Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 96-minute session, Ven Jamyang explores how to work with anger through the Buddhist middle path, using a student’s real conflict with an angry colleague as her primary teaching example. She establishes that self-grasping—a contraction of consciousness around a solid ‘I’—lies at the root of emotional suffering. Healing requires recognizing emotions clearly while refusing to identify with them, understanding their impermanence and natural arising. Through the colleague example, Jamyang demonstrates how the student’s own protective wall perpetuates the problem far more than the colleague’s anger itself. She explores anger’s antidotes—patience and loving-kindness—its destructive effects on body and relationships, and the crucial practice of self-compassion without judgment. She offers practical techniques for mindfulness and catching anger’s subtle precursors before they explode.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2007 11 27 jamyang – session 1 271107.mp3
UUID: cd85e3cd-0572-43d8-8de3-d9e841db4b5b
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2007-11-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 96.4 minutes
Words: ~11,641
Yeah. Well, turned off later. Is anybody here? Oh, Janice is still coming. Oh, I’ll ask her to change the money.
Hi. How are you? Okay. Thank you, man. Everywhere.
Unbelievable. Your life, isn’t it? Heavy. You. Because you would like to.
Yeah. Yeah. But, you know Does it shift your priorities? I don’t know. It it it sort of feels like it’s just a stonking great big blank slate at the moment.
You know? I don’t know if there were priorities at all anymore. Well, that shift’s priorities, isn’t it? Just a lot of mileage. Know?
Yeah. It didn’t sort of things. It’s just sort of yeah. What was there before is gone? Well, just because of where I am at as well.
It it’s everything’s sort of been a low rumble anyway. So as to what you know, where I’m going now, it’s it was sort of fueled to the grease, really. So You just have to sit a little bit, I think, with it, isn’t it? Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think one day your wisdom naturally will come up with Yeah. Mean, I’m more like that. Feel like Yeah.
I mean, I guess that’s the part I wanna be now. I’ll just sort of, you know Sit with it. I look at it. Learning how to interpret it and gain something from it. About karma, didn’t we?
We finished that. You were going to look at your own tendencies and what else and how to purify them. We did a purification practice. Did you try to do that? No.
You did it? No. No. Did you do it? Tried to.
Did you do it with a short mantra? How did you feel? Feel better. Good. We have to practice.
We have to practice. Jump again. I was here yesterday. He has such a soft voice. It’s like a soft voice.
So do my own. Oh, So then we’re talking we’re gonna talk about dealing with negative emotions. The trouble a little bit with giving a healing course, and I have to juggle a little bit with that, is that we have said it a few times. The reason the the main core of where all the trouble comes from is that self grasping. Self grasping is like a contraction of your consciousness.
The more you contract it, the more dark it becomes and the more solid it becomes. In order to heal, what you have to do is to look at that and let it go and open it up. So one thing is to change your attitude from me, me, me into looking at how can I benefit others? Another thing is to look at that. What is that?
What is that contraction? How does it look like? And what comes from it if I hold on to that too strongly? The danger of looking at that is that you’re going to feel that more or yeah, that you’re going to feel that more and that it looks like it’s going to be bigger, which means that you’re going to feel worse. It’s going to, you know, add to your problem.
So when we’re looking at negative emotions, it can be that you’re going to feel like, Oh my God! How much work is there to do? But in order to recognize that which is a negative emotion, which is what makes your mind contracting, if you can’t recognize that, you cannot stop doing that. So, we have to look at it in order to address it and in order to practice the opposite. But know that when we’re going to do this today, that might happen in your mind.
You might feel more tension or you might feel your own judgment like, I’m a bad person. I’m doing this and I’m doing that. That’s not why we’re doing this. We’re looking at recognize it when it comes up and so that we can discard it or we can do the opposite when it is in our mind so that we can let it go, so that we don’t reinforce it again and again. Keep that in mind and then maybe at the end of today we’ll do a meditation where we really open up again so that you don’t go home with a tense feeling.
But if it becomes too intense, please let me know. Yeah? Okay? Are you okay? Emotions.
We have positive emotions, we have negative emotions. If we look at them, if we talk about loving kind ness and compassion and generosity, we all know there is a positive feeling in that. That’s really nice emotions, isn’t it? And if they are in our mind, we feel happy, we feel content, we feel good about ourselves. Then there are negative emotions which are hate, depression, jealousy, anger, strong desire and we all know that when they’re in our mind, we feel bad.
Normally we are aware when we feel very good or when we feel very bad but then in between there is a whole range where we mainly feel confused, not really knowing what is going on, not really maybe seeing what is going on and not being able to redirect it the way you would like to have your mind focused upon. So we have to look into it and recognize what is this, what is this, what this, what is this? In Tibetan Buddhism they put a lot of work into what is anger? How does anger look like? Really?
What is what you know because we talk about I’m angry, I’m not angry. What is anger? We don’t have a definition for anger. Some person calls this anger and some person calls that anger. If that’s the case, you can’t really communicate because you say I know you’re angry.
Oh, no, I’m not angry but I can see angry. I’m not angry. You don’t even know if you talk about the same thing. So they have defined all the emotions all the positive emotions and all the negative emotions. They’re a definition.
When you look at a definition, you can see the nature of that emotion. And when you can see the nature, the more you about it and you can see it, that’s the nature of jealousy, that’s the nature of hate. Then when it comes up and you do something, you know, something that you might before have said, No, I’m not jealous, but maybe suddenly you say, Oh, actually that is jealousy. And then when you recognise it, you can do something to stop it or to change it. So that’s very important that we identify all the emotions all the positive emotions, all the negative emotions.
Then what we’re going to try to do is that we find a healthy and balanced attitude towards our emotions. We have a sword in our hand, and if negative emotion comes up, we hit ourselves on the hand because we don’t like ourselves when negative emotions come up. We judge very strongly and we’re not really kind to ourselves. In Buddhism, say emotions are just things that arise in the mind, naturally. As long as we have that grasping at ourselves, naturally all kinds of emotions arise in our mind positive emotions and negative emotions.
We are not in control of them. So there’s no reason to beat ourselves up because we have them. We just have them. Emotions are not really We believe I am my emotion. I am angry.
I am Tibetans say it’s not you. The you is not the one whose anger arises in your mind but you don’t have to identify with the anger. Anger is something that is impermanent, that arises due to causes and conditions. It arises and if you can just see it for what it is, it can dissolve back into the mind. No problem.
We cannot stop having that arising as long as we have that grasping at ourselves as being truly existent. That grasping is very, very subtle. If you really want to remove that, you need to develop a really subtle consciousness. That is going to take a long, long, long time. In the meantime, we cannot stop any emotion from arising.
By doing practice, your emotions will arise less strong, less long, not so easy as in the beginning. You will definitely have an effect on your emotions but completely removing it is simply not possible as long as that grasping is there. If you know that you have a self grasping, it’s naturally that emotions come up. And if you know that emotions are impermanent and that it’s a natural thing that they come and go, you don’t have to worry too much much about whatever comes up in your mind. True?
Another thing that we are doing is that we have two ways of dealing with emotions. One is we follow it, we reinforce it. I’m angry and we really become angry and we live it out. The other way that we have is we’re saying we deny that we’re angry. I’m not really angry and we suppress it.
Buddhism says both attitudes are very unhealthy. Both attitudes lead to sickness. So we’re not practicing either of them. That’s what we’re trying. But we have that habit.
So to find a third possibility, which Buddhism recommends, is difficult in the beginning because you need to look completely different to what is you or what is your emotion and your relationship with your emotions. So what Buddhism says is that emotion is just simply something that arises in the mind. If you follow that and identify with that, it’s like the emotion arises like a big wave but what you do is you jump on the wave and you keep it going. You live it and you become it. Then that can never dissolve back into the mind because you hold onto it somehow.
You try to get rid of it. When you’re angry, try to get rid of it by being angry but what you actually do is holding onto the anger so that anger cannot dissolve into the mind. When we suppress it, we say, I don’t have it. And you push it away. The pushing makes that anger push it back, pushes back because it wants to come up.
That’s its natural tendency to arise in the mind. And you say, I push it back, I push it up. So it becomes worse. So you’re just sitting on this big, you know, ball of emotions coming up and you have to really Some people say, If I allow my emotions to arise, there’s such a huge power down there because constantly they have been suppressing it. So Buddhism says, no, what you do is you let it arise and you see it for what it is and then it will just naturally go.
But you’re not going to follow it and you’re not going to push it away. Right? In the beginning, that can be scary because if you have suppressed it for a long time, the moment you let it come up, have the feeling it’s going to overwhelm me. It will take over and I’m just going to hit somebody, in the case of anger. If you always have lived the anger and you have a very strong identification with the anger, then it can be very scary not to get get angry anymore because you might think, ‘But if I’m not getting angry, who’s taking care of me?
Who’s defending me? Who is protecting me?’ Because anger is our protector. That is how we experience anger. That is how we see anger. True, have you seen it?
We talked about this before. Do the middle way, you have to be more the observer. Yeah. So you’re going to be the observer. Then what we can do is we all have many different emotions.
Sometimes different emotions come up at the same time. What you try to look at is the strongest emotion that comes up. That is what you try to address by many techniques. I’m going to give you many techniques what you can do when emotions come up. After the teaching, I’ll copy you this so that you have it with you at home and that you can read it afterwards and try to practice it.
First of all, we have to become more mindful of what all arises in our mind. In the beginning of this course, we have done mindfulness practices where you sit with your own mind. I can remember that most of you felt that really unpleasant. That was not a nice exercise. Can you remember that?
That you had to sit and just observe what was happening? And it was not nice to do. You didn’t like it. You I can’t you didn’t like it? You It’s okay.
Was just busy, busy, busy, and then the stuff that came up. Yeah. Yeah. And you? Can you remember?
But do you like it to sit down and just observe what is happening? No problem? Good. Are you? Okay.
You you didn’t like it, did you? No. And you didn’t like it? Too busy. Too busy.
Yeah. Then you see too much and you don’t know what to do. Yeah. And then you feel but, actually, what happens is that you just see what is naturally happening there. And then you get upset.
Oh my god, what is happening there? And then you follow that being upset and then it becomes worse and worse. Right? If you want to address the emotions, you will have to do something like that. Otherwise, you can only identify it when it’s really strong in your mind.
The more you can just sit and observe, the more you can start to recognize more subtle differences. In the beginning, if you’re really angry, can say, Yes, I’m angry. But many stages before you are really there. Stages that we don’t recognize as anger. Stages that we don’t see, Oh, if I keep on following this, I know something is going to happen and I’m going to explode.
We don’t know that. But if you sit down, you start to recognize and maybe at a certain day you might discover, Oh, this agitation was maybe before that person arrived who did that stupid thing. If that agitation wouldn’t have been in my mind, I would have no reason to get angry at a person. Maybe you see how we use things that happen around us to ventilate our negative emotions but actually they were already in our mind on a certain level. If you start to see that, you disconnect from then you can see it’s not really there.
The reason why you feel emotions coming up is not really there. It’s just a moment of consciousness that comes up. But because we used to follow that, we look for something. Something. If we feel good, we’re looking for a friend where we have a chat with.
And we share that. And we think, Oh, have such a nice friend. Such a nice connection with that person. But if I feel shit, I’m not going to go to my friend. I’m going to someone that I don’t like.
And then I have a reason to ventilate them. True? But we don’t recognize that. We believe, at the end of the day, that a good feeling really crave for Mary and that bad feeling really crave for Nick because it’s clear why, isn’t it? That’s what we do.
So we blame outside for whatever happens in our mind. Buddhism says our mind is just a stream of moments and these moments things come up. The things that come up have not so much to do with the things that appear in front of us. If you really look at it, they don’t have so much to do with it. But because we have a certain view of ourselves and because we have a certain view of the world, we project whatever we feel onto that.
With the identification that we have with our emotions, we allow certain emotions to come up. And whoever is in front of us that that somehow connects with that emotion, we feel validated to just let that come up and express that. Alright? If you can see that, you can stop doing that. You can stop blaming the other people for whatever you experience.
If you see that things are already naturally in your mind, you can even say, Wow, I can see this agitation this morning in my mind. I better don’t go and see anybody. I’ll better sit with myself and do some nice things so that I can trigger another kind of consciousness to arise in my mind. Something that feels more loving, something that feels more compassionate. Then, when that is in my mind, I’ll go out and I’ll meet people.
If you can recognize the agitation before, you can predict that you’re going to find somebody that you’re going to put it on to. You know? And that is an innocent victim of your anger, actually. Trigger that in her? You know, obviously, that must be something about me that’s why I think that that makes me feel like that because nobody else does.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And maybe there was something in you situation from before, that somebody really doesn’t like you. So there is, like, a sensitivity or, like, a wound in you that, you know, sometimes if you have had experiences in your life I had a friend who wrote me an email this morning. She was so angry.
It didn’t make sense at all what came out of her mouth. What she said is this whole description of having a family where they are all people with very hostile minds. They’re trying to look for somebody to get rid of their anger. What is the best person to get rid of your anger? The person who reacts.
True? The easiest target. What is the easiest victim? The person with the big pain inside of not being acknowledged, having been hurt in the past without any reconciliation. That is the best victim.
So she has these people in her and they’re looking for something. Somebody blew smoke in her face and somebody else said something about it and she said, Yes, I agree with that. Suddenly, five people jumped on top of her, attacking her because of what she was saying. What she did was getting really angry because she was triggered in her pain. She gets angry.
Sorry, I’ve got lost her. Who is she? She’s my friend. Okay, sorry. Friend just made a comment on somebody who was aggressive to her.
She only made a comment. That comment was enough to jump on top of her. Right? She makes that comment with the pain inside because she has experienced this many times. People bully her many times.
So there was the pain of Why are people bullying me? So when it happens again, you express that. On top of the pain, people see the pain and they start bullying you even more. Then you get angry. Then they say, well, you’re the angry person here.
You’re the really nasty person.’ But it is validation of their anger. So I think when that person is there, person, the anger is there, but something in you picks it up and can see it. I can see that she’s a really, really angry person and really unhappy and miserable. Yeah. But she tries to But it does something in you.
It does something in you. Constantly friends with everyone. It does something in you. Just so be she’s taking advantage of the that you are a more open, gentle soul? Oh.
Do you know what I mean? Like, there can be things. You know? There is a hurt. Yeah.
Yeah. So the hurt what is the hurt? Of being I think there’s that fear of being the target of her anger. Yeah. Yes.
So you know this from the past? Yes. I do. Yeah. So So I’m just I’m just I’ve been avoiding her.
I think that’s years. I really, really avoid and avoid and And that’s kind of I feel is making make it worse. Yeah. Because I I can see that anger in this person, and I just don’t want her to hear her. Yeah.
Yeah. So because you see the anger, what you’re doing is you make yourself already the target. You feel you’re an easy target and you’re gonna avoid. That person has not expressed her anger towards you. You start avoiding her because you see the potential for the harm coming.
True? So you seeing you thinking that her anger is your enemy, that’s a wrong perception. What is your enemy is you avoiding her. Because if you avoid her, her anger is somehow justified. Why is she avoiding me?
And she comes after you. That’s what anger does. It’s like if somebody’s angry, that other person wants to void. Then you feel justified. That’s how anger works.
If you have anger in your mind, you’re not getting angry at your friend, do you? We all have anger in our mind. But when a friend is in front of us, that anger doesn’t pop up. So if that person would see you as a friend, her anger cannot do anything. No, that’s not.
That’s why I’m just amazed that she’s so lovely and nice to most people. Who wants to be friends with everyone? If you would be her friend, if she can see you as her friend, you better be her friend. If you want to stop this, you have to make sure that she sees you friend. Fear that I am being true to myself if I do that because I don’t wanna be like that.
I I wanna have nothing. I’d rather have nothing to do with this person. I’m forced to have something to do with her. That’s the problem. But your problem is that you avoid her.
Your problem problem is your conclusion, I don’t want to have anything to do with you. And because of that, fuels her feeling of anger. But if you will go to her and say, I really like you and you give her chocolates and you give her whatever, they will think, Oh, Catherine, she’s a really nice person. As soon as she thinks Catherine is a really nice person, the anger is gone. You won’t see it anymore.
You know, she just doesn’t go away. I don’t want her to go away. That is your fear and your anger saying, I want it to go away. Anger comes from avoiding. Unless you confront it, like actually don’t get that happy and sort of throw it back in her face, you know.
I think she wouldn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t But maybe that can shorten it. This is very subtle psychology, right? What you’re talking about is this is how we deal a normal life. That is an option but in Buddhism we use it in the last place.
First we try to do other options where we really address what is happening in the mind. Because very subtle things happen. The most communication happens without talking, isn’t it? At least seventy percent. Maybe ninety percent.
I mean, we hardly talk. Yeah. Know. But at least Oh, you know from far away. Oh my god, coming.
You feel the energy coming. You feel your own aversion. I wanna get away from it. That’s a chemical thing, isn’t it? So your aversion is a reaction to something that comes.
And maybe her coming coming triggers your memory of something, you know, and you save yourself by walking away. But if you would recognize that that walking away fuels that and that walking away has nothing to do with her, that walking away has something to do with your own experience. Or also with her anger. But you can see that she can be very kind. Can see to other people.
It’s true. So she can be very kind. Is she sincerely kind to the others? So you have to think about that. She’s really kind.
So from Buddhist perspective, if I’m gonna look at karma shut up, Nick. I’m trying to give you a different perspective. Identify where the real problem arises. And as long as you think it comes from her, you cannot change it. Yeah.
That’s true. If you will recognize it, Oh, but that is in me that reinforces the problem, you can change that. That’s the only thing you can change. That’s that, yeah, if I do have any connections or interactions with her, I feel that huge wall in me too because I know that I can see her potential of so much anger and hostility. Yeah.
So that wall, what is that? I feel like I don’t want to even give her the opportunity to let it out. So that wall, is that your protection? Yes. So the wall is your protection and you say that is protecting me from her anger.
I’m going to say that wall is preventing you from being kind to her. That wall is what reinforces her anger, what gives her reason to be angry at you. If you would take the risk to drop the wall, she would drop her anger. I know too that that makes me stand out from the others who don’t have the others who don’t have a lot and who who don’t have an issue with her either. Yeah.
Know I do. Yeah. She’s hard to break down with her. What if you would say to her, I’m really sorry that we can’t connect, but I’m actually very afraid that of your you know, I have the feeling that I’m very If you recognize that that wall is your real enemy and not her, if you see that that wall is what is preventing you to have contact, then you maybe stop thinking that she is the problem. Maybe you start next time when the wall comes up, you recognize, There I put up the wall.
That prevents me from having connection with her. Can I drop it? Or, How can I create a situation that I don’t need to have that wall so strongly? Would you really be in public, become that angry at me? Maybe you do it when other people are there.
Can you drop the wall there? Find a place where for you the risk is not that big so that you can try it. Avoiding looks very innocent, you know, because avoiding you and it’s not I’m not saying you should never avoid. Right? I’m not saying that you should always sometimes avoiding is a very wise thing to do.
Yeah. That’s my thought. I thought it was being wise by avoiding them. Avoid you about accepting the avoidance as another option. You know, just not beating yourself up about it so much.
Just go, you know, it’s the less picturesque. Really what makes me realize that something is not right that because I have to change that because she’s I can’t avoid her. I have to work with her at some stage. You know? I can avoid her personally.
I I don’t have to talk to her about my personal life. I can you know? But she’s a nice person to everybody. Not to everybody. To many people.
Yeah. To people that she wants to be friends with. She’s very nice. Oh, right. Say that again.
Yeah. To people she wants to be friends with. So what kind of people does she wants to be friends with? What is that? I don’t know.
It’s just people that have different values for me. If you can find a similarity with her because that’s why we’re friends, that is a friend, isn’t it? We share something with a friend. If you find something that you can share and you can do that within your values, you you don’t have to give up that. But if you can find something that you both share, then she might see you as a friend and you might see her as a friend.
Then you can drop your wall and she can drop her anger. As long as you see the difference, Oh no, she’s like this, she’s like that, it’s not going to happen. Can you see that? It’s purely if we see, Oh, I share something with you, then I like you, then I can benefit from you, then I want to be friends with you, then I feel good about you, then I feel attachment, then I feel attraction. If I see the difference between you and me, know, and I’m different than you are, I’m definitely different than you are.
I have different values. No way we can become friends. Isn’t it? I put up a wall and that prevents me from really having contact with her. I don’t really want to be friends with her, maybe.
I just want to get along. You wanna be friends At work. Yeah. Out of a selfish reason. If you are friendly with her, friends with her, if you don’t see her as a danger, you feel good.
Yeah. You don’t have to put up your wall. You don’t have to defend yourself, you don’t have to you know, that costs a lot of energy. It does, it does. But if you feel then you feel safe.
With friends you feel safe because they have no reason to harm you. That’s why you want to be friends. And I know that’s what she’s doing. That’s what she she tries to be friends with most people. But How fantastic is that?
Yeah. It’s good for her. Lovely. Maybe she should be an example for you. If you hold on to that, it cannot change.
So you have to sit with that resistance. Soften that. Looking at her good qualities is a way to soften your own resistance. If your resistance softens, she will soften straight away. I can promise you.
If you can see that she’s looking for friends, she’s looking for friends. She’s not looking for enemies. It’s hard, you know, because you have to let go of that what you feel is your protection. And I know. I mean, I can see anyone.
I see any other people. I just need to be sure of it up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So the only thing, you cannot change them and you cannot change their potential to get angry. That is always there. But if they see you as your friend, it will never arise. For me, the beginning it was like, I don’t like that, to be nice to somebody because to get something is just like the buying thing. I had that very strong but I also know now that’s my resistance to really become soft.
And I put that in well. I actually think that the more I have the courage to drop that wall, the more I actually feel really connected to others. There is nothing about this buying or not sincere or it’s not there, you know. That’s me from behind my wall saying, oh, well, I only want to have sincere friendships, which means I only want to have friendships when I can keep that wall whenever I want it. What happens if Catherine goes through the motions and she still gets stomped on them?
What if this woman is It won’t Because she says the woman is looking for friends. She did not say this woman is looking for enemies. This woman is looking for somebody. I think she doesn’t know what to think of me either. No.
She just doesn’t know where I’m at because we don’t talk to each other. We do it for each other. I think she probably doesn’t like me. So she just doesn’t know who I am at all. No.
And maybe she is passive aggressive. Maybe she has a lot of suppressed aggression, right? But people who have that normally try to be very kind, normally try to be very good people. You can tune into that tendency of her. She wants to be a good person.
She wants to be friends. She suffers maybe tremendously from you not having that connection. You can do that in practice. Okay, so be mindful of that, what happens in your own mind, what arises in my own mind and owning that and sitting with that. That’s the only thing we can change.
If you just change your thinking, that changes the action without having to do like, it be enough to work on the wall without having to say, come and have coffee and be there by you? I think when walk on a wall, one day it just comes out of your mouth. Let’s have a coffee. And you think, Oh my God, what did I say? But it’s a natural thing.
A natural thing arises naturally. It comes naturally out of your mouth. Suddenly this kind were to her and she will naturally react quietly back. You think, What was that? Just in the moment when you work on that wall, one moment you forget the wall and there it can happen.
This is karma? We listen negative to karma, isn’t it? I think it’s changing your habit. What Catherine has done is due to certain experiences, you react to that. That’s karma, isn’t it?
We have experience then we have the choice. How are we going to react to that? There’s a reaction that happened a long time ago. Then whatever happens after that reinforces that reaction, validates that reaction so you keep on hanging on to the same reaction. As long as that reaction is there, you create more of the same karma.
And it has become a habit which means that it is a very strong karma. It is very difficult to cut that karma. In order to cut the karma you have to change the habit. Sometimes things happen one time to you and that’s it. That karma is finished.
There was no reaction that’s just done, finished. If something happens to you and you react to it, it’s something that has happened more times before where you had the same reaction. Now she has to work on that reaction. If she can stop that reaction, the karma will stop. Alright?
And yes, somebody might punch you, you know? And if you can receive that and say, Okay, now I’m just going to feel the pain that comes with the punch and I’m not going to punch back. The karma is finished. But you punching back means that it will come back again and it will come back again. Not only is it going to come back again but you have the tendency, you create a habit of responding again and again with punching back.
You know? So you become that angry person. Yes. But that is what you have to see. Hey, if I can change that part of me, my life is going to be so much more pleasant.
That is where you have to look at. It’s not even if it has nothing to do her. It’s you. Just imagine your day if you would have a nice relationship with her. Imagine your day.
How fantastic. Not only Yeah, well, there’s actually two, there’s three people like there at work so I can work on all three of them. Yeah. No, you only work on this. Oh, yeah.
Well, this You work on this and then it has a natural effect for all three of them. Yeah. Mindfulness. I think when you see it coming, you know when you really got to focus on the wall? Every time when you see it coming, can do something.
Oh, there is the wall again. When I have the wall, I’m going to trigger that. I don’t want to trigger that. Stay soft, stay soft. There’s no reason now to have the wall.
You can talk to yourself why you encounter that but you have to practice first on your cushion to make your mind more Yeah, having that awareness. Yeah, it’s about having the awareness. So that’s one thing having the awareness. Then the second thing is that as soon as emotions come up, for instance, the anger comes up or the resistance comes up or jealousy comes up, Remember, emotions are not solid. Emotions are not permanent.
Emotions are something that comes and goes. I don’t have to follow it. I don’t have to live it. If you’re in the supermarket and you’re again in the wrong line, you know, always in the longest line I don’t know if you do that but the agitation comes up and you can be impatient with the person behind the counter. But if you see it, okay, there the anger is.
There’s my tendency to get angry. I don’t have to follow it. Seeing it as just something that comes up, you know. Just let it be there, but you don’t have to become that. Or suppress it.
Just let be. So you stop thinking I’m angry. What you’re going to think is anger is arising in my mind. That’s okay. Know, anger is in my mind.
That’s okay. We have all kinds of emotions arising in the mind due to long term karma. No problem. We cannot stop that. It’s in my mind.
I don’t have to do anything with that. I can look at it. How does it look like? Where does it want to go? I don’t have to follow it.
I don’t have to take it seriously. But we do. We think it’s us. Hey, I have to take myself seriously. Otherwise, who’s going to do it?
But you don’t have to do it. If you see what anger really does to you, you know, you shouldn’t take it that seriously anymore. Maybe something that you feel, Oh, I don’t want to give that to myself. But we go into that, what anger does. Then the other thing is what we’re doing.
We judge ourselves very badly when negative emotions come in our mind. We are bad, bad, bad, isn’t it? Especially the girls. We’re not supposed to be like that. I don’t know how you feel that.
Exclude you a little bit. We beat ourselves up when negative emotions come in our mind. We are completely bad when that happens. We have to try to think, I’m not bad. An emotion comes up and an emotion goes, It doesn’t make me bad.
It makes human. This is just a result from past karma. If you beat yourself up, that’s the kind of suppression that you do. Plus on top of that, it’s an anger towards yourself. So what you’re doing is you reinforce anger, anger, anger.
What trying to do is you’re trying to develop loving relationships with others but first of all, create that with yourself too. You are just a normal human being that has emotions surfacing in the mind. Sometimes positive, sometimes negative. You have a choice what you’re going to practice and what you want to reinforce and what you want to discard. That will take time in order to develop that to another state of mind.
In the meantime, this is where you at. You don’t have to judge yourself. This is just where you are at. Due to many, many causes and conditions for many lifetimes, you are here. There’s nothing wrong or nothing good about it.
Nothing inherently wrong or inherently good. This is just where you are. We can only start where we are. So first we have to accept where we are and stop the judging. Right?
We all have good qualities. We all have negative qualities. No problem. They say the Buddha is nonjudgmental, you know. An enlightened being is non-judgmental.
If you think about somebody in front of you, we talked about that, that you feel the unconditional love, that’s If you feel that, it’s such a relief. You can drop so much of your own tension, you know. What we are doing is judging ourselves constantly and we get tense. We want to try to live up to ideals or to standards that maybe our parents have set out for us or society has set out for us. If we don’t live up to that, we create this whole tension in ourselves.
But if somebody would come to us and say, However you are, wherever you are, you’re perfect, you’re good enough, and really gives you that feeling, we can drop it. Suddenly we feel good, isn’t it? Suddenly we do feel happy with ourselves. Suddenly we do feel content with ourselves. We do feel appreciation for ourselves.
And if you feel that naturally all the good qualities are there, love compassion for others is naturally there. A big part of our problem is this self beating up, this self judgment. A way to deal with that is when you do meditations, visualize a person that can give unconditional love in the form of a Buddha or in the form of Amma or in the form of Christ or in the form of whatever represents that for you and visualize that love coming to you unconditionally. How does it feel like if everything in me is completely accepted without any judgment? Feel it.
And then sit with that feeling and feel how wonderful that is and how many good qualities naturally arise when you have that feeling. That’s where we want to go with ourselves. And if we can do that, we can give so much to others. Then if you have taken off that and then still negative emotions arise, then we can do a reality check. For instance, I get really angry, you know, or this person really is looking for me.
You could say, So who is this me? Who is this me that is angry? Or who is this me that this person is looking for? And I’m going to investigate, you know. Is this me in the body?
What is that person looking for? Is that in the body? That’s not in the body. Is that me? Is that in my mind?
No, it’s not in my mind. Where is it? Where is that solidity that I feel so strongly when I feel the danger coming or when I feel the anger coming? Where is that solidity? By investigating it’s like, that’s actually not there.
In reality, it’s not there. What am I cultivating in my mind about something that is not there? So that’s your reality check. And then another thing that you can do is that when you experience certain emotions, we always have the feeling, I’m the only person experiencing this. This ‘I’ becomes so strong and this ‘I’ becomes so separate from others and we think, Only this ‘I’ is suffering from that.
Nobody understands us. Nobody knows what we go through. And we feel so separate from everybody else. That separation is a result of that contraction. So if we’re going to think about others who have similar kinds of experiences or maybe worse kinds of experiences, Then that contraction loosens up again.
And we think, Oh, actually I’m not alone. I’m actually sharing this problem with many, many, many human beings. Or maybe also animals have the same kind of problems. How many animals have this problem? Oh my god, so many animals!
And they’re even worse off than me because they can’t do this and this and and this and I can’t do this. So these are general things that you can do when emotions come up. Five things. I’ll copy them for you. Then do we start with anger, or do we start having a break?
What do we do? I wanna go really good in front. Keep going. I like chores. My chores too.
I can also I’m just looking. I can also start with attachment. Attachment is more difficult to see, you know? Anger is if we don’t get what we want or if we get what we don’t want. Isn’t it?
Then we get angry. So Underneath the anger is I want something. Either I want something or I want to be separated from something. That word is underneath is attachment. If attachment doesn’t get what it wants, anger arises in the mind.
Anger is something that we can recognize easier than attachment. Attachment is more subtle. Attachment is more difficult to recognize. It’s also more difficult to recognize because it’s so mixed with pleasure. Anger is just aversion.
We’re very clear about that. Anger is something I don’t want. You can have the mind and you have what you don’t want. Very easy to separate. It’s all negative.
It’s completely negative. Attachment, there are actually things that are really nice that I would like to have. Looks like attachment both look like they are serving us but one is serving us and getting us what we want. So if we’re going to talk about the negative aspects of we think, Hey, but if I let go of attachment, I can’t get what I want. Right?
That makes it harder to really understand that. When we get angry, we direct our anger normally towards other people or towards ourselves or towards inanimate objects. Right? The hammer or the table or whoever is not fulfilling our wishes. Anger, I’m not sure.
I don’t they don’t call aversion anger, but aversion is definitely that which can lead to anger anger. But anger is there in in in a whole range of, how do say that? You have you have a little bit of agitation until rage. Isn’t it? A spectrum.
A whole big spectrum. Yeah. If we look at the opposite for anger, then in order to how do I get rid of my anger?’ One thing is to apply the antidote. So you have to know what is the opposite of anger. Anger means that you have a harmful intent towards others, or towards yourself, or towards something inanimate.
Your mind is agitated. So the opposite in the mind of anger is that you’re patient. Patience is a mind that is not moved by anything, that is not disturbed by harm. So it’s a mind that is completely flat no matter what happens to you. Anger is a mind that reacts to whatever happens to you.
So in order to work with the anger, we try to develop patience. That’s one thing. Another thing that helps to reduce the anger is that the opposite of anger is lovingkindness. We just talked about that with your example, Catherine. If your friend from work, your colleague if you would love your colleague, she would be your friend.
You feel love and kindness. If you feel love and kindness for your friend, you want your friend to be happy. The wish for somebody to be happy is different. It’s completely opposite of the wish to harm somebody. True?
So there are two things that you can practice. One is trying to make your mind very steady and very stable by seeing all the negative qualities of getting angry, of seeing all the reasons why you should not get angry at that person so that whatever happens you don’t get disturbed. Another way is by developing loving-kindness. The more loving-kindness we have in our mind for others, the less the anger can arise. It just can’t arise because you see a kind person.
The Dalai Lama says, Everybody that I see, I see an old friend. That’s his loving-kindness. Anger can never arise because he sees an old friend. Oh, I recognize you. I can do that with my father.
I love anger. That that one person is your gateway to enlightenment. If you practice patience with all the other people except that one, you can’t get enlightened. But if you only practice that one, that will bring you to enlightenment. Oh, I guess.
You’re right. You’re right. Right? We try to say, I’m a good person. I can do it with everybody except that one.
I’ve just realized because she comes up in my dreams, and I know that, you know, there’s something I have to do about this because I feel it’s perpetuating. I’m perpetuating my situation and it’s for So you have to see where is your contribution and take responsibility for that. And then see how can you shift that so that you feel good about yourself. It’s not about you beating yourself up and you’re at the fault and you’re doing the wrong thing. It’s not like that.
It’s like, where can I be more skillful with myself, with my reactions? And to benefit myself. To benefit myself. Do it with a very selfish reason. And the more you can benefit yourself, the more happy you are, the more happy your whole situation at work is.
And definitely she’s going be more happy. But if Sorry, can that not also lay you open to being taken advantage of? Like Yes. But in Tibet. Military junta in Burma.
I mean, all all the right motivation and and and aptitude, you can potentially be just taken for a ride. Yeah. Yeah. You don’t have to go that far away to But in a sense, though, it’s like So what you need is you need clear wisdom. And wisdom is not easy to develop.
If you have wisdom and I’ll play back, right? Because this is good if you bring things like this up. If you know karma and you know that abuse can only happen if you have created the causes for abuse. You can only stop abuse from happening in the future if you stop creating the causes for abuse in the future. So one thing is all karma is still happening.
You’re still experiencing the results from previous karma. The other thing is reaction that is going to create karma for the future. So you cannot do anything about the old karma that has been created. You can try to avoid situations but that’s the only thing you can do. You can’t stop creating karma for the future.
What she can say is if you can see that building that wall is actually triggering something in the other person which perpetuates that whole process, you can say I can stop doing that. She cannot stop if that other person really wants to get angry. She can’t stop that other person. But if she does the practice of letting go of that wall and feels safe in herself doing that anger won’t affect her. She has found a place in her mind where she can be safe and secure and that other person can be angry or not.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect her anymore. Right? That is where you go to. That you find an attitude that no matter what anybody does to you, it’s not affecting you.
The aversion is: There is a pain and I can’t deal with it and I can’t feel the pain. The pain is too big. If you go into the pain, compassion will come. Compassion for yourself, compassion for the other person. If that compassion is there, that is your protection.
Compassion is a completely open heart. That’s a loving heart. If you get angry, I only feel love for you. You you know, it’s like you can’t harm me with your anger. What really harms me is my reaction back.
Hey, don’t you dare to get angry at me. That’s what is harming me. Right? If we contemplated the suffering we did that in one of the first weeks thinking about the suffering that we all experience the more you contemplate on that, the more you really have the courage to feel the suffering, the more compassion can arise in your mind. Aversion is I can’t bear the suffering.
I can’t bear the suffering. I can’t bear the suffering. So you push the suffering away, you’re not sitting with the suffering, you’re not sitting with the pain. If you can completely experience the pain, the pain is gone. The biggest pain is that aversion that you can’t feel it.
There is this idea, Oh my God, it’s huge. If I’m going to feel that, I can’t survive. That is the biggest pain. As soon as you’ve felt it, the pain is gone. You think, What was that about?
Why did I defend myself my whole life? Because the pain is not that big. But maybe at one stage in your life you did put that information in your mind that you cannot afford to feel the pain because it’s too big. Right? Then you keep on carrying that information but maybe your situation changes and you grow up and you become an adult.
Looking with an adult body and an adult mind at that situation that you first felt was unbearable, it’s maybe not that big a deal anymore. So then when you have the courage to experience that, the pain of resisting the pain is gone And feeling the pain, normally that’s the smallest pain. The pain itself is the smallest thing. Fighting your own resistance, that’s the biggest thing. That’s the most difficult.
So if you completely allow the pain to be there, the pain disappears naturally, then nobody can harm you no matter what they do with you. So what I say with bodhisattvas, what we try to practice, is they swallow defeat. Swallow defeat. Rinpoche said to me, You swallow defeat, Jamyang. Swallow it and take You take it on board.
You take it completely on board. You take in all the pain that people give you. You take it on board and you feel it completely. That is the practice. Because if I can feel it, if I can allow to feel it, if I can bear the pain patience is being able to bear the pain.
That’s one part of patience. Your mind is not disturbed anymore even if the pain is there. Know? It’s like you can how to say? The biggest pain is that something is unbearable.
The moment we can bear it, it’s not a pain anymore. True? Yeah. So what we’re trying to do is to bear it. If you know how to bear it, it’s gone.
It’s not a pain. Can you understand that? Yeah. So something that for other people might be a pain for you, it’s not. Yeah.
The more you can take it on, what people give you, without reacting you react out of aversion. You react because you can’t bear the pain. You react to prevent yourself from feeling pain. That’s what you’re doing. But that reaction IS the pain.
So when you stop that reaction, know, first yes there is pain. Yes, you feel things that you don’t like but if you work through that, then there is a certain point you come in your mind, you don’t feel pain anymore. You can see if somebody gets angry, My god, are you okay? You’re my friend. Are you okay?
You’re so upset. Another person thinks, Oh, I’m angry at this very kind person. You can’t be angry at a kind person. You check yourself. You can’t.
It’s very, very difficult. You feel embarrassed when you get angry at a kind person. Or when you get angry and somebody reacts back with kindness, you feel ashamed. You think, what did I do? That person doesn’t deserve that.
But if the person gets angry back, you think, I was right because that person does deserve it, isn’t it? So the best protection to people getting angry at us is to develop a very, very big, good heart. To ostensibly diffuse it? To diffuse it. Diffuse it.
Extinguish it. Yeah. I would say the opposite. Yeah. I don’t know.
But that can be a personal thing. So maybe you haven’t addressed that real that wall. You know, maybe you found a way with with the people who are very close to you to avoid and that they don’t touch you, but there’s still a wall. I thought I should say more practice with them because I’m more interaction with them. Yeah.
Maybe too. Oh, no. I would debate that, actually, because you see that person every day in your work. And you have identified the problem as being coming from your family, not coming from you. You know, so you have dealt with that in your family but not with that part of you.
So you should be grateful, you know, because these people give you the opportunity to really look at that stuff. They say it’s a bodhisattva, you know, who takes on that suffering again and again and again. At a certain point, everybody develops so much love and compassion. Everybody’s kind to them. They are looking for people who get angry at them.
Because when an angry arises, that reaction arises and you can work with them. If everybody’s kind, where can you work? It’s nothing to do with your own mind. Everybody knows. Isn’t it?
They say at a certain point you’re longing for people who try to harm you because that’s the only place where you can check your practice, where you can I don’t think it’s really boring but Stimulation, anger? Well, I’ve had pain in the back of side. I’m very grateful. Meditating on my sickness. Meditating on my sickness.
Me see if I talked about all this. Yeah. I think we did all that. So when anger arises, the antidotes to anger, I’m gonna talk about that. First of all, think about all the faults or the disadvantages of anger.
You think and be very selfish Buddhism is practicing a very healthy selfishness. The more wisdom you have, you’re doing it for you. And the more you do it for you in a healthy way, the more you can benefit others. You can only benefit others when you do it for you. If you don’t do it for you, you can’t benefit anybody else.
I think the Buddha, he checked and he said, I’ve looked in the whole universe but I’m loving myself most. I’m the person who knows myself most. So to I’m the one who has to love myself most in the best way, in the most healthy way. React constantly for me, me, me who wants something and who doesn’t want something. We’re the only people who can do that.
So, if we take care of that reaction that constantly happens, we take care of the whole universe. It’s the only thing we can do. True? Good. But we don’t do that with avoiding.
We do that with completely being there for everybody, with completely opening up, but understanding that if we open up completely, that will lead us to biggest result for ourselves and for others. Disadvantages of anger. Look at what it does to your body and to your mind. How does it feel when we get angry? Are we happy?
Awful. Awful. How does it feel? Poisoned. Poisoned?
Total loss. You feel lost? No, no. I’ve lost everything. You lost everything?
The good things? Yeah. Because sometimes it can bring all other emotions like guilt or you make yourself feel sick and all other things come in with it. Yeah. So we don’t have any control?
How do we feel physically? Hey, Lena. So bad that you’ve tried to die. Yeah. No good.
What happens to the body, to a heartbeat, to a blood pressure? You can die. You go mad. Stomach ulcers. Ulcers.
Yeah. Attacks. Attacks. Migraines. Migraines.
Cancer. Cancer? Yeah. But you can also see the relationship with anger, isn’t it? It’s a destruction.
Every destruction that happens, you know. I’m not sure if I could say that but it’s a very destructive energy. I think the whole life is already in the nature of destruction because that’s just the nature of life, isn’t it? Things come into existence and go out of existence. But anger contributes very strongly to that getting out of existence.
So in terms of the body, it is very much focused upon destroying, destroying your own body. It destroys your own body. It destroys your own health. And it destroys you know, if you let it out, you destroy other people or you destroy your environment or you destroy. If you contemplate on the effects of that, if you look at the mind, what it does, it destroys all the positive things that we build up in the mind.
It’s very difficult to build up positive states of mind. Somehow, our society creates this image that we can naturally feel good if we just get what we want. Isn’t it? We feel good. But if you really look, feeling good has to do with love, has to do with compassion, has to do with generosity.
It doesn’t have to do with getting what we want. Getting what we want can actually make us quite sick. But developing these qualities as love and compassion is very, very difficult. It’s not something that naturally arises in the mind. Maybe sometimes, a moment, but normally it’s hard work, isn’t it?
It’s very easy for negative emotions to arise. It’s very easy for us to follow that and to cultivate that. It’s very difficult to cultivate the positive emotions. So when we try to do that, when we practice, we try to cultivate that positive state of mind. Then when anger comes, it not only destroys that positive state of mind that we have in that moment, but it actually destroys your merit.
Merit is that what brings you good fortune. Merit is that what ripens happiness. Anger destroys that. So it also takes away our happiness for the future. Things that we worked on really, really hard to create causes for happiness in the future, we destroy it with anger.
So the short term, there’s a negative effect for us and in the long term, there’s also a negative effect. If you have periods that you’re really, really angry, you can actually destroy, you know. It can take you years to go back to where you were before. So anger is very, very dangerous. And then you can look at your relationships.
What does anger do with your relationships? You know, how many effort do we put into relationships? One moment of anger, people say, Oh my God, this is Jamyang. I don’t want to be close to her. Did you see what Right?
So relationships are very fragile. And if people experience harm from us, they don’t want to be with us anymore. They don’t trust us. They don’t so it’s not good for our relationships. People want to be with people they like.
True? There is again maybe, you know, I can never be the way I am. I’ve said that for a long time. Can never be the way I am. People don’t accept me the way I am.
People have to accept me. But if people don’t like you, you know, it’s like they don’t accept you. Very easy. They walk away from you. They don’t want to be with you.
And you can keep on waiting for the person who has unconditional love for you and accepts you the way you are. But if you’re not a nice person, that person is not going to appear. Maybe God one day will appear, but even for God to appear or for Buddha to appear, you need a lot of causes and conditions. You need an open mind. You need a mind that is ripe to see the Buddha.
You need a mind that is ripe to see that person who can love unconditionally. You have to create that causes. They’re not coming out of the blue. They’re not coming just because you’re special in you feeling, you know, wanting to be accepted the way you are. They’re not coming to that.
Right? So that’s why we have to work on being kind. It’s for us. Selfish. Right?
It’s not to get that other person to do what you want. I think that’s the nasty bit of being kind to somebody, having your motivation. You’re not doing that so that that person is going to do what you want. You’re doing that because you feel much better, because you can better achieve what you want to achieve. If I want to get enlightened, I need many helpers on my path.
Right? There’s going to be a time that I’m going to have I’m thinking about Lamas, right? Lama Zopa Rinpoche. He has ten thousand of students. He cannot answer the mail himself.
He can’t. He needs helpers. He can’t organize his office on his own. He can’t organize his whole organization on his own. He’s only one person.
He needs many, many, many helpers. When does somebody want to help you? When they experience benefit from you. So if you really want to get enlightened to help others, you better make sure that you create good relationships so that others are going to help you to do the job. Otherwise you can’t do it.
Selfish. It’s not because I want you to do something for me. It’s like I want to be enlightened. In recognizing that I do need work to be done. I want to reach as many people as possible.
I can’t do that on my own. So how fantastic if you could help me. So then I can see your kindness because you have the potential to help me. And if I see that kindness, I naturally want to benefit you. And if I benefit you, you naturally want to give something back.
So then we don’t have to worry about the sucking part anymore. And then you don’t worry about the sucking part or the abusive part. Exactly. We don’t to think about that because we’re doing it for selfish reasons. Yeah.
Well, it’s not we let selfish though. You’re doing it for yourself in order to necessary. But there is this part of us that if you feel used as a doormat, there is a lack of wisdom. Right? It’s not about, Yes, let yourself be used as a doormat.
If you get that feeling, there is something not right. Normally you have to check your motivation. If your motivation is good, you know it’s going to benefit you. But if you see really harm, you’re protecting yourself. Maybe you’re practicing that it’s too advanced for you.
Maybe you have to say, Oh, I can’t handle this. Get out of that situation. If you feel used as a doormat, it’s not good. It’s not what you want practice. Right?
But then how you protect yourself from that, that’s maybe there are different options in that. That’s not actually saying, ‘Hey, you can’t use me as a doormat.’ There are more options, you know? Yeah. I do want to go for the coffee, otherwise we don’t have time for yeah. Yeah.
Probably we’ll I’ll I’ll try to finish the anger and the attachment today, and then the next time we go into the other emotions, like fear and anxiety and depression and things like that. Oh, I’ll give you a copy. How does that look like when I step two minutes away from it? And you try to step away and see that, which is different than being that way. Right?
So if So we better think about that now because this is not an inherent quality that I have or own or it’s just coming together of personal conditions. And it can’t be like that. It can’t be like that. But it’s not me. And I better don’t get any credit.
I know I’ll give myself credit for that. But that quality that brought you to to to that, that’s still your quality. That doesn’t appear that you’re putting on functioning. That quality is still there. You also have to see that.
Your positive thinking, your determination to get over problems, that is still there. That is not touched by a disease. That, you can take credit for that. Mhmm. And you can be proud of that.
That’s a pride that is not gonna harm you. You know? That’s a pride. That quality will always be there. You can always use that.
No matter how bad your body is, if you have the determination to overcome your suffering and you keep on applying, you keep on trying, that is really you who keeps on trying. I think there’s a lot more space in your mind. Yeah. Which feels lighter, which feels like you know? If you keep on doing, the happiness is gonna gonna surface because that is naturally in your mind.
You know? That’s naturally in your heart. It’s just too cloudy, You were gonna make a very good start. And for lifetimes to come, you’re gonna continue to work. It’s not a work that we finish in one life.
You know? We just make a start. And you put yourself on a path, and you that is