Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Ignyen spends this 45-minute session dismantling a fundamental misunderstanding: we habitually blame other people for our negative emotions, when in fact they arise entirely from our own past actions. Blame-laden thoughts coarsen the mind and waste the irreplaceable present moment. He connects our current mind-state directly to future experience, then reveals impatience as a hidden form of anger—distinguishing it from genuine virtuous energy. Moving into Buddhist ethics, he outlines the ten non-virtuous actions, emphasizing how gossip alone consumes entire lifespans. Throughout, Ven Jampa points to a practical medicine: recognizing negative experiences as purification and cultivating love and compassion as the strongest antidote. The session concludes with a substantial Q&A, where practitioners bring real struggles with anger, guilt, and depression.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 Dealing with Emotions 2001 08 26.mp3
UUID: af8d81c7-1329-4c4e-ae3b-ff1a0885a47c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Dealing with Emotions (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-08-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~4,489
Be the source of our happiness as such in the way that we currently think. But we do tend to treat other beings as the source of our negative feelings. And those we’re attached to, we have great hopes in for our positive feelings. And by acting in this way, we generate untold different negative emotions in the present. And then by generating these negative emotions in the present, they’re like something like poison that we allow to pervade the mind, directed at other beings, then we ourselves are gonna experience unhappiness in future.
Very similar to the unhappiness we experience in the present. But, of course, this habit is very strong for us. Even even when we’re sitting down and there’s no one else around, we start thinking of people and we think of someone, oh, yeah. I don’t like that person. And when we think about, why don’t I like that person?
It was coming back to a negative feeling we’ve had in relation to that person. Maybe they said something to us and we remember what they said and we have a negative feeling. That negative feeling that arises when someone talks to us in a negative way is not coming from that other person. It’s coming from our own past actions. Another person’s word are merely the conditions by which these past negative actions mature as feelings internally for us.
These feelings are awakened when we’re in contact with other beings, for instance. But these negative feelings are not coming from other beings. They’re coming from our own negative action. And especially even when there’s no one around and we think about other people. And when we think of the other person, we have a negative feeling in relation to what they’ve done.
And then we start to resent them. We get annoyed with them. We become impatient with them. That impatience is there in our mind and it coarsens the mind. The mind feels agitated.
And we think about this person having negative feeling. Mind we have mind becomes impatient towards them. Mind is a bit agitated, bit coarsened. And when it’s coarsened like that, when it’s agitated like that, we’re not happy. And we think about them this way, and we think and we also then we start thinking about, oh, they did this to me on this occasion.
They did that to me on that occasion. We start to justify having a negative thought towards them. And all this process just makes us unhappy. We’re becoming very skilled at finding reasons to justify disliking other beings. Everyone.
There’s absolutely no one in the universe that’s spared from this process of ours. If all the negative feelings probably we’ve ever experienced, we blame on other beings even though they’re we’re the root cause of them. But even now, when we sit and try to meditate, we have all these thoughts coming up of different beings and then the negative feelings that arise and then blaming those beings for those negative feelings. Then generating hatred, anger, resentment, wrath, spite, jealousy, and so on. They all, we don’t take much, you know, it just takes one.
We just have to focus on one person and already they’re all there. Anger, pride, jealousy, so forth. They’re just there directed at that one person, for instance. All of those negative emotions, by their very nature destroy happiness. They’re like darkness in relation to light.
It wouldn’t be so bad if those negative We could somehow justify feeling that way or thinking that way towards other beings, if in fact they were the root cause of our negative feelings. But they’re not even the root cause. There’s no justification at all to have a negative thought towards any other being at any time because all our negative feelings come from negative actions. And those negative feelings are coming from our past actions which we created ourselves. So dealing in dealing with negative emotions, we have to begin to examine our normal everyday process of just how they arise.
And there’s not in the course of a day, really, there’s no not even a moment when we aren’t afflicted by various thoughts. And we can see this. We are we’re oppressed. So we carry on this burden of thought, of negative thoughts and emotions. From morning to night, we get up and we’re burdened in the morning.
We get through the day and we still have this burden of thinking negatively towards others. We go to sleep and we dream about them at night and think negatively even in our dreams towards others. And often it’s a very subtle process. It’s so our mind is so precise and rapid in its various processes that often these things occur. We’re not even you know, in the course of a a moment, maybe a thousand thoughts or many thoughts occur.
And it’s not easy to oppose this negative tendency we have when we think of others. We’re not very successful at opposing it, for a start. We don’t put much effort into it because generally tend to think all our negative thoughts are justified. And even then it’s hard for us to discern. Not easy to always discern what is a negative emotion.
Many of our thoughts appear to be protecting us or beneficial for us. But basically, if any of our thoughts are directed towards harming other beings or that aspire that they’re not happy or that they don’t achieve what they should achieve or that, or that even rejoices if we later hear that, oh, they didn’t achieve what they wanted to achieve and so on. Then those types of those types of awareness are really harming ourselves. They’re not actually harming other beings, unless we take it down to literally take it to a verbal or a physical level, but often just having the thought of, you know, disliking others. It’s only harming ourselves.
It is making our present mind unhappy. To know no positive end whatsoever. It’s like, you know, investing in the stock market, but investing at the wrong time when all the stocks are going down and then putting them all into the worst stock possible. We don’t get any return. And we waste our time in the present, which is the most valuable thing we have.
The one thing that we have that can benefit us in future is the time this time in the present. There’s like another a poem by one Japanese one Chinese monk who was saying, each time each moment, this time will never come again, Which also reflects the fact that this present moment has such potential for us. But if we allow ourselves to simply generate negative emotions, whether it no matter how subtle they may be, then we’re wasting the present moment. This moment won’t come back again. It’s not as if we have unlimited time in order to get around to dealing with these issues.
We only have the present moment. And if we’re not practicing in the present moment, we’re not practicing. If we’re and what we will experience in future is really what the current state of our mind is. If we look at our current state of mind and just determine what’s the value there, that’s what whatever my mind is in the present, that’s what I will experience in future. If there’s a strong virtuous mind, positive mind in the present, then that’s really something to rejoice in because in future, in future, I’m going to experience a strong positive result.
I’m going to be very happy because of my current mind. Otherwise, if their mind at present is not very, very positive, then that’s generally what we’ll experience again in the future. Just as our present mind now, what we experience in the present moment is reflects our past mind. It’s just the actions of some time in the past maturing in the present moment. And to the degree that we have some happiness, freedom, some inner space, a little bit of mental ease, then to that extent, we really should rejoice.
In the past, at least I committed some reasonable positive actions because at present I have a certain amount of leisure. My feelings are okay in the present. I’m not, you know, in a situation where I don’t have some degree of leisure. So this is due to our own actions in the past. So, anyway, dealing with emotions is very much just observing our mind in the present moment and just observing what’s there.
And if there’s fault, seeing the fault to be fault. If there’s no fault, observing in there to be no fault. Because again, what we we really need or what really will be a benefit to us is the fact. Things exactly as they are. Understanding things in just the way they exist.
So this in a sense is our refuge. Another way we can describe our refuge is our positive emotions. Really, it’s our positive emotions that are our protector, our teacher, our friend, our benefactor, our patron, and so on. There’s no greater friend than positive emotions, our positive mind. And that positive mind is our teacher.
He’s the one we follow. And in a sense, we don’t need to look for an external teacher. It’s just what what is a virtue? What is a positive in the mind itself? Right, I’m just wondering if there’s anyone wants to bring up any any points maybe that have been mentioned so far?
You may disagree with this. Right. Yep. Yep. That one is ever present, I think.
We all have a measure of this sense of frustration with our own situation. We want to change it, we want it to improve and so on. That frustration is really like impatience, isn’t it? It’s a little bit like being impatient with our own situation. Impatience is anger, but not anger in an externally manifest way that we may think of it.
But that impatience is the very nature of anger. And in a sense, much of our lives are affected by anger. By our impatience with our own situation, impatience with others, very much by impatience with our own situation. On a day by day, it just takes up a lot of energy. We’re always wanting things to change for us.
We’re impatient that things change and develop. That impatience is a negative emotion. It’s a negative state. Sometimes it appears as if it’s very useful to us because it seems that, well, if I don’t have that sort of a view of my life, then I’m not going to do anything. I’m not going to be motivated to do much.
But I think it just has the appearance of being useful to us when in fact it has no use. Because just being impatient with our situation only means that we are, to a degree, agitated, have this internal agitation that just tends to disturb our current mind. When that impatience is associated with the mind, the mind itself becomes coarsened and unsettled. But again, sometimes it appears that, well, if we don’t have that, I’m just gonna fall into this state of apathy, know, like in The Pilgrim’s Progress where the Pilgrim falls into the slow despond, you know, in the first part of the book. That I don’t think is necessarily the case.
This type of impatience with our own situation is not useful. But what we do need is energy. And all energy is, is simply liking virtue. And liking virtue and being impatient with our current situation are not the same. We should have a liking for virtue.
That’s what we need in the present. And we shouldn’t be impatient with our situation. Liking what is positive. Liking what is positive. That we need.
Oh, they could yeah. That’s probably true. I think, yeah, I think men in general, we tend to, yeah, be more, I don’t know, protective or we don’t not as we don’t easily admit to emotions that we have. More protective, more concealed perhaps our emotions more so. And also, I think maybe because not being able to easily describe them or, you know, not be able to be really objective and talk about them objectively.
I don’t know. There’s probably many reasons for that. But it is very good to talk about them. Because by talking about them, then we’re able to focus on them. The more we focus, potentially the more we come to understand them.
And we begin to see what is positive, what is negative. Sometimes I think for males, if you talk about emotions, you may appear to be weak. You know, it’s sort of a weak topic that you’re really concerned about your feelings and so forth. Whereas, you shouldn’t be too concerned about one’s feelings, which is a complete myth because for, I think, male and female, it’s our feelings which are very central to our experience. And we need to understand our feelings as clearly as possible in order to be able to discern what’s a positive emotion and what’s a negative emotion because they’re they’re coming from how we feel, our feeling.
Yeah. Oh, that’s a very important question because even though what we experience, our feelings that we experience are coming from our past actions, they’re also conditioned by the people around us, by our environment. And sometimes in the presence of particular people, know, more of our past negative actions can mature in the present as negative feelings. So, times, you know, it may be if in fact we find with certain people that they bring up a lot of negative emotions, negative feelings, then we may have to, you know, separate ourselves from them because of that. A good practitioner doesn’t matter where they are.
The more the negative, the better. Because all it is is just our past actions coming back. It’s not really the other person. But on the other hand, you know, if we’re whenever we come in contact with a person, say or do something or suggest something or, you know, anything, even the way they scratch their nose or the way they look at us or it’s just, you know, we have a negative experience, then it may be and we’re finding that not easy to deal with. Then it may be better to separate ourselves or to limit our contact with such a person.
Yeah. No, that’s true. When it gets into the area of abuse, still that is coming from their past negative actions. What we experience as an individual is really coming from the negative actions we’ve committed in the past. And that’s the same for other beings as well.
However, we need to, as much as possible, in every way, always to limit the conditions which would generate negative feelings for ourselves or a negative situation for ourselves and others. And if, for instance, a child is potentially in an abusive situation, then it may be necessary to take them out of that situation to protect them. Because as much as possible, we need to limit the potential for us to experience unhappiness or physical abuse. Even though it’s our, you know, if we do experience it, it’s our actions in the past. Still, we don’t want all of our past potential to mature for us at present.
We need as much as possible to reduce the negative. The potential for negative actions to, what, achieve a result in the present. The best way for doing that is to have a positive, generate positive emotions in the present. But then also we need to be very skillful. And if there is a situation that we need to examine, If it’s, yeah, it’s gonna be difficult to handle.
The other person is abusive. Then we may need to, you know, simply remove ourselves from that situation. One thing we don’t want to end up hating the other person, which won’t help them, it won’t help us. Yeah. It’s inevitable that we experience negative feelings in the present because of the of the vast number of negative actions we’ve committed in the past, in past lifetimes.
But as much as possible, we need to limit that in the present. And the best way of limiting, the negative feelings, negative feelings arising in the present is by practicing positive emotions in the present. Positive thoughts such as love and compassion. The more strongly we practice love and compassion at the present, the less chance our past negative actions have of arising, of maturing in the present moment as negative experience. But simply practicing positive states in the present won’t eliminate all our past negative actions from the root.
But we need that as a basis to for our development at present. Later on, we need to eliminate those negative actions from in their essence, from their very root completely. Well, Here, ethics ethics is not harming others. It’s defined in various texts as the mind which protects or guards against negative states. So ethics for us at present is just this it’s a mind that protects us from doing negative actions.
That’s ethics. And negative actions there really comes down to harming others. Also, harming oneself is included. But ethics is basically that this mind that protects us from either harming ourselves or others. And that also is expressed on a verbal and a physical level.
So that ethics, although ethics in essence is the mind that guards against negative actions, physically it refers to not killing. So not engaging in killing any other being, but predominantly not killing a human being is meant. And then not stealing, not taking what is not given, and then not engaging in sexual misconduct. And that’s because of the disturbance one can create to the minds of other beings by, say, associating with the sexual partner or the partner of someone else and so on. So really there’s three physical actions.
Not killing, not stealing, not engaging in sexual misconduct. And then four of speech. And the first one there is not lying. And not lying there is there’s four types of lie, but the lie here that’s basically meant is not lying about our attainments. Not claiming that we have some, you know, power or some capacity that we don’t have.
For a monk or nun, that also includes, even if they do have that capacity, talking about it when there’s no need. So lying is one. Then slander, not engaging in slander. So this slander really means telling either lying or telling the truth about someone else in order to create a division between that person and someone else or others. So even if we tell the truth about someone in order to divide that person from their friends, then it’s slander.
Then there’s harsh words, just, you know, swearing or, you know, speaking in a very harsh way that coarsens the minds of other beings. And then gossip is the fourth negative action of speech. And it’s said to be the worst because it takes up the most time. So, if possible, if one can talk about something positive as well, good practitioners, you know, are able to, I guess, do away with gossip. But for the rest of us, we have to minimize it as much as possible, simply because it just takes up a lot of time.
In itself, it’s not necessarily very non virtuous, but because we can spend years of our lives, decades of our lives, just talking about all manner of things that have no consequence, then we can even waste an entire life through engaging in gossip. So if we could talk about some virtuous things as well, then that’s good. Here, we have to be skillful because sometimes we think about it, oh, I shouldn’t really gossip. But then, you know, I get I really like gossiping, you know, finding out what’s going on and so on, which we do. But if we can try and mix in a bit of something positive there as well, then that’s useful to us.
At present, it’s probably impossible that we wean ourselves off gossip straight away. We’re like we’re like an addict having to do without the heroin forever. And to a degree, it can be really useful for us if it’s done sensibly or skillfully. But ultimately, gossip is listed as the fourth non virtuous verbal action. And then we have the three of the mind which are harmful intention, avarice or greed for our own possessions and so on.
And then wrong view. So those are regarded as the ten non virtuous actions. Yeah. Then we have to examine there. If in fact, by saying something to one, it benefits one and harms the other, then maybe we should wait until they’re separated out before we reply.
It depends. We have to check our own intention, our own motivation. Yeah, we need really need to check our motivation. And if it’s possible to separate others out in that way, If we don’t have the intention to, cause distress to others, but that occurs anyway, then it’s not such a good result. But one doesn’t have the intention, therefore it’s not a very, it’s not a strong negative action on our part.
But if underneath we have this intention, know, to find a way of harming others indirectly and so on, then we have to check ourselves and stop. Sometimes we don’t have much space there to check ourselves either. We’ve said something even before we can we notice the words are coming out. But, this we need to examine because what is done with negative intention will have a negative result. It’s a poor investment.
It’s not going to produce a return that we’ll be happy with. But as much as possible, if we can create, in a sense, an internal space where we can see as clearly as possible thoughts when they arise and then enough space so that we can check, is that is that a useful thought to me? Is it of any value to me? Any value to anyone else? Then that sort of investigation can be of great use to us downstream.
In potentially our future lives to come. It’s not necessarily I think we know from our own experience. We have negative mental feelings that arise. Not easy to necessarily transform them quickly. It depends on the person, but having patience is certainly I mean, one can reflect in many ways.
Just developing patience for one’s situation. Understanding that negative mental feelings are impermanent. They don’t even last an instant. They’re always changing. All their feelings are impermanent.
That even though they may, you know, one may have a, you know, a negative experience or negative feeling that goes on for some days. Still, they’re just impermanent. Ultimately, they’re impermanent. If one is able to practice, Dharma here, then it’s very useful because one reflects that those negative feelings are coming from my past actions. They’re just all my own past actions maturing in the present.
Good. It’s a I’m burning them up. By experiencing them, I’ll never experience them again. They come to fruition. They’re experienced.
They’re finished. Oh, well, I mean, if that’s true, it’s true. No problem. But experiencing depression, it’s really what is it? It’s negative mental feeling, isn’t it?
And these things, they occur. It’s not they happen in the course of our existence. And if one can view them from, I guess, within an open a more open or a spacious field and see them to be a product of our own past actions. And that once experienced, then they’re they’re finished, then fine. They’re not enjoyable when we experience them.
We have a negative feeling. It’s, you know, it’s a negative feeling. But the good element there is that they’re being consumed. They’re being they’re maturing in the present and so on. And no problem.
It’s what can one do? One in a sense, the best thing one can do is simply rejoice that it’s happening. That one’s experiencing negative feeling. On the other hand, when we have a positive feeling, we also realize that, oh, that feeling that’s coming from a past positive action, that also is being consumed in the present moment. I need as much as possible to practice positive actions.
The best thing that a person can do who’s feeling somewhat depressed or even with clinical depression is to practice, do something positive. It’s not easy, but that’s certainly something that will be a benefit in the future. Similarly, it’s the result of past actions and what they experience is the maturation of those those actions. So it’s a type of purification. In a sense, it’s purifying what’s happened in the past.
And such, and those who experience this should be if possible, should be helped in whatever way possible so that they’re able to, you know, go through the experience and then progress and develop as individual. To develop compassion is very important. A certain amount of fear does arise, but that can be a positive fear as well. That can remind us we need to practice positive actions as much as possible ourselves. Positive actions, the best are love and compassion.
So we remind ourselves that we need to practice love and compassion. Oh, well then we need to just observe that. Fear itself is impermanent as well. But if it’s a negative fear, then we need to develop strategies that will help us with that. So we need a lot of patience with ourselves especially.
And all the fears and so forth that arise for us, we need a lot of patience to deal with. But they arise from time to time. And when they occur, we can practice patience. One of the best things we can do is generate compassion for other beings. And then also compassion for ourselves.
And so on. Love and compassion for others is one of the best things we can ever do. If we’re unhappy, we should practice love and compassion. If we’re happy, we should practice love and compassion. If we’re not feeling so good, because of stomachache, practice love and compassion.
If we’re feeling depressed, practice love and compassion. And so on. Have regret for our past negative actions is good. We shouldn’t regret our past positive actions. Then just having, I don’t know, a sense of guilt about, I don’t know, past situations that we don’t clearly understand or whatever.
There’s probably types of guilt that we can experience that are not very useful to us. Depends on, you know, what’s, from what they’re arising from. But certainly, all the regret