Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 53-minute session, Ven Lobsang Namgyel guides students through Buddhist approaches to anger and hatred as obstacles to compassion and altruism. He opens with the story of the boy and the bag of nails to illustrate how words spoken in anger leave lasting scars. The teaching distinguishes destructive anger from wrathful action—a compassion-driven response that uses the energy of anger without its destructive essence, illustrated through the example of a parent preventing a child from running into traffic. He explores the difference between righteous and self-righteous anger, drawing on Thich Nhat Hanh’s experience that angry activism fails where peaceful demonstration succeeds. The core antidotes to anger are patience and tolerance, developed through daily meditation on difficult situations and visualization of alternate, patient responses. Ven Namgyel addresses practical questions about relationships and household discipline, emphasizing that dropping expectations reduces anger, taking personal responsibility for one’s emotions, and leaving a tense situation to cool down rather than suppressing anger or using it to control others. He concludes by moving through compassion, love, and empathy as progressively deeper responses, noting that understanding others’ actions as rooted in karma and delusion—not personal malice—transforms one’s ability to respond wisely. Suited for practitioners seeking concrete Buddhist methods for emotional transformation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 42 _3rd session.mp3
UUID: b1e22961-8da6-4ede-84c2-58007f390fff
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 53.5 minutes
Words: ~6,922
Okay. So I have another little story for you. It’s called a bag of nails. This is just the lightness in between all the heaviness. A bag of nails.
Once upon a time there was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper he should hammer a nail in the fence. The first day the boy had driven thirty seven nails into the fence but gradually the number of daily nails dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the first day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all.
He proudly told his father about it and when the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. So the days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. You’ve done well my son but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same.
When you say things in anger they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry the wound is still there. That’s my light. That’s the light bit.
The wound is still there. It’s true, isn’t it? When you get angry, you make such a wound. And then afterwards, you say, I’m really sorry. Have a box of chocolates.
Have some flowers. Let me take you for dinner. Let me do something to fix it. But actually there’s still some sort of scarring, something that’s left behind. So there are many afflictive emotions such as conceit, arrogance, jealousy, desire, closed mindedness, being very narrow.
But out of all of those hatred and anger are considered to be the worst because of the greatest obstacle to developing compassion and altruism. Altruism because anger destroys virtue and the calmness of mind. So whatever good actions that you’re doing when you’re angry, you’re actually destroying all the potential of those good actions. You just wipe it out. So it’s like you set fire to the field.
You just, you’re growing all these good plants and then anger sets fire to the field. So there are two types of anger. One type can be positive where it’s motivated by compassion. So it could be used as an energy to bring about positive action but that energy can make us feel very powerful and can therefore blind us to destructive behavior. So this is what I mentioned this morning is that we can have this type of powerful anger which says you know this situation is wrong, I’m going to change it and not quite sure whether it’s what we call a wrathful action.
I don’t know if you know this word in Buddhism. I’ll write it down for you. It’s wrathful. You know this in Italian? Wrathful.
Yeah? Right. So it’s Yeah. Okay. Compassion and anger.
Yeah. Is that what it means? No. No. Right.
That is the book. Happens. The grapes of wrath. Maybe it’s a different connotation. In Buddhism, a wrathful action is one where you take this energy of anger and you have compassion.
You put it together so you have this power of the anger but with the compassion and then it becomes wrathful. It’s actually it’s a wisdom action. It’s a wise action. So this is what we want to check. Is it wrathful or is it anger?
You know, we say when we become Buddhist people often say I’m not really angry, I’m wrathful. And wrathful is like the deities. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the frightening Buddhas that we have. We have some frightening Buddhas who have fire breathing and horns and they represent wrathful action. So they’re dark in body and they represent the sort of power and strength.
So you you shouldn’t cheat yourself by thinking I’m doing a wrathful action. You need to really check. Is it compassion and anger combined or is it just anger and you’re hiding it. So the example of a wrathful action to give you some sort of clarity. You’re a mother or a father and you have a child and the child keeps wanting to run out in the road.
You know, say the child’s three years of age, four years of age and you’re walking along the road, this road is probably a good example if you’ve walked along here you know, the traffic goes past, you know, like this. So you’re walking along the road and the child keeps wanting to run into the road. Because you’re a good parent, you say, don’t do that. And you’re very kind, you know. Don’t do that.
It’s dangerous. The child keeps wanting to run. Come back. The child keeps wanting to run. Come back.
And you keep doing this. Come back, come back. But it’s not working. So if you’re a good parent, you now go into the wrathful action, which is if you do that, you’re going to get a little wallop, you know, and then the child gets shocked and then stops doing it. If you love your child, you use this sort of action in order to produce a positive result.
So it’s not an action that is caused by anger, it’s an action that’s caused by compassion. But the face has changed. Just the face, not the feeling. Right? So the wrathful part, the angry part, is just in the face, but it’s not in the feeling.
The anger has been transformed into compassion. So it’s a powerful action, but there’s no anger left. So is that clear? You’re in the full sun. Do you want to be in the full sun?
Oh, it’s fine. You’re okay? If you want to put your bathing costume on and get a suntan while you’re here. If you get too hot Yeah. Move, you know, because I think it gets quite strong.
So when we have this sort of power, and particularly I think this self righteous or righteous anger, there’s a self righteous and there’s a righteous, isn’t there? So self righteous is I know I’m right, I’ve got the answers and you better apply these answers or I have all the answers or the environment now is a cause for anger, you know, so people get very righteously angry about the environment and they want to do very angry actions in order to change the way the environment is being degraded but you’re bringing anger into a situation. So does anger long term produce a beneficial action? This is the question that you need to ask. Do you know Thich Nhat Hanh?
Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese meditation master who lives in France and he came from Vietnam in the 1970s when Vietnam was being bombed. He’s a Zen master and he wanted the bombing stopped because he said it’s not doing any good it’s not going to change the situation in Vietnam. So he went to the United States and he wanted to meet the government people and everything but nobody wanted to talk to him. So there were many demonstrations going on in America at this time. Thousands of people were demonstrating in Washington against the Vietnam War.
So he decided to join with these demonstrators and there were about ten thousand people walking down to the White House and they’re screaming and shouting, you know, and ban the bomb, but you know these sort of signs which were full of anger. So after the demonstration he talked to the people and he said, well I think what we should do is stop all the demonstrations. And they said, but why? You know, we’re we’re demonstrating for a very good purpose. And he said, yes, but you’re demonstrating the wrong way.
You’re showing a lot of anger. And when you’re angry, you’re not going to change things in a positive way. You need to to be peaceful and calm. So he taught them meditation and then he taught them to walk like you were doing walking meditation, but to walk in a very calm way and to use compassion and love. And then the ministers or the, what do they call them, senators and people like that, started to notice the change and started to ask him to come and talk to them.
So he started talking to the Senate and, you know, the Parliament and all the rest of it and had a great influence on the thinking of that time. So compassion worked where the anger didn’t. So this is talking about one thing is angry action, self righteous action, righteous action. Which is it? Is it destructive?
Is it beneficial? This is what you have to check. You know, I’m not telling you what it is, but it’s you need to check it for yourself. So in some cases anger could be used in a positive way but generally and we’re just talking generally it usually leads to ill feeling and to hatred and hatred never benefits it’s always harmful. So whenever you’re bringing hatred into the situation you cannot produce a positive result.
So you need to check the motivation. Then we cannot overcome anger and hatred by suppressing. So one antidote that people often use, they think just pushing it down is going to be a good way of dealing with it. But actually this is just suppressing. Like I said yesterday, it’s like a pressure cooker.
You’re just pushing all this pressure down, and the pressure builds, and the pressure builds, and the pressure builds until one day you lose it, and then it’s really strong, and you’re really sorry, and then you start pushing it down again. So we need to actually cultivate antidotes, and the main antidotes to anger and hatred are patience and tolerance. Okay? So these are the main antidotes. What you need to develop in your everyday life and in your meditation is patience and tolerance.
So this is what you meditate on. Yeah? You’re cooking. Yeah. Doesn’t take long, does it?
You’re on the anger course and you’re also sitting in the full sun. I mean it’s a little bit too much. Meditating on this is the active, you know, the meditation that you do before you get angry rather than waiting for the anger to come and then you think oh dear, that was terrible what should I do now? Instead of waiting for the anger to come what do you do before the anger comes? You decide to actively promote in your mind patience and tolerance.
So this is what you meditate on on a daily basis. So to go back to, I gave you five points, learning, conviction, determination, action, effort. So the action, the fourth one is meditating on patience and tolerance. The learning is meditating on your own mind. Why am I getting angry?
What makes me angry? Who makes me angry? Which situation makes me angry? So this is the learning process is when you’re meditating, often you get a lot of information about yourself, your own situation. And what we find is often people get angry because of stress, because they get tired.
So as you get tired, your stress levels are increasing and there’s more possibility of reacting with anger. So actually you need to take care of yourself before you get angry. You need to make sure that your stress levels are not so high that you’re reacting with anger. Okay? So in order to be able to cultivate the antidotes, then you need to generate enthusiasm and a strong desire to seek it.
So you need to make these two things, patience and tolerance, you need to make them very important in your life. Because up to now, if you have anger and hatred, anger and hatred can become very important. So then when you’re angry, you think I really don’t like anger, so you have an aversion. I don’t like the anger, so you’re adding anger to anger. And that doesn’t work either.
So in order to remove the anger, you need to actually develop the opposite. And the opposite to anger is patience. More than that is love, and then more than that is compassion. But they’re very high emotions, you know, where you need to stop is with patience. So when you’re meditating, you take situation which is usually difficult for you, you meditate on it and you think about what makes you irritable in that situation.
So one meditation is putting yourself back into this situation and why am I getting irritable? Why am I getting upset? What’s triggering me? What set me off? Okay?
So that’s one meditation. Then another meditation is if I was in that same situation, now how would I behave in a different way? So instead of just leaving it as it is, what’s the different behavior that I would bring to that situation? Instead of being angry, how could I be patient in the situation? How could I behave in a different way, in a more tolerant way, a less irritable way?
You know, when you visualize them something, your mind believes it to be true. So whether you’re actually doing it or whether you’re visualizing it, you’re imagining it to be happening, your mind believes it to be true. So just by imagining yourself being more patient, your mind believes you to be doing that. So it changes your behavior. It makes it possible.
And then you need to have a strong enthusiasm because the greater your ability to withstand the hardships. So, sorry to go back. When you’re trying to practice this, you’re trying to change your mind, you see the problems with the anger, you see what it does to you, you understand what it does to others and so then you feel okay I really want to change this but what’s the different behavior, what’s the opposite behavior? It’s patience and tolerance. So then you have to have an enthusiasm for wanting to remove the anger and for wanting to improve the patience and the tolerance.
Then you understand that this is like a battle. Right? Because this is a habit that you’ve had for a long, long time. So whatever you want to change, you’re going to make a strong determination. You have to make a strong effort.
And for sure, obstacles are going to arise. For sure. Because your mind is gonna say, no. We’re not going in that direction. We’re going in this direction.
Anger is the way we behave. And then you’re saying, no, it’s not. We behave in this way. So any new habit has obstacles. It’s really difficult in the beginning but if you keep applying it it’ll be it’ll work, it will happen.
Patience is the root of the word is the ability to suffer. Yeah. K? Yeah. So To be patient with suffering.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it’s easy or to be angry Yeah. Or to be quiet Yeah.
Freelance Yeah. Myself. Yes. Okay. Yes.
Yeah. You’re saying something in the middle. Please. Can you What was that last bit? On one hand, you’ve got Or you get angry.
Yes. Or you say, okay. I will barely renounce my feeling Yeah. And accept something that is wrong for me by accepting because I’m a patient. Yeah.
Well, we’re trying to develop the the quality of patience. So what we’re thinking of at the moment is anger as to the situation. It seems to be the solution. In fact it’s not. If you analyze it, if you look at the situation with wisdom, you would say anger is not the solution.
But when we’re angry we’re not wise. We’re just angry and that we’re full of ignorance because we’re behaving in a way that is destructive. Right? We’re setting fire to the field and then saying and afterwards I’ll deal with the consequences. So, you know, you just set fire and you say, the fire’s good.
So we take that as an extreme. So this this angry behavior is an extreme that we sometimes experience. Some people experience a lot of it. Some people a little of it. So what’s the opposite mind to anger?
The opposite mind to anger is patience. And in Buddhism, what’s said is that you cannot hold two opposites in your mind at the same time. They can’t exist together. It’s like fire and water. Okay?
So when you’ve got fire, what’s the water? What’s going to put out the fire? So actually, we’re talking about something that’s polar opposite. It’s it’s very different from the nature of anger and of course at the time that you’re angry you can’t suddenly apply patience because you’re so angry. But what you need to do is you need to start thinking about the value of patience, what patience would do for you, what patience would be like, how it would be to be patient towards others instead of being angry.
So you start thinking advantages of patience, the disadvantages of anger. You can do that when you’re calm, when you’re peaceful and this brings you to a more balanced state of mind. So what we’re asking for is not that you go from extreme of anger to the extreme patience in one day. You know? I think you can’t do it.
It takes a long time of reducing the intensity of the anger. So the problem is in the beginning, the intensity. It’s not the anger itself. We have the anger, but it’s so strong that it’s uncontrollable. You know?
So if it’s like that, then in the beginning, it’s just to reduce the strength of the anger. And then as you reduce the strength of the anger, then you start to understand that the anger is the cause of the suffering, both for yourself and for others. And then as you understand that the anger is the cause of your suffering and others, you realize that what you want to give up is that suffering. What you don’t want to experience is that suffering. What you don’t want give to others is that suffering.
And so you want to develop an aversion, something that you give up is creating that suffering for yourself, creating that suffering for others, and the answer to that patience and tolerance. So it’s like you’re going from one step to the next step to the next step. It’s not that you suddenly go from anger to patience, but how do you reduce the power of the anger? How do you reduce the intensity? You have to start changing your mind about the value.
At the moment we have anger because we think anger works. There’s no doubt about it. We wouldn’t be angry unless we thought anger was beneficial. Right? We think it works.
And so when you keep thinking about anger and does it work? You start understanding that it’s a misunderstanding. And actually that misunderstanding is coming from ignorance. It’s coming from a view that sees anger as beneficial and it sees patience and tolerance as weak. Right?
Yeah. Yeah, because it depends on whether you want to stay in the situation, isn’t it? If we’re talking about friendships or relationships, there’s often a point where you think I don’t like their behavior. And if you say to them I don’t like your behavior, this is looking outside, I want you to change in order for me to be happier and they say well tough luck, I’m not changing, I like my behavior. Then what do you do?
If you stay and you’re internally reacting and you don’t like that reaction and you don’t want to verbalize suppressing it. That makes you sick. If you verbalize it, you’re behaving in the same way as them, so now you hate yourself because what you disliked is now what you are. So you see behavior that you don’t like. Now you’re similar.
So now I don’t like myself. So now I don’t like you. I don’t like me, and I don’t like the situation. But I want to stay. I don’t want to go because at some time it’s okay you know.
So then again I think it was Langri Thangpa. Langri Thangpa said if somebody is really angry towards you or doing behavior something that you really don’t like, become a tree or become a rock. Right? So people sort of look at me like, really? I said, well, trees and rocks don’t have mouths.
They don’t talk. Right? We react so easily, so quickly, and then the fight starts. If you could just be, you hear the abuse, whatever it is, and it doesn’t affect you. It’s like wind blowing past your ear.
You’re like a tree or a rock. The wind just blows past. No need to grab hold of it and hear it and personalize it and think they are insulting me. How dare they? And back you come, you know, with worst insults than they’re making.
You could just later go past your ear. But I think as Westerners, this is extremely difficult because we’re so trained to react. We’re reactive. We’re out there, you know. So I think, you know, my mother used to say count to ten.
I think now it’s up to a hundred. I think you have to count more than ten these days to become more peaceful. But people often ask me about relationships and they’re in angry relationships and how do they get the relationship to change. Because you can’t go home and say, I went to this course and you are going to change. You’ve got to change yourself but how do you do that in the context of an angry relationship?
So I say to them well I think it’s okay to declare yourself. I think you can go home and say I’ve decided. I don’t want to be angry anymore. If you want to be, it’s fine, but I don’t want to be part of it. As part of that, when I start getting angry, I’m going to go out.
And I tell people it’s better to go out and walk until you feel peaceful, which is the equivalent of counting a hundred or a thousand. Calm down because the first thing that happens is when you’re angry, you’ve got adrenaline. And that adrenaline wants you to fight. Right? So if you stay, it’s often difficult to change your behavior, the habit of reacting back.
It’s just a habit. Right? And if we stay, we can’t get out of that habit. So how do we change? I think we have to say, I want to change.
And in order to change, when I’m getting upset, I’m going to leave the house and I’m going to go walking. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s my anger. We have to take responsibility for the anger, not to blame the other person. And then when I’m calm, I’m going to come back.
So many people have said in relationships this does work, this helps them. But going home and saying you’ve got to change, you’ve got to do this, doesn’t work. Suppressing it also doesn’t work because you go home and you say I’ve been on a course to do with anger so now I’m not angry anymore, you know? And they say, really? Poke poke poke poke poke poke and then you get angry and then they say, I knew you couldn’t keep it up.
It’s like a red red rag to a bull, you know? So I think if you do those sort of things, it just makes the other person want to push you into being angry. So I think you have to take responsibility. I’m the angry person, not you. And how do I take responsibility for my anger?
And how do I take responsibility for developing patience and which situation do I want to be in and what don’t I want to be in? This is all about your personal relationship, your personal responsibility with yourself, isn’t it? And how to be kind to the other person when they’re being abusive, know, because they’re also suffering when they’re being abusive. So how are you kind to them without rejecting them but without also encouraging abusive behavior? It’s not it’s not uncomplicated.
But if you sit and you meditate on it, when you’re peaceful and calm, you can often see the wise thing to do. But in the angry situation, you can’t see the wise thing to do at all. And so you throw something, you stomp out the door, and then you think, oh, you know, I could have done that better. When you’re calm, you can think about it. You can decide.
I I think it it I mean, I’m just thinking of a specific situation, like dealing with my fourteen children. Mhmm. And patience and tolerance just, you know, to get some Shut up. It work. Yeah.
You know? But then the other side is that, you know, the anger doesn’t work as well. But I was thinking it does work when there is some because there needs to be some sort of Short terms. Some sort of, you know, really firm boundary that they can get, but without it coming across like this. You know?
But other boundaries that before Yeah. They might be agreements. Like, I’m thinking about agreements we have in the house. Yeah. And, you know, such as when you go into the kitchen, you leave it as you find it.
Yeah. Yeah. And I had this happen the other night. I’ve been away. And I and I you know, when I come home, I’d like to find a kitchen.
Clean. I knew that I’ve been there for a week or so. So I sent a text to my daughter. Warning. Just Would you mind you know, really tired just like you see that, you know because you’ve driven Yeah.
All the way. Yeah. And and that’s other things. And then the was just a disaster area. And that’s you know, that’s my sort of thing.
Other parts of the house, I’m not worried about it. And It’s your expectation. It was. And it was really strong. Yes.
The kitchen. Yeah. The kitchen was the only really messy place. But I was really I really worked at trying to be patient and tolerant. It didn’t work.
I mean, I was still too strong. She looked like I guess we should write down the word expectations. Yeah. Right? Because when you have an expectation Yeah.
And the other people don’t accord with your expectation Yeah. You get angry. But I felt like it was quite reasonable, and I still do sitting here now. I feel like we’ve got an agreement. You don’t need it.
Well, what do I do? Do I just let it let it go? I don’t feel like I do. I think I think the baby whisperer Yeah. Would say that you have to tell him maybe out the house.
You know? I mean, I think if agreements out the house. Well, I think if agreements aren’t kept That’s what I said. Then what do you do? But that’s what I said.
I said, look. You know, we’ve got this agreement that keeps on breaking, then, you know, you’re out. And I tried to say, well, look, dad. That is so How can you do that to me? Too.
She’s been bad, but she she used the poor Yeah. See. Look. It’s not. It’s really hard.
I mean hard to find that balance in everyday situation. We have expectations, and we expect agreements to be met. But what happens when they’re not met? Yeah. Do we use it as a cause for anger?
Yeah. Or can you stay calm? Yeah. And you can have the wrathful face. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I was saying. Yeah. Is it’s really hard to have the compassion to look heavy Yeah.
But to be calm. Yeah. Right? It is. Yeah.
Because the emotion gets in there Yeah. And especially when you feel it’s unreasonable. And particularly when I’m tired. Yeah. Yeah.
I’ve got a lot of energy. And that that’s when you have to really watch it, you know, that you’ve got a long drive, you get tired on the drive, you’re right back, you open the door and your expectation is shiny, clean surfaces and it’s like a bomb has hit the place, you know? And of course, there’s that, you know, the volcano goes off, doesn’t it? And I felt really bad because she actually had a couple of good reasons, you know, after we can’t lose some sort of privilege. Yeah.
Then you don’t even have to get angry. Yeah. Probably just go and say, oh, alright. Well, your privilege is gone. They learn so much from that.
But Yeah. I I think that works at a particular stage, but she’s, like, twenty one. So we’re more like adults together. So it’s finding some way to be where there’s not The the adult agreement rather than the the adult the parent child agreement. So much the parent child Yeah.
Quite difficult. But I think it it’s that switching over from anger to what you’re talking about, isn’t it? That it’s to allow the child to grow up so that you don’t have to keep using all your energy, energy, you know, in the angry way, to use that angry energy that terrifies the child short term, and then works short term shortens your life, you know, distances you from the child because anger is also the antidote to love. So you’re antidoting your relationship, know, you’re actually getting further apart each time you’re angry. So there’s many downsides to trying to solve it with anger.
So in meditation, you take the situation and you think, well, what else could I have done? You know, I’m not saying there is anything else you could have done, but you sit down with it and you think, okay, if I’d come home, if I wasn’t so tired, what else could I have done? How could we have talked about it? How could we have produced a better situation that would have got me what I wanted rather than me having to be angry? Because anger is just it kills you in the end.
Know? One day you go, the kitchen, heart attack dead. What was the point? You know? Okay.
You get a clean kitchen, but you shorten your life. It’s not worth it for a kitchen. Right? So it’s how to get what you want if you if you have expectations how do you produce that without the anger? Meditate on that.
Go back to the situation with your daughter and see yourself doing it in a different way. You know? And then when somebody feels very close to you, they don’t want to hurt you. They don’t want to offer you a dirty kitchen. You know?
Often when you’re angry, get what you don’t want. Right? Because it’s that passive resistant. You you don’t want a dirty kitchen? Okay.
I’ll give you a dirty kitchen. Yeah. And nothing else? Yep. So on.
It was tired to cut the shoes, the shoes, the glass was there. Well, the shoes are are an analogy for a mental shoes. Right? If you have the mental shoes, you don’t get angry. But the problem is that in our society, anger is virtually given as the answer.
What solves every problem, you know, this powerful force of anger seems to solve the problem. And I’ve now I’ve met a number of women who’ve gone into managerial and director positions in big companies and they say to me nobody listens to me because I’m a woman. So I’m the boss, they don’t listen to me. So I say in a very nice way, now if you would all go and blah blah blah, and they go, you know, talking to each other, blah blah blah blah. But if the woman goes, and I and they’ll run.
You know? So short term, this anger does seem to work. There seems to be the ability to get things done. In families, we use it. In businesses, we use it.
But long term, does it work? Do you work really well for somebody you hate? Right? For somebody who shouts at you every day, threatens you, you’re gonna lose your job. I don’t want you here anymore, you better work harder or you’re out.
Do you work really hard for that type of person or for the person that tries to help you to improve, to do things in a better way. So I think we need to now start looking at the qualities that we’re using in our families and the qualities that we’re bringing into our work. Are those good qualities? Are they harmful? Because when they’re harmful, we’re creating more harm.
And it just keeps going around and around. You give out harm, more harm comes back. Yeah. This is it’s a good investigation. Okay.
We’ll stop there. Any other questions or perspectives? Yes or no? I think having an expectation that things are going to work the way you think they’re going to work. Isn’t it?
We all have that expectation that now I’ve worked really hard, I’m going to have this time for myself and somebody arrives on the door just as you get home, bing bong, oh I’m so happy you’re here, I’m in a really bad way, I really need somebody to talk to and your heart sinks and you think this is not fair. You know, this is my time off. I deserve some space. So we could have a real suffering being in front of us and we want to be compassionate but this is my space, this is my time. Or work says instead of finishing at one o’clock can you finish at four because somebody’s sick or blah blah blah.
This is not fair. I deserve my time off. I’ve worked really hard. So I think also this self righteous, you know, I deserve a holiday, I deserve space, I deserve peace, I deserve love, I deserve a clean kitchen, I deserve whatever it is. When you’ve got that I deserve going on, there’s an expectation.
As soon as you have an expectation, if it’s not fulfilled, anger comes up. Drop the expectation. Isn’t it? Try and drop the expectation. If you have a no expectation, there’s no anger.
Yeah. We don’t have pity. We decided pity is no good. So we don’t have pity. What else don’t we have?
We don’t have guilt. We have feeling kindness, love and compassion. So as part of kindness would be sympathy, empathy. It’s going in levels, know. So sympathy is, well I’m really glad I’m not like you, you know.
So somebody can say, oh I’m terribly sick And you put your arm around them and you say, oh, that’s terrible. But you’re thinking, well, I’m glad it’s not me. I’m glad it’s you. That’s sympathy. Right?
Empathy is you want to step into their shoes. You want to understand how it feels. This starts changing your mind about it. How does it feel to be this person who’s doing what they’re doing, you know? Why do they do it?
Then love is I want you to be happy no matter what you’re doing and then compassion is I want you to stop experiencing suffering. So in Buddhism we go up in steps, know, you start with kindness and being kind to yourself. You know, first step is being kind to yourself, right? Not in a selfish way but in a way of helping yourself to have something to give. You know, you don’t have patience and tolerance, if you don’t have some time, if you don’t have some space, if you’re not stressed out,, you’ve got the energy to do things for others, but first you have to do things for yourself.
So first you need to give yourself kindness and then with that kindness you can start to give kindness to others and then you start to see they need more than kindness. So they need even more help and then it goes up into love and compassion. But pity, I think is, I don’t know, I think of it as derogatory, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s like, poor thing.
Look at you down there. Well, there’s no sharedness. There’s no shared sort of humanity. There’s a separation, isn’t Yeah. So Buddhism is always trying to to get you closer and I think pity is that sense of you’re elevating yourself and they’re going down.
So in Buddhism what we try to understand is that people are doing what they’re doing because of karma and delusion. When there always has to be karma and delusion, negative karma and delusion involved in negative actions. Well, an understanding that why they’re doing something negative towards you is because of karma and delusion. So you can despise the karma and delusion. Don’t despise the person.
You know? If you want to dislike something, dislike the karma and delusion. Don’t dislike the person with the karma and delusion. You can take as an example yourself and how sometimes you behave in a negative way and you don’t quite know why. Right?
But sometimes negative behavior happens. And then you look back and you think, why did I do that? No reason, really. But maybe I was a bit tired, uncomfortable situation. Whatever it was, negative behavior happened.
Why did it happen? No understanding why, but the Buddhist understanding deep down karma and delusion. So karma and delusion pushed me into negative behavior in the same way that person doing those negative things to me is behaving out of karma and delusion and then you get a better understanding why you do it and why they do it. My mind gets if somebody hurts me, I don’t have to express it anymore. There’s My mind gets There’s some feeling.
Coolness on it. Yes. Yes. I think each person with the anger has different experience. There was one lady in Mexico who during the teachings she suddenly realized, oh this is me.
I’m the angry person. And she said, she’s she’s a lawyer and she said every day I’m angry every single day and from that day she decided I don’t want to be the angry person anymore so she started working on it on doing something about it And she wrote to me recently and she said, two months of not being angry. And she said, this is like a miracle, you know, that in my life, two months. But she said, I feel like an alcoholic because every day she says just one more day, you know. And when I teach Reiki, in Reiki it says just say for today I won’t be angry.
I think rather than saying I’ll never be angry ever again it’s more practical just to say I won’t be angry today and you try as much as you can not to be but if you are angry tomorrow you say just for today I won’t be angry you know you haven’t you haven’t lost it completely but if you have this expectation you’ll never be angry ever again when you’re angry then you think I’m useless, I can’t do it, I give up. But better to just think one day, just each day you try to be better, try to evolve, you try to be more patient but if you can’t, okay, that’s also okay. Don’t beat yourself up about doing something that’s negative. We all do, it? To have more acceptance of the negative things we do and how can I change it?
How can I grow how can I develop gradually but I think you must have done a lot of work on yourself because around here you’re very peaceful and you cook so peacefully? Thank goodness! You’re not staring the pot like this! So it shows you things can change doesn’t it? And I do say I think sometimes people need therapy.
I think if it’s a very strong problem they may need a psychiatrist or a group or something like that, some sort of help with the anger, because I think some people can work with it on their own and some people need help. So I think it’s also beneficial, to get help if you need it. You shouldn’t see that as something wrong. Okay, we’re late. Maybe they’ll be angry up there.
I don’t think so. But anyway, thank you very much for a good morning and you come back here at two o’clock for the discussion group. We organize at two o’clock. So just come back in here at two o’clock. Okay?
Thank you.