Buddhism 101 : Transforming Anger to Compassion – Ep. 23

Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful. Some good friends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture. Tibet house is the Dal Lamas cultural center in America. All best wishes. Have a great day Speaker 1 00:00:26 Visits, episode 23, titled transforming anger into compassion, Speaker 0 00:00:34 But know people like the Dar Lama a lot. When they see the Dar dilemma, they feel something special about it. And what is my wife taught me that actually, you know, she, you know, somebody asked me a gentleman asked me who was into gurus, wealthy gentleman. He said, you've known thatam a long time. Did you ever seem to a miracle, something, you know, produce something out of his ear or whatever, you know what, and I, I, you know, I I've seen some odd things happen around the dilemma, but you're not supposed to talk about it in Buddhism. It's against the sort of ethics and the tradition. So I'm sort of Heming and hawing and thinking what to say, you know, my wife is like no hesitation. Oh yes. Plenty of times she goes, I'm like, what? Okay, dear. So he's like lean forward in his chair and she goes, what was it? Speaker 0 00:01:23 And she said, well, I've seen him very, very busy with a lot of people clamoring for his attention and I'm stressed out and you know, what you think would be stressed out. And in all of those times, I have never seen him not give his full attention to whoever was right with him and in front of him. And the guy goes, oh, <laugh> so disappointed, but it's so true because why? And that's why people feel this way with Donald. And some people see him and immediately weep because somehow they subliminally sense that here's a, here is a situation where it isn't our usual thing. You know, which the Tibetan sometimes called this mountain and that mountain, this mountain and that mountain, you know, where you see the other person and you're this person, who's an entity inside it, skin with the boundary between you and your face. Speaker 0 00:02:14 You know, it's a boundary between you and the world and you assuming the other person is like that. And they're also feeling that. So the two of you are like negotiating, you know, then, and then what hand reaches out and you shake, you know, it's like, I'm not gonna kill you, you know, type of thing. The that's what handshake means, right? The weapon in the head. So, so that's how we normally are. And suddenly they meet someone who's sort of with them a hundred percent. It's like, they just suddenly feel safer. They feel like they don't have to be so frightened and so insecure about their own boundary because they're meeting this UN person, you know, they call the Tibetans, call him the ocean. It's like a giant, vast being, you know, but it's the specific you can analytically describe it as feeling you are everyone, which is strange, isn't it. Speaker 0 00:03:04 But if you've been a little bit in love, you have an idea. At least you you've gone a few people, you know, and then this is going way, way, way beyond that. So, and so you get there by what, by not killing for millions of lives, he didn't kill, he saved lives. He didn't take other people's property things away from them. He didn't, and, and of course sexuality is the, the third physical carmic act. Sexuality is where beings do melt their boundary, actually a little bit human beings. And, um, and they, and they are, you know, become truly close to each other. They kind of can feel their one being briefly, but, but you know, so to use that abusively where you you're just still hardening your boundary and harming someone and being sadistic or whatever, you know, not caring, then that's a, that's a big no-no. Speaker 0 00:03:55 It is not necessarily only adultery. It could be any kind of sexual misconduct or abuse, but the, but it's a secular ethic in the sense that it has to do with nature of life of causal life and using the causation process in the of life to expand your being, to become more and more open to other beings and to the nature of reality and to, because he, based on that discovery, that the broader, your awareness of the nature of reality, the happier you are, and that Dal Lama gives little slogans. Like he says, if you want to be happy, be compassionate, which is not intuitive when you first hear it, when you're compassionate means you can't bear the suffering of another person, you know, you feel, you really feel their suffering. You wanna do something about it. So why would that make you happy? You're expanding your awareness of suffering. Speaker 0 00:04:46 You would think, but actually you're not because the reason you're unhappy is cuz you're so damn sorry for yourself all the time. Cuz you were just satisfied, oh you never have enough. Oh, why did, why am I the only one who didn't do this? Why am I not in the front row? How come I'm not the head of the collar? Or how come Ooh, whatever it is. And then compassion means, oh, that person is much worse than me. Oh I can do something for them and forgetting about my own dissatisfaction and my own problem. You know? So that's why the dilemma says when he gets depressed, what is depression? Depression is like nobody ever had this misery. Like I do. Oh no, I, you know, people get mad at God. If they believe in God, they just, they get mad at themself, they'll commit suicide. Speaker 0 00:05:32 They just get completely isolated into their own thing. Compassion makes you aware of other people and what's matter with them. Right? So now we come to the issue of the enemy and uh, love your enemies. What they mean now on the surface level. Now there are four kinds of enemies in the book that we, that we analyze. And according to Tibetan science, psychology, and the one is the outer enemy. That's the one we normally all think about, you know, the one who hurt you, the one who you're afraid of, if they haven't hurt you personally, you think they might, you know, the terrorist, you know, Hitler, you know, Chank, you know, whoever that's enemy or the person at the office who always makes you unhappy or who fires you or what, you know, we know we all know what the enemy is. Your ex, those are the enemy, the outer enemy. Speaker 0 00:06:23 And um, so that's where you start now. Why would you want, love that enemy? But what does love mean in the Buddhist language? As I believe in Jesus, language love means the wish for the happiness of the beloved love is not just possessiveness. You know, I want them, I want to do something with somebody that's not really love. That's greed. That's possessiveness. Love is I so much like that person, that being or that thing, I want it to be fantastic. I want that person to be happy. That's what love is defined as it's good. It's the, it's the other side of the coin of compassion. I can't want, I don't want the other one to suffer and love is I do want the other one to be happy. The beloved to be happy right now. Why is your enemy hurt you? And why is the enemy harming you? Speaker 0 00:07:13 The enemy harms you because the enemy wants to be happy. Every being wants to be happy. And the enemy thinks you are in the way of their happiness. And they're going to be happy if they can just kill you or hurt you or do something, get you out of their way, you know, do whatever it is that they do to you. That's harmful to you. They think that will make them happy. So if they were happy without bothering you, why would they bother you? Do you follow? If they were really happy themselves? Well, you know, they were, it's a guy running around in the desert in Syria with a black flag and a hood over your head and being able to be shot at any minute. You know, that's not fun. <laugh>, that's not fun. They go back to Raha and jump in swimming pools and grab some person. Speaker 0 00:07:56 But then they, they grab a trophy wife or something, you know, by violence. And then she doesn't like them. So it doesn't get to be fun. It's not fun. It's like dissatisfying and it feels bad because the person feels bad around you. And so it's logical to proceed. Now, this doesn't mean people wrongly, wrongly. We run it all the time. You know when Sharon and I talked this topic as I'm sure Buddha and Jesus did, and everybody else was taught in their traditions ever since, well, if I love everybody, then everybody will beat me up and I'll be a doormat to them. And that doesn't mean that because it doesn't make other people happy to be, to be naively evil, evil people are not happy. They're very frustrated. They they'rerefore. They wanna you to join them in their misery. Usually, actually, people who are nasty, they're unhappy. You can even see the face of an angry, nasty person. They're feeling bad inside. They wanna spread that. Speaker 0 00:09:01 So, so you, if you want that enemy to be happy, you might very much oppose the negative thing they are doing. So it's, it's a, it's just an attitude. You're not hating them means you wanna destroy them and want them out of the world. And you know, you, you know, you want to dis obliterate them. Hating is, but loving them means you want them to be happy. So it might mean that you have to oppose them. You have to prevent them. You try not to eliminate them from the world. You realize you can't actually eliminate them. You can only destroy their body and they'll be back. Cuz everyone gets back. Everyone comes back in the Buddhist world. Everything is interconnected. Everything is infinitely inter inter entangled. And um, so it's the choice of your inter interaction with the enemy is not just come kill me. Love doesn't mean come destroy me. It does not mean that Jesus, I think is very misunderstood as he's saying, oh yeah, okay. I love all the world. So come kill me. Actually. He was not saying that he was saying, come try to kill me. And I'll show you that you fail. Nobody ever really pays attention to that. I, I sent a telegram to Mel Gibson, you know, who killed Jesus, who killed Jesus? You know, uh, news flash, uh, Mel, he didn't die. Speaker 0 00:10:26 The whole point is he couldn't be killed. He was the kind of being who couldn't be killed. There is such a being actually there are such types of being, you know, don't say don't never say never because materialists say no don't do you don't have, they are not that logical. They are a little bit cuckoo material, materialists. People who think they're nothing are slightly psycho. Do you know that? Do you realize that if you think you're really not there really not there, then you're gonna act recklessly and a little bit like psycho, you won't necessarily go into the shower with a knife, but, but you're a little bit psycho cuz you think you're something you're not, you're not nothing. You are never gonna be nothing, but you think you're nothing. So therefore you think you can do anything. And the impulse you feel like doing is okay, you's go ahead and do it. If you can get away with it. That's the danger of the, of the holistic materialist worldview non-spiritual worldview. Speaker 0 00:11:24 So, so the outer enemy is more complicated. Buddhist have a theory of self-defense they have justified self-defense they even have a theory of just of, of war that you can defend yourself in a, in a war situation, minimizing the violence all the way through. They are against capital punishment from the beginning. Absolutely. But they might, they, you might, they might sanction self defense, you know, get someone getting killed in a situation of self-defense. They might. So, so, uh, so the action with the outer enemy is not, that is not just be, be a pushover to the other person at all. In fact, you there's such a thing as tough love, you know, that that's the thing that alcoholics anonymous guy did tough love. And there's such a thing as fierce compassion and um, you know, those fears to bit <affirmative>, you know, those fierce Tibetan deities are supposedly fierce compassion. Speaker 0 00:12:16 They're not actually angry at anybody they're I just, I don't like to call them wrathful deities that people do. They're not wrathful they're just showing the form of ferocity to calm down really angry beings, you know, to sort of, you know, get them not to be angry, you know like that. Then you have the more important enemies, the inner enemy and the in the inner enemy is your own anger and your own hatred. And we are because we are not self aware enough unless we're because we haven't learned enough about how our mind works. We are vulnerable to when something happens that really bothers us. We feel this rage and this rage takes us over because it takes a hold of us by a specific handle actually, which is our wrong habit. That there's, that our being is some sort of fixed absolute thing. You know, like right now you're looking, some of you are looking at me or looking at something and, and you are listening and in the core of your subjectivity, everyone sort of feels that the same me is always there. Speaker 0 00:13:29 You know, that everything is changing in front of me and things are my mind is I'm thinking also I'm having inner changes by thinking things. But there's some point in there of something that never changes because it's that, that's what, or like I'm when I see a picture of myself 40 years ago, I was there and you know, it's like, I was the same person there. I think, although actually everything about me has totally changed, but we have this elusory thing that there's this witness entity, that's our real identity, which means sameness in Latin, this real identity. That's always unchanging us. And therefore it's not affected by circumstances. It's absolute actually it's a, it's what we call I Buddism an intrinsic identity or an intrinsic reality or a, or an isolated or independent self it's not related to the causational process. Do you follow me? Speaker 0 00:14:23 Maybe you have a little glimpse of what you're talking about. If you think introspectively, well then therefore when we have an impulse or we have an emotion and, and a voice says in us, which sounds like it's our voice to us. It says in our, we hear in our mind, that's new, good, that guy that's really unacceptable. You know, I have to get that this kind of really strong thing comes out. It seems to come from that absolute place. So then we are given over to it and we become mad. We say, meaning we become, they have studies that show that our judgment about the circumstances that in which we have this problem, we lose 85% of our reasoning power about how to deal with the situation. It narrows down to like a bull, you know, and a red flag, you know, and we harm ourself. Speaker 0 00:15:14 We harm beings that we love. We destroy things that we value. We be, we become, people will kill themselves. They will kill others, which you know, which will not accomplish their purpose. They will then be judged, you know, arrested cetera, lose their life. But they will do like that because they become helpless at this, in this, this, this energy of rage that seems to come from a place that they cannot resist because it seems like emotionally absolute to them. Obsession can work in the same way. You know, all of the different negative emotions can work it the same way, but, and they have their power over us because they seem to come from this absolute source to follow me. So that's that those impulses are the inner enemy because they, they are, it's like, you know, you are, you don't like it. If it's too hot or too cold, you will turn up the air conditioning or the heater. Speaker 0 00:16:12 And so outer things that come at us, we, we handle it. We try to deal with them or we suffer them. But if we can't deal with them, but they are not actually as bad as when you have a, an inner fever, when you have Ebola, when you have malaria or when you have something there with the terrible chills, when something comes from within, you're more helpless about it because it's inside you, you can't just go turn on this, in that heater. So you hope that you can find some medicine or somehow something, but it's more dangerous to you. So in the Buddhist view that inner hatred, the outer enemy is only motivated by their own helplessness and their own hatred to do something harmful to you. And, but, and, and you can, you have to deal with that. But if you, if they were happy and not in that bad state, you wouldn't mind, you know, they would not do it. Speaker 0 00:16:59 So loving them is the right way. Not getting, not investing them with the power to really affect you, but then how to do that with yourself. This is there where you learn to control that thing. And here, Sharon, Salberg my co-author in the book that she's very good in describing how the seventh element of the eightfold path of Buddhist education is something called mindfulness, which has become a kind of craze nowadays in America, you know, by, you know, observing your mind. And how many of you have practiced mindfulness meditation by the way, here in this audience. Oh, great. A lot of you, very good. Well, anybody who hasn't, it's a great thing for you to try, you know, even just a little bit, you know, you, what you do is you just sit down, you don't have to even sit. You don't have to sit. Speaker 0 00:17:48 Crosslegged some weird Yogi, who's all flexible in the joints. If you used to a chair, sit a chair, but you sit down and then you like discount your breath as a traditional way. You, you just count. And then you try to just think of one to 10, you know, but when you do that, of course, your mind starts going into Rees of memory, remembering something, worrying about something it starts wandering. And then you sort of just bring it back to the county and you do that. And what happens is that you, you begin to see all that's going on in your mind and you see how this memory starts to make you feel upset again. Or this memory makes you a little cheery again. And you begin to realize how, where the inner sources of your emotional reactions are. And if you do it a little more and you become more adept at it, then you begin to get to where you begin to get it a, a larger landscape in your mind. Speaker 0 00:18:46 And you gain more freedom in your mind where you can actually have a, have a say in whether you react or not to some event. It isn't like you're just a push button, react reactivity person. If you follow me, because where the, where the reaction comes from, where the distress arises from in the mind, you, you have a bigger degree of introspection. If you begin to do that a little bit, and that gives you a freedom, that's really very important in sort of, you know, developing more freedom from the inner enemy, but it won't eradicate the inner enemy, but it gives you more freedom from the inner enemy. And it makes, you know, your, your mind says, I have to get that person. They did this to me. They said that that's honest. And then you can then exercise a different voice, your, a different awareness voice. Speaker 0 00:19:34 Well now why do I have to do that? Or how should I do that? Or why are they doing it? Like you begin to investigate and you don't lose your good judgment and you realize how it is. And then, and then there's other great things. Shante David teaches in his sixth chapter. It's a wonderful thing where if you can, do, you know, why you get mad is because you get frustrated and you let that frustration build up. And this is very important for women because they're socialized to be polite and not be vigorously aggressive and out assertive. So, you know, there's something very annoying them. And then they just swallow it and kind of go, okay, yes, dear, whatever there. And then the frustration peels and builds. And then they blow up and throw a frying pack and, and, and, or they don't, and they get sick. Speaker 0 00:20:21 And so, you know, so, so there's a very beautiful thing. Santa Davis says, he says that frustration, you should never let it build up. And you should always keep, maintain good cheer and, and be cheerful and be comfortable in your mind. And what, what you've got the frustration about is if you see something happening that you don't want to be happening, or you see, or something you do want to happen is being blocked by someone. So in those kind of things, then you get frustrated and then you get mad and your anger comes to you and seduces you by saying, well, you can't stop that. Or you can't get that done because you're not strong enough, but I'll make you stronger by getting all enraged. It tricks you into that. And then you get you do something really clumsy and make the situation worse. And then you feel exhausted because you became enraged and you fail as a marshal artist when you lose your temper. And so instead of that, what you do is you, this other voice would say, well, no, well, well, how will I handle that and deal with it? Oh, but yeah, but then, so it, then, then San Davis says, if you can do something about a bad situation, why get upset about it, just do it. If you can't do anything about a bad situation, why get upset about it on top of that Speaker 0 00:21:39 Always remain cheerful and never get frustrated. And therefore what that is teaching is be active before you get mad. And my wife is a great master of that. She's really good. I call it, create, you know, joyful rudeness when humorous and joyful rudeness, when, so, and so is going on, you know, and telling you about how the Koch brothers are really great and there's no global warming and yes, they should completely take the Senate. And they should like screw over all of the good things that have happened since Roosevelt and you're getting matter and matter. The thing is when you hear the first sentence, you immediately intervene and say, why don't you stop talking such a bunch of rot? Speaker 2 00:22:25 <laugh> Speaker 0 00:22:27 How can you be so stupid? You know, and, and make a joke because you're not mad. You'll be able to think of something skillful to distract them. Like, let's talk about the golf scores. That kind of person would be interesting golf. You know, you're like, who's the golf champion now. And, you know, like just change the subject. And, but don't right away, don't sit and listen to two paragraphs and then get really mad and then have them dismiss you as a crazy liberal, like when I come home from somewhere and I'm kind of angry and upset and I've had trouble, I, uh, I start to tell my wife about it. Like, do you know what? And I'm all like, wild up like that. My expression is like this. And she'll say, why don't you just shut up before we're both upset. Speaker 2 00:23:11 <laugh> Speaker 0 00:23:16 And then I go like, ah, further then. Oh yeah. Okay. Right. And then it gives me a chance to up level and drop out, you know, Speaker 2 00:23:24 <laugh>, Speaker 0 00:23:25 I hope your ladies are listening to that. And that's Chan Davis teaching just be active, get in there and be forceful even without being angry. And then you'll be much more skillful. It'll be much more effective, helpful to the, to the opponent and helpful to yourself. So anyway, then, then quickly, I think probably I'll be going on him and then quickly then not too quickly, but no rush. Actually. I was told <laugh>. So, so then there's something we call the secret enemy and this is deeper and this is something they're very good at in the KA center. So you all know something a lot about it and has to do with the self habit. And this in a way as a psychologist was the Buddhist tradition and Buddha and his followers greatest contribution to the world is their whole insight into the way the mind functions, the wiring around the sense of identity and the how to cultivate a greater resilience of identity and, and less rigidity and fixation fix this about identity and learn to overcome prejudices, therefore, racial, gender, national religious, you know, by developing more openness, you know, and, and that's the going after what they call the self habit. Speaker 0 00:24:39 And that's the, the, that's the habit of that sort of psychotic thing of thinking, I'm this fixed thing that never changes. And that's real me and all of this other stuff is a bother. And I have to get away into that real me, which unfortunately many mystical traditions teach as if that's a good thing to do, go and escape from the universe, which, but, but the Budha did not do that. He, he, he was against that. He very clearly warned against that. So that's dealing with the secret enemy and then the super secret enemy is something, I mean, we have it as super secret, but it's a kind of, it's almost the same as the secret one. It's being very preoccupied with yourself and thinking always about yourself and where you are and what you're doing and what can I get out of it and being very enclosed within a sort of monologue of like, I, me, me, mine sort of thing, which is very similar to the self habit, it's called self concern or self preoccupation or self cherishing in the Buddhist tradition. Speaker 0 00:25:36 And then there's a funny aspect of that. And I think is special to us in the west, which, uh, which we, we focused on. And, and that is that at that deep level, when you find about yourself, we all have a remarkable degree of self AB negation and self contempt. We are socialized on two sides from the scientific side, from the religious side, we are socialized a little bit to consider ourselves somewhat unworthy. And part of that has to do with the industrial society that, you know, you have to produce something all the time or you're useless. You know, it has to do with maybe some of the, you know, the authoritarian religious structures that were there in our society, Western society from ancient time, from the male chauvinism, it may have to do with the family system, uh, you know, where the way we're brought up, you know, the busyness and the whatever, depending, even middle class people, parents are so busy and, and they're preoccupied. They don't pay attention in a certain way to the children. Speaker 0 00:26:42 It's, there's all kind of possible professional cultural things, but, but people who have been teaching widely in the world and have noticed a special quality of self-loathing in the American population, Western Western in general, but American one. And that's a super secret thing because then on top of that, people think though, they, they, they, they think they're, and some psychologists think they're narcissistic. That is to say, they're like, I'm so great. You know, they often cover that up with like, I'm so important and I'm so great because inside there's a deep insecurity, actually, it's very strong sense of I'm kind of worthless and I don't deserve anything. And therefore, why should I be happy? You know, what is that? Oh, no, I should be resigned to my misery. You know, type of thing. That's a subliminal thing that is very fing. And, uh, it's, palliated by the materialistic worldview that, well, just you I'm just a body. Speaker 0 00:27:33 So as long as I be comfortable, then when I'm dead, there'll be no worry. So I don't really have to worry about my state of mind cuz I'll get, I won't have it. I don't really have it. You realize that if you believe in nothing after death, that that means that, you know, if anything gets painful, you just should blow your brains out. And you're into nothing. That means that you are going around as a walking, nothing, the matrix there is you think you're something, but that's a delusion. Your brain fo focuses. And the reality is not bliss of Nirvana. Reality is nothing. And you escape to that. You can escape to at least an and nothing is anesthetic by the way. But the problem is nothing is nothing. So you are not gonna go there. No something can go to nothing because it isn't a place you'll never get into nothing. Then know something will ever be nothing. My slogan is, please remember it. Nobody gets out of here, a dead Speaker 3 00:28:28 <laugh> Speaker 0 00:28:31 And the, and the, and the, and the implication of that slogan is don't be too mean to your exes. Speaker 3 00:28:36 <laugh> Speaker 0 00:28:37 Because you fell in love with them. Many previous lifetimes you'll fall in love with them next life too. At that time, maybe they'll have the stronger lawyer <laugh> anyway. Okay. So that's the super secret enemy. That's the love of your enemies. And, um, you know, one can start by loving your friends too and yourself, and, uh, and, uh, but the best thing to do to start with here in North Carolina at this time is vote for K Hagen. <laugh> that's the best.