Bodhisattvacaryavatara, 28 November 1988, part 1

So we should try initially to adjust our motivation such that we’re going to listen to this teaching on the great vehicle, whereby to attain peerless, complete, perfect enlightenment in order to bring happiness and peace to all sentient beings. So the the definition of patience or forbearance is not to become angry in the face of harm and suffering. So there are three types of patience or forbearance. The first is not to retaliate in the face of harm. And this is not to return harm for harm, not to become angry when someone has hurt you.

In the In the Offering to the Spiritual Master, it speaks about the perfection of patience. And here the verse mentions that in the face of someone speaking harmful words to you, unpleasant words, that when they speak about all your various faults, even when they beat you, or finally if they were to kill you, that do not retaliate and return harm in the face of their harm, but instead to gain the perfection of patience and meditate on compassion for them. Then the second type of patience would be perseverance in difficult practices. This would involve, for example, in one’s practice of Dharma, being willing to persevere in the face of difficulties, in the face of obstacles, and thinking that how the Buddha conducted his life and his practice and understanding what is necessary to progress along the path, persevering in all the difficult in order to gain the various realizations, order to meditate on such things as selflessness and the law of cause and effect, impermanence, etcetera. That is, to persevere and be willing to tolerate difficulties in one’s practice.

Then the third is the patience of equanimity toward both happiness and suffering. And this would involve that to remain equanimous in the face of both happiness and suffering, in that we don’t become attached to contaminated happinesses nor do we seek to avoid sufferings. It becomes necessary to see the excellent qualities of suffering as if suffering were a medicine. Just as when we’re sick, it’s sometimes necessary to take courses of treatment which involve further difficulties, further sufferings, but in fact these are going to ultimately cure us. Likewise, we should see that suffering in itself is the excellent qualities of persevering and tolerating suffering as a medicine and not to become discouraged in the face of difficulties.

So the second type of patience is perseverance in the face of difficulties. In such circumstances as when someone were to become angry with us and they start to abuse us with harsh words, in the face of that abuse oneself becomes angry and thinking that now one suffers due to those harsh words of others and this suffering actually has a condition for oneself to become angry and and being unwilling to apply an antidote to prevent the anger from rising even when one is suffering. So the text goes on to explain that as an example of how this does not make sense, one is unwilling to meditate or apply the antidote of patience when becoming angry. Then, you know, when having a sickness such as jaundice and the great this jaundice can act as a great source of suffering, then why don’t we become angry at this sickness in the same way we’re acting as we’re becoming angry at this what we conceive of as a source of suffering? So there’s a debate going on here.

The idea of the unwillingness to try to control and anger in the face of suffering. And that first off, Śāntideva talks about, well if that’s the case, then why don’t you get angry when you become, when you suffer from a disease like jaundice? Since the jaundice is a source of your suffering, why don’t you become angry at your disease? And the other person says, Well, you know, that’s not quite similar. You know, this person has become has abused me, has become angry at me, and this acts as a condition for my afflictive emotions to arise.

And therefore and, you know, I I don’t have any control over this. So it’s not a similar case. So just as jaundice can act as a source of suffering for you, but you don’t get angry at this particular type of source of suffering, you don’t get angry at the jaundice, then why do you get angry at this person since they are just in the same way that they simply are a source of suffering? And the person responds, Well, it’s not the same case. You know, I have no control.

The condition of the jaundice arising is uncontrolled, but this person is becoming angry at me. They’re abusing me. Śāntideva responds, Well, this person likewise has no control. In the same way that a disease arises without any control, this person becomes angry without any control. They’re overcome by their afflictive emotions.

Just as sickness arises uncontrolled, afflictive emotion arises uncontrolled. And therefore, if this is just as if you’re going to get angry at something, then you should get angry at their anger, which is what they are controlled by. If you’re going to get angry at something, then get angry at their anger because they’re under the control of their anger, and that’s the source of their behavior. Then why not get angry at their anger? So this person has no freedom.

They’re completely under the control of their afflictive emotion. You know, the reasons for their various bad actions toward you is that they’ve without any control, that they’re completely governed by their afflictive emotions to which has arisen. They’re they’ve gone completely under the anger which they developed. So this person is under the influence of the condition of his own anger. This is due to the former habituations of actions that he’s created.

He’s created the actions of the karma in the past and now due to the force of that he’s now under the or she is now under the control of anger again repeating this same type of pattern. Perhaps in fact they have no intention but they have completely lost control over the situation and they’re completely under the influence of their own afflictive emotions. So all these these mistaken ways of acting, these harmful these harmful activities which this person has directed here arise through the simply when this person meets a specific type of condition, then without any freedom he falls under the complete influence of situation and under these conditions. And within this non freedom, he enacts out habitual patterns. He has no freedom when meeting the proper circumstances.

It’s as if the afflictive emotions automatically arise. He automatically becomes angry without any intention to become angry. He has no desire to develop anger. So the Buddha said that sentient beings are not the source of harm. That in fact it’s the afflictive emotions which are the source of harm.

That whatever someone else might do to us, whether they speak badly toward us, you know, find fault, list our various faults. It’s not them who is causing us difficulty, it’s their afflictive emotions which they have come under the control of. So in the same way that if we were harmed by a piece of machinery, we might think to become angry at the machine itself. But in fact, the driving force behind the machine is the electricity. So that’s what we should be angry at if we’re going to become angry at all is what’s what’s what is the energy or the driving force behind the machine itself.

And likewise, when someone hurts us, generally we why don’t why don’t we rather than becoming angry at the person, become angry at the driving force behind this person, and that is their afflictive emotions. But we might say, well, if someone calls me a bad word, these bad words hurt me. And so then, you know, therefore I get angry at the person. But if this were the case, if somebody were to beat us with a stick, then, you know, the person doesn’t hurt us. It’s stick hitting us on top of the head, for example, which gives us the pain.

So why don’t we get angry at the stick? But we would say, Well, you know, when we ask, Well, don’t you get angry at this stick? That’s what’s actually hurting you. Say, Well, it’s the person who wields the stick. The stick no the stick is under the control of the person.

I’m not going to get angry at the stick, I’m going get angry at the person because they’re controlling the stick. And you say, Well, then it’s not proper to get angry at the person either because they don’t have an independence or freedom. They’re also under the control of something else, another condition, they’re under the control of the afflictive emotions. Just as the stick is under the control of something else and you don’t get angry at it, then you shouldn’t get angry at the person because they’re also under the control of something else — the afflictive emotions. So then the the text goes on.

So this, I will present an argument with respect to a non-Buddhist school, I think it’s called the Samkhyas, in which they assert what is called a primal substance. And this primal substance is imputed to be the self. And it is a cause, but it is not a result. It only acts as a cause. And they list 25 types of objects of knowledge.

So the the this primal substance is asserted to be the creator of all things. So, in this tradition, in this system, whatever the sentient beings conceive, then from this primal substance, it is developed or created out of this primal substance. If conceiving sounds and sounds are created, conceiving smells or tastes or food, etcetera, then these are all arise out of primal substance. But not understanding that these are being created out of primal substance, that in fact these are all things that truly exist. The the sentient beings are deceived in this way, and in this way, they revolve in cyclic existence.

But in order to in this system of Samkhyas, in order to attain liberation, one attains a clairvoyance and seeing that all phenomena are simply an emanation or creation of this primal substance. Upon seeing this all the various manifestations of objects are withdrawn into the primal substance and the being completely abides alone without any appearances of any manifestations of any objects, and this is what they would call liberation. But Śāntideva refutes this assertion of the Samkhyas saying that you assert that the primal substance is permanent, or that is to say unchanging, and how can something which is unchanging produce an effect? How can it bring about all the various creations and emanations? Therefore, your unchanging primal substance cannot be the source of all the creations since it cannot produce anything and therefore it is not the reason for us to be entering into or or returning out of cyclic existence.

So everything everything is governed by by conditions, by other factors outside themselves, whether it’s suffering, whether it’s staying or going. All are changing. They’re not unchanging. And therefore, all the various causes and effects which arise are dependent on meeting various types of constantly changing conditions. Nothing is contained within itself.

Everything is governed by something outside of itself. So we have to understand that nothing is self governing, that things are governed by other factors outside themselves. And these are the various causes and conditions, the situation in which they exist in. And upon the aggregation of various causes and conditions, a particular effect will arise. And even these previous, even these causes and conditions, this situation is governed by something else.

A previous set of causes and conditions. When the causes and conditions of a previous situation arose this gave rise to new results, new conditions, and that gave on further to later results, later conditions. Something is always being conditioned by something previous to it. It’s never under its own control. Therefore, understanding that things are never governing themselves, that they’re always coming into being by something other than themselves, and we can begin to look on phenomena as if they were mirages and illusions.

And therefore, in this way, seeing all phenomena in this way, this will help us to cease anger toward them. So, Śāntideva’s text is explained from the point of view of the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, which is the highest thought of the Buddha. And that it is to see everything as non truly existent, as not naturally existing, as lacking self existence. This is in the lower schools, they accept, that is to say the Great Exposition School, the Sūtra School, and the Mind Only School, they accept true existence. That in fact objects naturally exist, they truly exist.

And they say that if things didn’t exist truly, if they didn’t exist naturally, then they wouldn’t exist at all. But the consequence of middle way school that says nothing exists naturally, that nothing exists truly, that in fact things are simply like apparitions or mirages. That they simply are come about through the aggregation of causes and conditions, they’re all dependent arisings. They have no nature of their own. They’re always dependent upon something else outside of themselves.

And the lower schools argue back that if in fact these things weren’t phenomena were not truly existent, then there would be no antidotes. There would be no abandonments. That in fact, if things do not truly exist, then they don’t exist at all. So now he’s explaining something of the view of the middle way school, that is emptiness, it’s a difficult a little bit difficult to understand.