Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The mosquito that won’t let you sleep — Ven Jampa Gendun uses that image to frame a live question in this nearly two-and-a-half-hour workshop session: when should you withdraw from a difficult person, and when does avoidance just carry the anger with you? He traces anger to self-cherishing — the mind’s conviction that its happiness outranks everyone else’s — built on a sense of “I” that feels solid yet cannot be located anywhere in body or mind. A second teacher then breaks anger into its conditions: frustrated desire, an identified obstacle, and a distressed mind, before dissecting the irrational beliefs that fuel it — the assumption that people must treat us fairly, or that they harm us by deliberate choice. The session closes with a guided empathy meditation: step into a difficult person’s perspective and look back at yourself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 Anger.mp3
UUID: 787d5709-48af-44c2-a355-d3e195afa0f4
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Weekend Workshop Anger (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 153.9 minutes
Words: ~12,330
You’re doing it again. So this afternoon we are going to talk about what we call the self-cherishing mind, how do we say it, trouble maker. You know, we have anger. We all have anger. And if we look at anger, then it might appear as something that is helpful.
And under the short term, it might appear that it does help us in getting what we want and not getting what we don’t want. But then if we look at the long term, I don’t see any advantage on the whole. We didn’t come up with any advantage except maybe the hope for change that could be but that’s not as sure. So there is something that is tricking us, isn’t it? It’s like it looks like a friend.
It looks like something that is gonna help us to get what we want. And then when it arises and it does its job, then it turns out that on long term, it’s actually giving us maybe the opposite of something that we which is not nourishing us, which is not giving us anything. It’s just making sure that we lose something. So, we must make a mistake somewhere. If we were right, then anger would give us what we want.
And we will be happy with that when we get it. But that’s not how it is. So somewhere we make a mistake. It appears that if we do this, we’re going to get what we want, and when we get what we want, we are happy. But the moment we engage in the actions with anger, we lose everything that we were striving for.
Do you think it’s that rational? What? Do you think it’s that rational? Just don’t know if I choose to use anger. I mean, know I do.
No, I think it’s very irrational. I think it’s very emotional. I’m just gonna react. Yeah. Rather than a something I go, I think this is going to best serve me.
Mhmm. Yeah. But you use it because you think it’s gonna serve you. You never use it because you think it’s gonna harm you. You can’t just start thinking about it and just do it.
No. Yeah. True. If you I don’t know. If you walk somewhere and there is a trap, right, or a hole in the in the ground.
Maybe the first time you walk in it, but then the second time you may be walking it again. But then the third time you would you would start to look like where is it, you know. And maybe you still don’t see it, but then the fourth time you maybe manage to go around. So with anger we have engaged many times in the same kinds of actions. With anger because we think it is going to give us something and every time it turns out it’s not doing it and somehow we do not change our our behavior.
So there is a mechanism underneath which is very difficult for us to see or we can’t see that and which makes it appear as if it’s going to help us. But that is not helping us, it’s actually harming us. And we do not think about it, but at the same time we do not learn on that level somehow, you know. So there must be a mistake in it that we do not see which makes that we cannot learn from it. That means that we see our mistake.
But if we don’t learn we do not see our mistake. Yes. And if you understand what goes wrong and and why it is not helpful, then maybe you find the motivation to try to do differently. Anger is about making sure that we get what we want. We if it appears that we’re not going to get what we want, anger is going to help us to get what we want or anger is going to help us not to get what we do not want.
True? Anger is all around I wanna have something or I do not wanna have something. So anger is all about me. True? So in Buddhism we say that me, we we make two mistakes in how how we act if that me starts to surface.
Surface. First of all that me appears in a certain way to us. That I that arises appears in a certain way. It appears to be very permanent. It appears to be concrete.
It appears to be existing in and of itself. It appears to be in control or it appears to be in danger. It appear that that endanger appears so in a concrete way. Isn’t it? And that I appears to be really that appears to be very real.
That appears to be an entity in and of itself. And if we’re going to look for that entity, you know, sometimes we might feel it in the body, sometimes we might feel it in the mind, sometimes we might feel it outside the body in the mind. But if we’re going to look for it, if we’re going to look in the body, we cannot feel anything which is the eye. Right? If we look in our heart, in our lungs, in our blood vessels, in our stomach, there is not one thing that we said, oh this is the eye.
It’s not there. Although it feels that it is in the body. If we look in the mind, you know, we say I am angry, I am sad, I have compassion, I If we’re going to look for that I, we cannot point it out. We cannot say this is the I. We even say, I’m looking in my mind.
My mind. If I talk about my mind, the I cannot be part of my mind. It’s like when we talk about it, it’s like the I is possessing the mind. We talk about it as if the I is something different from the mind. Do you think maybe in order to have compassion for others though you have to have a sense of yourself?
Yeah. Yeah. I’m not saying we should. We do. We all have that sense of ourselves.
But there appears an eye to be that appears to be part of our body that appears to be part of our mind that appears to be the possessor of our body and our mind. Right? And if we’re gonna look for that eye we cannot find that in the way it appears to us. Right? So that appearance that arises that the way that eye appears to us doesn’t exist in that way.
It appears. So we make their mistake and Geshe la is going to talk tomorrow in length about that. I won’t do that. A bit mind boggling really, isn’t it? Mind boggling?
To think about that. Yeah, it can be very hard to think about that. And then you think: Oh, then I do not have an eye and but I do feel an eye and how is that possible? And so we all do have an eye, right? We’re not going to negate the eye.
But the eye appears in a different way than it really exists. So that is called self grasping. We hold on to an eye in a different way than it really exists. And on the so so Geshe la is going to talk tomorrow about that self grasping. And then that I, when that arises, that I seems to be far more important than that I of anybody else.
Right? When my I arises, my eye is the most important thing in the world. My eye is much more important than anybody else. Is that true? Do we recognize that?
My happiness is more important than your happiness. My suffering is much bigger than anybody can imagine. My house, you know, is much more worth than the house of somebody else. If somebody something happens to my house is much worse than when something happens to somebody else house. When somebody hits my car just scratches my car that’s much worse than anybody else car.
Right? I get really upset when that happens. But when somebody else’s car gets scratched. I don’t care. Or boyfriend should do.
Take him tomorrow. We do do that. Do we recognize that that feeling? I am more important than other people. So in Buddhism that is called self-cherishing.
We cherish ourselves much more than that we cherish anybody else. What do we cherish? We have this I arising and I want to be happy and I do not want to suffer. And that is the most important thing in the world. And anything that we are doing, any action that we are doing in every moment it is all based on I want to be happy or more comfortable and I do not want to suffer or feel uncomfortable.
Right? So when we’re sitting here and we’re listening any thought that arises in the mind is based on I want to have more comfort and less suffering. Any movements that we are making is based on I have more wanting more comfort and less suffering. Is that true? We cannot stop ourselves from doing that.
This is a reactive mind that is doing it moment to moment to to moment. We have no control over that. We can’t have a control on a more gross level|gross mind that we say well I won’t move my body. But inside the things happen, The thoughts come up, the wish comes up, it’s constantly working there. So you can never prevent your rising but you can make a change to how Well first of all we have to have to recognize that we have this mind that is constantly concerned about itself and then it is constantly concerned about its own happiness And we cannot change that.
So in wanting to be happy in itself, there is nothing wrong with, you know. So we can keep on striving for happiness. But in the way we are striving for happiness, that is according to Buddhism not so skillful. So we’re looking for other ways of how we can achieve that happiness that we are looking for. So that self-cherishing mind that wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer that thinks that when I’m going to be happy when I get what I want.
When I get what I want I’m happy when I get something that I do not want I’m unhappy. So when somebody gives me what I want I feel happy, pleasant feelings arise, you know, and that other person is becoming my friend because that person is constantly giving me what I want. That person is benefiting I could even say, well, I see you and when I see you pleasant feelings arise in my mind. I think these feelings are coming from you. You must be a really wonderful person.
If that was really true then everybody would have the same when they look at you and that might be not true. It’s not true. But this is how the mind works. We look at somebody, pleasant feelings arise and we think that must be a very nice person. Or we look at somebody and unpleasant feelings arise and think, oh, that’s great.
I don’t wanna be with him or her. True? So that person hasn’t done anything. That person hasn’t said anything. That we don’t know anything about that person.
But just on the basis of the feelings that arise in our mind we make a judgment and we react with an aversion to the person I do not want to be with that person or we react with a liking I like that person I would like to share some time with that person. Right? These feelings might have nothing probably have nothing to do with that other person. But they have a lot to do with what you’ve had in your past. For instance, yes.
And according to Buddhism, pleasant feelings that arise in the mind are a result of actions that we have done in the past. So according to Buddhism, every positive action that we do or every action that we do that is benefiting others, is of benefit, that is helpful, will result in the future in happy experiences, pleasant experiences. Any harmful actions that we are doing in the past will result in unhappy feelings in the future. Right? So if I meet many pleasant feelings, that is a result of my own positive karma.
If I meet many people that give me unpleasant feelings, that is a result of my own previous karma. That means I must have harmed many beings in the past that I feel now. So many unpleasant feelings arising when I see them. We think the pleasant feeling comes from that person. So I want to be more with that person.
So I create a kind of attachment to that person. Or if unpleasant feelings come from that person, I create an aversion to this person. And if that becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, you know, then eventually that that attachment can become desirous attachment. I cannot separate from this person anymore. I wanna have all the time with that person.
All my aversion for unpleasant feelings that can go to anger. Now I get so angry with that person just by merely seeing that person. I get so furious I just want to get rid of him. That’s all based on feelings that arise. So the feelings that arise on the basis of that I which doesn’t really exist the way it appears to us, that leads to attachment and aversion based on the feelings that arise from whatever we encounter.
And then on top of that we hold our own happiness above the happiness of others. So my happiness is more important than others which means that if I come in a situation that I do not get what I want I will make sure that I get what I want. And I do not care so much about happiness of others. What if my happiness is more important than yours, don’t care about your happiness when it comes to my happiness. Is that true?
I put it very black white, but that is how you react. Yeah. So if I want to be happy and you prevent me from that, I’ll make sure that you can’t do that. Right? So and for that, I have my anger.
So I engage in actions in order to find happiness for myself that might harm that other person. The moment I really want something, I’m prepared to harm others. Is that true? If I really want something and other people put something in place that I can’t get back, I might be prepared or to engage negative actions. If I wanna if I see something in the shop that I really like and I do not have the money, and the fact that I do not have the money comes from all these people who made sure that I didn’t get it.
You know? I have this I’m the victim of all these people who made sure that I do not have the money today, but I can make sure that I get it. You know? I can just take it. That’s how we can do it or not.
Or if I’ve done something that is actually not so nice, and if people find out that might have consequences, I can easily try to hide, which becomes very easily a lie, which is a negative action. In order to make sure that I stay happy or that I get what I want, I’m prepared to lie. Are we or not? Am I the only one? So we prepare in order for pleasant feelings.
You know, if we feel something unpleasant, we are prepared to kill. If I had this mosquito in my room that goes the whole night, you know, I can see the killer instinct coming up that says, I wish that. I I mean, might even do it and engage in killing that insect just because it’s bothering us. Because I want to sleep. I want to be happy.
I do not want to be disturbed. We just take somebody else’s life. And we think my life is more important. My happiness is more important than the happiness of a lot of creature. We put ourselves above other creatures.
That is called self-cherishing. Because we have the self-cherishing mind that believes my happiness is more important than your happiness, we are prepared to engage in negative actions. And negative actions in the in the in the long term, according to Buddhism, if you if you believe in karma, any negative action, any action that causes suffering for yourself or for others is gonna lead to suffering suffering in the future for yourself. We’ll come back to you in some way. Right?
So in our attempt to find happiness, we are actually creating the causes for ourselves to suffer even more. Can we see that? Can we follow this? Yes. Yes.
Because this lady that I saw sort of said that this one person in my life that I don’t engage very well with and makes me quite angry, I’ve kind of withdrawn from and removed myself from that situation. But she said that we’ve met each other in past lives and whatever and that I need to confront that and deal with it. But I feel like I shouldn’t be pressured into something if I’ve dealt with the situation by removing myself from the situation. Yeah. That can be enough from a Buddhist perspective.
It can be enough, but you’re you’re not sure. So you might meet a similar situation again. Sometimes Another mosquito in the next There might be another mosquito in next room. So when you really hate that mosquito, you know, and you you you feel that if you’re gonna engage in the same space as that mosquito, then you’re gonna harm that mosquito. It can be really good to withdraw yourself and not be there.
But it does not address your hate. So your hate is still there. Also the object that you feel the hate towards is being removed which is a good first step. As soon as an object would appear even in another form, that hate would arise again. So that what the hate is doing to you, you have not yet addressed.
But the hate goes with you. The mosquito doesn’t follow me. But the hate goes with you. Is that true? The hate is in your mind.
I’ve let go of the hate now, but I know that if I try to re engage I think it would come back again. So I just leave that mosquito, it can live in its own little world and I live in my own little world and everything’s fine. Yeah. So the hate is still there. Yes, so it’s still there.
So the mosquito reminds you of your hair. About it. No, no. This is important because you know the first step is many times that you do remove yourself out of the situation. And then you calm your mind and you make your mind more peaceful.
And that can help to make your mind more clear. And then you’re gonna think about it. And then you’re gonna think about a situation and you’re gonna look in a different way at a whole situation in order to let go of your hate, you know. When you start to recognize that you’re the person who’s suffering from your hate. But what if you feel like you are dealing with it as much as you can but that mosquito is, like, purposely antagonises You still have to be able to cope with that as much as you can.
What I hear is it’s too much now. So maybe give it a break now for a while. But maybe in two or three years. Or maybe in ten years. A mosquito might die by then.
But many other mosquitoes will be born. Sorry? Many other mosquitoes will be born. It’s not about the mosquito, right? No.
The reason why you feel hate is because you feel harmed by that person. Mhmm. Right? You feel harmed. Yeah.
If you feel harmed and it upsets you so much that you cannot think clearly, you keep removing yourself. But maybe at a certain point you can make the situation so safe for yourself that you can look at your own hate without necessarily involving that other person. If you recognize that your hate is that what makes you upset, makes you unhappy, which is actually destroying parts of you, you know, then you can maybe look at it and let it go. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to meet that other person. Ever again.
Ever again. You might meet another person, you know? I think that, you know, as a result, the hate that it is meant to be, I should be able to ring up that person now and meet with them and sit with them and talk with them. So it’s not necessarily it’s got nothing to do with that. No, if somebody is I don’t know.
It’s difficult to say. Think there’s a very big difference between hate and anger. Think hate is long term anger, though. Think it’s more there’s lots of instances. I don’t know.
Think there’s very, very, very extreme He’s a very beautiful definition of hate. I don’t think it’s something that we that we have. Hate is a very, very, very strong one. Mhmm. With anger, we can like, you move room if we have and and you you pop off and go wild.
Instead of like, take a step back. If if I have a conflict with my son, like, let’s just I can’t move rooms. I can’t well, take a step back and just leave it Mhmm. And talk about it later. And that’s dealing with the anger of of the moment.
Mhmm. But what I hear from Teresa is that that that person is upsetting her so much that she cannot even keep a clear mind with whatever’s happening. Don’t think it’s hate. I think hate is a very, very Well, very Yeah. What is hate?
It’s jump back. It’s Hate. Is it defined? It’s not a difference, isn’t it? It’s both the wish to harm.
Mhmm. But for me, it’s very, very different. Mhmm. Very different. Mhmm.
But this is a good question. It’s really Yeah. But you you feel so much aversion to this person that you do not wanna be in the same space. I did use her as a Well, you can A mosquito. You can get to the point where it just the the side of them keeps you agitated.
Yeah. But I think I’d actually have to physically be in the same room to feel it. Your mind part of your mind believes, you know, what you’re seeing in your imagination as if the person’s there. Yeah.
So if you can recondition even in in your own safety of your of your experimental laboratory of your own meditation. You can recondition that side of them no longer will will you will react with that with this agitation in mind. Yeah. If you can begin there Yeah. If you can do that, then maybe there’s a chance in fact in physical reality.
You you you can begin to recondition your mind. Mhmm. But you can begin in the safety of of your own imagination. Yeah. Just call bring it the mind.
If your mind gets agitated, calm it down. Bring it to the mind. Mind gets agitated. Keep Let’s say the mind gets used to anything. The mind can get used to anything.
So just as that we can learn the mind, you know, the anger arises and comes again and again. We can also learn the mind to every time when that anger comes up we just let that anger resolve back again and it comes up and resolves back. And you can get used to that, seeing the image and at the same time letting go of the anger that comes up. Calming yourself down. Making yourself feeling feel safe with yourself, you know.
Because at the moment you do not feel safe with that person, do you? But you also don’t feel safe with yourself you are when you meet with that person. No. No. So if you make yourself safe with yourself first Yeah.
And work on that. The other thing that came up in this discussion with this lady was that she herself had to forgive her father for whatever, and she felt like she could do that when he died and that sort of thing. So it seems to be easier for people to forgive wrongs of the past and distance themselves rather than deal with wrongs of the present. So I don’t know how to explain myself, but I think it’s more difficult when people are continually wronging you to keep forgiving them over and over again rather than, know, as I said, know, removing yourself and then it becomes the past and then you can forgive them. But if you put yourself back into the situation and you feel like you’re being wronged again and again and again.
I don’t know if anybody else relates at all. I relate to that. You do not have to use yourself as a doormat, you know. So if somebody is very negative to you again and again, you do not have to look for that situation. You do not have to go into that situation again and again.
Okay. Is that alright? Mosquitoes in the other room. That’s good. But dealing with the hate is also very important.
Yeah. Right? Yeah. The screen door. The screen door.
Fourteen. What is that? Mortein? Alright. No, not that one.
Thank you. So, we believe that we become happy when we cherish ourselves. And we believe that we are unhappy when we cannot cherish ourselves. We have to take care of our own happiness, isn’t it? So we have to make sure that we feel happy.
So if I need something, I have to make sure that I get that. If somebody stops me from doing that, I have to make sure that that person moves away so that I can get what I want. In order to get what I want, I’m even prepared to engage in negative actions. So what Buddhism says is that that whole mechanism of how we try to get happiness and how we try to avoid suffering, that is actually the cause of our ongoing suffering. Right?
The method that we are using in finding happiness is actually the cause of our ongoing suffering. Because our happiness is constantly or or what we are looking for is constantly focused only on me. And in order to get what I want, I’m prepared to harm others if needed. True? Or if somebody tries to harm my family, I will also make sure that they are safe and they can’t be harmed.
Or if somebody wants to scratch my car, I will also make sure that that person can’t do that. So Buddhism, if we are engaged, if we are prepared to engage in negative actions in order to find our own happiness, you know, that in itself makes us suffer on the long term. The suffering comes back to us again and again and again. So what Buddhism uses there as an alternative is that they say, it’s, you know, if we look at how we want to have happiness, everybody around us has that same kind of feeling of I. And everybody around us has that same feeling of I want to be happy, as that we have that.
And everybody around us doesn’t want to suffer, just as we do not want to suffer. Right? If I only work for myself, I’m like a little dictator. I want to make sure everybody has to make sure that you serve me. Right?
And because I want to be my happiness is so important. And somehow, I use you all as servants in that. If you do something that I do not like, I want do not want you to be close to me. If you give me something that I like, you can come closer to me and give me that. So that’s a very self centered, very selfish attitude.
And karmically, the results are going to be suffering for ourselves in the future. And also in the short term, we do not really get our happiness. If we start using our anger to find that happiness we actually get a whole list of disadvantages, which do not look like a happy person. So Buddhism says if we change that attitude from an attitude that wants to cherish only itself into an attitude that wants to cherish others more than oneself, if we recognize that happiness of others is at least just as important as our own happiness, and if we start working for others to be happy, if we start working for the benefit of others, you know, if we start working for the benefit of others, we start engaging in virtuous actions. And virtuous actions, the natural result in the future future is happiness.
Right? So if we start engaging in actions that are benefiting others, we are actually creating the causes for ourselves to experience happiness. Right? So instead of thinking what do I want, I think what do you want? You know?
If I believe in democracy, the majority should vote, isn’t majority wants, we will do. True? But? But I was just thinking I’m not in you’re not enough to make a democracy. Democracy.
But what if the happiness of one person, of the other, say, is something that goes against what is right for you? Like? Like? The other person wants to drink alcohol or needs drugs? That’ll do.
That’ll do. Mhmm. If the other person wants to drink alcohol and wants me to drink alcohol, well I’d be happy to have one glass but to have more than I think is good for me, but that person says well I’m not going to be happy unless you join me. Yeah. That’s bullshit.
I know. It’s bullshit. The fact is, were you saying, I should do that to make that person No. No. If I say cherishing, others do not mean that you do whatever others say.
That’s something very very different. It’s also not that when somebody else starts to behave like a little child and says, I want this before I’m happy, that you give that person everything. Right? If a child starts to demand something because they believe, I get that, I’m gonna be happy, that’s not necessarily true. Right?
So you look through the eyes of an adult that sees, is this really going to make you happy or not? And sometimes you have to look a little bit further than the short term happiness, also from that other person. But I can’t impose my beliefs about happiness on that other person, but I still think it’s important to follow my own integrity, so sometimes those two things are in conflict. But I don’t think I can impose my beliefs about happiness on that other person. I still think it’s important to follow my own integrity, so sometimes those two things are in conflict. I don’t think I can tell that other person what they need to do to be happy. No.
No. No. But you can separate yourself from that. If you feel like alcohol has a really negative effect on my body and on my mind and I do not wanna you know? And we all know that.
The more you drink, the the more crazy you become, isn’t it? And you can engage in many negative actions when you start drinking. Become more selfish and so you have reasons to say I cannot support that. Mhmm. Right?
You have reasons that are based on happiness of many people. Isn’t it? Because if that other person starts drinking and drinks more and more and more, he’s gonna be unpleasant not only for you but for many around him or her. Yeah, I can see it with alcohol. I need to see it with other thoughts like this.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What you’re saying makes sense. And if people say, only when you do this I will feel happy, that’s short on happiness, isn’t it?
That’s not necessarily the happiness that we are talking about. No. No, that’s true. You know? And sometimes, what we think is that pleasant feeling is happiness.
So if somebody says, if you give me that I have a pleasant feeling then I’m happy, that’s not necessarily like that. So if you start thinking about is this really giving this person more well-being, maybe that helps. One more question, sorry for the time. What if what they want might be good for their well-being but not for mine? I wonder if that’s possible.
I think it might be. Is it really good for their well or does it look like it is good for their well-being? You know this morning Jampa talked about that sometimes we have to allow negative feelings to rise or unpleasant to rise in order to become more well, to feel better. Feeling unpleasant things is not necessarily bad. Right?
It’s fine. Yeah? Think about it. So on the basis of the self-cherishing, we divide our world into three, basically. We divide our world into those beings that help benefit us, and we call them our friends.
And then we have those beings who harm us, they are our enemies, those that we do not want to be close to. And then there are many, many people and beings that we never encounter or hardly know them and we don’t really care about them. And these are like strangers. As soon as somebody is in that role of friend who is benefiting us, then whatever happens to the person is very important for us. We want that person to be happy and we do not want that person to suffer.
As soon as somebody is in the category of enemy, then we want that person to suffer and we do not want that person to be happy. Is that true? An enemy is It’s a big word, know, but it is like just to separate into three parts. Enemy in the sense of you’re harming me. Well, I think from my own personal point of view, enemy is is like hate.
It’s not a word I would use. It’s not something that I even identify with. Because they are strangers, and they’re myself and my friends, but enemies. So how do you call those who who you feel harm you? I don’t think well, maybe I’m very naive.
I don’t think there’s anybody out there with a purpose to harm me. I really, really don’t think so. That’s fantastic. This is But so you never meet somebody? It doesn’t have to be it’s just a categorization, just like we talked about anger and all the nuances.
But for example, somebody you’re waiting in line, you mentioned this. Somebody gets in front of you in line. At that moment, what what categorization can be in that that person That depends where I am. If I’m in we’re talking earlier about being in Israel, being a very aggressive society. When that person jumps in line, silly, because that’s what people do.
But here, people don’t do that, and I’m thinking, they’re standing in line for a bus. There’s something very wrong here. But I live here now, so I’m used to all these people standing like this waiting for a bus. You know? So I think it depends.
And somebody gets in front of you? I I it doesn’t bother you. You know? So if that makes you feel good and you wanna jump in front, or I’d say you you’re you’re in a real hurry. One piece of chocolate left, and you’re just about to reach for I’m going on diet.
What about a friend? What about when you’re younger and you never talk to again and you sort of hesitate to remember that. What if someone robbed your house? Touch wood? Yeah.
It it hasn’t happened to me. But if they Invasion of my personal space. I don’t go that far that he, I would not hate, and he would not be my enemy, but it just doesn’t you know? They’re pretty powerful words. They’re words that just don’t even with my children, in Belle, she’s a four year old, think, oh, I hate my friend!’ And I will sit with her and analyse where that word comes from, because she doesn’t.
Hate hates isn’t hurt. Hate you don’t hate. You’re you’re disappointed. You’re angry, and it’s her behavior that really hurt, not the person. Maybe the person, she’s really a good being, but it’s her behavior that was upsetting.
So let’s look at her behavior. Let’s see how we can behave to change her behavior. What is So so you don’t have this hate because this hate is something that just eats at you, and you and you can’t let it go. And that’s why we have all these horrible messes in the world because of this this innate hate that just goes on. And for me it just doesn’t it’s worse.
But you are sometimes angry. Yeah, but I’m angry on a Yes. So what’s that? I don’t know. I don’t know.
This is what I came to find out because I don’t know. But I think it’s suppressed anger. Think we talked about that before break. Yeah. But it’s That you work on a different level with your anger.
Yeah. But you definitely feel hurt by others before you start doing that or harmed. Yeah. But it’s not it’s not it’s not where I would say they’re an enemy or I hate them. They’re the two very But what you’re doing is you’re trying to do something.
You’re trying to make them feel guilty. You’re trying to influence them. Yeah. But I don’t hate them. But you want them to change?
Yeah. But I don’t hate. I want you to hang up and hold. Yeah. Think it’s just because it’s so powerful for It’s so destructive.
But even if you And I’ve seen it I’ve seen it in its most powerful destructive force. Yeah. That it’s just something you just don’t go there. It’s something that’s so horrible, but you acknowledge that other people might relate to that feeling. Yeah.
But I I don’t but with my kids What was the word that you feel? What word you would use that you feel? What word you would use? If if I if I look at my home situation, and I was talking to you earlier about how my son hates Muslims because of the culture that we grew up in. My relationship to them is now to try and see.
Let’s try and understand them. No. No. No. No.
I’m talking about how you feel towards I don’t feel the hate. No. No. No. What word do you use?
You must have uneasy feeling for a particular category of person once in a while. Yeah? Somebody that does something that you don’t like. At that very moment I can if I see it What word would you use to describe your your emotional? About somebody who if you found that somebody had been abusing your daughter?
Would you I mean, I would hate somebody who did that to my daughter, who took away her her innocence, who I don’t go down that line. I don’t allow myself that Use the word dislike. Yeah. You dislike somebody. Yeah.
In that category, you know, just using the word enemy. That’s It is a very strong word. This is a very black and white word. Yeah. A person It’s a very A person you dislike.
Dislike. Yeah. Yeah. Is that alright? Yep.
Okay. So then we have three categories. One with people that we dislike. Intensely. Strangers.
Sometimes intensely. Sometimes they might feel like enemies. Sometimes they might feel like they are taking our happiness away. And then you have a category of those who benefit us, are our friends, those that we love, and then the big group of strangers who do not have a particular effect on us. So we have a different wish for each group, isn’t it, in terms of happiness.
If we look at ourselves, we want to be happy, we do not want to suffer. We share that with the group that is benefiting me. Everybody who benefits me, I want them to be happy, and I do not want them to suffer. But everybody who’s harming me, I find it very difficult to feel that I want to benefit them. Because somehow I want them to feel what I felt when they hurt me.
Or at least not benefit from anything I’m going to do. It’s a little bit of retribution. It is a bit of So we have that tendency that we do not wish them good. Maybe we wish them harm. And then we have this whole group of strangers where we do not have any particular wish.
We don’t care basically. There is not a compassion in the sense that we do not care, we do not care. So according to Buddhism, this attitude where we are so obsessed with our own happiness, and anybody who benefits us, they are part of that. And we are so obsessed with not wanting to suffer or not want to feel any discomfort that we just want to be we have distance of that group that is afflicting on us. We do not want them close to us and we prefer them to experience the same things that we do.
So if we want to change our attitude from cherishing ourselves into cherishing others, we have to look at these three categories that they are not so valid the way we have labeled them. Right? Because if we’re really going to look, then everybody, everybody, our enemies, our strangers, those that we like, those that we do not like, they all have that feeling of I arising in them. They all have that same tendency that they all want to be happy and do not want to suffer. We have that same nature.
We cannot change that nature. It is not that those who harm me want to suffer, you know. They just they want to be happy just as that I want to be happy. They have a similar feeling of I as that I have, and they’re just striving just as hard as that I do to be happy. So if I see that just cherishing myself and all those who I like is a pathway for me to engage in negative actions, is a pathway for me to encounter more suffering in the future.
And if I could change that attitude into an attitude of cherishing others, then I first have to make sure that others is really others and not those who only benefit me. Right? Because if I only can do that for those who benefit me, I’m not really cherishing others. I’m just I’m still cherishing myself. I might be a little bit of cherishing others, but it’s all based on myself.
So if we want to change that attitude, we’re going to look at how these categories are not so they are based on the things that people do for us. They’re not based on something more valid as everybody shares the same feelings. If I could see that everybody wants to be happy, why would I choose to make that person happy and that person unhappy? They have both their wish is just as strong. It’s funny if I would do that, isn’t it?
I choose you to be happy and you to be unhappy. It’s very strange, but that’s what we constantly do. True? If you really realize that that I that appears is for us all the same, you know, and that I that wants to be happy is for us all the same. But then we’re going to say, yeah, you can have it from my side, I can rejoice when you have it, but I cannot rejoice when you have it.
That creates struggle, isn’t it? We would have a problem straight away in the group. But if I can cherish everybody and if I can really feel that I want everybody to be happy in the same way and that I wanna do my best to achieve that and I even prepared to give up my own happiness for that, then there was much more chance of harmony in the group. True? So that’s the way how we can change our attitude so that we can create more causes for happiness for ourselves.
That is the way how we can change our attitude so that anger cannot arise that easily in the mind. If I really want my enemy to be happy, I cannot be angry at them. If I want somebody to be happy, I cannot be angry. So if I somehow can see that my enemy has this wish for and if I somehow am prepared to help that person to get that happiness, I cannot be angry anymore. My anger is gone.
I’m not sure till what time do we have because we had this little exercise or a little meditation, but maybe ten more minutes. You want do an exercise or a meditation? Exercise? Not a physical exercise. What you’re going to think about What?
I need more detail. Detail. Okay. I’ll give you the detail. If we meet an object of anger, we do not want to be there.
We want to turn away. We have an aversion, a natural aversion. We do not want to be with that object. We want to turn away from it or we want to harm it. So, I’m going to ask you to think about what benefits and I want to hear reasons, right?
If you say: Alright, there is this object and I do not want to go there and I really hate it when I see that and my whole body wants to turn away. But what would be the reason? What if I would go to the object? What would come from that? Would there be benefit in that?
For me, what would I need to develop in order to be able to do For instance, I need courage to face my fear. Is developing that courage, is that a benefit for yourself or is that a negativity for yourself? That’s just an example. And then I want you to think about what if you turn away from the object and you run away? What are the benefits that come from that?
Exercise. I like that one. Do you like that one? I just like leaving the room. What?
Oh, it’s the difference between leaving the room and staying. Yeah. And maybe the and what is the good in leaving the room and what is the good in staying? You know? Can there be something good coming from that?
If I stay, what is the good that can come from that when I leave? And it can be both, you know, but I want you to think about that. And sometimes you first have to leave before you can stay, you know. You don’t know. You wanna do the exercise?
Yep. No meditation. So you can choose between many objects of anger. Sorry. Here you go, Theresa.
You have enough? So, I need You wanna break up? You can break up into groups if you want. And think about it together. You can also withdraw and think about it on your own.
General antidotes. So you might know a good joke. Summary, we’ll do a meditation. So I wanted to talk about Am I in your way? No, am I I think I’m in your am I in your way?
Look. Yeah. What do you say on the back here? Maybe I’ll start with the back. So just talking about looking at the approach to working with anger.
We’re going to make a twofold approach. One is in working with anger, must say first off the pathology of anger. Pathology simply means it’s unhealthy. Yeah? And I think this is the most important.
I was a little bit surprised. Maybe, I don’t know why. But it’s easy to, maybe in discussion, it’s easy to become a little bit intellectualized or abstract when talking about the disadvantages of anger and the advantages, at least how we see it, how we can miss our own feelings around it. Because you can think one thing. I think we have to become aware that we can hold two different positions, both irrationally and emotionally.
And sometimes they can be in complete opposition to one another. You can think one thing reasonably and intellectually, but emotionally you react very much differently. And so we were talking about the pathology of anger, the disadvantages of anger rather rationally and reasonably. But I think and we’re quite reasonable adults and so forth and we can talk. But I think if you got out on the street and you’re in the actual life situations, might relate in quite a different way.
And you might resort to anger or feelings of maybe displeasure, dislike, whatever terminology we want to use, in a more ready fashion and you’d be able to somehow justify them. You’d say, Well, he deserves it. Come up with some better reasoning in terms of your own actual experience. And then looking at the certainty of the basis, the absurdity of the irrational basis upon which it relies. So Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism I think, Buddhism which is derived from its Indian roots, very much close to those Indian roots, relies a great deal upon analysis and investigation, examination.
And, you know, we are we have a great deal and we’re going look at those. I don’t know if we have time today. We operate on the basis of many irrational beliefs. And, you know, Jampa pointed out one was self centeredness, that it’s the best way that we can conduct our lives. We might not think that clearly or articulate in those words.
Nonetheless, we are working from of a belief that this is the most effective way to get happiness in life is from a self centered approach to our life. Perhaps we’ve never even thought about it, but I feel assured that if you could find that belief in your system somewhere. And of course the most the mother of all the beliefs, the most basic irrational belief is the belief in a solid, concrete, independent, unchanging I, permanent I. That’s at the bottom of them all. So we’re basing our life to a large degree on irrational beliefs.
And Buddhism is saying, Let’s uncover those and look at them and see that they’re irrational and begin to work through them. And this but here we’re working at a particular level. We’re working at the level of anger and trying to see what are some of the irrational beliefs upon which our anger is based. And let’s see. So we have to look at we looked a little bit at the pathology, the advantages, and also the disadvantages and the advantages.
If you don’t look at the advantages and, you know, if you haven’t thoroughly exhausted the categories and set to some major, which includes both the advantages, then you would think, well, if I really were to think it through I could probably come up with some advantages. I just can’t be bothered at the moment. And you will harbor in the background somewhere that there is some pay to anger. You oppose it. And not having oppose it, it will remain, you know, dormant somewhere and it will arise when the situation and the proper conditions come about.
So this is the absurdity of the irrational basis of our beliefs. Okay. So we’re taking a look at anger. The way that we can begin to break it down, you know, Now it’s like this is kind of the whole, this kind of this overwhelming emotion. But if we begin to break it down into some workable parts, then we can begin to work with each of these various parts in dismantling this mountain of anger.
And so these are the conditions the anger rises in dependence upon. There are two conditions and one fundamental cause. And it can work at all these various levels in dismantling and imposing the emotion of anger. First, it’s a frustrated desire. I want and I can’t have.
And this could be anything. It could be, you know, material things. It could be happiness, love. It could be your goals. It could be success.
You know, somebody you have a desire and somehow you’re not able to fulfill that desire. It’s being opposed. Something out there is stopping you from fulfilling that desire. And that desire could be for almost anything. It could be internal and external.
It could be something even noble, you know, frustrated desire to achieve Buddhahood. If it wasn’t for those people playing that music next door, I’d probably be a Buddha by now. It doesn’t matter. Something or someone stopping you from getting what you want. And this automatically gives us some indicator of how we can lessen our anger.
The fewer desires you have, the less opportunity for anger to arise. If you’re content, you won’t get angry. With few desires But until we remove ignorance completely from the mind, there’s always going to be desires. So we can lessen our desires and therefore lessen the causes or the conditions necessary for anger. But until we remove ignorance completely from our mind, we’re always going to have some desire.
Having some desires, we’ll always be able to find something. It’s the nature of the situation that there’s always going to be something obstructing some of our desires, fulfilling our desires. And the desire of being frustrated or blocked in some way, we go on to identify an object that is seen as preventing us from fulfilling our desires. Someone or something is stopping us from getting what it is that we want. And we can begin to work at this level as well in terms of reframing the situation.
Like here, we generally identify if it’s a person. We call that, roughly speaking, the enemy, someone you don’t like, someone who’s displeasing. We can see how the enemy, in fact, is not obstructing us from getting our happiness that we want. We can reframe situation in such a way that we no longer identify an enemy as preventing us from finding happiness, and therefore we can remove this condition. The fundamental cause is a distressed mind.
Happy people don’t get angry. So we can begin to work at the level of how can we keep our mind happy? That’s no easy task, I think. Yeah. Essentially, you know, anger is saying it’s having difficulty bearing with the object.
It’s come in contact with an object and it can no longer it wants to be separated from this object. It wants to break off contact and not to repeat contact again in the future. So in order to do that it will get rid of the object, it will harm the object, it will destroy the object, and whatever is identified with ourselves getting it what we want. Our mind is unhappy and we want this is not a state of affairs that we want to continue. So we might punch somebody in the nose.
Get rid of them. Or, you know, Get rid of that. That’s disgusting. Whatever it might be. And as we mentioned before, the mind is imbalanced.
The negative quality of the object, of the person that we’ve identified we’ll just talk about people in general, but it doesn’t necessarily it could be you know, dirty linen, you know, whatever. It’s distracting you from getting what you want. It doesn’t fit into the linen closet right, whatever it was. I think that was your example. That’s a good example of it.
We can do it in terms of identifying the person. There’s always a depreciation of their good qualities because everybody has some good qualities and exaggeration of their negative qualities. So the object is not being seen in a proper light. Okay. So if analyze an emotion, and this would apply to both positive and negative emotions.
There’s some kind of event, and this leads us to have we’re going to have certain perceptions, sensations, and feelings with respect to this event. Let’s say, for example, you see I like the one about somebody’s hitting a child. There’s an adult hitting a child. You have a perception. The child is being harmed.
You have a physical sensation, maybe a tightening in your chest, maybe a churning in your stomach, maybe a tightening in your throat. You feel displeasure, uncomfortable. So this is like the input. Then this is going to be there’s an event, the activating condition, but this is itself is not sufficient. We have to it’s run through or interpreted by a belief system.
You know, how what in terms of our belief system, how are we going to view this event? We experience we have these three perception, sensation, and feeling, but we’re going to our reaction will be filtered through our belief system. You could react with anger, you know, and you go up and punch the guy in the face. How dare you? Or that child would you you big oaf.
You’re bigger. What you know, how can you treat that’s another so you have a belief system that this is unfair, this shouldn’t be happening, a big person shouldn’t pick on a small person. It’s going to carry a lot of emotional baggage, associations from your past, how you were treated and maybe how big people treated you in the past. And so all this is going to be dumped in some way through your belief system on this present poor guy who’s hit I mean he’s not a poor guy, anyway. Or you could filter it through a belief system where you reacted with compassion.
Have compassion for both the victim but also the perpetrator, realizing that not only is the child being harmed but the perpetrator themselves are harming themselves by doing what they’re doing. They’re unhappy now and they’ll even undergo greater suffering in the future. But, you know, it’s not to say that you don’t stop. You pull the child away to protect the child, but you do some out of a sense of compassion. So the same activating event, somebody, this man is hitting a child, we have the same perceptions, the child is being harmed, some physical sensations, displeased, but because of our belief system the reaction is going to be quite different.
The emotion which arises from that is going to be quite different. You can react with compassion or anger, depending upon your belief system, some emotional reaction. And Okay. We looked at that one. I thought there was more back here.
Beliefs you know, I think if we really look at it, some of the beliefs that we have are really absurd. And we can talk about them in a very general sense, but we’re going to talk about them in terms of a Buddhist analysis. But I have a few here. These are kind of irrational statements that we might make which portray some of the main ideals that we hold, some of the beliefs that we might hold which will bring about, which causes us to get angry. And this is just some statements which express a particular belief system that we have.
How awful for you to have treated me so unfairly? You know there’s no reason that, there’s no logical reason that people have to treat us fairly. It’d be nice. It’d be preferable. We would like it, but there’s no universal law.
There’s no logic a way in which we can demand that people treat us fairly. We would like for them to treat us fairly, but it’s not necessary that they do so. I can’t stand you treating me in such an irresponsible, unjust manner. You should not, must not behave that way toward me. Know, However a person treats us, it might cause us a great deal of inconvenience, it might cause us expense and pain, but the person is not awful for having done it.
We will not be driven crazy for having them having done it to us. And moreover, the person themselves is not terrible. You know, we might not appreciate their action, their behavior, but this does not make the person who committed the action a terrible person. And we believe, and I think this is an interesting one, that the person who is committing what they’re doing is in complete control of their thinking and their acting. That they are as if bringing us this harm by choice.
There’s a sense that they could be acting differently and that they have chosen to act in the way that they are, which serves as a means for causing us unhappiness. They’re preventing us from fulfilling our desires. So in all of this we can we’re going to look at some of our irrational beliefs. We can apply antidotes. We can see the absurdity through some kind of analysis and see that they aren’t in keeping with the actual nature of the object or the thing that we’re dealing with.
You know I think in, you know we’ve been talking about the advantages and disadvantages of anger and we have to begin to question what is the overall quality of life that I want for myself and does anger support that? You know whether this particular instance or this other situation is justifiable in terms of anger and how we relate with it doesn’t support the overall quality or goals of my life. And I think we can begin to see that in many ways we’ve become our own worst enemies, you know, and not only now but in the future as well. So we’re trying to, in working with anger, use two allied approaches. One of them is to see the pathology of our anger, and I think that’s, and that is like disadvantages of anger, and that’s like the platform.
And then we then this serves as the foundation for trying to understand why we get angry. And this involves seeing the absurdity of many of our irrational beliefs that we’re filtering these events through and coming up with a negative emotional reaction. So we were going to talk about antidotes, but maybe we can do a short meditation, okay? We’ll start we’ll work there’s a long there’s a list of antidotes that we’re going to work with, some methods that you can work with in coming to be aware of and working with some of these belief systems. So we’re going if you’d like to stand up and stretch for a moment, we’ll do a meditation together.
So the meditation that we’re going to be doing is I think it’s extremely you know, one of the important qualities that’s helpful in our everyday life in relating in a more positive fashion with the people around us is the development of empathy. You know, there’s beginning to have some feeling for what’s going on for the other person. You know, I think we all experience this. There are some people we don’t quite feel comfortable around. There are some people, as Jampa was mentioning in terms of self centeredness, some people become so self centered that they become insensitive or they aren’t aware that there are other people even physically around them.
And they’re not it’s not very pleasant to be in their company in many ways. We can’t quite trust them. We can’t be relaxed around them. There’s always a certain degree of defensiveness. We have to be on guard.
One way we begin to work through that is by developing a sense of empathy. In sympathy, we feel with the person. If somebody’s suffering, we feel sorry for them. With empathy we feel into the person. We have a sense where they’re at because we can look into our own emotional repertoire, what we’ve experienced in the course of our life, and say, Oh, something similar happened to me.
I know how that feels. Yeah? Like if somebody’s going through a relationship breakup, Oh, remember how that felt. Boy, that was terrible. You can really gain a sense.
You can feel into them how they may be feeling. It’s not projection or what we call interjection because the focus is on the other person. You have a sense of how they’re feeling. And what would I have wanted I when I underwent that same situation as they did? And maybe, you know, we’re all equal, as Jampa mentioned, in terms of everybody wants to be happy and no one wants to suffer.
You know, superficially we have differences amongst ourselves, gender and education and economic backgrounds and interests and so forth. But I think if we it’s not that’s pretty superficial. The differences I think are very are more or less superficial. If we begin to scrape down beneath the superficial differences, we’re all very much alike. And we can, to some degree, can trust our intuition around this, that I know what I might have liked.
And there’s a good chance that this person would like the same thing for me. You know, when I was going through my relationship difficulty, wouldn’t it have been nice if somebody had made a phone call or came over and said, Would you like to go out for a walk? Something like that. I would have liked that. That person, probably this person would like that as well.
It’s like a safe bet. You know, I mean, you have to use your discretion, your wisdom, for sure. But more than that I think you’ll be right. In this way and so we can develop empathy is not something given, you know, all these qualities. Know, it’s not as if the Mother Teresa’s and Dalai Lama’s and Nelson Mandela’s and the Martin Luther King’s that somehow they were born as they were in terms of all the love and compassion that they, you know, they had, you know, loving kindness genes and compassionate molecules in their brains, that somehow they’re just they’re from Mars, and they’ve always been the way they are, that they didn’t have to work, they didn’t have moments of difficulty and challenge in their life, and that they didn’t have to develop these qualities that we admire in them, that we too can develop these same qualities.
There’s no question about that. So it’s even the qualities of love and compassion, you know, we all have a certain degree, sure, at present, and we can build on that, we can develop that. And it’s just a matter of training, you know, whatever we become accustomed to becomes easier over time. So empathy, we can train in development of a love and compassion. And this ability is considered a long way in terms of changing our belief system, you know, that this person is a horrible person for standing as an obstacle in finding what it is that we want.
This is the direct opponent to anger in a way, the development of love and compassion. So we’re going to very quickly we’re just going to practice putting ourselves in another person’s place. So we’re going to play a role, okay? And I’ll just explain to you very quickly, and then we’re going to meditate on it just for a few minutes. I know some of you mentioned that you have to leave at four, so we’re going to stop at four, okay?
So no worry about that. You know, presently, you know, due to our to our self centeredness, see everything and everyone from the vantage point of ourselves in terms of our own self centeredness. And we are unable to see the world out of other people’s eyes to a large degree. This is a matter of degrees and different situations, different degrees. So we’re going to exchange places.
We’re going to put ourselves into the place of somebody that we’re presently having some difficulties with, some disagreement, some hard feelings, and attention. You know, it doesn’t have to be big time, could be something small. But we try to feel and put ourselves as best we can, play a role in our imagination, how they might be experiencing the situation from their side. Maybe we’ve never really looked at it from this point of view. We’ve only looked at it from our own point of view.
So maybe we can get some insight into another way of looking at the same difficulty from their point of view. It’s difficult, but try this. When you’re putting yourself in their position, looking at the situation out of their eyes, what do you see when you look at the situation with their eyes? Looking back at yourself, your former self before you made this exchange putting yourself in this place, do you see hostility? Do you see defensiveness?
Do you see open mindedness? Do you see closed mindedness? Do you see someone who’s making an effort to understand or someone who’s completely shut down? And look at the problem from their perspective, look at your former self from their perspective, and then is there any legitimacy in the way that they you you can express what it is that you’re seeing to your former self and try to see if there’s any legitimacy in what this person is saying to you from their perspective. Just trying to, you know, develop a multifaceted viewpoint, not just this myopic viewpoint where we see everything from this one point of view of self centeredness, you know, this single pointed focus.
Try to see how it might look from their side. This is what we call empathy. Okay, so we try that. So take in a comfortable, firm posture. And so this meditation will last about eight minutes altogether.
So, it’s not going be long, so you’re going to have to put a lot of effort in it. And so, just beginning by relaxing the body. Bringing your awareness to the natural sensation of the breath, wherever it’s most clear and obvious. No. So gently and patiently, keep bringing your mind back to the breath again and again.
Bring your mind back to the breath. Now we’re going to meditate on putting yourself in this other person’s place, this exchange of places. So think of a person that you’re having some difficulties with, some tensions, some disagreements, even a minor one. It doesn’t have to be major. And if you can imagine that person there in front yourself, but if you can’t see them it’s not so important.
The feeling’s more important. And imagine you’re putting yourself in their place and looking at the situation out of their eyes, feeling their feelings. How would it be to them from their point of view in looking at this difficulty, this situation? How might they be experiencing it? As best you can.
And looking back at your former self, what do you see? Do you see an open mindedness, a closed mindedness, defensiveness, hostility? How are they experiencing you? Now you can express how you’ve seen the situation, how you feel, and how you see your former Self. Explain what it is that you see that you feel to your former self from their point of view, how they might be feeling and seeing the situation, their experience.
And then bring your mind back to the breath. Get in touch with your body, the pressure of your buttocks on the cushion, the chair, some sensations feeling within the body. In an easy and relaxed manner, slowly become aware of your surrounding, taking your time. Thank you all for a nice day. See you tomorrow.
Oh, the homework? And the homework, but also that I’m letting more people know Oh, yeah. Tomorrow, the normal schedule is that the normal weekly schedule is that Sundays there’s a nine o’clock meditation. So we’ll be joining the nine o’clock group for the morning meditation, but it will be specifically on loving kindness, which is an antidote to anger. And then after the at ten we’ll take a break and have tea, and then ten thirty, Geshe-la, we’ll talk about emptiness and anger.
Okay, so tomorrow we’ll start with there’ll be a larger group tomorrow, so don’t be don’t get angry. And then we had some homework. You want to talk about that? They all have to You have the homework. So you’ll be graded.
Keep that. Keep that. But I don’t point to the end between now and tomorrow. That’s good. But that in case you get What’s your telephone number?
I’ll make some three phone calls. Okay.