The Eight Verses of Mind Training – Verses 3-4: Overcoming Afflictions
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, International Women’s Partnership Centre, Chiang Mai, Thailand, January 15th 2007, Part 2.
The third verse says:
In all my actions may I watch my mind,
And as soon as disturbing emotions arise,
May I forcefully stop them at once,
Since they will hurt both me and others.
Now as I am sure you know, one of the main concerns in Buddhist Dharma is dealing with what are called the three or the five poisons. Throughout the ages there have been various ways developed of how to deal with these three poisons of our inherent ignorance, desire and our anger together with envy and pride. Now until we become an Arhat or a Buddha, everybody has something of the three poisons—some are stronger or more prevalent than others, but for sure we all suffer from them to a greater or lesser degree.
And so, especially when we are dealing with a text like this which sets out the conduct of the perfect Bodhisattvas—selflessly giving themselves away in the place of others, always serving others before themselves, being completely joyful and fearless in the face of all the awful things that others do to them and so forth—well, at times like this we have to be very honest.
These principles set out the conduct of a realised Bodhisattva. However, we are mostly not perfect Bodhisattvas and it doesn’t help to pretend to ourselves that we are. If we try to pose as being perfectly loving and completely compassionate, absolutely without any irritation or anger, totally filled with loving kindness towards all other beings… then if we are actually fortunate enough to really have those qualities, that is wonderful. But if we just pretend and put on this Bodhisattva pose, then we create more problems for ourselves than benefit.
So it often happens, especially with newcomers to the Dharma or to this kind of doctrine, that we hear how Bodhisattvas should act and we read about the problems of self-cherishing, so then we think that someone who is really a genuine practitioner would act like “this” and they would never think like “that”. So we force ourselves and in a way we become actors who are playing a part, but because we don’t want to admit that to ourselves, we suppress all that is negative. Since we decide that we mustn’t feel negative, we suppress our unwholesome emotions and create what in Jungian psychology is called “the shadow”. We develop a shadow because we are not facing up to the more disreputable parts of our psyche, since we believe that we are only allowed to acknowledge the light. Eventually this causes a crisis and people get nervous disorders and so forth when they become very disillusioned because they were trying so hard: “I’ve always tried to be a good person, so why is this psychological breakdown happening to me?” Usually it’s because they have not been true to themselves.
Even lamas complain about it because people have the idea of how a lama, a guru or a monk must behave. They are expected to act in certain ways and they must always be happy, always be smiling and they must behave exactly how we conceive a perfect being to be. We don’t allow them just to be who they are. It doesn’t mean that our teachers should be undisciplined and wild, but often they cannot express themselves as a real person. This can feel imprisoning because if they have any insight into their nature, they know that although they are not bad, they are still just people. Yet their role does not allow them to express themselves as they really are. So this is also a big problem for people in the role of examples for others.
There is a famous quotation that says “This above all: to thine own self be true”, because then we are honest also with others. The only way to really know what is going on inside ourselves is to look dispassionately. We can lie to ourselves a lot, especially about our intentions and motivations. We usually give good-sounding motives for whatever we do and often those motives are not real. We deceive ourselves as to our real intentions in order to feel okay about ourselves. Even Hitler or Mao Tse Tung or Pol Pot felt outraged when people didn’t consider that what they were doing was for benefiting the masses. They justified everything that they did. As far as they were concerned, they were great heroes. We can justify anything to ourselves, including genocide.
One way to really help us to be honest with ourselves is the habit of observing the thoughts without judging them, just seeing what is coming up, looking into the quality of our thoughts and feelings. As we progress, then more and more subtle undertones start to come up and we can see that even certain qualities which we consider acceptable are maybe not okay. Or even things which we think are not okay maybe are fine once we start to delve below the upper surface.
Now, according to Buddhist psychology, any action of body, speech and mind where the basic intention is tainted by any of the poisons is necessarily negative and will result in unwholesome karma. It doesn’t matter how we justify these actions to ourselves if the real underlying motivation is based on our delusion, our desires and greed, aversion and anger, envy and jealousy or pride. Since these are intrinsically negative, they will always have a harmful result.
If we are in a habit of being aware and know what is actually happening in our minds, then we are able to recognise these positive and negative tendencies at the moment of their arising. However, often by the time we are conscious of feeling angry or greedy or jealous, we are already swept along by our emotions before we suddenly realise what is happening. So the sooner we can distinguish what is arising in our minds, the easier it is to just recognise, accept and let it go.
So all these negative qualities are not arbitrary; they are very basic qualities which are interconnected and their existence is connected with this sense of self, the sense of a self-existing autonomous ego which is our basic ignorance.
Now it is obvious that once we have this sense of a separate autonomous ego, then comes the desire to gratify the ego. So this grasping, greedy, desiring mind is always reaching out more and more to attract towards itself anything which appears to be pleasurable: people, things, experiences, thoughts.
But then sometimes our desires are thwarted and what we want we cannot get. Or things that appear to be threatening and painful come to us and that creates aversion, anger, irritation because our desire for pleasure is frustrated. As the Buddha said, we don’t get what we want and we do get what we don’t want, and this brings dukkha, suffering, when we reach out with anger and frustration.
Then jealousy and envy arise because others are receiving the pleasure or success which we think we should have. So again there is greed for their pleasure and anger because we feel deprived, so these emotions are all interconnected.
Of course pride is again this basic sense of an ego and of a self-existent identity which creates the feeling of superiority, equality or inferiority—this sense of an I-ness in contradistinction to everybody else who is not me.
Actually the sharper the insight into what is actually going on in the mind, the more we realise that everything we do is polarised between attracting pleasure and avoiding pain. Even in changing our position we are inviting comfort and trying to get rid of the discomfort. We continually do it; we are conditioned like a plant facing towards the sunlight and shrinking from the cold. We do this all the time, usually unconsciously.
Well, the point is that we all have kleshas—that is not the problem. It’s not that from now on I will be totally without any desire, without any anger, without any ignorance. I will totally forget myself and only consider others. I mean, that’s very lovely, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
But what we can do is to become more and more conscious of these negative forces in our mind. We can recognise them and we can see them for what they are. It’s like if we unmask a wrongdoer, then they shrivel of themselves. Often we don’t need to actually do anything. For example, if we’re feeling irritation arising and we say to ourselves, “anger”, then having recognised the anger, of itself it will begin to dissipate. It’s not that we have to face anger with more anger. We do not feel angry at ourselves for being angry. That just creates a cycle. But if we just relax and recognise anger when it arises, then often of itself it will either just transform altogether or at least begin to dissolve. It’s like one of those big angry demons that if we recognise that they are just a fiction of our imagination, they simply evaporate.
Buddhist texts are very strict with the idea that these poisons are what really create our problems in life. They are not our friends. Sometimes they appear innocuous, especially greed, because when we fulfil our greed it feels pleasurable, so it seems not to be a problem. But actually these emotional defilements are an enemy held in our hearts because greed is something which is endless; it can never be satisfied. It will always agitate our hearts because we are always wanting something. So it is not a friend.
Sometimes people feel strong when they are angry and very self-righteous, so they think it’s all right to be angry. But in fact it is not right to be angry, which again is like having an enemy sitting in our hearts. After all, ordinary enemies, if we are nice to them, if we try reconciliation and maybe we sign a treaty, then perhaps our enemies can become our friends. Anything can change—but the poisons never change. They are not on our side.
So don’t befriend your poisons. They are always going to create unrest and dukkha. They are the source of our dukkha. Our dukkha isn’t outside; our dukkha is inside. Our mental poisons are the one enemy we don’t need to befriend.
So then we have to recognise the enemy and replace the enemy with the friends who help us on the path. So for example, the antidote to greed would be contentment, sharing and generosity. The antidote to anger is patience with difficult situations, compassion, love and so forth. The antidote to envy is joy and happiness in others’ good fortune, and the antidote to pride, of course, would be this whole text, which is putting others before ourselves.
The Dharma is something to be practised day by day; it’s not something just for when we go to the temple or when we are sitting in meditation. It is something to be cultivated from moment to moment to moment, a practice that we have to take with us and utilise in order to transform our minds and through that our actions, and thereby the lives of ourselves and others.
So then in verse 4 it says:
When I see ill-natured people,
Overwhelmed by wrong deeds and pain,
May I cherish them as something rare,
As though I had found a treasure-trove.
So this verse is dealing with the question of what we do when we meet people who are difficult or ill-natured. Normally our reaction is to either avoid them or become irritated or even angry towards them.
However, in order to genuinely advance on the spiritual path, we need to cultivate compassion, loving kindness and develop patient acceptance of difficulties and obstacles. Now, if one is a reasonably nice person, it is usual that other people will also be pleasant back to us. So that is very good, but it’s very easy to be friendly and loving to people who are themselves friendly and loving. That doesn’t take any particular effort. After all, even wolves and tigers are friendly and loving towards their own.
But like if one wants to develop physical muscles, then it’s no good exercising by lifting a feather. That is not going to get us anywhere. We need to lift heavy weights to get our muscles. And likewise spiritually, if we want to get real spiritual muscles and become a spiritual hero—as the word “Bodhisattva” is translated in Tibetan—we need obstacles to overcome.
So this is why when we meet people who are difficult and obnoxious and really a problem for us, instead of feeling aversion, we should think, Oh, fantastic, now I can really have someone to practise on! Oh, I am so grateful, thank you so much, you are my true spiritual friend. You are going to help me on the path, because without you how would I learn all these qualities of compassion and patience! You are my real teacher. Thank you, thank you.
This is what this text is about. It’s about the gratitude we feel towards difficulties and obstacles because this is how we are going to learn. Of course we don’t need to invite these difficulties, but when difficulties do come, then we have the method for dealing with them skilfully.
Atisha was the founding father of this whole Lojong movement, and when he came to Tibet he had an attendant who was an Indian monk. This attendant was really rude and obnoxious, and he would never do anything anybody asked him to do and he was an awful person. So the disciples said to Atisha, “Look, why do you keep this awful person to attend you? We would really serve you with so much devotion. Please send him back to India and we will look after you.” So Atisha replied, “What are you talking about? He is my greatest spiritual friend. Without him how am I going to put all these Dharma principles into action? You are all so devoted and loving, so you are no use!”
So this is why the text says “May I cherish them as something rare, as though I had found a treasure-trove.” When we come across people who are difficult to us and who create problems, this is a very skilful way of dealing with the situation instead of becoming upset and creating more anger and aversion which after all causes more suffering for ourselves. Actually, our anger doesn’t hurt them. They are okay in their smug complacency. They are fine. But who suffers is us. We are doing for ourselves what only our enemies would want for us. So why give them that satisfaction? Welcome them and then what can they do?
So this is the point, that situations are helpful or not depending on our attitude. It’s not what is happening out there. It’s how we deal with what is happening out there.
During the Second World War when the Nazis were taking over Holland, there was a young Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum who was in her late twenties. She was an artist and writer leading a fairly bohemian type of life. She wasn’t really religious. She was just an ordinary sort of person.
At that time under the Nazi regime, the Jewish people had to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes so everyone knew they were Jewish. They were not issued with ration cards so they were not allowed to buy most foodstuffs, so gradually they would be starved. They couldn’t travel on public transport anymore and they couldn’t do most of the work, and so they were penniless and destitute. Later came the routine of being arrested in their homes at night and sent to the death camps.
So it was at a time not only of great hardship, but also terror for these people. During their days they were constantly confronted by the Nazi soldiers who were very aggressive, full of hatred and totally powerful. It was a time of great terror and fear, rather like being in Cambodia during the regime of Pol Pot.
So Etty saw this happening and she wrote many letters, which is why we know about her, because eventually she died in one of the camps. But she observed what was going on around her and she thought, What can we do? What is the answer to all this hatred and fear and violence? And she realised the only answer was love. That as long as she answered their hatred with love, she was victorious. The moment she gave in to hatred and fear, they won.
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May All Beings Benefit
Sarva Mangalam