Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 17-minute talk, Ven Thubten Gyatso unpacks the Buddhist understanding of anger and how to transform disturbing emotions into spiritual growth. He begins by defining anger precisely—the wish to inflict harm on others, oneself, or objects—and distinguishes it from righteous indignation or strong opposition to wrongdoing. He explores how anger arises from frustrated expectations, then moves through practical tools: humour and lightness as prevention; the cultivation of patience as the antidote; and love and compassion as the true opposite. He addresses how to teach children emotional resilience through example and wisdom about impermanence, and reframes life’s difficulties—relationship problems, financial stress, weather—as precious opportunities to train the mind. The talk emphasizes that spiritual growth lies in cultivating these positive mental qualities, which travel with us into future lives, unlike external possessions and reputation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 DE 1995 10 21.mp3
UUID: 75f79c68-aaaf-4b69-9b40-fd1563d69b95
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Dealing With Disturbing Emotions (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 1995-10-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 17.2 minutes
Words: ~1,546
We are indeed manipulated in so many ways. An angry response. The non-angry reaction is really quite unusual. I said, great, what do you meditate on? He said, hatred.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s frustration when things don’t go as we wish. Right? Yeah.
Yep, that’s right. That’s right. We get irritable when things don’t go as we wish or people don’t act as we want them to and so on and so on. That irritability leads to anger. That’s right.
Let go. Let it be. I think I was saying before, I said that my motto, my survival motto is Don’t be too serious. And it really is to have a sense of humor. It’s so important.
And just to look on the funny side of things is a great medicine, great prevention of anger. So much better. So important. And then all of these other things that I mentioned. It can be, sure, it can be.
We can get uptight about being uptight. Yeah. That’s right. Exactly. Do say anger.
Anger is defined in Buddhism as the wish to inflict harm upon one of the three objects: others, self or inanimate object. Whereas if we feel indignant about the destruction of the environment, we can oppose, we can act strongly but not with anger. We shouldn’t act with anger. Well, we should definitely use scuffle words. What do you think?
Can young children be angry? I think dogs and cats can be angry. Depends. Sorry? What the wish to inflict harm.
That is anger. That is anger. How do we stop ourselves from doing it? That’s the question. By being patient because they mimic our behavior.
And that’s the best way. In all ways children will definitely mimic our behavior. Of course they still have their own afflictions and if we’re perfect it doesn’t mean they’re going to be perfect because they have afflictions. They have self-cherishing and so on. Not only by example, I think by example is the best way we can influence our children, but also by wisdom and teaching them how to deal with when things go wrong.
Their toy is broken, that’s usually what we get angry at when we’re young. We can teach impermanence to children, in any way we can teach impermanence and how they can deal with frustrations in their life in a positive way and then they will avoid anger. There’s actually a a wide scope of ways of helping kids. It’s a good field, I think, develop and grow. Everybody has this responsibility because we all relate to children no matter what our position in life is.
And we do have this great responsibility for kids. Well, for a start, if we can see the situation which would normally precipitate anger, if we can see it in a positive way and not get angry, right, so we won’t destroy our positive karma. So at least our positive karma has a chance. Also, we can turn the situation into creating positive karma by cultivating patience. So it all goes very well for our future.
And you see, also by being angry we create the habit of being angry. And not only does that habit hurt us in this life, hurts us in future life. By being loving we create the habit of being loving and spontaneously we can love not only in the future of this life but in future lives as well. So love is the opposite of anger. Patience is the antidote but love is the opposite.
So we can’t go straight from anger to love. We need to go through patience. And on a basis of a mind which is still and patient then we can cultivate the opposite love, delight in the happiness of others. We should always use every situation to develop the positive minds wisdom, understanding cause and effect, patience and then love and compassion. Problems can be advantageous for generating love and compassion and that’s our real goal.
Anyway, just to summarize perhaps today, it’s clearly a subject which is ongoing and we can talk a lot about dealing with disturbing emotions. Mostly I’ve focused on anger because it’s the most disturbing emotion. I’ve touched upon attachment and jealousy and pride and so on which all can be gone into in detail and have their own antidotes, their own ways of resolving the resolution of these disturbing emotions. Perhaps the main point that I want to get across this afternoon is that this is something we can do. Life is such a great opportunity that although our disturbing emotions were innate, we’ve had them from the beginning of previous lives.
Now that we have this knowledge, now that we have this understanding, this recognition of the nature of the mind and how to deal with it through meditating and training our minds, then no matter what is going on in our life, everything is an opportunity to grow, to mature in our minds. And that’s what spiritual growth means. Spiritual just means spirit is mind, that’s all. So spiritual growth is the cultivation of the positive attitude of wisdom, loving kindness, compassion and so on. Non-spiritual practices are these negative states that were talked about.
So we are extremely fortunate. We are so fortunate to to have the opportunity to to learn how to to grow internally. Paradoxically, the more suffering, the more difficulties, the more opportunities we have to grow internally, to grow spiritually. So many times in history, not only in Buddhism but in Christianity and other religions, the great saints have transformed adversity to spiritual growth. Now, our little problems, our relationship problems, our financial problems, the the hot weather, the cold weather, they’re they’re nothing.
They’re just nothing. They’re not worth getting upset about. There is so much more to existence. There’s so much more meaning to humanity, to this human rebirth. That meaning is the opportunity to grow spiritually, to grow in love and compassion.
And we take that with us into the future life. We don’t finish our practice now, we’ll finish and complete it in future lives. Where as all the money we have collected in the bank, we have to leave that behind. Our relatives who we don’t particularly like are going to fight over it and get it all. All the busyness and the collections and the reputations, everything can be left behind.
But whatever happens internally is taken with us. Actually we should be so happy with our lives, so we should rejoice that every moment of our life is an opportunity to really make things meaningful through love and compassion and to slowly eradicate the disturbing states of life. Every person, no matter whether they are kind to us or harmful to us, is an object of love and compassion and wisdom. So here is my chance to train and if we’re agitated or irritated, well we need more patience. The policeman said to me, You need more patience.
That means that this person is my greatest friend. You see, if we’re not agitated by somebody, how can we practice patience? We need somebody to make our mind agitated so we can practice patience. An athlete needs an oval to run around and around and around to strengthen the leg muscles muscles to win the race. Without the oval and the effort of training, the athletes can’t win.
So we’re mental athletes and we can’t win a gold medal at the Olympics, well I can’t. Most of us probably can’t win gold medals at the Olympics but we can win gold medals in the mental Olympics of training and patience, becoming practitioners of love, compassion, generosity. Actually, there’s no comparison with the attainment of patience and the ability to run one hundred meters in nine seconds. No comparison. So what?
So what? The things that we praise. The athletes are worshipped and the film stars are worshipped. It’s ridiculous. We don’t worship love, compassion, generosity and patience but that’s what we should be.
And who cares? We don’t need to be worshipped. The very attainment is peace and that joy is not dependent upon any other person, upon their recognition, a certificate on the wall or gold medal on the shelf. The joy of practicing patience, love and compassion is experienced here and now. So we shouldn’t allow our minds to be distracted and become despondent and despair when the external problems are so threatening.
Learn to relax, not be serious and utilize the situation to our advantage and then our life becomes meaningful. Makes life meaningful and worthwhile. I think maybe that’s enough. I’ve talked too much today. Haven’t given you a lot of chance to discuss but we only had come together this one Saturday afternoon.
I’d like to thank everybody for inviting me here and organizing the talk. I’ve enjoyed your questions. They’re very good and I hope I’ve given you a few ideas to work on. As I say, from my side I don’t practice all this. I just talk about it.
It’s really hard but there’s nothing else more worthwhile doing than trying. We’ll all try it again. So I wish you well in your practice and I hope to see you again.