Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A parable about a king who solves thorny roads by making sandals rather than carpeting his kingdom in leather gives this 45-minute session one of its most striking images: we cannot master the world, only train the mind. Ven Jampa Gendun opens by connecting reflection on death and the eight ego-driven preoccupations to the courage needed to reorient life toward growth and compassion. He then returns to Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, defining tolerance as an actively peaceful, undistressed mind rather than teeth-gritting endurance, and works through why enemies are indispensable to its practice. A hospital scenario — a parent’s gratitude when a surgeon saves their child, regardless of the bill — makes the point concrete: harmful intention does not cancel real benefit. Best suited to practitioners already following this Śāntideva series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 31 Tce 1991 05 15.mp3
UUID: 23a2dd13-15ad-4971-ae8e-0224305d6c76
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Tolerance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-05-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~5,762
It’s quite an interesting subject. I think death is not something that’s rather popular to be talked about. You have to be kind of strange to talk about death, don’t you? Morbid, I don’t know. It’s like I was thinking that we’ve never experienced it.
A jampa, the monk, has never died. He’s never grown old. It’s something new. It’s something I’ve never it’s a new experience for me. And perhaps the being of my continuum in previous existences has, They say, if I amassed all the bones of my previous lives, then they would form mountains as high as the Himalayas.
But it has never happened to this particular person, Jampa, or you as individual beings. It is really difficult for us. Somehow death is creeping up on us. Old age is creeping up on us. It is not a very pleasant thought, this person, this Jampa.
And the wrinkles begin to form and I don’t have the vigor that I used to do. I used to be able to stay awake, you know, for twenty four hours quite easily. Now I can’t do that like I used to. Get when I get sick, I don’t get better as easily as I used to. I get tired a little bit quicker.
Things like this. And slowly, maybe, it begins to dawn on you that this immortal being who you thought you were is not quite so impregnable that maybe you are going to die. And, You know, essentially putting, you know, the question of death and our mortality is life enhancing because, you know, how would our impending death change the way we lead our everyday life? If we thought we had if we were pronounced that we were going to have cancer but we had no side effects, but we were going to die in, say, two years or something, what kind of what different way would we lead our life? What effects would it have?
How much hypocrisy would it cut out? How much banality? How much wasting of our time and our energies on meaningless things that we don’t even particularly enjoy but that we have we’re stuck with. And it seems like it could create great energy and great meaning and great purpose to our life. So the idea behind reflecting, contemplating on death is to appreciate our life while we still have it.
To be happy, you know, that’s the it’s not there’s nothing that we are to do other than to be happy. And perhaps begin to check up, examine, am I happy? The overall predominant quality of my life satisfactory? And is the direction of my life the way I want to be going, taking stock? It’s like, you know, we’re getting into the area of what normally we call refuge, going for refuge.
This quality of realigning our allegiance away from a life which is led in terms of expectations and fears towards one which is based upon actively choosing a life based upon actively choosing a life based upon growth, meaning, purpose, fulfillment, authenticity, these kind of values. Taking refuge in that in the quality of life over and above having and possessing and manipulating with the quality of being. What kind of life do I want to be? And hopefully we can begin to adjust our motivation. So we can begin this realignment of our allegiance.
Know, generally our life is based upon these, you know, what I’ve termed the eight principal preoccupations of ego based, ego-orientated existence. These expectations of pleasure, fear, pain, expectations of profit, fear, loss, fame, infamy, praise, blame. These are running our life. We aren’t in control. These expectations, these hopes, and these fears, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are as if a leaf blown by the winds of these these values which have been foisted upon us.
So beginning to take hold of one’s life for oneself and beginning to determine what works for me, what has meaning for me, what has purpose for me, what feels right for me, getting in touch with your own basic feelings. You know, live in a culturally inculcated reality. Unquestionably we accept all the various we have accepted all the various values, all the various norms of our society, of our culture, of our peers. And the unexamined life, to a large degree, is not a life worth living. And so the going for refuge is taking stock and developing the courage to live according to one’s own autonomously created values, the quality of life which has meaning for you, which takes a great deal of courage.
It takes a great deal of courage to be an individual in our society, to go beyond the flock, the herd, as it is. You know, to be normal in an insane society is not to be well. It’s to be a little bit sick, to become to determine to be healthy, to determine to be one’s self. It’s a tremendous battle that we all have to fight in one way or another. And if we can raise the level of this motivation, of this redirecting of our life, this reorientation of our process towards growth, such that you know, a shift between away from self concern toward the concern for others.
And the basis of spiritual life is compassion, moving away from exaggerated self concern. It is not to say that we don’t deal with our problems. It is necessary that we deal with them. But we can begin to ensure that we keep them in some kind of perspective, that we have a more universal approach to this problem of life, that we see that we are very much interrelated with others, and that to seek to withdraw, to isolate oneself psychologically or physically, to practice a sense of self centeredness, which is finding happiness at the exclusion and expense of others, is self defeating, is counterproductive, is not in our own best interest. So if we are going to be selfish, then we should at least be wisely selfish.
And this means to begin to actively concern ourselves more with others, at least not to seek happiness at the expense of others, at the exclusion of others. So in this process, this reevaluating process, to, you know, in terms of traditional refuge, The inner focus, the inner principle of one’s life becomes Buddha, awakening, growing. And this becomes central. You know, this is not to say that we do not make use of all the good things about us to create a comfortable, meaningful life in terms of materials, relationships. These are all constitute all go toward a good life.
But we can take we have it’s a sense of confidence that if I grow, then I don’t need to be afraid of losing these things. I don’t have to lead a life based upon hopes of gaining these things. Because, in dependence upon my growth, things will go well. If I’ve developed my mind, if I’ve gone beyond many of my neurotic compulsive patterns, if I’ve developed more skillful ways of relating with myself and others in the world around me, then I can relax. I can gather the good things, but I also can let them go at the proper time.
I need not have great hopes and expectations of others and the things about me, nor great fears and disappointments and frustrations, because I have grown. And this becomes an inner focus. Gather the things about you and the people about you, significant relationships. But always remember that none of these things without the proper attitude, will become inherently a source of happiness. In fact, all of these things that we work so hard, as we all have experienced in one way or another, can simply become another complicating factor in our life and can become nothing more than another problem, another frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction in our life.
That all of the things about us are as if neutral and depend upon our attitude toward them. So it’s imperative that we make us an important component of our life, growth, our own inner development, if we’re ever going to have a satisfying, authentic, meaningful, and happy way of life. Without this, then there’s no hope in a way. Now we can’t order the world. We can’t control the world.
We can’t become masters of the world. It’s not in the way of the nature of the thing. But if we can control one factor, that is our own mind, then this is enough. This is more than enough. This is quite sufficient to gain the purpose of our life.
So the inner goal of our life becomes Buddha, and we achieve that by means of the Dharma, the techniques, the teachings, the various realizations, anything which raises the level of our consciousness, and anything which takes us from attachment to openness, from hatred to love, from self centeredness to other centeredness, from ignorance to wisdom, anything which has that potential, we can take recourse to as a means to realize awakened growth. And we do this within the social context of a spiritual community. And those who support us, those who teach us, inspire us, guide us. And this becomes a refuge, this becomes a sense of a direction, somewhere where I can have conviction that things will go well. I might not know the details or particularities of what my life is going to lead to, but it will go well.
I can have this conviction. And hopefully we can raise the level of our motivation such that we are seeking to grow, only for ourselves, but in order to be able to help others to grow and to do the same. You know, with their various perfections, the perfections of generosity, ethics, tolerance, we’re looking at. But these are all ways we can help ourselves and help others. That mental health is a social phenomenon.
And dependent upon this motivation of developing ourselves in order to benefit others more and more, we ourselves will become healthy. The more we are concerned with our own my opic needs and self concerns, the more miserable we’ll become. So it’s pragmatically beneficial to begin to open our hearts to the needs of others and to develop ourselves for their benefit. And out of this we can achieve not only our own but others’ welfare.
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 the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merits 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. So we’re almost almost finished with the tolerance section, the sixth chapter of Śāntideva’s Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds.
Another translation of the title is A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. You’ve been very The subject is tolerance, and you’ve been very tolerant. We spent a long time talking about tolerance. The tolerance. An undistressed mind in the face of problematic situations. So it’s an undistressed mind.
It is an active state of awareness and experiences peace, undistressed. It’s not something which we usually associate with tolerance or patience, that is gritting your teeth and holding on as best you can. It’s a very positive state. You know, last week we were discussing the means of changing our viewpoint with respect to our enemy and therefore how we are going to react to our enemy. Changing our viewpoint, reframing the situation, this is what the mind training entails.
And the primary thesis is that anger, hostility, aggression are based upon distorted premises. And we’re going to analyze and try to transform, reframe, look at that same fact in another way. This is what reframing means. The facts do not change. Our attitude toward those facts changes.
Sometimes we can’t change the situation. It’s not in our control. It’s not within our ability. But if we can change our attitude, our viewpoint, how we look at that situation, then this is sufficient. Going beyond our habitual way of relating to that situation, our knee jerk reaction to that particular situation where we have used anger as a coping mechanism to deal with the distress associated with that situation, reframing it in such a way that that same previously problematic situation is no longer distressful.
We have a new way to see that same situation, that distress is not inherent in this situation. It is simply an unskillful reactive pattern that we develop in association with particular stimulus, in particular situation, and we can retrain ourselves. There’s no reason why we can’t. But, you know, this is what is the basis of mind training. And we have a particular reality that we’re shaping, that we’re forming, which is consistent with fact, internally consistent, and is experienced as peace, as opposed to our particular reality, our presently culturally reality, which isn’t perhaps very particularly satisfactory.
You know, we get angry at someone, someone frustrates our desires. There are two conditions and the main cause of anger: frustrated desire, identifying someone who is preventing us from achieving our desire, and a distressed mind. So this person we call an enemy is frustrating our desire. She is frustrating. Frustrating.
They’re obstructing us from getting what we want. It would appear that they’re stopping us from being happy. That’s why we become distressed. We have the viewpoint that this person is preventing me from achieving my happiness, and they’re deserving of my anger, my hostility, and my aggression. And we label them enemy.
We get distressed and we get angry. So Śāntideva is asking us to reframe the situation, to go beyond this knee jerk reaction, this habitual reactive pattern, and try to see that the enemy is like, as he mentioned last week in the previous verse, is like the agent of the Buddha’s grace. A Śāntideva is asking a lot of us, isn’t This enemy is like a Buddha in disguise, as it were. You know, this enemy is assisting us to grow and ultimately to go beyond our suffering. We live a life unquestioned, unexamined.
We simply live in a life of reaction, values which we have never examined. Śāntideva is asking us to go beyond our superficial way of relating, unexamined way of relating. Śāntideva says first off, he says, there is no practice as noble as tolerance. And that it is only in dependence upon an enemy that we can practice tolerance. You know, it’s just like we can only practice generosity with respect to somebody who is needy.
We can’t practice with they are the causes of our practice of generosity, someone who is needy. The enemy, someone who is trying to harm us, is the cause of our practice of tolerance, whether we like it or not. The enemy is the cause of our growth because they help us to practice tolerance, and there’s no practice as noble as tolerance. You know, to grow, I’ve been using this word a lot. To fundamentally means to fundamentally enlarge, expanding our our horizons, both, a growth of our boundaries externally in terms of perspective, outwardly, and internally in terms of depth.
To grow is concomitant with a more satisfying, more authentic, more fulfilling way of being. And this, I guess, is what? This is a premise that we have to validate for ourselves. I think it, yes it does. I think we have to validate this within our own experience.
You know, as I said, sometimes it’s necessary to accept legitimate suffering. You know, like as I mentioned, Jung said that all neurosis is based upon the refusal to accept legitimate suffering. And that it would be a great mistake to think that a spiritual life, a life of growth, is the skillful avoidance of difficult people, difficult situations. In fact, it’s not. It may be, in fact, the opposite of that.
The life that we presently lead, as I mentioned in terms of refuge, is based upon knee jerk reactions to fear and expectations and hopes. That is the basis upon which we are leading our life. If we are ever going to grow is to consciously seek to shift the criteria upon which you base your life, your choices that make your life decisions, away from fear, away from hope, but on growth. That you have this confidence, this faith that if I grow, that if I develop myself, that if I become more loving, more wise, I’m going to experience more and more happiness, more and more satisfying ways of being. It may cost me something in the intermediate, but the outcome is going to be positive.
We have this conviction, and I think we have to validate this within our own experience, what that means. We have to believe in this. Otherwise, we won’t take up legitimate suffering voluntarily. We’ll always avoid suffering. It’s like a child, you know.
One mark of maturity is being able to put off gratification of goals. We begin to devise different levels of gratification: immediate, intermediate, and long term. An immature person is someone who has to have their gratifications immediately. For example, someone drops out of high school because they want a car, they want to get a job, they want a flat, they want a stereo. But they cannot see that if they finished high school, that their earning potential would be that much increased.
The possibility of various types of satisfying work would be that much increased. But they don’t have this perspective, this maturity, and willing to put off getting these things that they want for some time later. Likewise, if we’re going to lead a spiritual life, if we’re spiritual, it’s like early life based upon growth, we may have to voluntarily take up difficult difficulties, difficult situations, difficult people, put ourselves in those no pain, no gain — in those situations, believing that working through these difficulties is going to make you a better person, a happier person, a more enriched person. That’s going to improve the quality of your life significantly to the point where it’s worth this small amount of pain for this great return in the future, and having this conviction, this faith. The enemy forces us to confront our issues, to question what we are doing and why we are doing, you know, to acknowledge our feelings, motivations.
Beginning to appreciate an enemy as someone who is helping us to grow is a radical, a revolutionary way of shift in our perspective, in a way of our viewpoint, the way we’re going to reframe that situation. But it is valid, and we’re not trying to call black white or white black. The enemy is helping us to grow. If you take the opportunity, if you’re able to use that situation to reframe, to develop tolerance, to appreciate, if you’re willing to examine in the light of a new way of looking at the same situation. Otherwise, the enemy is a hassle, no doubt about it.
The enemy helps us to learn about ourselves. And this is what spiritual practice is. To study Buddhism is to study yourself. And to practice Buddhism is to take what you learn about yourself through your studies and apply it to your everyday life to solve your everyday problem. So your enemy is helping you to solve your everyday problem, not immediately.
He’s a hassle. You know, we can’t call black or white. But he’s helping you to grow. You can appreciate them. You don’t necessarily have to become distressed and say, He is obstructing my happiness.
Therefore, I hate this guy. I hate this girl. We can see that, in fact, your intermediate happiness might be interfered with, but your long term happiness is being benefited. We begin to take a look at the situation in longer term perspectives, in a more, perhaps, more mature way. And we begin to learn how to deal with other people more effectively.
The enemy represents a significant opportunity to practice. You know, people want to practice the Dharma. They want to grow. This is it. This is your opportunity.
Now go for it. You know, to go beyond our habitual past patterns based upon expectations and fears. You’re trying to evolve new ways of relating, new ways of being. You know, we’re kind of breaking new ground, something new. I have never looked at an enemy this way before.
I’ve never thought about that before, a new possibility, that maybe this person, even though he’s hassling me, is in some way helping me. That’s a new way, a new thought, a realization, a possible way, a shift. It could happen, but it takes examination, it takes contemplation, and it takes familiarization. Beginning to see the enemy as a real possibility of growth. All of what we’re looking at, this reframing, beginning to look at the various premises upon which we base our reactions is there is a category of texts called mind training texts, and one important text amongst these is the Seven-Point Training of the Mind.
A particular commentary on the Seven-Point Training of the Mind says, quoting, In general, all methods for attaining Buddhahood rely upon sentient beings. We’re coming to the close of this particular chapter. He’s going to begin to shift. We’ve been looking at various ways to reframe situations such that we no longer become distressed at problematic situations and therefore no longer angry, distress being the main cause of anger. Now he is beginning to generalize.
We have gone through various distinctive particular causes for distress, attachment, jealousy, pride, etcetera. Now he’s going to begin to generalize with respect to enemies, and then sentient beings in general, to transform this tolerance into not just an indifference, but a sense of feeling of compassion and love, a connectedness, an involvement. In general, all methods for attaining Buddhahood rely upon sentient beings. Therefore, to the individual who wishes to awaken, sentient beings are worthy of gratitude as Buddhas. Specifically, all sentient beings are worthy of gratitude since there is no one who has not been my parent.
In particular, all those who hurt me are worthy of gratitude since they are my companions and helpers for gathering the accumulation of merit and pristine wisdom, and for clearing away the obstructions of disturbing emotions and conceptual knowledge. Śāntideva concludes, and this is awe were discussing this last week beginning to appreciate our enemy. Therefore, I should love my enemy because they helped me on the way to enlightenment. It is like finding a treasure at home without having made effort to gain it. And the fruit of patience should, first of all, be dedicated to them because it comes about through our cooperation.
They are indeed the causes for my tolerance. But there is always this adversary that has been bugging Śāntideva all along, and Śāntideva kind of preempts a possible objection to this adversary. You might object that an enemy should not be so venerated because he has no intention to give rise to patience. Then why venerate, look up, appreciate my enemy? They have no intention of benefiting me.
They are actually out to harm me. They have no intention to benefit me, to help me. And Śāntideva answers, then why venerate the sacred Dharma, which surely must be suitable cause for it? The Dharma, the teachings, have no intention to benefit you, no intention at all. Then why do people praise them?
Why do people hold them as sacred, as so valuable? They have no intention to benefit you. The adversary answers, But an enemy has the intention to do harm. One cannot venerate such a person. Śāntideva answers back, How could I ever develop patience if he sought to benefit me as though he were a doctor?
For tolerance is produced in dependence upon one with a truly hateful intention. And since he is the cause for patience, he should be venerated just like the sacred dharma. Whether we like it or not, the only time we can develop tolerance is with somebody who’s giving us a hard time. That’s the only time. We can’t develop tolerance with someone who’s always kind to us, always helping us, being nice to us.
We can’t develop tolerance. That’s not the opportunity. That’s not the proper context situation. And in terms of the six perfections, which are sort of categorizations of the areas in which we need to concentrate in order to develop creative potential. The six perfections of generosity, ethics, tolerance, joyous effort, meditative concentration, and wisdom.
It is said that as you move upward through these six perfections, the higher perfections are much more powerful, much more effective in creating creative potential than the lower ones. Therefore, the practice of tolerance is considered a more powerful practice than that of generosity, than that of even of ethics. And without this enemy, without this person trying to harm us, give us a difficult time, there’s no way that we can practice The fact is tolerance and patience can only be developed toward those people who cause this distress. And that’s usually the time when we least want to practice tolerance, strangely, no? I mean, it’s not strange.
It makes sense. Know, tolerance is an undistressed mind in the face of usually problematic situations, normally problematic situations. If no one calls you any problems, there would be no way to develop tolerance. And with tolerance, when you develop a smooth mind, you you you and you’ve gone a long way with tolerance. If you think about it, you’ve gone a long way to moving beyond a life based upon expectations and fears in a very conventional, mundane manner.
You’re no longer thrown by fears, by expectation, no longer swayed, no longer thrown off balance. And there’s some people that it’s amazing that their minds have these little hooks, you know, like this I don’t know what they call it, that stuff that sticks together. Yeah, one has hooks and one has loops. Yeah, some of them might as well. The slightest, you know, somebody honks their horn and their whole day is shot.
You know, they just dwell upon it, you know, going over it and over it. I mean, what kind of life? I mean, it’s bound to happen. The world just can’t be arranged for more than five minutes to conduct itself exactly as you would like it, unless you stay in your room, something’s going to happen. So we have to develop a smooth mind.
We can’t control the world. You know, it’s like that oh, I won’t go into that. There’s a story about the the king who stepped on a thorn and he was very upset. Obviously, he stepped on his thorn and hurt his foot and he called together his ministers and he said, Something must be done. And the ministers thought and he thought and he thought.
And one wise minister said, Well, we’ll cover all the roads in your kingdom with leather and then you can walk around on your roads and you’ll never step on a thorn. The king thought, Oh, that’s a fantastic idea. But the treasurer, as they have a habit to do, spoke up and said, We simply don’t have the money, the resources to cover all the robes in your kingdom with leather. But one of the wiser ministers spoke up and said, Why don’t we cut a piece of leather just to the size of your foot, the sole of your foot, and we’ll bind that to the bottom of your foot? And it’s as if all the roads in your kingdom were covered by leather.
And likewise, if we are able to control our mind, we can’t control the world outside of ourselves. We can’t become a master of cyclic existence of saṃsāra. It’s not in the nature of things. But if we can control this one factor of our own mind, then it serves the same purpose. As I mentioned, we lived in a culturally inculcated reality.
You know, this reality is not inherently existent, it’s not objectively existent. Most of our values and ways of thinking have been unknowingly and unquestionably adopted from those around us. The norms of our society is that the friend is someone who is to be valued because they benefit us. The enemy is to be feared because they threaten us. And the stranger is to be ignored because they neither threaten us nor do they benefit us.
Śāntideva is asking us to critically analyze. And I think this is really important to consider this. Buddhism really demands a lot in a way that examine our lives and our values and the ways we act and our principles and everything about us, even the nature of ourself, which we take so much for granted, it’s beginning to it really calls everything into question. It’s saying that this is the root of our problem, this ignoring quality, this unexamined state which we leave everything in. Śāntideva is asking us to critically analyze these unexamined assumptions.
Anything which promotes our growth, which brings about our ultimate welfare, is to be valued and appreciated. I mentioned this is probably what Kahlil Gibran meant when he said, I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind. Yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. But we object and say, the stranger and the enemy, they have no intention to benefit me. And this may be true or not.
Maybe they don’t have any intention to benefit me. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But that’s not the point. Śāntideva is asking us to go beyond this superficial criteria for valuing, for appreciating, and look at things in a deeper way than perhaps we normally are used to. You know, imagine a situation where you have a child who has become critically ill, maybe had an accident.
You rush your child to the hospital and you’re totally wrapped up in the welfare of your child. All of your energy, all of your thought is focused upon the welfare of child. That’s all you want out of life at this moment, to see your child well again, to see it smile again, to see it run and laugh again. That’s all you could ask for. That’s all you want out of life at that very moment.
And you take, you rush your child to the hospital, and they rush their child into the operating room, and you wait frantically a few hours. And finally, the doctor comes out, and she says, It’s okay. Your child’s going to be well. What would be a healthy response at that moment? What would be a response of a natural feeling which would arise?
You know, you could you could say you could think upon hearing that your child is going to be well, immediately think, I wonder how much this is going to cost me. The anesthesiologist, the surgeon in the hospital. Or one could respond with gratitude and thanks that someone had developed the skills, that all of these circumstances had been created so that you could get that one thing that you wanted out of life most, the health of your child, to see your child well again. You got what you wanted and they’re going to send you a bill. Why react with a banker’s mentality?
So why do we have to base our response upon their presumed intentions? Why can’t we, from our side, determine how we’re going to respond, that we want to respond in a healthy, authentic, meaningful way, devoid of what their intention might be or not. We don’t know. Devoid of that, I choose how I wish to respond. I got what I wanted.
They benefited me. I don’t care whether they to be, they sought to benefit me or not. I was benefited. I am not ungrateful. And likewise with the enemy. The enemy has no intention to benefit you, but they do benefit you.
They benefit your ultimate welfare. And therefore, becoming convinced of this, you can begin to appreciate the value, determine how you’re going to respond in the face of that harm rather than this unexamined reactive pattern of aggression, hostility, anger. You know, what’s important is your response. The enemy, they’re going to lead their life. But you’re going have to lead your own.
So it’s your responsibility and it’s your life. It’s your welfare. You’re not going to harm or help that enemy in becoming angry or caring, probably. But it’s going to make a big difference to you, quality of your life. Heaven forbid you should help your enemy.
If we can use the problematic situations presented to us by someone trying to harm us in order to grow and develop tolerance, we have been benefited. Otherwise we have simply been harmed. It’s our ability to change that situation and reframe it from one where we are being harmed both in the present and in the future by reacting with anger or to see it as a chance for growth, to appreciate and value and therefore to be benefited. Śāntideva goes on, Therefore the Buddha has taught the field of sentient beings to be a Buddha field, for many who have loved them have thereby reached the highest perfection. And perhaps this is what Christ meant when he said, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who maltreat you.
Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate so that you might become perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect. The Śāntideva goes on, The sentient beings and the conquerors alike establish Buddha qualities. So why should I not respect sentient