Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40-minute session, Ven Jamyang teaches how ancient Buddhism approaches anger, showing how modern psychology rediscovers what Buddhism outlined millennia ago. He begins with anger’s destructive qualities and its antidotes—love and kindness—then moves to the core practice: when harmed, apply karma’s logic to look inward rather than blame outward. He covers techniques for recognizing anger sooner, seeing the other person’s perspective so harm feels less personal, and distinguishing genuine compassionate action from suppressed anger masquerading as wrathfulness. A central theme: welcome difficulties as training; without suffering, there is no practice. The final section emphasizes self-compassion during training—be kind to yourself, gradually catching anger sooner and its duration shortening. Includes daily mindfulness meditation homework.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2007 11 27 jamyang – session 2 271107.mp3
UUID: 25e2f163-1f7c-420a-99a0-2acdd4101e3a
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2007-11-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.9 minutes
Words: ~5,188
Yes. So I’m gonna do commercial. Great. Wow. Music play.
People who are very happy to donate money. And then what they are doing is they create little books, and then they give them away for free so that everybody can have the teachings from Lama Yeshe. So we’re now in the end of the line where we can see. So I have one is Becoming Your Own Therapist. You This one I get back to you.
Yeah. But you don’t have a new one? No. Alright. So this has two books.
Think the first that they did is very tiny one. Mhmm. There’s all kind of talks that he gave in us many are in Australia, actually. But this book also has the book, make your mind an ocean in it. So these are actually two little it’s like, oh my god.
Can I have it? Doesn’t want to. So tell me which which one you wanna have. You have to start somewhere. Do you wanna have this one?
Yeah. Yeah. I think that one. This one? You missed out with something.
This is really commitment therapy. Have you heard of it? That’s an old one. It is in Buddhism, but it’s new to Australia. Right.
I know it from Holland from at least twenty years ago. Oh, really? As a Western thing or as a Buddhist No. No. Western thing.
Okay. So I need to have a teacher that has to give you. Yeah. And there are many therapies in Holland Yeah. That are not coming here.
And I think, oh, you know, there’s so much in there that you can do with that. They’re working so much with the mind. They’re trying to do, you know, so many experiments, people with themselves. But here, it’s just not here. It’s just not happening and I don’t know what it is.
It’s not the first time. No. But people feel like oh, this is new, you know? But actually it’s not that new. But it doesn’t mean it’s not valid or it doesn’t mean it’s not helpful.
It’s like acceptance. I think it’s bearing the pain. Isn’t it? It’s very Buddhist. Everything that works and now this is my real promotion everything that works, you can find it back in Buddhism.
That’s what’s so amazing with this modern psychology. Every single technique, theory, discourse, there’s a parallel. That’s about two thousand years older. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s amazing. And then people say this is new. You know? But, no, it’s all in here. It’s all in here.
It’s just we have to learn to read it in the language that we understand and then we can practice it because sometimes it is a little bit hidden and it’s a little bit packed in packages that are not really attractive to us. You and I were talking earlier about Buddhism for busy people. That’s a great introduction. It really is quite rudimentary. Sort of The the videotape?
No. No. Oh, what is it? This is like a paperback. Is it?
It’s about three hundred pages written by an advertising executive. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah. But there’s no new either. There’s no new knowledge.
Every everything that can be thought is. Yeah. Well, we we pack it differently. You know? And we really like nice papers.
Isn’t it? Even the bible’s like that. Nothing new out of this on. There’s nothing new out this on. I think what is new in this age age is that we are living in degenerate age which means it is an age where the delusions are getting stronger and stronger and stronger.
That’s very new. So in order to understand this this old the tools, we have to relate to the tools with where we are now. And there is many times a big discrepancy because these were created when the delusions were not that strong. So when we read about attachment, we might not recognise what we’re talking about. So we have to think how does attachment look like in our society?
And then we can say, Ah, I recognise that, I recognise that and then you know what to do. So that makes a little bit of a gap between Buddhism. And That’s a cultural thing too, though, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.
America as opposed to twenty first century America, totally different places. Yeah. True. Australians then. Oh, god.
Yeah. Yeah. You. Sorry to interrupt. Did you want me to stay for him or just That will be great.
Okay. If you can do that. Yeah. Great. Thank you.
I think it’s really quite innocent compared to if you go to Europe. It’s very, very innocent. Innocent. Very I quite like it, you know, because And it hasn’t put an imprint on the world like the States has. Okay.
And anger. We just go through that disadvantages, the So first of all, contemplate the faults of anger. There are books written about that. There is one book which is called the Bodhisattva Way of Life from Śāntideva and Geshe la teaches that on every Tuesday night. And there is a chapter on anger.
In other words, a chapter on patience which talks about if somebody hurts us or if we feel harmed or if we feel threatened or, you know, if we see things happening, what do we do? You can put it under. If you want to go into it, it’s a long chapter. Geshe-la spoke many many weeks so I cannot repeat that. But if you look at the destructive quality of anger, you know, maybe that’s just a good start and to check again and again what do I want.
Do I want people to be happy or do I actually wanna destroy something? If I wanna destroy, I wanna harm, stop yourself. You That, I think, is good enough for now. The next thing is that you try to practice the antidote which is love and kindness. For instance, if the girl at Catherine’s work she said: I can see that she has good qualities because she’s very kind to this person and very kind to that person and very kind to her children.
If you really would see the kindness, your anger will drop. Isn’t it? Don’t think that I’m angry, I think she is angry. Or did I say your wall will drop? The wall comes from aversion.
You’re constantly in aversion and from aversion comes anger. So when this girl would do one thing, you would have reasons to be angry. You would have many reasons to be angry. But it hasn’t happened yet. But it’s almost like it’s there.
The potential for the BAM to explode is there. Definitely there. Yeah. One thing the girl has to do only one thing and you have right. You are right in exploding and getting angry at her.
True? Yeah. So what you’re saying, she has so much. Yeah. Put it there.
That would be great. Thank you so much, Hillary. A precious jewel. Fantastic. Thank you, Hilary.
So you say, oh, she can explode any moment. But you create for yourself a situation that you explode at any moment. So in that sense That’s why I’m avoiding her. Yeah. But then it becomes different, isn’t it?
Then you avoid her maybe not because she’s going to explode but you might explode. And then everybody thinks you are angry but actually you saw that she’s angry. This is how we do it, isn’t it? This is how we all do it. Do something about your own anger?
Yes. Yes. Be wisely angry is a very difficult thing. You know, it’s like the Dalai Lama has said for many, many, many years, anger under no circumstances do you allow that to, you know, to focus on other beings? He now says you can use that energy wisely.
You know? For instance, if the child doesn’t wanna listen, blah blah blah, then you can use that anger to stop the child from constantly going over boundaries. But that’s compassion. So and what I see is that many Westerners, they feel like, oh, so I can use the anger and they pretend they’re wrathfully compassionate but actually they’re angry. Ruffled.
Ruffled. For instance, I say, so I know you’re going to shut up. Right? And I’m not saying that to harm you but I’m saying that because I want the energy back in the group and I want to have the communication happening. I’m doing that to benefit.
Right? And I see that you can’t stop yourself and that you will then I use a method to bring you back. That comes from compassion. That doesn’t come from harming you. Or anger.
So that’s okay. Many times what we do because we have already such a problem with that anger to let it arise, when we have that tendency to suppress it, then we’re going to be ruffled. And I’m not angry, I’m just wrathful. Right? I think as long as we have suppressed anger, we are not wrathful.
We’re actually angry and we’re looking for a way to justify ourselves. Right? So I’m not such a I wouldn’t say, you know, use your anger. I would say first learn to work with your own anger and free that completely. All that things that you have suppressed, free that.
And if you feel completely happy and at peace with yourself with all your reactions then maybe you can direct it in a wrathful way. Positively. But otherwise I wouldn’t go there. So when anger comes up, first of all when somebody harms you, remember karma. Remember cause and effect.
I used for quite a while as practice every time when somebody hurt me I would say I must have done that in the past. I must have done the same in the past. So I would say, I don’t see it as always, I must have done the same in the past. And I have this as a thing that keeps on going I must have done the same in the past. It’s like that moment you can say that and you can look into your own mind and I would say, So what is it in me what would do that?
Where would I do that? Where do I recognize that from? Where have I done it to others? If I can find that, there’s no reason to be angry at that person. I can say, Alright, this is something coming back to me now.
If I get angry now at her, I know it’s going to come back again. I better stop it and I forgive her and I’m kind back. I can say, Thank you for doing that. Because if I can see that own tendency in my own mind, I create a lot of wisdom about my own mind. I get more control over my own mind.
I can stop myself doing it. Stop myself doing the same kind of things. Right? That’s the way how you can do it. What we normally do is somebody harms us with blame, isn’t it?
The thing that goes on. Saying, I must have done the same in the past or saying, That must be a result of my own karma means that we stop pointing the finger out. It means that we stop the karma from progressing in the same kind of way. Point the finger inside. In the beginning that can be hard because we all want to have how to say we all have hurt.
We all want that hurt to be seen. We all want that hurt to be acknowledged. In order to do that we do point outside. Then we have to point that finger inside where there is already so much hurt and then we have to say it’s all coming from me. Oh my god.
But the hurt, I know it’s coming from that person. So in the beginning it’s really painful. So you have to be kind to yourself too. You know? It’s not about blaming yourself.
That what you do with that other person, that’s not how you do it. You don’t blame in the sense of you’re a bad person. That’s the message that we give, isn’t it? You’re a bad person. You’re harming me.
So that’s what we point back. I’m a bad person. I did that myself. It’s not like that. karma means just a natural law.
Something is coming back. karma is like dropping the glass and knowing it’s going to fall down. karma means that if I hit you knowing that hit is going to come back. If I have that clear knowledge, I’m not going to hit you. You know, it’s stupid.
Because as soon as I do it, I can see it’s going to come back. I can feel the hurt already myself. So that stops me from doing it. That’s karma. It’s not blame.
Not blaming others, not blaming yourself. Does that help? Even when you do this, three fingers are pointing to you and you not That’s what I say. But you don’t want to do that. If you do that, if you bring the blame to you, we know how painful that is, isn’t it?
It really hurts. So maybe we can learn the lesson. If I do that to other people, that’s also very painful. Maybe that helps too not to do that. You’re actually harming when you do that.
Then you can think about what is going on for that other person and put yourself in his or her position and try to see the situation from his or her perspective. That doesn’t justify harm that has been done but it can soften you and your reaction. You can understand, it’s logic that a person does it because of this and this and and this, you know it’s not personally. You know it’s not towards you. It’s not me who’s going to be harmed.
It’s just that person had a reason to do that and you were just there. Right? So you get a little bit you soften. And if you soften, you don’t react with anger. React more with compassion.
Well, then you can think about seeing the anger. If you see the anger in another person, we’re asking, So what is it in me that is similar in that? Normally when we judge somebody, they say and that’s also modern psychology isn’t it? That person probably has something that you haven’t accepted about yourself. So you’re going look what is that?
What am I judging? What am I angry about? And where can I find that in myself? Maybe you can’t find it, right? But what you’re doing is you take all the energy that you put into that other person, you take that and you put it to yourself.
Where is that in me? Just looking in yourself where you have the same tendency is not going to harm anybody. And maybe you see very interesting things. And maybe you don’t see that tendency but maybe you see other tendency and think, Wow, I didn’t know I was doing that. I always thought what is that in me?
Oh my God! It can dissolve. It can go away. Anger is more likely to arise in the mind when we feel unhappy or dissatisfied. So if we feel angry we can sit down and look at deeper levels of our own mind.
What is actually going on? Am I still doing the things that I like to do? Am I still fulfilling my life? Am I still focused in the way that I want to be focused in my life? You can look at where’s my appreciation for my human life?
If things happen to me how do I look at it? Do I look at the positive side? Do I look at the negative side? So look at it why is that anger constantly in my mind? What is there that makes me unhappy?
And is that something that I can change? If you know what makes you unhappy it’s not too difficult to change normally, isn’t it? It’s normally the diagnosis that is the most difficult thing. If we know what’s wrong we can easily shift it. True?
So that’s why you have to look into it. It’s like the doctor. If the doctor really knows you have this cancer, there is a specific therapy for that cancer. The more your diagnosis is right, the more your therapy can be very precise and accurate. If we keep it all a little bit vague, it’s very difficult.
Yeah, you can apply the general antidotes but it’s very difficult to really cut it. That’s why we have to sit and even look at the unpleasant things that arise, you know, because it helps us to diagnose. What we like is that everything goes very smoothly, everything goes very pleasant, everything goes very comfortable, everything is really really really nice. Isn’t it? We’re all looking for that because we’re all looking for happiness.
That’s a natural tendency. So if any difficulty arises we have also the natural tendency to say I don’t want this. I prefer the comfort. I prefer this. I prefer that.
But, if you really look at life, saṃsāra or life is in the nature of suffering. Because we have this feeling of I, there are always things that we like and things that we don’t like. If things arise that we don’t like, we try to avoid them. What we’re trying to do with spiritual practice is instead of avoiding, we try to swallow them. We try to take them in.
We try to use them on our way to spiritual practice. So if problems arise in the FPMT now they say, Problems don’t exist. Problems only exist because I think it’s a problem. Because I don’t like what happens. The problem is not a problem from itself.
It’s because there is a relationship between me and that what arises. I don’t like it. We say first of all you could say whatever arises that I don’t like it’s not a problem, it’s a challenge. If you can see there’s a challenge, your attitude of aversion can transform into an attitude that you think Okay, I’ll have a look at this. What’s in there for me?
Then it becomes a more positive experience. And you can use it for your spiritual practice. If you say I really don’t want that and you run away far away you haven’t done anything with it except running away. And for some people that might be good at a certain stage in their life running away is the best thing to do. But if things come back to you again and again then maybe it’s time to look at it.
And also when somebody harms you, it’s not that you have to stay and just bear it. It’s not like that, right? Your primary reactions of this is not good for me, this is unhealthy, this is destructive for me, I go away. That’s a good thing to do. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that.
And yes, when we are children, many times we can’t get away from the difficult situations and you have to stay in there and that makes the trauma so big. But then that also gives lots of opportunities to practice in the rest of your life because it will come up again and again and again because it’s so imbued in your whole system. So then you have many opportunities to shift that mind. And every time that you shift it, it’s not about getting happy although the product eventually is that we are getting happy but it is about that you use that energy that normally goes into the aversion, you use that in a different way to look at a situation different. So you constantly transform your own reaction into something else.
Instead of running away, you look at it. Instead of running after it you step back from it. That is the power of practice. That’s the training. That’s being on the bicycle again and again and again.
Looking at it. What happens? And this is my normal reaction, I change my normal reaction. That’s your training. Training.
And then, you know, some people have a life where the difficulties keep arising, keep arising, keep arising. If they can use every opportunity to transform their reaction they have a fantastic fruitful life. All these moments of transformation that’s what they’re going to take with them in the next life. If you have a life which is really, really nice and really good and you have everything that you want, where is your practice? You can’t practice.
True? If we don’t suffer, we can’t practice. That’s the problem if you will be reborn as a god. Gods have perfect bliss. They don’t suffer.
Why would they practice? It’s true. You know, we need you check why you will start looking for for Buddhism or why why you arrived here. It’s because you had problems. I don’t know for you but that’s what you normally do, it’s situations that are too difficult to deal with and you need help.
How do I deal with that? It’s not because you were perfectly happy. You would never come, would you? You would go to the beach and you would do all nice things and you would be perfectly happy. So we do need problems in order to practice.
Unfortunately it’s just like that. We can really welcome problems — the moment we can really welcome problems, problems don’t exist anymore. There are challenges. They are like Wow, what an opportunity. You know, here’s something coming that is too big for me or too difficult for me.
I can see my own aversion Oh, I want an opportunity to watch my mind. What is my mind doing with it? How can I change it? How can I improve it? How can I become more strong?
How can I become more wise? What is in here for me? Then you shift your whole life. Then you become a content person, you become an inspiring person. True?
And then you can say, Okay, if everything fails, I tried all these things to stop my anger and I’m still angry, then maybe it’s time to talk to the person. Right? If you have tried all the things to deal with your own mind and nothing helps, maybe it’s time to talk to the other person. But you have to be really, really clear: Why do I want to do that? What is my motivation?
Then you can think: Many times when we have a problem with a person somehow we don’t want to think about the situation that we have harmony together. We want to tell the person something and I’m right in that and I want that person to listen. Isn’t it? If you go with that intention into the situation, you want to come out of it as a winner and you want to tell that person something. That is never going to give you what you really want.
That is never going to dissolve your anger. That can give you a little few moments of feeling good but it’s not really feeling good because you put the other person down or you realize that you just unload your anger on that other person. Before you do that, really have to check if you really want to be friends with that person and say something is between us and I really find it difficult because I do want to be your friend. If you really have that motivation, then I think you can talk. I think the other person will feel that you’re coming from a good space.
Okay. So when you start practicing, you might become angry and realize afterwards, oh, there I did it and I didn’t want to do that and I tried to So what you normally do is if you see it happening, you just observe it and while it happens you try I know that when you start thinking about it, you do observe yourself getting angry but you can’t withdraw yourself out of it. But then afterwards you sit down and you go through it again and you think: So where did it happen? Where did the anger start to rise? What did I do?
Why did I respond? Why did I respond the way I did it? How can I look different so that my anger doesn’t get so much invoked? So then you look at it from afterwards and you look at it from different angles. And then if you can see, oh, you know, that is what I can do next time.
Then my anger doesn’t get inflamed. If I see that perspective from the other person I feel I’m not getting triggered so much. If I keep on thinking about the good qualities of the other person I feel I’m not getting triggered so much. If I can step more out of it I can feel the anger doesn’t get worse. Why do that on your cushion?
You think about it, you think about it and then you make a determination. Next time when it happens I want to catch myself and what I’m going to try to do when I catch myself I’m going to try to do this. Next time, normally it will happen exactly the same but you will notice quicker and you think ‘Ah, I did it again’. So then you can try there to do it again. If you see yourself doing that, don’t beat yourself up and say ‘I didn’t do it’ but tell yourself ‘Yes, I did do it.
I did catch myself quicker. That’s fantastic. And then sit down again and meditate on it and you will see that you can catch yourself quicker. The anger doesn’t last as long. When you sit down you get quicker clarity of mind, you can see much better the other perspectives, you can see the very big picture and it all becomes tiny and useless, you know, the reasons why you really become angry.
That’s how you train. Support yourself in every moment of training. Don’t beat yourself up because you didn’t do it right. It’s like you put yourself on the bicycle in fitness and then you have done the best you could and then you beat yourself up. You didn’t go hard enough on the bicycle.
It’s like sometimes you can’t go hard. You can only do your best. And if you do it, you are doing your best. We normally expect one hundred and fifty percent from ourselves, isn’t it? And if we don’t give that, we beat ourselves up because it’s not good enough.
One hundred percent is good enough. Eighty percent is also very good. And if you feel that you only did ten percent, still ten percent. Still more than nothing. And really give yourself the positive information.
Because it’s a hard training, it’s a difficult training. And if you want to do it, have to be kind to yourself. You have to be kind, kind, kind again and again and again. No matter how many mistakes you make. You have to be kind to yourself.
Don’t judge them. Very difficult. Especially if you have that you know, the judgment that you give to somebody else, you normally also give that to yourself. So if I judge somebody really badly because I don’t know because I feel they don’t take care of me then every time when I don’t take care of myself and I would catch myself I would do the same. I beat myself up too.
It’s not about beating up. Beating up is the destruction again. That’s the anger again. First of all, you have to stop that give yourself some space and make mistakes. Accept that you have delusions.
We are not perfect. If we were perfect, we would choose a different body. Or maybe not, maybe not, maybe not. Maybe not, we don’t know. Maybe this is the perfect situation for us.
Maybe we’d realize how perfect our life is if we would have a perfect mind. That’s actually what the Buddhism that you use. You use, you think that everything is perfect. Everything is exactly the way it should be. Everything is exactly, you know, and you have perfect ability to react on it.
You have perfect ability to deal with it. And if you can see that, if you can even think about it, that gives you some inspiration or tool to really do it. If you think, I’m hopeless and I can’t do it and I don’t know where to start and I’m so stupid and I’m so that, it’s very difficult to get any positive action from that kind of judgement, isn’t it? So try to keep yourself positive and then your inner wisdom and your inner intuition will let something surface to help you, to give you inspiration. Okay?
I think it’s twenty two. You have to go almost. Okay. Next time. So I’m gonna leave the attachment to next time.
She stapled everything, didn’t she? Okay. And you take everything home and read it. Please read it. I did have a little homework.
There you go. What did we do? Think Oh, we did a purification meditation. Yeah. Yeah, I have it.
You can have one too. Yeah. Do ten minutes mindfulness meditation a day. So I bring you back to where we started. Mindfulness sitting with yourself and try it again and see if there is a difference.
Maybe in you just being with your own mind maybe there is a difference. Maybe there’s more patience, more understanding, more tolerance, more Just sit with your own mind and just look in it and stop beating yourself up. Check. So for instance, with the experiences in your life. Like last time we talked about karma.
For instance, some people experience again and again some certain kind of abuse. Check with your own mind. What is in my own mind that can be connected to that experience? If you have a very compassionate mind, normally abuse doesn’t happen. Or when abuse does happen you can see your own part that has the tendency to get angry and might have the same tendency in different situations.
So just look at that and then apply the antidote to the emotion when you see the rising. We only talked about the antidote of anger but you can look the other ones up and otherwise we’ll practice that later. Maybe start with the emotion that you feel is the biggest one. Anger is normally the easiest one to start with because we suffer so much from anger that easy to recognize or maybe not. Thank you.
You’re welcome. Thank you for coming.