The four opponent powers

• Q&A
• The four opponent powers:
• Regret: taking responsibility without shame and guilt
• Restoring the relationship and apologizing
• Examining the pride that prevents us from apologizing
• The benefits of having your reputation damaged
• Determination to not do it again
• Remedial action

• Taking responsibility for our actions
• The four distortions
• Q&A

We’ll try and go through some questions rather quickly and then we can do the Four Opponent Powers and a little bit about apologizing. 

Audience: What do you do in the moment to not feel “you are the anger?”

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): You remember that you are a human being with a kind heart. Come back to what is, at the present: you’re a human being with a kind heart. 

Audience: What if you over fix? For example, you think it’s up to you to fix what someone else has suffered via your mistake and they see you as interfering.

VTC: Oh yes, we play Mr or Ms Fix-it: “I made a mistake, but I also know what’s best for you!” So, if somebody else sees what we’re doing as interfering, we chill out. If they don’t want what we’re offering then we stop. I mean, what else is there to do? You’re going to force your help and your advice on somebody else? They want to remedy the problem themselves in their own way, so let them do that. 

In some of these questions, if you’re thinking of a specific situation and asking that in a general way, I don’t know what your specific situation is. I’m answering in a general way that may or may not fit your specific situation, so please don’t take what I’m saying as personal advice given to you, because I don’t know all the details of your situation. I’m giving general answers and then you have to think about things yourself. Otherwise, we wind up not with a double mess but with a triple mess. 

Audience: Sometimes I think that I have forgotten, but after a time the anger feelings emerge again. What do you recommend?

VTC: This is so normal! Believe me, it’s not like we practice forgiveness once and we put it down, and it’s gone forever. We’ve developed these kinds of habits for a really, really long time, so they’re going to come back again and again. Especially if you’re working with a specific situation, the thing to do is to meditate and release the anger, then you’re okay for a while.  When it comes back again, you meditate again and you release it again. What else are you going to do?

There are many techniques for practicing to help us release the anger, and we just keep employing them. Don’t berate yourself when you get angry again about the same thing that you thought you had banished. It’s completely normal. It takes a while to overcome this kind of stuff. But we need to keep on working at changing our mind and changing our perspective. Sometimes, because of modern society, we want everything to be quick. It happens and then it’s done, and it’s finished, and I’ve forgiven that person, crossed that off my list. But now it’s coming back on my list. So, maybe you don’t have a list; maybe you just live your life and deal with what comes up as it comes up.

Audience: The appearances of this life seem so solid and real. It’s very ungrounding sometimes to think they’re not. When you first started practicing Dharma, what factors do you think enabled you to remain grounded, though you were regularly questioning your perception of reality, your thoughts and your feelings? And what keeps you grounded and engaged now after forty plus years of practice?

VTC: I think what kept me grounded at the beginning was that some of the teachings that I heard just rang so true that there was no way my berserky mind could refute them. When I looked—and I looked at my anger—I had to say, “Yeah, I have anger, and it’s really counterproductive.” And when I looked at my attachment, again I had to say, “Yeah I have that one too, and it’s really not very good.” 

It was just the truth of the Dharma. There were certain things—of course not everything, but certain things—that really hit home, and I knew from my own experience they were true. And that just kept me going. Then of course the more you practice, the more you see the benefits of the practice, and you see how it works. But you have to put in effort, and you have to put in time. It’s not going to happen easily, and it’s not going to happen quickly. But the alternative is worse. So, we learn to take delight in the practice. Don’t be too obsessed about attaining the goal, just enjoy the practice and enjoy transforming your mind as you can.

Keep it simple, dear

The practice of the Four Opponent Powers is a very good way to develop self-forgiveness, but there are a few other ways to achieve self-forgiveness also. Like I was saying, we have to own what is our responsibility, but not blame ourselves for what is not our responsibility. We tend to not own what is our responsibility, and we do blame ourselves for what is not our responsibility. It’s really imperative that we learn to discern what is a virtuous thought from what is a non virtuous thought. What is my responsibility, what is not my responsibility? What is clear thinking, and what are just all my old habits? 

That takes time and energy, but it is something that’s very helpful because we have to accurately discern this situation. If we don’t, we’re purifying negativities that we didn’t commit because we’re blaming ourselves for something we didn’t do. And meanwhile, the negativities we did commit, we aren’t dealing with; we’re blaming them on somebody else. We want to learn to be very honest with ourselves but with understanding, not with cruelty and judgment: “Look what I did! Oh this is so terrible! I don’t want anybody else to know I did this because then they will think I am some disgusting horrible monster. So, I want to keep it hidden.” And sometimes we even want to keep it hidden from ourselves. 

But it’s very important to be able to own this stuff and be kind to ourselves: “Yeah, I did something really stupid that was harmful to somebody else as well as harmful to myself, and I really regret it.” And I’m going to own it, because I know if I try and cover it up, that’s not going to make it go away. I have to own it. I also have to learn to not take myself so seriously. I mean this in the sense that I own it, I regret it, but I don’t make an impossibly difficult situation out of it by just tormenting myself again and again, with thoughts of “How could I have done this? How evil and terrible I was.”

If you grew up in a religion where guilt was taught to you as a child—you sinned and you’re going to hell—it may be very easy to start judging yourself and condemning yourself. That’s totally unnecessary. That does not purify the negativity. Somehow, our mistaken way of thinking sometimes believes, “The more I can torment myself for having done this, the more I’m atoning for my negativity. The more I can feel guilty and hate myself, the more I’m making up for what I did.” 

That is totally illogical, and when our mind thinks like that it’s not thinking clearly. It’s thinking in the old pattern that very often we were taught to think in as children. But now we’re adults and we can reassess those old patterns, and if they are not true and they are not helpful, set them aside. We have to admit our mistakes but with some kind of understanding for ourselves. 

When I look back at some of the things that I’ve done, I have to say I was a different person then when I did those things, And in many of the situations I really lacked maturity, and I was not thinking clearly. Or I was being incredibly self-centered; I was rationalizing things that were negative to make them positive in order to give myself an excuse for doing those things. I took stupid risks. So, I acknowledge that, but then I also see that I was 20 or 25-years-old at the time.

Now, I know that at age 16 all of us are almost omniscient. And we thought we were omniscient all through being 20, 25 and so on. Then at a certain point in our life, maybe when we get to be our parents’ age, we realize that we don’t know as much as we thought we did, and we get a little bit humbler. That kind of humility is good. We have to say, “Look what I did, but I was also 20 years old and not thinking clearly. I created those actions, and I’m going to experience those karmic results because the seeds were laid in my continuum, but I don’t have to hate the person that I was 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago [laughter], because I can understand who that person was.” 

When you look back when you were 20 or 25, or even 40 or 45, you can see what you were suffering from. Now that you’re older and mature, you can see the inconsistencies in your way of thinking back then. And you can see what emotional needs you had then, that you didn’t realize you had, or you realized you had but you didn’t know how to meet those emotional needs. You did all sorts of stupid things instead that harmed others and harmed yourself. 

So just say, “That person that I used to be was suffering in that way, and I understand that person, why they did that, but I don’t have to hate them. I’m going to purify the action, purify the karma, and then go on with my life without making a full-blown catastrophe out of something.” It’s beautiful.

I love this word “proliferations.” It’s another synonym for massive conceptualizations, massive elaborations. Our mind proliferates, with one thought after another, sometimes to the point where we can’t even slow down enough to figure out what’s going on. Have you ever had that happen? I was just reading something about this whole thing of “white fragility.” I read one article on it, I read another article, I’m looking at this and I thought, “I’m getting crazy you know, because now saying, ‘Good morning’ is interpreted in terms of racism.” Everything is interpreted in terms of racism now, and for me, that’s a little bit too much. I can’t handle that. It’s the same thing, what my own mind does, if some event happens, and I think, “Why did I do that, why did they say that? What if they hadn’t said that, what if I hadn’t said that? And what if I hadn’t done that, and how could I have done that, and this and that and oh. . .” 

Have you done that ever? You wind up just sitting there mumbling to yourself because you can’t think clearly about anything anymore, because your mind is so fixed on putting everything in categories, and you have to understand it! You have to fix it! When actually we need to calmly think, “Okay, I just need to chill out. I do what I can; I understand what I can. I’m not going to understand the whole thing right now. So, I’ll just chill out, accept myself for who I am now, for what I am now, knowing I can change in the future, and that’s good enough.”

Another one of Lama Yeshe’s favorite sayings, besides “Slowly, slowly dear,”  was “Good enough dear.” So, we work at forgiving, we work at apologizing, all at our own speed. Don’t get yourself all tangled up, because you feel your mother or your friend or somebody is pushing you to apologize, or to forgive, or because your own mind is just going crazy with too many ideas. Just learn to have a relaxed mind, and then you see your mistakes. You accept yourself because you understand the person that you were, but you also know that you have to make reparation through doing the Four Opponent Powers for purification. And you also know that you can change in the future as you practice, “Slowly, slowly dear,” “Gradually dear,” and “It’s good enough.”  

Lama Yeshe’s very pithy things pop up in my mind in many interesting circumstances, and are very true. One time, I was in North Carolina, and I was thinking, “What do I do here? What do I do there?” And then I thought—sometimes I do a 911 to the Buddha, and a 911 to my teacher— “Okay, Lama, my mind’s going berserky; what do I do?” And the teaching that came through very loud and clear: “Keep it simple, dear.” In other words, shut down the opinion factory, shut down the proliferation pack factory—just keep it simple. Cultivate your kind heart, do the best you can, do some purification, accept yourself, accept others, breathe, smile.

Regret

The first of the four opponent powers is regret. Regret is taking responsibility but without blame and guilt. It’s the mind that shuts down all the proliferations about this and that: “What if this and that?” And, “How could I?” And, “Who am I? I’m disgusting.” And, “I want to tell people what I did because I want to get it off my chest, but I don’t want them to know what I did because it was so awful, and they’ll never speak to me again.” You’ve quietened that mind; you’ve just said “Keep it simple” and dropped all that, and you have regret for what you did. 

You say that to the Buddha—you do the visualization with the buddhas and bodhisattvas in front of you, and remember, they don’t judge you. They don’t criticize you, so any kind of judgment when you open up and tell them what you did is coming from you. It’s not coming from them. So, really focus on imagining that they can sit there and listen to what you have to say, and they have constant equanimity. They are not hating you or judging you for any of it. In fact, you know the reason they work so hard to become enlightened is so that they can benefit us. So, they’re certainly not going to judge us. Establish a relationship with the buddhas in that way and whatever you regret, you say.

Restoring the relationship

The second of the four is restoring the relationship. Here we’re going to go off on a tangent about apologizing, but this second power isn’t just apologizing —apologizing relates to it, but it’s not the meaning of the second one. The second one means to restore the relationship, to rely on whoever it was we harmed, to create a new feeling and motivation towards them, so that in the future we will act differently. In that way we restore the relationship. In terms of our negative actions, sometimes they are against the Three Jewels—the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—sometimes they’re against our spiritual mentors, and sometimes they’re against ordinary sentient beings. 

When we’ve harmed the Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha, we repair that relationship by taking refuge and seeking their spiritual guidance. That is a change in our own mind, so instead of having lots of doubt, instead of criticizing and blaming the Three Jewels for this or that, we see their good qualities; we take refuge in them. 

In terms of other sentient beings; instead of hating them and judging them, and being jealous and disliking them, and wanting to punish them and wanting to control them and envying them and all this other kind of junk, we’re going to replace all that stuff with bodhichitta, with the aspiration to become a fully awakened being so we can be of the greatest benefit to other living beings. That is a motivation based on genuine love and compassion, and remember, love and compassion are equal for all beings. Love simply means wanting someone to have happiness and the causes of happiness. Compassion simply means wanting them to be free of duhkha: of suffering, of angst, of dissatisfaction, and its causes. 

So, we generate a positive attitude towards somebody who we harmed, or a group of people that we’ve harmed, or whatever. Now, here’s where an apology could come in, because as I was saying yesterday, sometimes the person is still alive; we want to go and talk to them and apologize. When we apologize, it’s not necessary that they forgive us. Because the work is us transforming our motivation towards them—that’s the second of the Four Opponent Powers. Whether they accept our apology or not is their business; it’s not our business. If they refuse it, it’s actually kind of tragic because they’re keeping themselves in suffering. 

We have to accept that people are where they’re at, and we can’t force them to be other than where they’re at that moment. The important thing is the change in our mind. We may go to the other person and apologize, or we may want to write a note, because it might be fairly sensitive. We may just kind of suss out the waters first, by talking to a mutual acquaintance or mutual friend, to see if that person is ready to talk to us. We kind of suss it out and see if we can make the direct apology. But if we can’t, or if the other person doesn’t accept it, it’s not a problem. We’ve still accomplished the second of the four opponent powers. 

That all sounds good, but what keeps us from apologizing? Even though we know that we made a mistake, even though we regret the mistake, we don’t want to really apologize to the other person. We think, “Yes, my mind has changed, but I really don’t want to say to you that I harmed you.” What is it that’s preventing us? It’s pride isn’t it? Pride. So, what’s that pride about? Let’s dissect that pride.

What’s going on, when because of pride, we can’t own something to somebody else—someone who already knows we did the action. We aren’t telling them anything new. We’re just saying we’re sorry for doing it. They know we did it. So, what prevents us from owning it to the other person? And when we refuse to own it to ourself by justifying and rationalizing, what’s going on there, too?  What is that pride about that I can’t just say to myself, “I blundered, and I regret it.” 

What do you think? What’s going on? What’s the thought behind that pride that won’t let us say it? Is it fear that the other person’s going to say, “You finally acknowledge this! I’m glad you did, and you should have acknowledged it before!” Are we afraid that the other person is going to rip into us, is that it? Or are we afraid that if we apologize it means we’re a really awful person?  Whereas if we don’t apologize that doesn’t make us an awful person, even though we know we did it and they know we did it.

See how silly the mind can be sometimes? So, what’s that pride about? “I have a certain reputation and a certain way I want other people to think of me, and if I admit my own faults and weaknesses then I will lose my reputation in their eyes. And God forbid that.” But don’t stop there in your questioning; keep going with, “What’s so bad if I lose my reputation in other people’s eyes?” What’s so bad? What’s going to happen? Is the sky going to fall, like with Chicken Little? [laughter] Is the sky going to fall because I admit my mistake to myself?

This is really an insult to the other person to think that they have no ability to be tolerant and forgive us; that’s really insulting the other person’s intelligence. But let’s say they were intolerant, and they thought, “Oh, what a horrible person. I knew they did that all along and finally they’re admitting it, and they really are as horrible as I already knew, and I’m never going to speak to them again. Oh, they’re disgusting, get me out of here! They’re radioactive. They’re toxic, and I can’t stand to be around them because they’re poisoning my life!” Say they thought all this after we’ve made an apology. So then our reputation with that person deflates. What’s so bad about that? What’s the problem if somebody thinks like that about us? Is the world going to end? There’s still going to be climate change. Yoohoo is still going to be president, at least until November. The pandemic’s going to do what it’s going to do. Somebody thinks I’m a creep, so what? Just because somebody thinks that way about me, does that mean I am that way? 

Wait a minute, I have my own ability to evaluate my own behavior. I have an ability to assess my own actions and to be honest with myself. Somebody else—they’re mad at me and they don’t want to forgive me—that’s their thing. That’s their thing. My reputation is gone, so what? This is how a Dharma practitioner who is new to the Dharma approaches the situation.

For the people who’ve been practicing a while, you say; “I lost my reputation—fantastic. It’s so good that people think awful of me; that’s good! Because I’ve been too proud with my nose in the air all along, and this is bringing me down a notch. And if I want to become a buddha, which is what I say I want to do, there’s no such thing as an arrogant buddha. So, this person is helping me in my practice to remove my arrogance and make me more humble and more down to earth. That’s great!”

This is Togmay Sangpo, so if you don’t like it, you blame him—he’s a bodhisattva. I wouldn’t recommend blaming bodhisattvas; it’s not a good habit. He says:

Even if someone broadcasts all kinds of unpleasant remarks about you throughout the three thousand worlds—[not just this planet but they’re broadcasting all kinds of unpleasant remarks about you throughout three thousand worlds]—In return, with a loving mind, speak of his good qualities. This is the practice of bodhisattvas. 

“You’ve got to be kidding! This guy just ruined my reputation in front of three thousand worlds, and I’m gonna speak of his good qualities? And this is a practice of bodhisattvas? This is how bodhisattvas think? And bodhisattvas are the ones who are going to become buddhas and ignorant sentient beings like me are not going to become buddhas? I have to learn to think like that?” 

Here’s another one: 

Though someone may deride and speak bad words about you in a public gathering—[in front of everybody]—look on her as a spiritual teacher and bow to her with respect. This is the practice of bodhisattvas.

“That person who ruined my reputation, derided me and spoke bad words about me, even though they were true or even if they weren’t true and they were a bunch of lies, I’m supposed to see her as a spiritual teacher? What in the world is she teaching me? She’s making me angry and it’s her fault, so I’m going to get her back!” And then I stew on that for a decade or two, about seeing her as a spiritual teacher and bowing to her with respect. What in the world is this person teaching me?

They’re teaching me to not be attached to my reputation. They’re teaching me that reputation is just a bunch of other people’s thoughts, and other people’s thoughts are not so reliable, and they change all the time. And they often don’t have much to do with the actual situation. Even if a lot of other people believe what that person said about me, and even though it’s not true, it’s good for me to learn some humility and not to think that I’m so special. It’s good. Someone puts me down—now I will understand better other people who get put down, and how they feel. Now I can develop a reason to renounce samsara. I’m seeing what samsara is all about, and now I can develop compassion for people who suffer just like me and for people who deride them just like somebody derided me. 

There are so many benefits that can come from having your reputation damaged. And does having your reputation damaged shorten your lifespan? No. Does it make you sick? No. Does it make you lose all your Dharma wisdom? No. Does it send you to a lower rebirth? No. Losing our reputation is not really the most horrible thing that can happen to us, and it can be good for us. This is the practice of bodhisattvas. Is it an easy practice? When we become familiar with it, and the reasoning behind it, it becomes easy. When our old mind, when attachment to the happiness of this life is active, then the practice is very difficult.  

How do you overcome that pride? What I found is, often in many situations where I get stuck, the answer is always just tell the truth. So, what do I do to overcome that pride? I tell the truth: “I did that; it was really foolish. It hurt you, and I really regret it.” You tell the truth. You don’t need to slobber all over the place. You don’t need to crawl along the central aisle: “Mea culpa! Mea culpa!” You don’t need to do that. You apologize and then it’s finished. 

We get rid of the pride, we just do it, and then we feel a whole lot better afterwards because there’s nothing like the truth. There’s nothing like the truth and being able to say it, and accept it and then learn from what happened. And then, the third opponent of the four opponent powers is, make a determination not to do it again!

Determine not to do it again

Some mistakes we’ve made where we really need to apologize, we can with some confidence say, “I will not do that again. I’ve really looked at my mind, I’ve looked at my behavior, and I will not do that again.” Then there are other things, like gossip, where when I say “I will not do that again,” it isn’t a hundred percent truthful. So, maybe we have to say, “For the next two days, I won’t gossip.” And then after two days you renew it for another two days. You do something reasonable. 

Remedial action

Then fourth is to do some kind of remedial action, to do something virtuous. One of the people who asked a question thought that the remedial action was to go and fix the situation that she had muddied up. But the other person didn’t want her to do that, so then that isn’t your remedial behavior. You have to back off. There are many other things we can do to create virtue. In a spiritual way, we can do prostrations, we can make offerings, we can do the meditation on the Buddha visualizing the light coming and purifying us, we can recite scriptures, we can meditate; there are so many things we can do to purify. 

On another level, we can volunteer our service to monasteries, to Dharma Centers, to charities. We can do some volunteer work at a school, at a hospital, at a homeless shelter—reach out in some way to do something for somebody. There’s always people who you can help; there’s no shortage of them. You can go to an individual. You can think of an organization that helps refugees. There are so many people doing good organizational work like this. So, we do some kind of remedial behavior. Then when you’ve done all four, you think, “Okay, now that karma is purified.” 

Chances are just one round of the four opponent powers isn’t going to purify everything completely, so we do it again! Like this other person said, “Our anger comes up again, or our regret comes up again, or whatever it is, it comes up again,” so we do the four opponent powers again. But each time at the end, we really say to ourselves, “Okay, now it’s purified; I’ve set it down,” and you really let yourself feel like you’ve set that down. It’s not like you are only saying that, but you really haven’t let it go. Just imagine what it would feel like in your life to just really set it down and feel, “I’ve made my amends; that’s done. That’s not gonna haunt me anymore.” Really think like that—that can make a very strong impact on the mind. 

Taking responsibility for our actions

When taking responsibility, we may have done certain things in this life that contributed to the unfortunate event, but also there may have been things that we did in previous lives. Right now somebody is harming me, and I’m challenged with forgiving them. And as I’m looking back to understand the situation, I also have to accept that in addition to what I did in this life, I may be experiencing the result of actions I did in a previous life.

You might say, “Well, that’s not fair; that was another person when you did things as a child.” Do you experience the results of some of the actions you did as a kid, now as an adult? We do, don’t we? Were you a different person when you were a kid? Yes. Were you in the same continuity of the person you are now? Yes. Are your previous lives in the same continuity as the person you are now? Yes. So whatever that person did, the seeds of their actions—which, by the way, there are some virtuous ones in there too because we have a precious human life—that karma is ripening now. 

It’s ripening in part in this suffering, miserable situation that I’m in. The karma may be ripening also in my habit to do the same self-destructive behavior. That’s one way karma ripens: it sets us up to do the same action again. It’s the same way as in this lifetime and we do something, and that starts a habit to do it again. Personally speaking, I find it very liberating to say, “Yes, I’m experiencing the result of my previously created karma now that’s ripening. It could have ripened in a much worse situation, like being born in an unfortunate realm for eons. It’s not ripening like that. It’s ripening in some kind of misery in this lifetime that, when I look at it, I can handle. I can deal with this difficult situation. It’s certainly much better than the alternative ways that this karma could have ripened. So you say, “Good! I’m glad it’s ripening like this.”

One friend of mine was doing retreat, and often when you do retreat you’re purifying a lot of negativity, so things come up. She was living at the monastery in Nepal and she got a huge boil on her cheek. It was so painful. And she was walking around Kopan Monastery and she bumped into Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche, and she said, “Oh Rinpoche!” He looked at her and said, “What’s that?” She said, “Rinpoche I have this huge painful boil.” And he said, “Wonderful!” She almost fainted! “Wonderful—all that negative karma is ripening in a boil, and soon it’ll be all over.” 

If you think like that, it really helps you handle the difficult situation, because you realize, “I’m just experiencing the result of what I did, and I have inner resources that will help me deal with the situation, and there are people in the community who can help me deal with the situation. It’s much better that this ripens now than later in a bad rebirth.” Then you’re kind of happy. It’s a very, very useful way to think. It prevents one of the other things we’re habituated to do when we experience suffering. Sometimes we get mad and blow up, and sometimes we blame ourselves. 

Pity Party

When we do the “I blame myself” trip, then I don’t know about you, but I throw a pity party. I go to my room and I cry because, “I’m suffering so much; people don’t understand me. How miserable I am, and how sorry I am for what I did. I’m an awful person. I’m hopeless. I even tried to apologize, and it came out all wrong because I can’t do anything right and nobody loves me— everybody hates me. I think I’ll eat some worms.” There are some things you learn in Kindergarten that never leave you, and that’s one of them! [laughter] They probably learn equivalent things in Canada and Germany. 

So, we sit and throw ourselves a pity party with lead balloons, lots of packages of tissues. We close the door, and we get depressed. We feel like nobody in the world understands us. And then when somebody comes in and says, “Are you alright? You look really unhappy.” We say, “No! Everything’s okay! Do you feel sorry for me, too, because my state of mind is all your fault?” That’s an alternative to forgiving. If you don’t want to forgive, you can have a pity party. They’re so much fun! Because we’re the center of attention in a pity party, and nobody can steal the attention from us. Just think about it.

People out there listening, how many of you have thrown yourself a pity party? Be honest. [laughter] Sometimes I ask this to a live audience, and nobody raises their hand. I say, “Are you telling the truth?” And then at the end almost every hand is up. Feeling sorry for yourself is so fantastic! A spa of self-pity and feeling sorry for ourselves. When I feel sorry for myself, I am a victim, and everybody else is wrong, and I don’t have to do anything except wait for them to realize how wrong they are and come crawling back and apologize to me. 

There are really some perks of being a victim, because I know who I am; I know how to introduce myself. I know what my sob story is. Some people are going to get really mad at me, and they’re going to say, “Okay, enough with your humor, take this seriously because we hurt inside. Take our pain seriously; acknowledge our pain—don’t make fun of it.” I’m happy to acknowledge your pain and not make fun of it. I’m making fun of my own pain, because I found that making fun of my own pain helps me get rid of my pain. I’m happy to take your pain seriously, and if I can do something to help I’ll do it. I also know that I can’t cure it. I’m trying to help you learn some ways to cure your own pain. If they don’t help you, if you think I’m making fun of you and your pain, then put it on the back burner; it’s okay. This is what helps me. 

That’s another thing that Lama Yeshe did. He had this incredibly skillful way of getting us to laugh at ourselves. I don’t know how he did it. We were his first group of disciples, and we were a rowdy, obnoxious bunch! We had no clue what Tibetan Lamas were; we didn’t know what was going on. Lama didn’t sit there and think, “Oh my god! What did I get myself into? Get these guys out of here. I want Tibetan disciples again.” He found a way to make us laugh at our own foibles. I found it so relieving to be able to laugh at my own stupidagios, instead of taking everything so seriously. I found it very relieving. That’s what helped me. 

The four distortions

So, that brings up the whole thing of hurt, because what lies behind the anger is often hurt. Hurt often comes from having unrealistic expectations. In the Buddha Dharma we talk of four distorted conceptions, and these four are very helpful. One of them is seeing what is impermanent and changing in nature as permanent. It’s a distorted conception to see ourselves as permanent, the other person as permanent, my pain as permanent. Is your pain permanent? When you feel pain, does it continue on and on without ever changing forever? It doesn’t, does it? And sometimes it disappears, and you think, “Oh, it disappeared—how did it disappear?” Have you ever had that happen? You’ve been in pain, mental pain or physical pain, and then all of a sudden you realize, “Oh, I feel okay! When did that happen? How did that happen?” 

We stopped proliferating. For one minute we stopped proliferating, and we noticed, “Oh, gee, there’s a world out there!” The world is not just about my pain. Pain exists, but it is not permanent; it doesn’t last forever. I had a friend who was a hospice nurse, and she told me from her experience—and she had been a hospice nurse for a long time and seen many different things—that even if a person wanted to hold on to their anger or some really negative feeling for a long time, she said, “I’ve noticed that you can’t hold on to a feeling like that more than 45 minutes.” At some point it changes. It changes, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. But what it does show is that it’s not permanent, and your pain is not who you are. It’s just an experience that’s happening, and it is in the process of ending. So, there it is. And you know what? There are a lot of other people feeling it, too.

Tonglen

That takes us into the meditation we were doing this morning, which was a very short version of tonglen—taking and giving—where we think of the other people who are experiencing the same pain we are. Just thinking of those other people is a stretch, because I don’t know about you, but when I’m in physical pain it can be horrible, but I know other people are experiencing worse. But with emotional pain, I think nobody else has ever hurt like this before—nobody. 

This is true especially when somebody has betrayed my trust. No one has ever hurt so much from people betraying my trust as I’m hurting now. And there’s that idea in my mind that my mind is like concrete, and that makes the pain like concrete. But if I’m able to step back, I realize the pain arises because of causes and conditions, and it also fades away when the causes and conditions fade away. Why is it so traumatic to feel that pain? Because it’s my pain. I don’t get nearly as bummed out about other people’s pain. Why is that? If somebody broadcasts all kinds of unpleasant remarks about Venerable Semkye throughout the 3000 worlds, I say, “Look Venerable Semkye, it’s not a big deal. I know you’re a good person, you’re my friend. Just chill out. That guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

When somebody I know and trust broadcasts all kinds of unpleasant remarks about me throughout the 3000 worlds, this is a national disaster—no, an international disaster! “Nobody else has ever hurt more than I am hurting—nobody, ever! I’m going to have my pity party about it, and don’t interrupt me.” That’s a distorted conception, isn’t it? Why am I so special, that I hurt more than anybody else has ever hurt on this planet, or in this universe? Is that true? I don’t think that’s true. Here I am again, faced with the very sad reality that the universe is not all about me. And then I laugh. 

Then I laugh about how silly I was, the way I was thinking. And I realize what a common experience emotional pain is, and how many people feel emotional pain is more painful than physical pain. I remember all the times in the past where I felt excruciating emotional pain because I was really good at that one. I felt my painful emotions really deeply, and I also analyzed them to death and proliferated a lot. Now I’m able to look at that stuff and say, “Yes, I’ve hurt before, and I got over all of it. None of it’s killed me, and much of the time, when I’ve recovered from my pain, I’ve become a stronger, clearer thinking person. The pain hasn’t damaged me forever. It’s given me some wisdom, and it’s given me confidence that I can manage my own emotions without falling apart. Even though it may have taken me six months to get around to doing it, I can manage my own emotions.” 

There are ways in which it can help to put all the events in our life in a certain perspective, especially seeing impermanent, transient things—conditioned things—as impermanent and transient, instead of as permanent. It can help so much! And another distorted thinking is this: things that are in the nature of duhkha—unsatisfactory experiences, suffering—we see those things as pleasure. 

I have a story of how somebody really betrayed my trust really badly. I was talking to my other Dharma friend about it, and he said, “What do you expect? You’re in samsara.” I was seeing things in a distorted way. I thought that the friendship with this person was going to be permanent. I thought it was going to be happy, I didn’t think it would ever bring suffering. Although looking back on it, there were so many red flags, and I just ignored them. I got myself into this situation, things fell apart, and I was really hurt. I was really angry, and I was very confused, but it made me a better person. 

I am so thankful for that experience now, because I realize how much I have grown through having to figure my way out of it. And I realize that I’m not the only one who experiences horrible pain. This is a universal experience, and as long as I’m in samsara I better get used to it. But I also see that the more I train the mind to think according to the Dharma, the more I train my mind to be more realistic, the milder the pain is. It’s a matter of practice.

In terms of forgiving people, it’s very important to separate the person from the action that they did. The person is not the action that they did. They’re not the fact that they beat you up. They’re not the harsh words. They’re not the malevolent thoughts. They are a human being, with the Buddha Nature, who has the potential to become a fully awakened being. And that is not going to change: they always have that potential; they always have that possibility. And they’ve committed a really negative action.

Separating the person from the action

You know what? They’re just like me—I have the Buddha Nature, and I’ve done a lot of negative actions, too. But the action is not the person. They are two different things. We can say the action is horrible, but we can’t say the person is evil. We can’t say the person is so toxic that there’s no hope for them. There may be hope for them in a future life. Maybe in this life they have very strong habits that it’s difficult for them to get out of, but they still have that Buddha Potential, and they can still attain Buddhahood. They can overcome their problems and their bad habits, maybe in a future life—it’s not going to happen in this life—but they are not the negative action they have done. 

In the same way, I’ve done lots of negativities but that’s not the sum total of who I am as a human being. There is a lot more to my life than the mistake that I made. Like the story this morning with the man who shot a police officer in the neck, and the other man who thankfully recognized and saw his potential as a human being, and supported him in turning his life around. 

One time I was teaching at a high school in an area of the country where there were a lot of people who were evangelicals. After the talk, one young man came up to me and he said, “Do you believe in the devil?” And that just hurt me so much because he had been taught to believe there’s the devil, and the devil infects you, and there’s some outside, external being that is harming you. And I said, “No, I don’t believe in the devil, but I think that when we are self-centered in an unhealthy way, we bring pain on ourselves. But, that’s not fixed forever, we can remedy that.” So, the action and the person are different. 

Now I’m going to talk to a Buddhist audience for a minute—so, Buddhist audience, you believe in rebirth, that we’ve been reborn since beginningless time. Have we ever done, in any of our beginningless rebirths, some of the horrible actions we see other people do, or the same actions that have been done to us? Is there any chance that, within our afflicted minds in beginningless time, we acted like that? There’s a big chance, because as long as there are seeds of karma in our mindstream, who knows what we’re capable of? If I see that in previous lives I could have done those things, and I still have the seeds of the afflictions in my mind now, I’d better be careful that I don’t do it in future lives. It helps me see I am more than whatever action I did in my previous life, and other people are more than their actions that they do in this life. They’re complicated human beings and afflictions overpower their minds.

If we can think like that, it keeps us from hating other people, and instead we could see the tragedy in their actions. We could look at that police officer who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes without hatred. We can look at that video, and it’s a hard video to watch. We can come out of it furious: “How could he have done that?” But if we have a Buddhist perspective and we understand how afflictions operate, then we can understand how he could have done that. Because the afflictions come in the mind and totally whack you out. And we can also see that he still has the Nuddha Nature. 

I don’t know him as a person, I don’t know now, unless he’s sitting in jail, if he has regret or if he’s angry. I have no idea. What I do know is that he’s a human being with the Buddha Nature, who has afflictions, who is not the actions he’s done, who is just like me wanting to be happy and not suffer. And I can have some compassion for him. I can have forgiveness for him. And yet I can still say his action was horrific. So, we have to separate the person from the action.

Questions & Answers

Audience: Many people online responded that they do throw pity parties. [laughter] One person says, “I spend so much energy running around trying to fix other people’s problems and ease their pain, even when it’s got nothing to do with me. Then I pity party when I fail—laugh out loud! For step two, restoring the relationship, what do you recommend when it’s been decades, and you don’t have their information?” 

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): You restore it in your mind. You clear your own mind from any hard feelings about that person. If you want to, you can even imagine seeing them and imagine apologizing. But the important thing is that your mind is no longer in conflict about what happened, and you have genuine regret for what you did. 

Audience: I’m wondering if the phrase “reasonable expectations in samsara for an ordinary mind” is an oxymoron. [laughter] And I’m wondering if the extreme of that would be to have the approach of being a defensive driver and expecting everyone to make a mistake in every moment. 

VTC: Okay, no, you don’t want to get into that, where you’re suspicious of everybody and everything; that’s not very good. I’ve thought about this, too. In certain social worlds or situations, we have certain expectations, and we also have to add the caveat that sentient beings do what sentient beings do. So, we can expect that, and then when they don’t do that, we say, “Oh yeah, I also had that caveat. I expected that to happen, too.” So, you aren’t suspicious; you trust people. But when they make mistakes, you say, “Of course, they’re afflicted human beings, just like me.” 

Audience: I found this very helpful. This whole idea that karma ripens in precious human life. When I think about how a karma might ripen in a hell realm, or as a hungry ghost, or in an animal realm, or even in a demigod realm, that puts a whole new spin on the fortitude of being able to bear suffering. Because with precious human life, it’s doable. 

VTC: It’s doable! Yes, it’s not going to destroy  you.

Audience: It’s not going to destroy you. And you have the opportunity to use it to rejoice, and then to cultivate the wish to be free and to help others to do the same. The second part, one that was really helpful, is when I think about how I cause myself so much pain when I have difficulties with others—the proliferating mind that sets up the scenario on why this hurts so much. The whole situation goes on, and then to see somebody else that it happens to—to see the level of habitual proliferation that perpetuates the mental suffering that doesn’t have to be there. 

VTC: Can you make an example? 

Audience: I make a request to somebody here in the community and they push back on it. Instead of just looking at that and letting it go, or finding out how we can work with it, I go and sulk and say, “That person does that all the time. I want some autonomy. I want some respect, yada, yada.” I just build it up to this big hurt, and it’s only because they disagreed with what I said. Then when I might go back around to make it okay, somebody else pushes back—it’s just a difference of opinion—there is nothing there! I make it into this wound, this betrayal. I make it into this drama. It’s like being able to identify that it’s simply a mental habit, there’s nothing in reality to base the feelings on. I’m getting that more clearly. 

VTC: Good, because you can see how the mind makes up a story: “They don’t respect me.” Then everything gets seen through the eyes of “they don’t respect me.” Like you said, it’s just a difference in opinion; it has nothing to do with whether somebody respects you or not. 

Audience: I think that for each of us, there are these needs that are big; respect might be one, autonomy might be one, trust might be one, and collaboration might be one. And when you live in community like this, those needs are going to get met or they’re not going to get met. And all that practice is about “What do you do when it doesn’t get met?” You have to deal with that. The world doesn’t have to deliver, all the time! [laughter]