Review
We are going through the lam-rim, the graded stages. No need to review the initial stages in great detail.
Initial Scope
On the initial scope, we learn to appreciate the precious human rebirth by recognizing the temporary freedoms that we have from the worst states and the opportunities that we have that enrich our lives. Looking at the causes for such a rebirth, we see how difficult it is to attain. Then we see that we are going to lose that circumstance at the time of death. Death will come for sure, and we never know when. The only thing that will be of any help in terms of our next rebirth is having taken the preventive measures to avoid a worse rebirth with which we wouldn’t be able to continue on the spiritual path.
We looked at what the worst rebirths would be like – being born as a trapped being in one of the hell realms, as a clutching ghost, or as a creeping creature, an animal. We develop a very unsettling type of fear of that, but it’s not one that makes us feel helpless and hopeless because we realize that there is a way to avoid it. That way is to put a positive direction in our lives, what’s known as refuge.
We saw that this is provided by the ultimate Dharma Jewel, which is the true stoppings of all the various causes of suffering and the understandings that will bring those stoppings about. These exist in full in the mental continuums of the Buddhas and in part on the mental continuums of the Arya Sangha. That gives us the direction to go in – what we want to try to actualize in ourselves.
The first thing that we need to do to go in that direction is to make sure that we continue to get precious human rebirths. For that, we have to avoid the cause of worse rebirths, the cause of the so-called suffering of suffering, which is destructive behavior. That led us to the detailed discussion of karma.
Having actualized this initial level of motivation in which we have turned our attention from this lifetime to future lifetimes, we have, in a sense, taken care of what those future lives will be. At least we are working on it.
Intermediate Scope
On the intermediate level, we have to think about what the better rebirths would be like, because we want to avoid attachment to them. The better rebirth states also have their sufferings. We looked in detail at the sufferings of humans, of the gods, and of the demi-gods. None of that is attractive. We also looked at the sufferings of any type of samsaric rebirth. All of that leads us to want to avoid those types of suffering.
In order to avoid those sufferings, we need to avoid their causes. Their causes, we see as we go deeper and deeper, are the disturbing emotions and disturbing attitudes. We looked at the six so-called root disturbing emotions, the last of which is a set of five disturbing attitudes. Then, we looked at the subsidiary, or auxiliary, disturbing emotions, which come from those six. There is a list of 20 of those, and we went through all of them. We also looked at the order in which these disturbing emotions arise and the circumstances or causes for them to arise.
In order to develop more strongly the wish to get out of all of these sufferings, the determination to be free, we have next in the outline a list of the disadvantages of the disturbing emotions to really convince us these are troublemakers, that these are things that really harm us. In Lam-rim chen-mo, A Grand Presentation of the Graded Stages of the Path, Tsongkhapa gives a list of these. There are 12 or so of them, depending on how you count them. Let’s go through these and think about them.
The Disadvantages of the Disturbing Emotions
They Cause the Mind to Be Disturbed
When the disturbing emotions arise, such as attachment, grasping, longing desire, greed, everything in that category and also in the category of anger, hostility, and so on (we can just focus on these, although, obviously, jealousy, arrogance, etc. would be included), the first disadvantage is that:
- They cause our minds to be completely disturbed.
What does that mean, “completely disturbed”?
Participant: Out of balance.
Dr. Berzin: We no longer have peace of mind; we are not calm anymore. Is that the case? Do you notice that? How do you notice it?
Participant: You feel uneasy.
Dr. Berzin: Is it a physical feeling, a mental feeling, or both?
Participant: Both.
Dr. Berzin: This is very important to develop a sensitivity to. We need to notice. Often it is not obvious to us because we get so carried away. And because it’s not so obvious to us, we start to feel a disturbing emotion. But if we are sensitive to our energy, we can feel that it’s disturbed. The text refers to the mind becoming disturbed, but the mind and energy are very closely related.
How would it be that the mind is disturbed? I guess it would be that calmness is disturbed or put out of balance. Think about that and try to recognize it in your experience. What we want to do after each of these is to feel very strongly that this is a real troublemaker and that we really need to get over this. This is not something that we just want to tolerate. OK?
So, it causes our minds to become completely disturbed. Also, part of that is that we can’t think straight.
[meditation]
I was going to read what Shantideva says at the end, but maybe reading it at this point is helpful, as a lot of this is coming out of Shantideva. He says, in chapter four of Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior (sPyod-‘jug, Bodhisattvacharya-avatara):
[28] Although enemies, such as anger and craving, have neither legs nor arms, they are neither brave nor wise, how is it that they have made me like their slave?
We are like slaves to them, aren’t we, in the sense that they take over?
[29] For while squatting in my mind, at their pleasure, they gleefully cause me harm. To be patient and not become angry with them is an inappropriate, pathetic place for patience.
So, we shouldn’t tolerate them, but that doesn’t mean that we develop strong anger.
[30] Even if all the gods and anti-gods were to rise up against me as enemies, they couldn’t drag and feed me into the fire (of a joyless realm) of unrelenting pain.
[31] But those strong mighty enemies, my disturbing emotions, can in a moment hurl me into them, which when met, will cause not even the ashes of the King of Mountains to remain.
[32] My disturbing emotions are long-standing enemies, with no beginning or end. No other enemy can be like that, for such a long time.
([33] With all (the others), becoming close and serving (them) nicely, bring benefits and happiness; but being close with my disturbing emotions (only) harms me with even more pain.
In other words, even if we indulge them, they just cause more problems.
[34] These long-time, continuing enemies like this are the sole causes for masses of harm to increase evermore. How can I be joyful and not terrified in samsara if I set a secure place (for them) in my heart?
[35] Where can I have happiness if, in a web of attachment within my mind, they lurk as guards of my samsara prison, becoming my murderers and butchers in joyless realms and the like?
[36a] Therefore, I shall never give up my effort in this until, directly myself, I definitely smash these enemies.
Shantideva says this in a very beautiful, poetic way. Here, this list just elaborates on all the disadvantages of the disturbing emotions. It’s very interesting, do we really identify them as our enemies?
Participant: Not always.
Dr. Berzin: Even some of the time?
Participant: When we are excited about things, our energy is shaky.
Dr. Berzin: Excited could be a positive thing in English. It means to be very enthusiastic. But it says here, in the first one, that our minds become completely disturbed. Then, as I said, we don’t think straight. Therefore, we certainly don’t regard the disturbing emotions as enemies. They just carry us away. That’s really the recognition that we need, that “This is the thing that causes me the most harm.”
Participant: Quite often, they not only disturb the mind, but they make me do or say something that I otherwise wouldn’t.
They Cause Us to Act Wrongly Toward Our Focal Object
That brings us to the second disadvantage:
- They cause us to act wrongly toward our focal object.
The focal object could be another person. It could be our computer when it has crashed or when we have accidentally deleted something and so on. “Act wrongly” means to act or speak in a destructive way, to curse at the object and so on. We can recognize that in our behavior.
Certainly, when we are really attached to somebody, we often say all sorts of really regrettable things to them. When they haven’t called us or they don’t pay enough attention to us or when they have done something that we don’t like, we often drive them further away by what we say, don’t we? And when we get angry with somebody, certainly, we say things that hurt.
[meditation]
We are very agitated emotionally and physically; we are out of balance. Then we say and do things that are aimed at a specific object or person. Or we could be so angry that we just yell into the air; it doesn’t have to be that somebody is actually present. We’ve discussed this in terms of karma, the results of destructive behavior, which is suffering. And it causes our dormant tendencies to become firmer.
Participant: What do you mean by dormant tendencies?
Dr. Berzin: We have tendencies to get angry, to get attached, to be jealous and so on. When those tendencies are not active, they are sort of sleeping, but they are still there. If we want to be a little more technical, we’d say that they are imputed. The more that we have a particular disturbing emotion, the firmer the tendency to have that emotion becomes. So, if we have had various instances of getting angry, we can impute onto those instances a tendency to get angry. A tendency is like that. It’s not something concrete that we can find. But the more instances of a certain type of emotional occurrence like anger that we have, then obviously, the stronger the tendency to get angry again becomes.
It’s very interesting actually. We have certain types of attachment for things – for instance, violent computer games, pornography or something like that. And we think, “Well, it’s just entertaining. It’s innocent.” But each time that we play that game or look at the pornography, the tendency to continue to do it becomes stronger. It also makes the hostility that is there with the violent game or the desire that is there with the pornography stronger, more deeply embedded. It’s very self-deceiving to think, “Well, it’s just innocent to continue looking at that. I can keep it under control.”
Participant: I think it is also important to keep in mind the other side – that you could feel guilty because it happened again. If you fall into anger or attachment, you shouldn’t make it smaller than it is, but on the other hand, you shouldn’t feel guilty when it happens.
Dr. Berzin: We have to analyze that a little bit further. If we have gotten angry and lost our temper, the point is not to feel guilty. After all, we won’t be completely free of these things until we’ve become arhats. It’s important to keep a perspective on it. On the other hand, we want to exercise some self-control. Let’s think of somebody who has a strong desire for alcohol, an alcoholic. Obviously, the more that they drink, the more desire they have and the more addicted they become. It has a physical counterpart as well.
What do you recommend in that situation? We have to exercise self-control and just stop. Even when we stop, the desire to have another drink – or a cigarette, if we’ve stopped smoking, or a marijuana joint, if we’ve stopped indulging in that – is going to arise. I think there is a difference here between being self-indulgent – saying, “Well, I’ll have a drink now and then,” if we are an alcoholic – and not feeling guilty if we have it. I think one has to make a clear decision. These are addictions. Addiction is quite clear in terms of giving up substances. But let’s say we are addicted to a person and we become very, very dependent on that person. That is more difficult.
I think what you are saying is more relevant in terms of giving up drinking alcohol or whatever – that we shouldn’t feel guilty when the desire to have a drink comes up because it will come up.
Participant: When you feel guilty, you give responsibility away. You can feel regret, but you still have responsibility for your decision to stop drinking or not.
Dr. Berzin: If we feel guilty, we give up the responsibility. Can you explain that? I don’t quite follow.
Participant: Feeling guilty, for me, is to think, “Poor, little me. It’s not my fault.”
Dr. Berzin: I think it’s just the opposite: “I am so bad because I am like this. It is my fault.” In either case, whether it is “poor me” or “I am the really bad one because I felt this again,” there is a strong grasping onto a very solid “me”: “What I did was so bad. I am the bad one,” or whatever. These things certainly don’t help at all. However, one doesn’t go to the other extreme and not exercise some sort of self-control, at least in terms of the action.
Participant: Feeling guilty is associated with a negative spiral.
Dr. Berzin: Definitely.
Participant: If we feel guilty, it just gets worse and worse.
Dr. Berzin: However, regret is something quite different; it’s thinking, “I wish I hadn’t gotten angry,” and so on. I think that there are certain cases, like with alcohol or cigarettes, that when we decide to stop, we stop. I think we need to differentiate between the action and the disturbing emotion. That’s the difference between the initial scope and the intermediate scope, by the way. The initial scope focuses on the actions, the behavior, and the intermediate scope focuses on the disturbing emotions.
Participant: What I found helpful in that regard is something you said a while ago – that if I don’t live up to my ideal and get angry or act foolishly, I can tell myself, “Well, I have Buddha-nature. I can do better.” Then I won’t feel guilty. It’s rather like in sports, telling myself, “I might just jump a bit further.”
Dr. Berzin: So, we need to give ourselves a pep talk as it were: “I can do better than that. I have Buddha-nature.” Buddha-nature, of course, is being clouded by the disturbing emotions, but we have the basis for being able to overcome them. The mind is not inherently stained by these disturbing emotions.
That’s very true. Of course, at a much more advanced level – getting back to the causes of the disturbing emotions – these objects, whether they’re violent movies, sex movies or whatever, are things that we would have complete equanimity toward. It’s a very delicate thing to give something up. It means changing our focus from the disturbing emotions to the action. I am thinking in terms of fear: “I am afraid to have a drink,” or “I am afraid to look at this violent movie. I am afraid because I’ll develop a disturbing emotion.” On the one hand, it says we need to have dread of going to a worse rebirth and stuff like that, but on the other hand, we have to reaffirm that there is a way to avoid this. “I am afraid that I’ll get angry again.”
Let’s say we very frequently lose our patience when we stay for a long time with our parents. We are afraid that if we spend a week with them over the Christmas holiday, we’re going to get angry, lose our patience. How do we deal with that? Is that a healthy sense of fear?
Remember, disturbing emotions cause us to act wrongly toward our focal objects – to lose our temper with our parents, for example.
Participant: It depends on how I deal with it. I don’t have to sleep at their house, for example.
Dr. Berzin: That’s if we live in the same city as they do. If we go visit them in a different city or a different country, then it’s difficult not to stay with them if they have room.
Participant: I think it is helpful if one can prepare.
Dr. Berzin: That’s exactly my point. There are these two types of fear. Remember, we have that with the lower realms. We can fear something and feel helpless and hopeless, thinking, “There is nothing I can do.” Or we can think, “I am afraid I might lose my temper; therefore, I am going to prepare very well.” There are measures that we can take that will help. If we do lose our temper, we can regret it, rather than feel guilty, thinking, “I am so bad.” And of course, we apologize.
Participant: It’s just in this situation that, again, you get angry with your parents. Then you feel angry that you got angry with them.
Dr. Berzin: Either we feel guilty, or we feel angry with ourselves. Or, as you were saying, we think, “Poor me, I acted improperly again.”
Participant: That should be a constructive thing.
Dr. Berzin: To get angry with ourselves? Shantideva says that to be patient with anger is an incorrect application of patience: this is our enemy. We need to use a strong energy but not the disturbing emotion of anger. Instead, we use the strong energy that, “I am not going to let this…” As Shantideva says, talking of anger, “You have caused me so much harm in the past. I am not going to let you continue.”
Participant: Strong determination.
Dr. Berzin: Right. We need strong determination. But it is very common that we get angry with ourselves.
Participant: I think the anger has to be directed against the anger and not against ourselves.
Dr. Berzin: Very good point. The enemy is the anger; the enemy isn’t us. Remember, we have this disturbing emotion, the deluded outlook toward a transitory network. We are casting the net of “me” on top of the anger and identifying with it. Then, instead of getting angry with the anger, we get angry with ourselves because we are the anger in a sense.
That’s why the order in which all of the disturbing emotions develop starts with this throwing “me” onto various aspects of what we are experiencing, identifying with them as we would say in simple language. That causes our dormant tendencies to become firmer.
They Cause the Same Types of Disturbing Emotions to Recur
The next one:
- They cause the same type of disturbing emotion to recur.
Literally, it says “the continuity not to be cut.” Basically, these disturbing emotions prevent us from cutting their continuity. It’s an awkward way of expressing it, but it’s the way that we would express it in Tibetan. We want to cut the continuity. But the more that we have a disturbing emotion, the more difficult it is to cut its continuity.
They Cause Harm to Ourselves & Others
The next one:
- They cause harm to ourselves, to others, or to both.
We can see that if we analyze. We don’t accomplish our aims in life when we are attached, clinging, angry and so on. That doesn’t mean that we are just passive in life. There is quite a difference between having an aim and aiming toward it and overly clinging to that aim, being desirous of it in a very disturbing way. Can you differentiate between those two? For instance, “I really want to make a lot of money so that I can be rich.”
[meditation]
It’s a difficult one, actually. We can think back to our student days when we had to take an examination. We really wanted to do well. Most of us were very, very nervous and not very relaxed. Analyze what’s going on. Is there a difference between striving to do our best and having this very strong disturbing desire?
[Participant comment]
Dr. Berzin: On the one hand, we are throwing this net of “me” onto the exam results, thinking that, somehow, they will prove our worth, either as a good or bad person, and then we’re very attached to that. Aren’t we? I think the desire in this situation is toward the “me.” And there’s also fear, fear that we won’t be good enough.
Participant: Then you have to start again next year.
Dr. Berzin: Then we have to do the course over, and what would our parents think? We won’t graduate on time, and so on.
Participant: And pay for it.
Dr. Berzin: Then, we have to borrow even more money, and so on.
Participant: So, you don’t want to fail.
Dr. Berzin: Is there a disturbing emotion there or is this realistic?
Participant: Both.
Dr. Berzin: These are the facts: If we fail, we would have to repeat the course and borrow even more money. But can we approach that without a disturbing emotion? Where is the disturbing emotion here?
Participant: Fear.
Dr. Berzin: What is fear based on?
Participant: You exaggerate this direction you feel you’ve got, and you have to do the course again…
Dr. Berzin: It can occur, but we exaggerate it. We exaggerate the negative aspect of it. That’s our definition of anger, isn’t it? It’s repulsion. Fear is the uneasiness that we experience with the repulsion. We really don’t want that thing, and we make it into a monster. “It would be the end of the world.” Well, it would probably be pretty nasty, but we’ll live in most cases, unless it’s some sort of torture scene or something like that.
Again, what the disturbing emotions such as clinging, attachment, etc. do is to exaggerate the good qualities of something. Then we have to have it. There’s a strong “me.” “I have to get it.” The disturbing emotions such as repulsion, anger, fear, etc., exaggerate the negative qualities. Then the strong “me” – “I have to get that away.” The point is not to exaggerate the negative qualities but to take the test very seriously and study.
Think of a simple example: crossing the street. We can exaggerate the negative qualities of “I could be hit by a car” and then be afraid to cross the street. So, every time we have to cross the street, we are afraid and are looking back and forth, back and forth. Or somebody who is afraid that they left the gas on in their house – they have to go back to the stove a couple of times before they actually leave. That’s exaggerating the negative qualities. It doesn’t mean that we are not careful when we cross the street or that we don’t make sure that the gas is off when we leave the house.
It’s important to recognize what the disturbing emotion is and not to deconstruct too much. It causes harm to ourselves, to others, or to both. We get angry, over desirous, obsessed and so on, and then, inevitably, we do something that will be of harm to us and others.
They Cause Us to Commit Unspeakable Acts
Furthermore,
- They cause us, in this lifetime and in future lifetimes, to commit unspeakable acts and to experience physical discomfort, suffering and mental unhappiness.
“Unspeakable act” is just another term for negative ways, acting in some sort of destructive way that makes us experience suffering in this and future lives. So, there’s physical discomfort. Certainly, when we are angry, we feel discomfort. Now we are not just talking about what we experience at the time of the disturbing emotion. Sure, at the time of the disturbing emotion, we are physically uncomfortable, and we have mental unhappiness. Do we have mental unhappiness when we have strong desire? We think that’s happiness, don’t we? We are with somebody, and we are very, very attached and…
[Participant comment]
Dr. Berzin: We can have desire even without being with the person. That’s not happiness. That’s unhappy, “poor me.” There is the “poor me, I am not with the person.” Or jealousy – that’s even worse.
[Participant comment]
Dr. Berzin: Even if we are with the person (that will come a little bit later with number 11), it still makes us feel uneasy, unsure of ourselves. Even after we have had that incident of anger, we still have mental unhappiness. Unhappiness is going to come.
[Participant comment]
Dr. Berzin: “It causes us in this lifetime and future lifetimes” – so, they are not necessarily talking about right at this moment, although it could include that – “to commit unspeakable acts and to experience physical discomfort, suffering and mental unhappiness.” We can say that the discomfort, suffering and unhappiness are from the destructive behavior, the unspeakable acts.
Participant: What does “unspeakable” mean?
Dr. Berzin: “Unspeakable action” or more precisely “uncommendable actions” (kha-na ma-tho-ba) is a Tibetan term that comes from the Sanskrit term. It means something that cannot be praised; unpraiseworthy acts. But literally, it means uncommendable.
Participant: But it’s not as bad as the ones that we would go to Avici hell for?
Dr. Berzin: It includes those. There are two categories of uncommendable actions. There are those that are naturally uncommendable. Those would be the ones from our list of destructive behavior. Then there are what’s called “prohibited uncommendable actions,” which are actions that Buddha specified as being counterproductive for specific people in specific situations – for instance, the various monks’ and nuns’ vows of not eating after noon. For them, eating after noon would be a prohibited uncommendable action. “Unpraiseworthy” is is close to the meaning, but literally, it’s “uncommendable.”
They Cause Us to Actualize the Sufferings of Birth, Old Age & Death
The next one:
- They cause us to actualize the sufferings of birth, old age and death.
So, they perpetuate the whole samsaric cycle and causes our positive force to diminish. How would that happen?
Remember our discussion about the increase of karma, one of the four laws of karma – that positive or negative force, tendencies and so on are things that can continue to be affected. It’s not that positive force is something solid in our minds and that it is unaffected by anything. It is affected by things. It can get stronger, and it can get weaker. As Shantideva and Chandrakirti say, anger toward a bodhisattva can destroy a large amount of positive force, particularly if we haven’t dedicated that positive force. Think about that.
Let’s say we are doing something really positive and productive on our computer, something great and really helpful. Then, by mistake, we press the wrong button, and it all gets deleted. We can’t recover it and we get angry. What happens to the positive force from all that good work that we lost? It’s really devastating, isn’t it? “Devastated” is the actual word that is used, which means that it becomes very, very weak.
Participant: It can’t be destroyed completely.
Dr. Berzin: But it becomes very, very weak. That happens, doesn’t it?
Participant: Even just in ordinary terms, like relationships, if you are very kind and helpful to someone, but then when you get really angry towards him, yell at him or hit him, that might destroy the whole relationship.
Dr. Berzin: All the positive force from it, the good feeling, etc. is destroyed. So, it’s really a troublemaker. It causes our possessions, resources and wealth to fall away. We gamble and lose things because of attachment to get more.
Participant: Maybe you win.
Dr. Berzin: But maybe we lose everything. Or when getting angry, we could smash our favorite object.
Participant: But you can be a very angry, terrible person and have a lot of money.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, because we are talking about karma. Being able to earn a lot of money is a result of generosity in a past lifetime. That’s a different karma that’s ripening. However, again, I think we have to look at both the short-term consequences and the long-term consequences. If we are very desirous, we spend a lot of money unnecessarily, don’t we? If we are angry, we can certainly destroy our possessions because of that anger.
They Cause Us to Feel Inadequate, Joyless & Fearful When with Others
The next one:
- They cause us to feel inadequate, joyless and devoid of feeling fearless in the company of others.
These are the literal terms. We have to look at the definitions.
Feeling Inadequate
Feeling inadequate is a type of laziness – feeling unable to deal properly with a situation or to control our emotions. If we are in the company of someone toward whom we have strong desire or strong anger, we feel unable to deal properly with that person. “I am so upset that I can’t control my emotions.” It’s true, isn’t it? Again, try to relate that to your experience. “I am so upset because my lover or my friend is with somebody else.” We are so jealous that we feel inadequate and unable to deal with other people. That is actually listed as a form of laziness – feeling that “I can’t deal with it. I can’t handle it.” We don’t even try because we are too upset.
Participant: The mind isn’t able to focus on the others.
Dr. Berzin: We have that with acting wrongly toward our focal object.
First of all, it causes our minds to become completely disturbed. We feel we can’t control our emotions. Often, if we are upset with somebody, we then snap at somebody else. We have a difficult day in the office or are really angry with something, when we come home to our partner or our children, we get angry with them.
Participant: A few years ago at my work, I told my boss that I didn’t want to work with another colleague on any project for the time being because we just clashed so much.
Dr. Berzin: On the one hand, a cause for a disturbing emotion to arise is a certain object. So, in a sense, we need to keep a distance. But we might not be able to do that. Our boss could say, “OK, you don’t have to work on the project.” But there are many work situations in which we can’t avoid our colleagues. We have to work together with them. To feel, “I can’t deal with this,” is, in a sense, a form of laziness. We have given up before we even try. It makes us feel inadequate – that we can’t deal with it.
Feeling Joyless
The second one here is joyless. We are uneasy, not at ease. When we are upset about something, we are not at ease, are we? We are tense. Because we are tense, we can bark at others like a dog and bite. They do make us tense – attachment, jealousy, anger and pride. Pride is an interesting one. Does that make us tense? Arrogance, I think, is a better way of saying it. When we are very arrogant, we are not at ease with other people.
Participant: You feel you need to hold your position; you’re uneasy about losing it.
Dr. Berzin: Oh, I am thinking of when I went to Princeton and Harvard. Harvard was even more like that than Princeton where everybody was pretty much first in their class. Then, you come to Harvard and “nothing special.” Nobody is anything special. Most people got perfect scores on their entrance exams, so “nothing special.” In a sense, sometimes you felt, despite having this arrogance, that somehow, “I got in by mistake, and all these other people are maybe smarter than I am. So, I better keep my mouth shut because they are going to find out that I am not as smart as they are,” even though we all were very smart. There was an insecurity with a lot of people. And we were very arrogant. A lot of professors of big-name universities can be very arrogant. They are certainly not at ease. And they are not able to handle situations very well because they have to keep up this front.
This is the interesting thing: behind arrogance, there is an insecurity that somebody is going to find us out, that we are not really as good as we think we are.
Participant: You could make mistake.
Dr. Berzin: For instance, we could say something incorrect, and some student of ours corrects us and it gets in the newspaper.
Devoid of Feeling Fearless
The third one here is devoid of feeling fearless. We don’t feel fearless: we are afraid. What does that mean? We are with someone that we have a great deal of attachment to, and we are afraid of being rejected by that person. It’s a sense of security, isn’t it? We’re afraid of being rejected or not getting what we want. And anger is always associated with fear. This is a very, very helpful thing to realize, I think.
So, in the company of others, the disturbing emotions cause us to feel inadequate, unable to deal properly with the situation – “I can’t handle it. I can’t control my emotions.” They make us feel uneasy and tense, and they make us feel frightened, afraid of being rejected. So, we are insecure and afraid of not getting what we want. Really quite nasty, quite unpleasant, isn’t it?
They Cause Our Bad Reputation to Spread
The next one:
- They cause our bad reputation to spread in all directions, and they cause a holy being such as a teacher and protector to criticize us, to find fault with us.
“This is a person with a really bad temper. You better watch out!” Or “This person is so arrogant,” or “This person is so clingy.” People say all sorts of nasty things about us. And it causes our teacher to find fault with us and look down on us.
Actually, it’s very helpful to think that if great teachers were to see us getting angry, being so greedy, so selfish, so attached and so on, “What would they think?”
Participant: Probably, they would not look down on us.
Dr. Berzin: They would, in a sense – this is a difficult term to translate – “find fault.” It also has the connotation of “to scold.” They would scold us and find fault. They wouldn’t just smile, have equanimity, and say, “It doesn’t matter.”
Participant: They would scold you out of compassion, not out of looking down on you.
Dr. Berzin: Maybe that’s too strong a way of translating the word. They wouldn’t admire us for acting that way. It’s the opposite of admiring. “Disappointed” maybe? Well, that would imply that they had hopes and expectations.
Participant: Is Buddha disappointed? I don’t know.
Dr. Berzin: I don’t know either. But thinking of myself, I wouldn’t want to disappoint my teachers by acting in a ridiculous way in front of them – getting angry, being greedy, stuffing my face with cookies, or whatever. We wouldn’t act like that.
They Cause Us to Die with Regret & to Be Reborn in a Worse Realm
The last one:
- They cause us to die with regret, and after dying, to be reborn in one of the worst rebirth states, and to be unable to accomplish our spiritual aims.
It’s in one of the verses by Shantideva – that the more anger we have, the more desirous we are and so on, the more likely it is that we will have worse lives in the future.
Certainly, if we are very, very attached to our wealth, our possessions, our friends, our loved ones, we will have a very unpleasant death. Or it could be that we die in a fit of anger – let’s say, in a war situation.
Participant: If you don’t die while being angry, but if you did something very unskillful, then you might regret it.
Dr. Berzin: It causes us to die with regret. This is the point.
“I regret how I acted in my life – how often I got angry, how clinging, desirous, jealous and all of these things that I was.” We don’t even have to die to feel that. A lot of people experience a terminal sickness like cancer. But even if it is not terminal, it can be a life-threatening type of situation. That can cause us very much to regret a type of behavior or personality trait that we had before we got sick. If we recover from that sickness, then often, it gives us a good opportunity to try to change. However, if we die like that, we are reborn as some sort of animal or insect or something like that, and there is not much we can do.
Participant: I wonder about constructive regret before dying. I think it would be quite helpful. It would make the mind less uneasy.
Dr. Berzin: Regretting something negative at the time when we are dying certainly makes it less heavy than not regretting it. However, that doesn’t change the fact of feeling, “I have really wasted the opportunity that I had.”
Participant: Then, guilt can come in as well.
Participant: We can regret it now and try to take countermeasures.
Dr. Berzin: It might be too late. If we are too weak, in too much pain, or are on pain killers and our minds are unclear – that’s too late.
Participant: That’s what I am saying: regret it now.
Dr. Berzin: Regretting things now is much more important. Shantideva said that when we are on our death bed and we see a vision of what’s coming next – with hell and so on – we wet our pants and all of that. We die in terror.
Participant: No help.
Dr. Berzin: No help. Then there is this thing – taking refuge.
Summary
So, these are the disadvantages when the disturbing emotions arise:
- They cause our minds to be completely disturbed
- They cause us to act wrongly toward our focal object, causing our dormant tendencies to become firmer, more strongly planted
- They cause the same types of disturbing emotions to recur, so we can’t stop their continuity
- They cause us to harm ourselves, others, or both
- They cause us to commit unspeakable, uncommendable acts and, therefore, to experience physical discomfort and mental unhappiness in this and future lifetimes
- They cause us to actualize the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death
- They cause us to be far away from liberation (I think I skipped that one), cause our positive force to diminish and our resources to fall away
- They cause us to feel inadequate in the company of others and unable to deal properly with a situation or to control our emotions
- They cause us to feel joyless: we are not at ease; we are tense
- They cause us to be devoid of the feeling of fearlessness, of being fearless; we are afraid of being rejected or of not getting what we want
- They cause our bad reputation to spread in all directions, and holy beings such as spiritual teachers and protectors criticize and find fault with us
- They cause us to die with regrets, and after dying, to be born in one of the worst rebirth states and unable to accomplish our spiritual aims.
Let’s just digest that again and try to recognize, “These are my true enemies,” as Shantideva says. They cause so much trouble – anger, attachment, jealousy, and so on. And although these are difficult to overcome, they are really what we have to fight against. Shantideva, again – so beautifully – says it so well:
Although enemies, such as anger and craving, have neither legs nor arms, are neither brave nor wise, how is it that they have made me like their slave?
For while squatting in my mind, at their pleasure, they gleefully cause me harm. To be patient and not angry with them is an inappropriate, pathetic place for patience.
Even if all the gods and anti-gods were to rise up against me as enemies, they couldn’t drag and feed me into the fire (of a joyless realm) of unrelenting pain.
But those strong, mighty enemies, my disturbing emotions, can in a moment hurl me into them, which when met, will cause not even the ashes of the King of Mountains to remain.
My disturbing emotions are long-standing enemies, without a beginning or an end. No other enemy can be like that for such a long time.
With all (the others), becoming close and serving (them) nicely bring benefit and happiness; but being close with my disturbing emotions (only) harms me with even more pain.
These long- time, continuing enemies like these are sole causes for the masses of harm to increase ever more. How can I be joyful and not terrified in samsara if I set a secure place (for them) in my heart?
Where can I have happiness if, in a web of attachment within my mind, they lurk as guards of my samsara prison, becoming my murderers and butchers in joyless realms and the like?
Therefore, I shall never give up my effort in this until, directly myself, I definitely smash these enemies.
Most of the points that Tsongkhapa makes come directly from here. So, reflect on these, please.