawberry cheesecake over there, we hit people, you know, all of this in order to bring the mind back to peace, to bring it back to an equilibrium, to to rest. So, you know, in working with anger, what we’re trying to do is to reframe situations such that fewer and fewer situations are able to act as conditions to for to activate these seeds of anger, these reactive anger patterns. And a fewer a fewer object situations, people are able to push our button. In other words, we are able to do this by reframing the situation.
We we develop better coping skills. You know, even even even instant coffee doesn’t arise from nowhere. Even instant coffee doesn’t arise from nowhere. It instant even instant coffee has arises in dependence upon causes and conditions. It rises in dependence upon ingredients.
Just in the same way, anger arises in dependence upon certain ingredients. And the most fundamental ingredient for the development of anger in all the various afflictive emotions is ignorance. Ignorance as the misconception as to the nature of the self and the nature of the all these various external objects, the self of external objects, this table, you and this house, whatever, but also the nature of my self, myself, Jampa, or whoever that might be. This misconception, this misconception. You know, as long as ignorance remains, then we are going to with all of the various afflictive emotions are going to arise because they’re all based.
They all have as their foundation, a misconception of the nature of the self and the nature of external phenomena. As long as ignorance remains within the mind, the mind will always be prone to states of disequilibrium, states of tension, states of affliction, disturbance. You know, this is in a way mean, it is an important point from the point from the point of view of Buddhism because, you know, many at least from the point of view of historic India, many non-Buddhist schools took, sought to achieve various trance states, various meditative concentrations, very deep samadhis, where the afflictive emotions were temporarily suppressed. And they took these meditative trances to be ends in themselves, because they are the mind is at peace, because none of the afflictive emotions are manifested. They all have been, even on the most subtle level, what we might call the subconscious level, have been pacified.
But as long but it requires causes to maintain these trance states. Those causes are impermanent. They will eventually be exhausted. And as long as ignorance is present, or the seed of ignorance is present within mind, then the possibility for affliction is always there. That coming out of these trance states, one will develop afflictive emotions again.
One has not achieved liberation. Even, you know, from the point of view of Buddhism, such a way such an approach to spiritual journey was mistaken on two ways. One was the fact that that unless we identify the root cause of our problems, and that is ignorance, and remove that from us that that root, we haven’t really dealt with the problem completely. We only have temporarily pacified it. We only have suppressed it momentarily.
That’s one mistake. The other is that from the point of view of the great vehicle, the Mahāyāna, even the achievement of these temporal states, these temporal states of peace, if they are taken to be ends in themselves and not as means to the development of the mind, then this requires that we withdraw from the world. That is to say we have to abandon others. So the abandonment of others becomes the goal becomes a part of the goal of the spiritual path. You know, if you if you conceive this the goal of your spiritual life, these samadhi, these trance states, and part of your goal is very much tied up with abandoning the world, abandoning other people.
And to and from the point of view of the you know, this is conceived of as a great mistake from the point of view of the great vehicle, because part of part of being mentally healthy person is to be a mentally healthy person is both necessary to live in the world and working and relating skillfully with others, and to ex externally and internally to maintain one’s equilibrium, to maintain a sense of peace within oneself. This is the optimum mode of being, that we have existentially, we have two aspects to ourselves, the private experiential part of ourselves and the social public part of ourselves, that part of ourselves which exists in relationship to others. And any holistic approach to mental health, to spiritual growth, necessarily, we must deal with both of these facets of ourselves. And we experience internally peace by means of removing the causes of our suffering, and that is ignorance. But additionally, developing a skillful way of relating, developing the optimal mode of being with others, which is formed out of compassion and love, the awakening heart.
You know, these are the two wings to this optimum mode of being of enlightenment. Being for oneself, the optimum mode of being for oneself and being for others is expressed as Buddha, this awakened one. One is holistically brought about one’s complete potential to its consummation. And we have to learn how to communicate and care with others and care for others. That’s part of being mentally healthy.
But it’s also part of being mental of mental health to remove the factors of misconception from our mind, to remove these distorting factors of ignorance. So we it’s necessarily that we make we have to work on these two areas of our being. Love and compassion on the one hand, which I refer to as method, and on the other, wisdom, understanding the nature of our mind, the nature of the self. Though so ignorance is is the foundation of all our afflictive emotions. It’s most it’s it’s active manifestation is desire.
The functioning aspect, as it were, that which is running around doing all the work of ignorance, is desire. And it is the most central and active manifest expression of ignorance. It is the driving force behind all of our various afflictive emotions. You know, we’ve discussed why the conditions and the causes necessary, which come together for us to become angry. The two conditions of frustrated desire and identifying an object which is preventing us from satisfying our desire.
And the main condition, the main cause for anger being distress, the inability of the mind to bear with the present situation. It’s it’s it’s even not the present situation. It’s the inability of the mind to bear one’s imagined extending of the present situation. Like, this situation is going to go on the rest of my life, and I can’t stand it. That’s the that’s the mentality.
That’s the the distortion which is associated with this distress. As if one cannot imagine this simply as an impermanent situation, one is superimposing a factor of permanence, that this is the way it’s always going to be, and I can’t bear it, and I won’t be able to bear it. One’s inability to in the face of eternal frustration, it’s distress. So, by reframing the situations, it helps us to ease this distress, and therefore removing the main cause of our anger. In the actual text on tolerance by Śāntideva, we’ve been looking recently at the distress which is induced by jealousy.
There’s various ways in which this distress can arise. Attachment, jealousy, pride. This causes distress. Out of this distress, the mind can react with anger, with aggression, with hostility. So we presently have been working with the quality of distress, which is induced by jealousy.
And how we can reframe those situations such that we’re no longer jealous, therefore, we’re longer in distress, therefore, anger can no longer arise. And the mind is unable to bear. There’s always this strange you know, the mind is you know, the the the the opposite of tolerance is inability to bear. The mind is unable to bear others having, you know, whatever it might be, material things, excellent qualities, praise. I simply can’t bear that my this person be praised.
I can’t bear that they have something that I don’t have. I can’t bear that they’re beautiful and I’m not. It’s some quality about them. I can’t bear that. I become distressed.
I’m jealous. So again, you know, in all of this, it has to be emphasized that we’re not saying that you shouldn’t have all of these good things. You know, you shouldn’t have material possessions, that you shouldn’t have wealth, money, you shouldn’t have status, a respected position, a good reputation. All these things go to make a comfortable life, a happy life, whatever they might be. But they in themselves are too, as I have mentioned, are in a way neutral.
I used this example of a knife. A knife is in a way neutral. In the hands of a surgeon, a skillful surgeon, it can be life giving, life enhancing, it’s beneficial. That same knife, scalpel, whatever, in the hand of a murderer is life threatening, it’s destructive, harmful. So the knife is the same knife, but it’s used in two different ways, with two different intentions, and the outcome is very much different.
So, are what we make them, and what are we making of the things about us. If we can develop skillful states of mind, healthy attitudes, then anything and everything can become can be experienced as a source of happiness, as a source of growth, as a growth enhancing factor in our life. On the other hand, if we don’t have healthy attitudes, if we aren’t able to frame the situation as such, then anything and everything can simply become a hassle for us, can become a source of frustrations, disappointment, dissatisfaction, can become a growth inhibiting factor in our life. This is one of the fundamental practices within the genre of teachings called mind training, in which we are to take adverse circumstances as the path, as a way of developing ourselves. And we can’t control the world around us.
We don’t have that ability. We don’t have that capacity. But if we can develop the way the skillful way of framing situations, then anything that might occur can become growth enhancing. There’s nothing whatsoever which is inherently an obstruction to our spiritual development. And that ultimately is to say nothing whatsoever is ultimately a source of suffering, though it might be temporarily so.
If we’re skillful enough in how view the situation, the attitude we take toward it. So the point is we can’t control the world, but we can learn to control maybe our own mind, which is in fact is sufficient. With our mind, we make the world. All of the various afflictive emotions are are experienced as one form of distress or another, and they predispose us to future distress, to future dissatisfaction. You know, of what use are all of our various hopes and fears?
You know, I’ve been using the word hopes, but today I thought maybe a better hope better word than hope is expectation. It’s the same word in Tibetan. What are all our expectations and fears, all our attachments, all our angers and jealousies, if they if they only cause us dissatisfaction, if they only cause us suffering now and in the future, There’s a, you know, just a verse which kind of points out hopes and fears or expectations and fears, to lose good days that might be better spent, to waste long nights in pensive discontent, to speed today, to put back tomorrow, to feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow. You know, I I find it remarkable. You know, some sometimes, oh, I wish I wish it were tomorrow because I had this great expectation.
Or or I wish today was finished because I have this great fear, this great aversion to what is going to be for me today. And we’ve we’ve passed our lives hoping that they’re living someplace other than in the present moment, trying to speed on tomorrows and and put back today. We passed away our life has passed. Your last talk I must apologize. It reminds me that some of you might have come last Wednesday, and you you went to all the trouble of coming.
So I apologize. I was a little bit sick. Last week not last week, last talk, two weeks ago, I briefly mentioned the the eight principle preoccupations of ego-orientated existence. That’s not a lot of words, isn’t it? Eight principle preoccupations of ego-orientated existence.
What I mean by that is a way of life, which takes as its main criteria. You know, the the principles based upon which it’s going to act in the world, its criteria, its value system for acting is such that those actions would serve to secure the self in space and time. This is its criteria, ultimately. Anything which helps to secure the self, the I, in space and time, you know, no matter how it may be expressed, That’s my that’s my prime criteria for acting in the world, for my way of life. This is ego-orientated existence.
So, you know, this is what our life is built upon in the sense of expectations and fears. expectations are setting one’s priorities in terms of that which enhances, confirms our ego. And we live in perpetual struggle for future gratifications. And fear is is, you know, it’s just the opposite. It is setting our priorities in terms of what is this confirms or is seen as a threat to one’s ego.
And we said there are eight categories of these expectations and fears. There’s there’s expectation of pleasure, expectation of pleasure, fear of pain, expectation of gain, fear of loss, expectation of praise, fear of ridicule, expectation of fame, fear of notoriety. And this is you know, I talked going all the way back to what we mentioned about refuge, our life based upon fears. And life based upon fears is a life in bondage. And I don’t I only am slowly becoming aware, and the little that I know, of how much of my behavior is based upon fear, the fear of pain, the expectations of pleasure.
Now how programmed I actually am, how unawake. The primary delusion in which I live is my own ego. You know, the I think I’m thinking quite rationally, but in fact, it’s permeated by fear of pain, fear of loss, fear of ridicule, and how much this fear limits us and determines the quality of our life. And to practice Dharma means, in a very practical sense, to actively oppose one’s expectations and fears, to go beyond these expectations and fears. And this requires a great deal of courage.
In particular, these eight expressions, to go beyond the using as your your primary criteria for your actions in the world as your expectations for pleasure. I’m only going to do that if I expect if I can expect pleasure. Then there’s no voluntary acceptance of suffering. No no voluntary acceptance of legitimate suffering, which may be quite necessary and probably is if we’re going to grow out of one’s fear of pain. You know, one one simply is not thinking rationally.
What is in my best interest? One is simply thinking in patterned modes of thought determined out of out of past experiences. You know, it’s very childlike. One has no control over one’s life. One is being controlled by one’s expectations and fear.
So what it means to practice Dharma is to begin to go beyond this. The pleasure pain, the gain-loss, these principles, and how are you going to determine to act in your life, you’re beginning to choose in the free light of your own wisdom.