Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A quote from Epictetus — “It’s not the things themselves which trouble us, but the opinions we have about them” — anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s approach in this 45-minute talk on tolerance and anger. After a brief contemplation on precious human life, contrasting our situation with beggars in Calcutta, refugees, and the severely ill, he reframes “taking refuge” to expose our futile search for satisfaction in saṃsāra’s fleeting pleasures. The core teaching examines pride: how it blocks learning, creates relational conflict, and makes relaxation impossible — illustrated with vivid examples from beach vanity to married couples comparing qualities. The reframing follows: whoever deflates our ego is helping, not harming, us. He closes by distinguishing healthy self-worth from comparison-driven pride, quotes Lama Yeshe on the damage of low self-esteem, and draws on Asaṇga’s similes for Buddha nature as the ground of genuine confidence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 29 Tce 1991 05 08.mp3
UUID: 3e96cda5-b610-4e89-9a47-5b13c6e4d5f6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-05-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~4,716
Developing appreciation for our opportunity, chance to grow. So if you take a comfortable, stable, firm position. Any plans that need to be made? Any lists that need to be made, any worries that need to be worried, they’ll still be there when your meditation is finished. For the next five minutes, create some time and space for yourself to rest your mind and body.
And first, getting in touch with your body, taking notice of any tightness, any tensions. And consciously relaxing those areas. Feeling all the tension as if moved down and out of your body into the ground. Softening the body, becoming comfortable. Then gently focus your attention on the breath.
Perhaps take a few deep sighs, deep breaths just to release all the tension, all the tightness that’s been built up. Gently bring your attention to rest upon the breath, the natural, easy flow of the breath. Gently bring the mind back to the breath. Body becoming soft, comfortable. The breath becoming gentle and even.
The mind becoming quiet. We’re going to contemplate and begin to appreciate this great chance, this opportunity that we have to grow. Let’s begin in a negative fashion. Imagine yourself as a beggar in Calcutta, out on the streets with a family to take care of. From morning till night, having to beg for just enough money to get by for that day.
When you come home at night, what can you do? What do you feel like doing? Was there a chance to study, to meditate, to listen to teachings? Perhaps you’re a mother in Ethiopia, Sudan watching your family die. You yourself are starving.
Perhaps you’re a Vietnam refugee in a Hong Kong internment camp. What do you do? What can you do in such a situation? What freedom do you have? What choices?
Or maybe just a villager in India working from dawn to dusk. Thirty days a month, every day, day after day. Or you were born in a country where you weren’t allowed to meet together, where you had no freedoms of assembly, no religious freedoms, no political freedom. Everything was under government control. Or perhaps you’re intellectually handicapped.
What can you do in such a situation? Are you psychotic without control of your mind? You’re undergoing chemical therapy, which dulls your mind, losing the clarity of being able to think. Or if you had cancer, having to undergo pain constantly. Or you’re completely caught up in materialism.
All you can think of is these days, how to get more money, more power, more status. Now look what you do have positively to begin to appreciate it. That you live in a free country, that you can easily meet all your material needs, that you have a healthy body and a healthy mind, that you have some love and compassion, some wisdom, and an inclination to to grow, to develop yourself. Any facilities, teachers, books? What you have is very rare in the world.
Very unique and special amongst all the peoples of the world. We have to begin to appreciate it and not let it go to waste to make use of our great fortune that we all have to find happiness and help others to find happiness. The phrase taking refuge is borrowed from its traditional context, the often repeated Buddhist declaration of faith in the teachers, teachings in the spiritual community. I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha. To make the point that taking refuge in momentary transitory pleasures is something we are doing all the time with an almost religious fervor and conviction.
For example, one day we may think, oh, I’m so depressed. I think I’ll go to the beach.’ So we drive to the ocean, jump in the water, play around like fish, and then lie down to fry in the sun. When this becomes boring, we think, ‘Now I’m hungry. Where does the refreshment stand?’ Then we stuff ourselves with as much junk food as possible, hoping to find some satisfaction in the ice cream, popcorn, and Coke and chocolate we are devouring. We take refuge in these things as a way out of our depression and boredom only to end up fat and sunburnt.
When Buddhism speaks of taking refuge, it is emphasizing the importance and breaking out of this desperate, unfulfilling search for satisfaction. Taking refuge involves a change of our attitude. We cease to be tossed this way and that by the changing fortunes of our life and gain the space to begin tapping into our own inner potential. So when we, you know, to begin to gain the conviction that no matter what the my life might bring me, you know, we have very We cannot control the things about us and what befalls us to a large degree. Perhaps whether we lose our job or not, whether someone dies or not, whether we have an accident or not.
And we have to use various methods to ensure that we have all the comforts and joys of life. And we can use all the various material methods, external methods. But gaining over and above this the conviction that if I grow, then no matter what may happen, things will go well. Whether I lose my job, whether someone close to me does die, whether I do have an accident, becomes sick. If I have developed my mind, then I can be assured that things will still go well, that I won’t be thrown off balance.
And so, though we take what? Secondary, temporal refuge and the various things about us and the people to work with those things to help us develop a comfortable, happy, fulfilled life. Our primary source of Creating the kind of life that we wish, that we have a feeling, satisfying, authentic way of being is placed, that trust is placed within our own mental development. Know, things like wisdom, love and compassion. If you develop love and compassion, if you develop wisdom, then things will go well no matter what the variety of temporal situations may occur, no matter what the flux of our fortune may be.
It will be a good fortune. Things will go well. Having that kind of conviction. You you’re not quite sure what the temporary, the temporal appearance is going to take. What the quality of that unique manifestation of our life might be from moment to moment.
But you know you can depend upon it will be a favorable quality, a type of life which will bring you happiness and fulfillment if you’ve developed your mind. So in this going for refuge, the central focus becomes awakening, developing one’s own potential. And we do this by means of the Dharma and in the social context of a spiritual community. So though we repeat this formula going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha, essentially what we’re saying is that I have the potential to grow and I take refuge in that potential. And this is my ultimate, making growth a significant component of the overall array of methods that you use to find a good life.
To maintain that balance, to keep that place in your life, to develop yourself, developing the conviction that it’s an absolute necessity to find the type of life that you want to lead, to find well-being, to maintain some part of your life, to give over some part of your energy, your space, your time, to your own inner development as an assurance that things will go well no matter what the vicissitudes of our external world might, whatever they might bring us, whatever might happen in our life. We can be assured that if we’ve developed our mind, if we’ve grown, then things will go well. And if we can raise the level of that motivation, that not only I’m doing it for myself, the more that I develop myself, more that I can be a benefit to others. The more that I develop my love, wisdom, my creative energy, the more that I can be a real help to others and help them to do the same. And that making others a significant component of your life.
Overcoming this tendency to absorb ourselves in our own isolated world. We usually conceive as ourselves being unconnected with others. That communication and concern and caring are a facet of a healthy life, a very important component of a fulfilled way of life. So in going for the refuge, in making, setting aside some significant part of your life to develop yourself, trying to raise that level of motivation to do that in order to help others to do the same. And then no matter what happens, we can sort of relax.
We can have some confidence. We don’t have to be terribly over concerned that we aren’t going to get our fair share of happiness in life because we can have the confidence that we are creating the causes for real happiness, real satisfaction. That we have to make effort in gathering the good things of life together about us. They will come. We can have some kind of confidence in that and in ourselves and the quality of our life, future life.
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. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving any 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 any other perfections may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. We’re looking at the area of Last week we mentioned that three of our greatest attachments are toward food, clothing and praise. And amongst these, one of the main attachments that we have is toward praise, reputation of some sort. It was pointed out even great meditators or seemingly great meditators, I guess we could say leading to spiritual materialism. So we have some kind of expectations.
I talked about the various expectations, expectations of pleasure, expectations of gain, praise, fame. Out of our expectations for praise and fame, we become distressed when this praise isn’t forthcoming. If we somehow our praise is being obstructed, somebody’s in our way, depriving us of our rightful praise that we’re attached to, that we expect. And out of this comes a dissatisfaction, a distress. Out of this distress, acting as the main cause, comes anger.
You know, when one’s pride is hurt, for example, this causes distress, and out of this comes anger. You know, anger acting distress acting as the main cause for anger. But if we can clearly begin to see the disadvantages of pride, the destructive qualities of pride, then we will not be upset when someone hurts our pride, when someone interferes with the praise which would only feed our pride, which would only inflate our already inflated self image that we may have about ourselves. You know, anything that might make us more proud than perhaps that we already are. If we can begin to reframe these situations, if we can begin to see pride as being not in our best interests, if we can begin to see disadvantages of pride, then anyone who distracts from our pride, anyone who deflates our pride, anyone who contributes to the lessening of our feeling of self importance is actually contributing to our welfare, our contentment, our happiness.
Talking about reframing, this whole process is a question of reframing various types of situations. What do we mean by reframing? To reframe then means to change the conceptual and or emotional setting or viewpoint in a relationship to which a situation is experienced and to place it in another frame which fits the facts of the same concrete situation equally well or even better and thereby changes its entire meaning. So we’re trying to, by reframing, the facts remain the same. We’re just going to look at it from a new viewpoint and therefore we’re going to give it a new meaning.
You know sometimes we can’t change the fact and we can’t call black white or white black. We have to accept the fact, but we can change the significance that we attribute to the fact. We can change the context, the viewpoint from which we look at the facts. The mechanism involved here is not immediately obvious, especially if we bear in mind that there is a change while the situation itself may remain quite unchanged, indeed even unchangeable. What turns out to be changed as a result of reframing is the meaning attributed to the situation and therefore its consequence, but not its concrete facts.
Or as the philosopher Epictetus expressed in the early first century AD, It’s not the things themselves which trouble us, but the opinions that we have about these things. So we’re trying to change our opinion in order not to become distressed, in order that anger not arise. One of the areas in which we can become distressed with is when our pride is hurt, when we’re deprived of praise. So we see this as destructive to who I am. I want that praise.
We have a sense of self importance And anything which deflates our inflated pride, anything which decreases our feelings of self importance, see normally as a threat to our own self image of who I am, as distracting from myself, detracting from myself. Myself. And so we see as harmful to ourselves. We become distressed and we become angry. So we’re going to try to see the same types of situations, the facts remain the same, but try to see it from another point of view.
If we can begin to see the disadvantages of pride, then anyone who deflates our pride is no longer seen as detracting from our happiness but in fact contributing to our happiness. This transformation of the same facts but looked at with new significance, a different meaning. And talking about the disadvantages of pride. According to Buddhist psychology, pride is the greatest interference for gaining knowledge and more wisdom. In other words, pride prevents you from learning, from gaining knowledge and making progress.
It is a closed mind and this is really a big problem all over the world and for us individually. Let’s take an example. Pride creates conflict. Maybe I look at her and check up her qualities, then I think I’m better because she has this and I’m better because I have that. And all those arguments I create, a conflict, contradictions between us, I’m better because of this, I’m better because of that, somehow it makes it very complicated, it makes things very complicated.
Also, people who have pride find it very difficult to be satisfied with a companion. They have difficulties in finding good companions. They might think, well you are sweet but still not sophisticated enough. You are a nice person but there was always some kind of criticism. Myself, I’m not sophisticated but I want my companion to be so.
That’s the ego. Look at any kind of worldly relationship. Check that out. There is no way that someone says ‘He or she is perfect for me.’ This you find only very rarely. There is always something wrong because there is pride.
Then one is very uncooperative with another. I don’t want to cooperate with him. When he says certain things I feel he dominates me. I have more right to make decisions than him. All this bad communication and blocking of cooperation comes from ego, from pride.
Pride is also very tricky. I tell you, for me it really seems that pride is very tricky. Can you imagine? He is telling me something which is absolutely true and says, you should do this but I don’t want to listen. We do this, check out.
I don’t want to listen to him. His opinion is better, but deep inside, I have a fixed ideal of I am the best. I have the best opinion, the top one. With this fixed ideal, with this pride, I cannot admit that he’s right. Can you imagine?
This is completely polluted, but it happens. That’s true. We have to learn this. It’s unbelievable. So you can see in certain things he is completely right, but I don’t want to admit this.
I don’t want to accept it so I reject it. I decided I cannot learn from him. I don’t want to learn from him. He should learn from me only and this is not true. We all learn from each other.
I can learn from him and he can learn from me too. We do learn from each other. We can learn from each other. It’s not true that I am only right. So you can see how pride is preventing you from receiving more knowledge because it makes you close.
People who are proud never relax. It’s not possible to relax. Why? Because the nature of pride is such that there is an object of I am something, I am somehow better, I am somehow perfect, Somehow I am better. With pride I have such an attitude.
How can I relax then? I cannot relax. It feels like having a nail stuck somewhere. I feel so sensitive because somewhere there is a nail stuck, so I cannot relax, isn’t it? When I relax, they are coming after me.
It’s true, then I can’t relax. Let’s say I dress up like a Western gentleman. I clean myself, put on something special, wear expensive Western clothes with big pride, and go to the beach. Imagine if no one looks at me. With my pride I think, ‘Today I’m going to dress up as beautiful as possible.’ Then when I’m going somewhere, expect people to watch me.
Relax then? I cannot relax. The result is disappointment. Nobody looks at me. The poor monk gets no attention.
The same can happen to ladies, too. So you can see, all happens because of pride. I’m beautiful, I’m handsome, I’m wealthy, because I’m educated, because I’m blah blah blah. You know what I mean? You know, hundred things you can say because of this and that and this and that, I’m proud.
There are all these reasons which feed pride so it is very difficult to relax. And also, let’s say he treats me disrespectfully, then my pride reacts. Today he treated me without respect. Maybe one day he comes up to me in a certain way and full of pride and I decide today he does not respect me and I feel hurt, so hurt, we do this all the time. Or maybe he didn’t say you are nice or to a lady he didn’t say you are beautiful.
Maybe instead ask how old are you? Then she freaked out. All these things are really difficult. Of course, each individual has different reasons for pride and finds different reasons to increase his pride. There are so many examples in the world.
I have met so many people all over the world. Married couples, for instance, have problems too with pride. When one is older or more wealthy or more poor, there is so much concern about all of this because of pride. Ladies say, I’m still beautiful but my husband is already very old. You know what I mean?
It’s not uncommon. It’s so common all over the world, so easy to see. In the same way, the man is thinking, I am much younger and more beautiful than my wife. It works both ways, that’s all. But actually, beauty is superstition.
I mean, you cannot measure it. In India, a fat lady is considered beautiful. In the West, a fat lady is considered ugly and beauty differs according to different people’s minds. That is true, especially when you think about your companion. There maybe see some kind of reality because you are not just looking superficially from the outside.
However, I don’t want to go on like this. All of these conflicts come about through pride because you are proud. You think I have somehow better qualities, so why should I put up with these ladies and gentlemen who are of worse quality than me? This is somehow stupid. You can’t enjoy each other.
You don’t enjoy and you lose all self respect. And then you treat your husband like a sweeper. Oh, you are such a heavy burden for me because I’m better. I’m of better quality. Anyway, I don’t want to talk too much about this as long as you understand this demonstration.
Pride is a problem. It’s really a problem. And you are never relaxed. You feel never comfortable. Among people, you are not comfortable and alone.
Not either. I think that is enough. So in reframing, there was Lama Thubten Yeshe who founded Buddha House,. In reframing, the reframing here involves cultivating an attitude or anyone who prevents you from developing pride, you know, becoming even more proud than you already are, who deflates our puffed up egos is really helping us to be content and happy, to become relaxed. This is the reframing.
Anyone who helps us to deflate our pride, anyone who pricks this puffed up self image that we have, our sense of self importance is helping us to become more content, more relaxed, happier person. This is the reframing of the attitude toward the same fact. The fact remains the same. Someone’s putting us down, someone’s preventing us from being praised. But our attitude toward that same fact is quite significantly transformed.
It’s quite different. You know, in this process, obviously if you begin to see that when somebody puts you down, they’re helping you, you’re not going to become distressed and therefore there’s no possibility for anger to arise. You know in talking about pride, there are two types of pride. There’s healthy pride and unhealthy pride. We’ve been talking about unhealthy pride.
But there’s a healthy pride, a feeling of self worth which is centered in oneself and doesn’t rely on having to prop up oneself image by constantly comparing oneself with others or constantly having to be praised by others. You know feeling good about yourself is terribly important. I think we all know this. Having some confidence and feelings of self worth and self esteem are very basic to the process of transformation that I can change, that I have this potential, that feeling just feeling good about yourself. You know, to a large degree, our only limitations are those we acknowledge.
And if we have very low opinion of ourselves, we’ll never try. And not trying, we will never achieve. And talking about the problem of lower self esteem, again, a quote from Lama Yeshe. You’re talking in terms of tantra. The main problem, the problem, what is the problem?
It is ordinary recognition that I am a poor man, poor woman. Do you understand? Perceiving holding as poor one, poor object, poor quality. And perceiving also such poor acting ugly, having lower opinion of our body, lower opinion of our quality. That is the worst symptom to being healthy, to be liberated.
That is the main obstacle to eradicate, to cut. As long as you decided, having the preconception that I am the poor one, You decided. You decided already that you are the bad guy. You decided already. So, when you decided you’re a bad guy, you do always bad actions anyway.
I’m worthless. I’m a bad guy, So, I am the bad one. Of course, that’s the way it is. It’s true. You know, life in such a situation life becomes a self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy.
That feelings of insufficiency, lack of self worth, self esteem lead to expressing that in our life. We need a way of life which appropriate to the type of person that we conceive of ourselves to be. This is why there’s no possibility for change because basically one doesn’t think one can change. Basically down there way deep beyond the intellectual level. Know, harboring the sense of insufficiency about oneself that one just doesn’t have quite what it takes.
Everyone else seems to be doing okay. But somewhere along the line, you messed up. You’re not quite sure where or how. But there’s this vague notion that there’s something wrong with me. And this is why Buddhism places such a tremendous emphasis on overcoming this feeling of insufficiency and this developing a sense of basic goodness about oneself and emphasizing the quality that we all possess basic goodness or Buddha nature.
Asaṇga was one of the most important Buddhist masters in India and he describes this quality of Buddha nature or basic goodness. That it’s presently obscured by our various disturbing patterns. He sets out some similes trying to describe how we all possess this basic goodness, Buddha nature, but it’s not apparent to us. The way in which our Buddha nature, our basic goodness, our brilliant sanity is obscured. A Buddha in a muddy lotus, honey covered by bees, grain in a husk, gold in a trash heap, treasure hidden beneath the earth, a bean in its pod, a statue wrapped in dirty rags, a future king carried in the womb of an ugly woman, a precious object buried in the ground.
Similarly, the tathagata essence abides in all beings. The tathagata essence is our Buddha nature, abides in all beings, obscured by the adventitious stains of the afflictive emotions. You know the very nature of our mind, of our subtle most consciousness is Buddha nature. That it is dynamic quality. And that even on a very mundane level, beginning to we have a tendency to discount anything which does not fit in with our preconceptions of who we are.
We focus upon those actions, those qualities of ourselves which reinforce our preconception, our conception of who we are. We create situations. We develop relationships which all reinforce this conception that we have of ourselves. And it becomes terribly difficult to break out of this pattern and it limits us. We basically don’t believe that we can change, that we really can achieve.
In tantra, you know, talking about the great emphasis is placed upon developing divine pride, the pride of a deity where one actually assumes the pride of a deity that one takes the result into the path, that one is an enlightened being and tries to re identify oneself with the factors of enlightenment, with the factors of love and compassion which we all have no matter how elusive, no matter how mixed with attachment our love and compassion might be. Still it’s there. We all have some wisdom no matter how faint, no matter how obscure that wisdom might be. It’s still there. We all have some creative energy no matter how unrefined and undeveloped that energy might be it’s there.
So, you know, making the beginning to focus upon what in fact we do have. The moments of brilliant wisdom that we do express in every day of our life. Beginning to recognize those, to become mindful of them in order to begin to contradict this habitual pattern of our insufficient self, how we conceive of ourselves to be. You know, beginning to contradict the self image that we have. Beginning to reshape it to develop a sense of divine self image.
This is one of the focuses of tantra. These various meditational deities are simply that. Various qualities of enlightened being, enlightened way of life. And identifying with in order to create space. It’s like, you know, in order to get these energies moving.