Entering the Middle Way, 4 April 1991, part 2

So it’s said that if someone out of anger were to hit us on the head with a stick and causes a wound. Then what is the use of retaliating? Because does our retaliating transfer that wound on your head back to them? No, it stays on your head. So what good what use is it?

What good is your retaliation? It doesn’t remove your own wound. On the other hand, if an additional example, if someone were to kill a relative or a friend of yours, in retaliation you kill that person. If killing that person had the ability and the power to bring back your friend to life, or your relative back to life, then it makes sense. There would be some use in it.

But it can’t. And what use is it? So, someone has hit us, the action is finished. And there is there is no use in retaliating. It makes no sense.

Someone has already hit us, and we experience a suffering out of that. And if we were to retaliate, it doesn’t take our suffering away. But, but, but in fact, it brings about a great fault in that out of retaliating, bringing harm to others, in the future we are going to experience suffering from that act of retaliation. So, we’ve actually doubled our suffering. We had the initial suffering which was finished.

It was there. But now we’ve created another suffering out of that suffering. So, then it makes no sense to act in this way. It’s of no use. So rather than retaliate, we should try to practice tolerance.

If we cultivate tolerance if we do not cultivate tolerance, then we’re involved in two types of If we cultivate tolerance, then there’s going to be two benefits accruing. So, in what way are there these many benefits to be accrued out of the practice of tolerance? That the very fact that this person has hit you and brought you harm is bringing to fruition an unskillful action which you have created in the past yourself. So the experience of that suffering suffering is the exhaustion of that unskillful action created in the past, and that action is now finished. And if we don’t retaliate, but on the contrary, we cultivate tolerance, not only are we not going to create any negativity for ourselves, which will bring us future suffering, but the cultivation of tolerance in itself is beneficial in that it will bring us happiness in the future.

You know, whatever arises in dependence upon causes and conditions, we need both of these. And the wound on your head is a the result of a cause which is one’s own unskillful action which one has created in the past. The cause of that wound on your head is your own unskillful action. The condition for it is the stick that that person hits you with. So one has created the cause for the wound oneself and it’s simply the stick which provides the condition for this wound to arise.

So, there is no benefit to in retaliating, but in fact it’s a fault because one will one does not want the suffering which will accrue from that. Quoting from the thirty-second verse: How could it be right for one wishing to assert that he is finishing the effects of non virtuous actions done earlier to sow the seeds of others suffering through harming and hating others. You know, the fact is that don’t want suffering. But we don’t like any type of pain. We don’t want to be brought any types difficulties.

Whenever these arise, we want to be rid of them. We don’t like them. So all of these unwanted experiences, experiences, is undesirable, all our various troubles, all our various pains are the results of unskillful actions that we have created in the past. So, though we desire not to have to experience any problems, any difficulties. If in response to someone else’s harm, we ourselves become angry, various afflictive emotions arise, we harm this other individual, then we are planting the seeds for our own future suffering that don’t we desire.

Causes of suffering is incompatible with our wishes. That if we persist in creating causes of our suffering, then this is completely incompatible with what we actually wish, that is not to suffer. These two ways of thinking are incompatible or mutually exclusive. So if we don’t desire If we don’t desire suffering, then don’t harm others. Don’t retaliate and don’t become angry at others.

If we do, if we act in this way, then we are planting the seeds of undesired suffering in the future. So, if we do not desire suffering, then we must cease the creation creating the causes of suffering. On the other hand, if we, if we desire happiness, then we must begin to cultivate the causes of happiness, and anything other than this is actually contradictory to that which we desire. So these are quite these are very good advices of Candrakīrti. We should listen well to these advices.

So we’ll stop there for today. If you have some questions, we’ll answer questions. So the best way is to understand that the harm harm that’s being brought to you is in response is the result, is the result of the harm that you brought to this person previously. That having harmed this person previously, now this result is coming back to you, and that understanding that this previous way of acting was mistaken because now you see the harm which is now you see the suffering which is a result of that previous harm. Now that previous mistaken action has come to fulfillment, the of the previously harming the action of having previously harmed this other person, now you have experienced the resultant suffering out of that, and now it’s finished.

Now there’s no more needs to be done, and it’s been beneficial what has occurred. Actually, you know, this person has actually has benefited you. They brought to first full circle this mistaken action that you created previously, and now the harm is finished, and only through the benefit of this other person has this action been completely exhausted. And now this person is harming me and creating negativity for themselves, and here they are benefiting me, and we should develop a sense of compassion. And we, this person becoming angry at us and causing us harm, they are creating a great deal of negativities for themselves.

And out of this they experience suffering in the future. So seeing that they’re only creating the causes for their own future suffering, we should develop compassion for them. You know, this person has been extremely beneficial to me, out of this harm that this person has brought me, that my previous unskillful action has been brought to completion, now it’s completely finished. But not only that, that this person has given me the opportunity to practice tolerance, and even more, they have given me the opportunity to cultivate compassion. And out of all of this, I’ve developed a great deal of positive potential due to which I will experience great happiness in the future.

So there are many different ways we can reason in working with this situation. So, this is out of harm being brought to oneself. If we can develop it’s extremely beneficial if we can cultivate tolerance. It’s extremely beneficial if we can cultivate compassion. Out of this we’ll develop a great deal of positive potential.

And this situation is extremely opportune to create a great deal of happiness for ourselves. Śāntideva tries to point out the great kindness of someone who brings us harm. In that there are people who, towards which we can practice generosity, are a great number, are many in number. But there are very few that we can practice tolerance with, and therefore we can quickly bring to completion the perfection of generosity since there are so many objects we can practice it with. But it’s difficult to bring to completion the perfection of tolerance because those objects are extremely rare.

And therefore, it is the person who harms us which is of the greater kindness because it helps us to bring us the occasion to bring to completion our perfection of tolerance. It is only people who harm us toward whom we can cultivate tolerance. We can’t cultivate tolerance toward those who benefit us, for example, parents. Yes. This question’s about so in in in Western society, there’s there’s a very widely accepted method for dealing with grief, which many many people have found to be very beneficial.

And part of that and dealing with grief successfully, according to this method, is to go through a number of stages. And one of those stages is anger, and it involves acknowledging and accepting our anger before we can pass on to the next and finally to to regaining a happy mind after experiencing, you know, grief, that losing. So what is the cause of the grief? So, no, so the question is so we’re actually this method says that we should actually bring anger into our minds, allow anger to come into our minds and experience it before we can let it go. If we don’t do that, then we may become stuck, and it may take us a very long time to experience a happy mind.

So that seems to be a little bit contrary. It’s actually wishing to experience anger so that then you can move on. And what what is the object? What is there? Cause of the grief?

For example, I’m pretty just using an example. Oh, you know, death of a, you know, your father or mother. The What is the to develop anger? Who are you going get angry at? Your parents for dying?

Is that what you’re saying? It could be any one of a number of things. It could be getting angry with your parents for dying. So remember he thinks that this is a big mistake, that getting angry at, for example, your parents even if they’re dead is extremely negative. For example, angry at your parents and one spiritual teacher are some of the greatest types of negativities that you can create.

And that the rising of anger is an afflictive emotion and it is experienced as a disturbance to the mind. The mind becomes unpeaceful. How can anger bring happiness? How does that happen? If if someone experiences, if someone feels the anger and they can’t but they can’t actually acknowledge it, then it’s possible for someone to be it’s it’s been observed that someone can actually be angry all the way up until they die and die angry because they haven’t been able to accept that they’re angry and let it go and move on to something else.

To accept it, it means they have to sort of feel it and bring anger into their mind. So that they if they accept it and bring anger into their mind, recognize it, and somehow manage to apply an antidote, then they can die happy and not angry. Therefore, it’s it’s beneficial. It’s definitely necessary that we identify anger in order to cease it. But I don’t think it’s necessary that we create it in order to identify identify the anger that’s already there, not try to create anger in order to identify it.

The bodhisattva is continually trying to cease his anger. He’s always working to cease his anger. I can see no benefit in creating anger. Though it’s definitely necessary that we identify anger when it is there. So sometimes one emotion can mask another.

For example, though you may be attached to someone, they may do something wrong that you don’t like and you become angry at them. And you cannot be attached and angry at the same time. So though you are presently angry at them, it covers over or masks your attachment toward them. So you know, if someone’s even though we don’t like it, someone’s life is exhausted, there’s nothing they can do. They die.

So the, I mean, the only way it could be of any use to get angry would be if it masks another emotion. When we can cause one emotion to arise in order to mask another one. But he doesn’t think that would be beneficial. He doesn’t see how becoming angry could be beneficial in getting rid of this unhappy mind, this grief. If you were drinking hot tea and your mouth was burning, if you drank cold water, it would eliminate that.

Can I just ask one question? Does Rinpoche think it’s possible to be angry and yet not acknowledge it? Maybe so. So I guess this just says that maybe people are angry when they don’t identify it. And then but to actually put it aside, they have to identify it properly, which means they they have to allow themselves to feel well, maybe they have to feel the anger, and they’re afraid of feeling it so they don’t they keep pushing it down.

So it’s possible that in order to identify, there may be some benefit to increase the emotion. Just like in order to wash your clothes, you try to work up a good lather, but eventually you’re going to wash them away. You get rid of them eventually. So maybe in order to identify the emotion, may be useful to increase it. But that’s the only way he can think of it a benefit.

So in the teachings on the Graduated Path, when one where it says that one is to view one’s spiritual master as the Buddha, and this is a process of cultivating this pure vision. And in the stages of developing this awareness that one’s teacher, one’s lama is a Buddha, it becomes necessary to see his or her faults. One actually tries to see what faults do they have, and as one appears to them, one looks at those identifying those faults, one sees in fact these are not faults and begins to apply reasoning why in fact these aren’t faults. And so there is a period when one actually looks for faults in order that one can refute that these are actually faults in order to gain a pure vision of one’s teacher as a Buddha. So this is the way we can achieve a very stable and perfected pure vision by having reason through these various faults that you cultivate, that you begin to see.

So if one were simply to sit there in meditation thinking that my spiritual teacher has no fault, spiritual teacher has no no fault, my spiritual teacher is a Buddha, and cultivate devotion in this way, then one day you will see that your teacher has a fault. And then all of that effort in cultivating was of no use. It was of no benefit. But on the other hand, if in the process of cultivating this pure vision one’s teacher, you actually