This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Perspective and Patience: Working with Conflict ~ Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good evening, welcome. Tonight, I want to talk a little bit about conflict. Interestingly, conflict shows up in the early Buddhist literature. Apparently, there is some heavenly realm—this is just a little side story that’s sprinkled in very rarely, but it’s in there a few times in the suttas1—a heavenly realm where the gods and the Titans are always battling. They’re always in conflict.
In Buddhist cosmology, the Gods are just disembodied beings; they have no special powers or special knowledge or anything like this. They’re just like humans who happen to be disembodied. And Titans are… I don’t know what they are. They are other disembodied beings who are not gods. There’s this conflict between the gods and the Titans. The Pali2 word for Titan is Asura, and some people translate them as demons, but they’re not demonic, as you’ll see.
By looking a little bit at how these Gods and Titans interact, and specifically how the king of the Gods and the king of the Titans interact, we can learn a little bit about conflict, how it was portrayed, and what the Buddha had to say about it.
Sakka3, who is the king of the Gods, is always in this conflict with the Titans. He asks the Buddha about this, and I’m paraphrasing a little bit. He says to the Buddha, “When beings, including Gods, humans, and Titans, all wish to live in peace, why are they perpetually embroiled in conflict?” This is a question we could ask ourselves. Everybody wants to live in peace, but why is there so much conflict, disagreement, or violence?
In answer to this question, the Buddha gives a discourse that traces the cause of conflict and hostility. The Buddha first says to Sakka that the reason for conflict is because people have jealousy and stinginess. We could say that is wanting what other people have or not wanting to share what you have. It’s all about “mine, I need more.” We certainly see a lot of that in contemporary times too.
Sakka is very happy to finally learn this, like, “Oh, okay, great. Jealousy and stinginess is the source of conflict. Fantastic, thank you, I understand this.” And then Sakka says, “But wait, what’s the cause of jealousy and stinginess?” The Buddha then points to subtler and subtler things that are undergirding each of these, and it gets all the way down to views, beliefs, and opinions. This is the source of conflict, and it gets expressed in so many different ways.
There’s this way in which clinging to our views leads to conflict. Some of you might be protesting, “But of course I’m clinging to my views! I’m right, they’re wrong!” Of course. But we all know that clinging, holding on tightly to anything, isn’t the way to greater peace and freedom, whether it’s a view or the wish to control other people. Not holding on to, not clinging to philosophies or doctrines or even teachings, including Buddhist teachings—they’re not to be held on to. They can be a support and they can be helpful, but clinging to anything is not the way to the greatest freedom. They can be held, as I often find myself doing, with open hands, as opposed to really holding on.
Part of the way we can recognize that the Buddha is placing this emphasis on not clinging, not holding on to, not gripping our views, is how he describes an awakened person, somebody who has the most amount of freedom, complete freedom. In this small little quote, he says, “An awakened person is not an enemy to any doctrine seen, heard, or thought, but not forming opinions, not shut down, and not desirous, they are wise ones who have laid the burden down.” The burden of trying to hold on, like, “I’m right and you’re wrong. I know things and you don’t.” It’s not that they don’t have ideas, but this word “opinions” here—opinions are often like our views that have implicit in them, “Here’s how you’re wrong, and here’s how you should fix it.”
The Buddha is saying a completely awakened person isn’t one that’s out there fighting with everybody who has different teachings or a different understanding. Instead, they’re helping other people to find more freedom. They’re not spending time putting down everybody else. This idea is to not engage in disputes over beliefs and views because of the recognition that when we get into disputes or conflicts about views, it just tends to lead to dogmatism and fundamentalism. People just dig into their views when they see opposite ones. We see this happening a lot on the world stage or even in our personal lives. We can see that just because somebody has a different view than we do, we often tend to hold our views a little bit tighter. Maybe we feel a little bit threatened by something that’s completely different. We feel threatened, like, “Wait, if they believe something that I don’t believe, then that means I’m wrong. So they can’t be right, because implicit in that is I’m wrong. So I must be right, and they are wrong.” As soon as you have this feeling like “I’m right,” then this “us versus them” dynamic gets created in an even stronger way, and we just dig in in whatever way is necessary.
I heard a story once that had a big impact on me. I think it was from Sharon Salzberg, one of the elders in this tradition. She talks about how she found herself in this really big fight with another Buddhist practitioner from a different Buddhist tradition about what happens after death. Their voices were getting higher and higher, and they were fighting and arguing. Then she realized, “What are we fighting about? We don’t know. We’re not dead. We don’t actually know.” And yet, there’s this big way that they both got kind of dug into their own beliefs and views about this.
The truth is, we have this tendency to think that we know the truth based on our experience. Of course. But by nature, we have a limited experience. We don’t have all possible experiences, so other people’s views often are coming from their experience, and ours are coming from ours. We often are setting up this dynamic of, “Well, my views are based on observation and thoughtfulness and intellect, and their views are just idiosyncratic and weird.” But it’s just really all based on people’s experiences. Nobody’s making views just for the fun of it out of complete nothing.
There’s this way in which our unexamined opinions, assumptions, or beliefs—we’ve just inherited them. We have experiences, but part of this experience is the family we grew up in, the culture we grew up in, the society we grew up in, the society we’re in now. We’re just kind of adopting these without necessarily looking at them or examining them. And of course, in some ways, that’s how we define society and culture—people have similar views. That’s okay. Of course we have them. The problem is the clinging and the insisting that we are right and everybody else is wrong. Us versus them.
With this practice, something that I appreciate so much is that we don’t have to turn off our critical intelligence and just adopt some beliefs. That is absolutely not what this practice is about, what this tradition is about. Instead, it’s the opposite. It’s an encouragement to investigate, get curious about what you hear as the teachings, what you read about the teachings, and about yourself. What are your views? How did you come to have them? Are they helpful? Do they lead to more freedom or not? What I’m pointing to is not the great psychological archaeological dig, which is something a little bit different, but just this openness, this curiosity. Just asking the question, “Where did these come from?” or “What are my beliefs?” It’s the asking of the question that makes the difference. Because asking the question just helps this recognition, like, “Oh yeah, this is a belief, and there might be another belief possible.” If we don’t ask that question, then we just assume there’s only one belief—the one that I have, and it’s the right one. But just asking helps create some space and some room for something else, a new idea or maybe a new understanding or appreciation of people who have different beliefs, different views.
So when Sakka asks the Buddha, “Why, when everybody wants peace, is there so much conflict?” the Buddha starts with something that’s obvious and that we all experience, like wanting more, not wanting to share. And then when Sakka has this conversation, “Well, what about that and that and that?” they get down to views and beliefs. This is a source of conflict.
Now I’d like to share another little story with Sakka, the king of the Gods, and the king of the Titans. The suttas preserve this; the Buddha is telling this story to the monastics. There was a battle between the gods and the Titans, and then the king of the Titans, his name is Vepacitti4, he goes to Sakka, the king of the Gods, and says, “Let’s have a debate and let’s win by debate.” This is after a battle. Maybe they said, “Okay, you know, I’m tired of fighting. Maybe there’s got to be another way we can do this. Let’s have a debate.” I’m paraphrasing here, of course.
And Sakka, the king of the Gods, says okay. So they assembled a panel of both gods and Titans who they said would be able to determine who wins the debate. And then Vepacitti, the king of the Titans, says to the king of the Gods, “Why don’t you go first?” And Sakka, the king of the Gods, says, “No, you’re the senior here. Why don’t you go first?” A little bit of respect there.
So Vepacitti, the king of the Titans, makes his first statement, and this is done in verse, so the English feels a little clunky sometimes. “Fools would vent anger even more if no one would keep them in check. Hence, with drastic punishment, the wise person restrains the fool.” And the Titans applaud, and the gods are silent. For me, I just love this little bit of detail. We see this so much today, right? If you’re on this team or that team or this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle, you’re just like, “Yay!” and then this side is silent. This was composed thousands of years ago, and here we are still doing the same thing.
So the king of the Titans said that, and then he said to the king of the Gods, “Now you speak.” And the king of the Gods says, “I think that this is the only way to put a stop to a fool: when you know that the other is upset, be mindful and stay calm.” And the gods applauded, and the Titans were silent.
Then the king of the Titans speaks next, and he says, “I see this fault, Sakka, in just being patient. When a fool thinks of you thus, ‘He puts up with me out of fear,’ the fool will chase you even more, like a bull chasing someone who flees.” So the king of the Titans is criticizing this whole idea of “be mindful and stay calm,” because he’s saying, “Well, if you don’t really punish them or hit them with force, they will assume that you are afraid. And if they think that you are afraid, they will go after you even more.” And of course, the Titans applauded when the king of the Titans said this.
Then the king of the Gods replies, “Let the fool think this if he wishes, that ‘he puts up with me out of fear.’ Of goals culminating in one’s own good, none better than patience is found.” This idea that patience really supports one’s own good, one’s benefit. He continues, “When you get angry at an angry person, you just make things worse. When you don’t get angry at an angry person, you win a battle hard to win.” I love this, right? If one person’s angry, and then another person’s angry, and they get angry again, then where’s it going to end? You can’t stop anger with more anger. It’s impossible. Somebody has to stop somewhere, or else there’s just this resentment that just brews and gets bigger and bigger. And here’s Sakka, the king of the Gods, saying, “When you don’t get angry at an angry person, you win a battle hard to win.” Otherwise, it just escalates. If you could just say, “You know what? I’m just not going to play that game. I’m just not going to engage and play that game with you,” you win a battle hard to win.
Then the king of the Gods continues, “When you know that the other is angry, you act for the good of both yourself and the other if you’re mindful and stay calm.” So the king of the Gods is also saying that it’s beneficial not only for you to not get angry, but it helps them also. And this is the greater good, right? To support the person who you are in conflict with and to support yourself. To not escalate, but instead to de-escalate by simply being mindful and calm. Of course, this is powerful. It’s not our natural impulse, of course.
And then this ends with the panel of judges, consisting of both gods and Titans, saying, “The verses spoken by the king of the Titans evoke punishment and violence. That’s how you get to arguments, quarrels, and disputes. The verses spoken by the king of Gods don’t evoke punishment and violence. That’s how you stay free of arguments, quarrels, and disputes.” You can imagine that all the gods clapped when they heard that, and the Titans were silent when this final ruling came down.
This idea of being patient, this idea of being mindful and calm in the face of conflict, when meeting somebody who’s perhaps meeting you with anger—this is not something easy. It’s not something that’s straightforward. There’s this way in which we can understand patience is this non-reactivity. It’s not acting on these impulses that aren’t helpful, that aren’t supportive for us. So not raging and not blaming—not blaming others, not blaming ourselves—or not despairing or not making wild stories. But just to say, “Wow, okay, so there’s anger here, and this is uncomfortable. I wish it weren’t here. Maybe I don’t even know what to do.” But not escalating, but instead being mindful, like recognizing, “This is very uncomfortable. I wish it weren’t like this.” Chances are. But is there a way that we can just hold our difficulties, maybe in a spacious way, instead of trying to fix everything as fast as possible by yelling or acting very quickly, irrationally, perhaps, before we’ve had a chance to think things through?
Is there a way that we can have this more openness that feels more peaceful? And this recognition that, “Yes, this is difficult, but I don’t have to fix it right this moment.” Often we want to just get out of that feeling of discomfort. Part of meditation practice—this is not in the advertising—but part of meditation practice is to learn to hold discomfort. Because sometimes it’s just physically uncomfortable to be sitting still, or sometimes we’re meditating and uncomfortable emotions come up or uncomfortable memories come up. And as best we can, to be able to hold them. This is great practice for our daily life. The exact same thing, right? Discomfort arises, and can we hold it? So meditation practice, of course, it allows some steadying of the mind, but even if you’re having a very uncomfortable meditation session, there’s tremendous value in that.
So is there a way that we can not lash out and maintain composure even when we’re met with somebody who is angry? Just instead, maybe just take a deep breath, feel our feet on the ground. And maybe even just doing that, taking a deep breath and allowing that person to see it, maybe that’s enough that can bring things down. Maybe not, too. Don’t underestimate how helpful it can be to feel your feet on the ground. Often when there’s conflict, we don’t have our wits with us necessarily. Instead, we’re feeling like, “Oh, wow, what’s happening?” But feeling our feet on the ground is a way we can feel grounded and maybe steady. Otherwise, the thoughts are more likely to go out and spin and make some wild stories.
So, to have some patience when meeting some conflict. But I want to say a little bit about what patience isn’t, because it’s tempting when we hear about this, “Okay, have some non-reactivity,” to maybe think about it in a certain way. But patience isn’t like this numbing resignation, like, “Okay, all right.” And we just kind of disconnect from our emotions, disconnect from the experience, disconnect from what’s happening. And there’s this kind of, “Okay, well, I’m just going to check out until this is over, and then maybe I’ll check back in later, maybe I won’t.” So that’s not patience. That’s numbing resignation. That’s just checking out. Is there a way that we can stay present, feel our feet on the ground, take a deep breath, and feel the discomfort and not run away, not check out? I’m not saying this is easy, but there’s a way that meditation practice really can support us in this. Just this feeling of discomfort and realizing, “Okay, it’s not going to kill me. I don’t like it.” That’s okay. We don’t have to like everything.
Also, patience is not gritting your teeth, holding on, and just waiting for things to be over, but with a lot of tension. We could call that waiting with aversion. That’s different than patience. Patience has this way of some steadiness and allowing things to unfold. So recognizing uncomfortableness, staying connected, and allowing things to unfold how they’re going to unfold. They’ll unfold differently if we have some steadiness, of course they will, if we have some calm.
Patience also is not like being impervious to pressure. It’s not like saying, “Nope, I’m going to stand here and not do anything no matter what.” That’s just stubbornness. So instead, patience is, “Okay, I’m feeling connected. I know what’s happening. I’m allowing things to unfold.” And it might become clear that it would be really wise to do this thing or that other thing, and then we do this thing or that other thing. But we’re not just standing there not reacting just out of principle, even though it might be harmful to others or to ourselves to do that. We’re not doing it just for the sake of doing it.
And patience, the way that I’m describing it, of course, is not passivity. This is work, right? To not check out, not run away, but to stay present. And this is a way that we really can be with conflict. It’s, “Okay, can I hold this?” And not masking or suppressing what’s happening. Maybe flashes of anger come up. Maybe flashes of “Why is this happening to me?” comes up. But we’re not acting unskillfully. We’re acknowledging our experience, and as best we can, we’re holding them spaciously with some patience.
So that’s one way to work with conflict: this patience and mindfulness and calmness. And then the first story with Sakka, when he was asking the Buddha about, “Okay, well, why when everybody wants peace is there so much conflict?” and the Buddha eventually got down to, “Well, it’s about views.” So this is a second way to work with conflict: to have some awareness of what are the views that we are holding on to, or that we are… maybe just to simply become aware of our beliefs. Because most likely, our views and beliefs are not obvious to us. That’s kind of the nature of views and beliefs, that they are kind of buried underneath. They’re subtle, and they have a giant impact on our life, our actions, but they’re not obvious to us. And we may not even recognize them until there’s a conflict and we realize, “Oh, there’s something here that’s getting threatened. What is it that feels threatened?” And this can be a way to just bring some curiosity to this. This could be a way in which we can recognize, “Oh yeah, I have this belief that things should be this way, and they’re not that way, and they should be that way.” We might have that belief, and somehow just recognizing our beliefs and naming them allows them to be held a little bit less tightly. I’m not saying we have to get rid of them. I’m not saying we have to change them all. But if we become aware of them, then we could start to see and recognize, “Okay, what’s helpful? What’s not helpful? What leads to more freedom? What leads to less freedom?” Can we bring curiosity and some inquiry into our beliefs, our inner life, our views? What are we holding on to? Is it helpful?
Maybe I also just want to add in here that beliefs are resistant to change. They’re not something that once we see them, they’re going to be different. For example, we might have a belief, “No pain, no gain.” I think this was a Nike slogan from years ago. But this idea that you have to work hard, and if you’re not working hard, nothing good’s going to happen. I know I certainly had this belief, and it worked until it didn’t. Until the working hard, this idea that I had to work hard, I realized, “Oh, actually, this belief of working hard, I’m using this as a distraction from the rest of my life, from my inner life and all these difficulties.” My insisting that I have to work harder, harder, harder—I just put all my attention and my energy there and was ignoring everything else in my life: my inner life, my relationships, these types of things. I’m not saying you don’t have to work hard, of course not. But we might have a belief that nothing valuable will happen unless we’re doing that, unless there’s a lot of striving. And then there’s a way in which we can dismiss things that are beautiful, uplifting, easeful. We might just be dismissing them when that might be exactly what’s needed. In some ways, many of us need some nourishment of some ease and well-being, and “no pain, no gain” can get in the way of this.
So working with conflict, we can learn from the king of the Gods and the king of the Titans, who have some conflict. I guess that’s kind of what the Buddhist cosmology has. And the Buddha’s teachings about, “Well, look at your views and have patience.” Don’t feel like you have to act so quickly. And when I was thinking about this, I thought, “Well, looking at your views and having patience,” for me, kind of felt like taking the high road, right? This might be a way in which we might understand that in contemporary teaching, like, “Oh, this is what part of taking the high road means.”
And then I’ll end with this last little story about the king of Gods and the king of the Titans. The king of the Titans was really sick, he was ill, and the king of the Gods went to him and offered to cure him. “You know, I can cure you. I can make you not sick anymore. But I’d like you to teach me this magic, Sambara’s5 magic.” That’s what the king of the Gods is saying. And the king of the Titans said, “No, I’m not going to teach that to you, because Sambara used this magic and now he’s in purgatory and in hell. I don’t want you to have to go to hell, so I’m not going to teach it to you.” So there was some kindness there. Here we are, these two beings that are in constant conflict, and yet there was a way they had some care and respect for one another too.
So working with conflict with views and patience, maybe a little bit of respect in there to sprinkle some in, that can’t hurt. And with that, I’ll end and open it up to see if there’s some comments or questions. Thank you.
Questioner: One of the Eightfold Path is Right View, and I’m wondering about enlightenment. Like the Buddha, for example, does he have the right views? Is it possible to have views that are actually correct?
Diana Clark: Yeah, thank you for bringing this up. So, “Right View”—the word “right” is not like the opposite of “wrong” in that setting. It’s more like “right” in terms of the correct tool. The way that if you needed to paint a wall, you would use a paintbrush, not a screwdriver, kind of thing like that. So your question is about… can you ask it again?
Questioner: In other words, enlightenment. Like a liberated being, like the Buddha for example, he must have some sort of views of some nature. Are they actually true, correct?
Diana Clark: I see. Actually, I think the answer is whatever views there are, he’s not holding on to them, clinging to them. So we might say, “Well, this is his current understanding,” or “This is what seems to be true now.” He’s holding things that way. So there’s just an absence of clinging. So it’s not maybe that the views are… I guess they are correct. I don’t know. Next time I meet a Buddha, I definitely will ask them though.
Questioner: But isn’t the Dharma a view? It’s a way of seeing, right? Could it be looked at as a way of viewing the spiritual path?
Diana Clark: Sure, sure. We could view the spiritual path like… the Buddha talks about this. Are we going to learn everything on this path so that we can get better at winning debates with people with other religious traditions? And the Buddha would say, “No, that’s actually not a good reason why to learn this.” It’s more to find more freedom or something like that. So is that helpful? Yeah, great. Thank you.
Questioner: I think I’ll just offer more of a comment. I’m reminded in your discussion of conflict a line from the Talmud, which is, “A hero is someone who turns an enemy into a friend.” And I could just see at the end of the last story some kindness turning to friendship between the king of the Titans and Sakka. Like this kindness coming first. Or even when Reagan met Gorbachev, he was like, “Hey, if aliens were coming to attack your country, would you let me know?” He’s like, “Oh yeah.” And that was kind of the start of a dialogue between the two of them. That’s just the comment. Thank you.
Diana Clark: Nice, nice. Thank you.
Questioner: Just a comment. So two, actually. One question, then a comment. I know in Buddhism, the emphasis often is on equanimity, but I’m wondering if patience… I feel like it could hold an equal place, but it’s not often talked about. Is my understanding correct?
Diana Clark: Yeah, so patience, and this is a good question, like how is it different than equanimity? Patience is part of the paramis6, which are these practices that are usually practiced not on the meditation cushion but out in daily life. But equanimity is a little bit higher bar. Equanimity is… like patience would be more like, “Okay, this is really uncomfortable, and I wish it weren’t otherwise, but I’m going to stay here as best I can and be with it.” Equanimity is like, “Oh, wow, look at that, it’s uncomfortable,” and not with the sense of, “Oh, and I really wish it weren’t here. What can I do to persevere through this?” So equanimity is more like just noticing discomfort as discomfort and not wanting to push it away or get away from it.
Questioner: And the second comment I was going to make was, especially when you talked about patience in terms of being in the conflict, there’s a quote in the Tao Te Ching7, you’ve probably heard it already, the Stephen Mitchell version. He says, “Do you have the patience to let the water settle and let the answer rise by itself?” Something like that.
Diana Clark: There you go. Lots of good wisdom.
Moderator: Diana, there was a question on the chat, which is, “What’s the name of the sutta?”
Diana Clark: So these are two different suttas. The one where Sakka asks the Buddha, “You know, when everybody wants peace, why is there conflict?” that’s the Sakka Sutta. That’s DN 218. And then the other one where the king of the Titans and the king of the gods are in conflict and they’re having this debate, that is SN 11.5, “Fine Words.”9
Diana Clark: Any other comments? Okay. So may you have a… I was going to say, may you have a conflict-free week, but maybe you need to have conflict so then you can practice like, “What are my views? Have some patience.” May you have a wonderful evening. Thank you.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good evening, welcome. Tonight, I want to talk a little bit about conflict. Interestingly, conflict shows up in the early Buddhist literature. Apparently, there is some heavenly realm—this is just a little side story that’s sprinkled in very rarely, but it’s in there a few times in the suttas1—a heavenly realm where the gods and the Titans are always battling. They’re always in conflict.
In Buddhist cosmology, the Gods are just disembodied beings; they have no special powers or special knowledge or anything like this. They’re just like humans who happen to be disembodied. And Titans are… I don’t know what they are. They are other disembodied beings who are not gods. There’s this conflict between the gods and the Titans. The Pali2 word for Titan is Asura, and some people translate them as demons, but they’re not demonic, as you’ll see.
By looking a little bit at how these Gods and Titans interact, and specifically how the king of the Gods and the king of the Titans interact, we can learn a little bit about conflict, how it was portrayed, and what the Buddha had to say about it.
Sakka3, who is the king of the Gods, is always in this conflict with the Titans. He asks the Buddha about this, and I’m paraphrasing a little bit. He says to the Buddha, “When beings, including Gods, humans, and Titans, all wish to live in peace, why are they perpetually embroiled in conflict?” This is a question we could ask ourselves. Everybody wants to live in peace, but why is there so much conflict, disagreement, or violence?
In answer to this question, the Buddha gives a discourse that traces the cause of conflict and hostility. The Buddha first says to Sakka that the reason for conflict is because people have jealousy and stinginess. We could say that is wanting what other people have or not wanting to share what you have. It’s all about “mine, I need more.” We certainly see a lot of that in contemporary times too.
Sakka is very happy to finally learn this, like, “Oh, okay, great. Jealousy and stinginess is the source of conflict. Fantastic, thank you, I understand this.” And then Sakka says, “But wait, what’s the cause of jealousy and stinginess?” The Buddha then points to subtler and subtler things that are undergirding each of these, and it gets all the way down to views, beliefs, and opinions. This is the source of conflict, and it gets expressed in so many different ways.
There’s this way in which clinging to our views leads to conflict. Some of you might be protesting, “But of course I’m clinging to my views! I’m right, they’re wrong!” Of course. But we all know that clinging, holding on tightly to anything, isn’t the way to greater peace and freedom, whether it’s a view or the wish to control other people. Not holding on to, not clinging to philosophies or doctrines or even teachings, including Buddhist teachings—they’re not to be held on to. They can be a support and they can be helpful, but clinging to anything is not the way to the greatest freedom. They can be held, as I often find myself doing, with open hands, as opposed to really holding on.
Part of the way we can recognize that the Buddha is placing this emphasis on not clinging, not holding on to, not gripping our views, is how he describes an awakened person, somebody who has the most amount of freedom, complete freedom. In this small little quote, he says, “An awakened person is not an enemy to any doctrine seen, heard, or thought, but not forming opinions, not shut down, and not desirous, they are wise ones who have laid the burden down.” The burden of trying to hold on, like, “I’m right and you’re wrong. I know things and you don’t.” It’s not that they don’t have ideas, but this word “opinions” here—opinions are often like our views that have implicit in them, “Here’s how you’re wrong, and here’s how you should fix it.”
The Buddha is saying a completely awakened person isn’t one that’s out there fighting with everybody who has different teachings or a different understanding. Instead, they’re helping other people to find more freedom. They’re not spending time putting down everybody else. This idea is to not engage in disputes over beliefs and views because of the recognition that when we get into disputes or conflicts about views, it just tends to lead to dogmatism and fundamentalism. People just dig into their views when they see opposite ones. We see this happening a lot on the world stage or even in our personal lives. We can see that just because somebody has a different view than we do, we often tend to hold our views a little bit tighter. Maybe we feel a little bit threatened by something that’s completely different. We feel threatened, like, “Wait, if they believe something that I don’t believe, then that means I’m wrong. So they can’t be right, because implicit in that is I’m wrong. So I must be right, and they are wrong.” As soon as you have this feeling like “I’m right,” then this “us versus them” dynamic gets created in an even stronger way, and we just dig in in whatever way is necessary.
I heard a story once that had a big impact on me. I think it was from Sharon Salzberg, one of the elders in this tradition. She talks about how she found herself in this really big fight with another Buddhist practitioner from a different Buddhist tradition about what happens after death. Their voices were getting higher and higher, and they were fighting and arguing. Then she realized, “What are we fighting about? We don’t know. We’re not dead. We don’t actually know.” And yet, there’s this big way that they both got kind of dug into their own beliefs and views about this.
The truth is, we have this tendency to think that we know the truth based on our experience. Of course. But by nature, we have a limited experience. We don’t have all possible experiences, so other people’s views often are coming from their experience, and ours are coming from ours. We often are setting up this dynamic of, “Well, my views are based on observation and thoughtfulness and intellect, and their views are just idiosyncratic and weird.” But it’s just really all based on people’s experiences. Nobody’s making views just for the fun of it out of complete nothing.
There’s this way in which our unexamined opinions, assumptions, or beliefs—we’ve just inherited them. We have experiences, but part of this experience is the family we grew up in, the culture we grew up in, the society we grew up in, the society we’re in now. We’re just kind of adopting these without necessarily looking at them or examining them. And of course, in some ways, that’s how we define society and culture—people have similar views. That’s okay. Of course we have them. The problem is the clinging and the insisting that we are right and everybody else is wrong. Us versus them.
With this practice, something that I appreciate so much is that we don’t have to turn off our critical intelligence and just adopt some beliefs. That is absolutely not what this practice is about, what this tradition is about. Instead, it’s the opposite. It’s an encouragement to investigate, get curious about what you hear as the teachings, what you read about the teachings, and about yourself. What are your views? How did you come to have them? Are they helpful? Do they lead to more freedom or not? What I’m pointing to is not the great psychological archaeological dig, which is something a little bit different, but just this openness, this curiosity. Just asking the question, “Where did these come from?” or “What are my beliefs?” It’s the asking of the question that makes the difference. Because asking the question just helps this recognition, like, “Oh yeah, this is a belief, and there might be another belief possible.” If we don’t ask that question, then we just assume there’s only one belief—the one that I have, and it’s the right one. But just asking helps create some space and some room for something else, a new idea or maybe a new understanding or appreciation of people who have different beliefs, different views.
So when Sakka asks the Buddha, “Why, when everybody wants peace, is there so much conflict?” the Buddha starts with something that’s obvious and that we all experience, like wanting more, not wanting to share. And then when Sakka has this conversation, “Well, what about that and that and that?” they get down to views and beliefs. This is a source of conflict.
Now I’d like to share another little story with Sakka, the king of the Gods, and the king of the Titans. The suttas preserve this; the Buddha is telling this story to the monastics. There was a battle between the gods and the Titans, and then the king of the Titans, his name is Vepacitti4, he goes to Sakka, the king of the Gods, and says, “Let’s have a debate and let’s win by debate.” This is after a battle. Maybe they said, “Okay, you know, I’m tired of fighting. Maybe there’s got to be another way we can do this. Let’s have a debate.” I’m paraphrasing here, of course.
And Sakka, the king of the Gods, says okay. So they assembled a panel of both gods and Titans who they said would be able to determine who wins the debate. And then Vepacitti, the king of the Titans, says to the king of the Gods, “Why don’t you go first?” And Sakka, the king of the Gods, says, “No, you’re the senior here. Why don’t you go first?” A little bit of respect there.
So Vepacitti, the king of the Titans, makes his first statement, and this is done in verse, so the English feels a little clunky sometimes. “Fools would vent anger even more if no one would keep them in check. Hence, with drastic punishment, the wise person restrains the fool.” And the Titans applaud, and the gods are silent. For me, I just love this little bit of detail. We see this so much today, right? If you’re on this team or that team or this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle, you’re just like, “Yay!” and then this side is silent. This was composed thousands of years ago, and here we are still doing the same thing.
So the king of the Titans said that, and then he said to the king of the Gods, “Now you speak.” And the king of the Gods says, “I think that this is the only way to put a stop to a fool: when you know that the other is upset, be mindful and stay calm.” And the gods applauded, and the Titans were silent.
Then the king of the Titans speaks next, and he says, “I see this fault, Sakka, in just being patient. When a fool thinks of you thus, ‘He puts up with me out of fear,’ the fool will chase you even more, like a bull chasing someone who flees.” So the king of the Titans is criticizing this whole idea of “be mindful and stay calm,” because he’s saying, “Well, if you don’t really punish them or hit them with force, they will assume that you are afraid. And if they think that you are afraid, they will go after you even more.” And of course, the Titans applauded when the king of the Titans said this.
Then the king of the Gods replies, “Let the fool think this if he wishes, that ‘he puts up with me out of fear.’ Of goals culminating in one’s own good, none better than patience is found.” This idea that patience really supports one’s own good, one’s benefit. He continues, “When you get angry at an angry person, you just make things worse. When you don’t get angry at an angry person, you win a battle hard to win.” I love this, right? If one person’s angry, and then another person’s angry, and they get angry again, then where’s it going to end? You can’t stop anger with more anger. It’s impossible. Somebody has to stop somewhere, or else there’s just this resentment that just brews and gets bigger and bigger. And here’s Sakka, the king of the Gods, saying, “When you don’t get angry at an angry person, you win a battle hard to win.” Otherwise, it just escalates. If you could just say, “You know what? I’m just not going to play that game. I’m just not going to engage and play that game with you,” you win a battle hard to win.
Then the king of the Gods continues, “When you know that the other is angry, you act for the good of both yourself and the other if you’re mindful and stay calm.” So the king of the Gods is also saying that it’s beneficial not only for you to not get angry, but it helps them also. And this is the greater good, right? To support the person who you are in conflict with and to support yourself. To not escalate, but instead to de-escalate by simply being mindful and calm. Of course, this is powerful. It’s not our natural impulse, of course.
And then this ends with the panel of judges, consisting of both gods and Titans, saying, “The verses spoken by the king of the Titans evoke punishment and violence. That’s how you get to arguments, quarrels, and disputes. The verses spoken by the king of Gods don’t evoke punishment and violence. That’s how you stay free of arguments, quarrels, and disputes.” You can imagine that all the gods clapped when they heard that, and the Titans were silent when this final ruling came down.
This idea of being patient, this idea of being mindful and calm in the face of conflict, when meeting somebody who’s perhaps meeting you with anger—this is not something easy. It’s not something that’s straightforward. There’s this way in which we can understand patience is this non-reactivity. It’s not acting on these impulses that aren’t helpful, that aren’t supportive for us. So not raging and not blaming—not blaming others, not blaming ourselves—or not despairing or not making wild stories. But just to say, “Wow, okay, so there’s anger here, and this is uncomfortable. I wish it weren’t here. Maybe I don’t even know what to do.” But not escalating, but instead being mindful, like recognizing, “This is very uncomfortable. I wish it weren’t like this.” Chances are. But is there a way that we can just hold our difficulties, maybe in a spacious way, instead of trying to fix everything as fast as possible by yelling or acting very quickly, irrationally, perhaps, before we’ve had a chance to think things through?
Is there a way that we can have this more openness that feels more peaceful? And this recognition that, “Yes, this is difficult, but I don’t have to fix it right this moment.” Often we want to just get out of that feeling of discomfort. Part of meditation practice—this is not in the advertising—but part of meditation practice is to learn to hold discomfort. Because sometimes it’s just physically uncomfortable to be sitting still, or sometimes we’re meditating and uncomfortable emotions come up or uncomfortable memories come up. And as best we can, to be able to hold them. This is great practice for our daily life. The exact same thing, right? Discomfort arises, and can we hold it? So meditation practice, of course, it allows some steadying of the mind, but even if you’re having a very uncomfortable meditation session, there’s tremendous value in that.
So is there a way that we can not lash out and maintain composure even when we’re met with somebody who is angry? Just instead, maybe just take a deep breath, feel our feet on the ground. And maybe even just doing that, taking a deep breath and allowing that person to see it, maybe that’s enough that can bring things down. Maybe not, too. Don’t underestimate how helpful it can be to feel your feet on the ground. Often when there’s conflict, we don’t have our wits with us necessarily. Instead, we’re feeling like, “Oh, wow, what’s happening?” But feeling our feet on the ground is a way we can feel grounded and maybe steady. Otherwise, the thoughts are more likely to go out and spin and make some wild stories.
So, to have some patience when meeting some conflict. But I want to say a little bit about what patience isn’t, because it’s tempting when we hear about this, “Okay, have some non-reactivity,” to maybe think about it in a certain way. But patience isn’t like this numbing resignation, like, “Okay, all right.” And we just kind of disconnect from our emotions, disconnect from the experience, disconnect from what’s happening. And there’s this kind of, “Okay, well, I’m just going to check out until this is over, and then maybe I’ll check back in later, maybe I won’t.” So that’s not patience. That’s numbing resignation. That’s just checking out. Is there a way that we can stay present, feel our feet on the ground, take a deep breath, and feel the discomfort and not run away, not check out? I’m not saying this is easy, but there’s a way that meditation practice really can support us in this. Just this feeling of discomfort and realizing, “Okay, it’s not going to kill me. I don’t like it.” That’s okay. We don’t have to like everything.
Also, patience is not gritting your teeth, holding on, and just waiting for things to be over, but with a lot of tension. We could call that waiting with aversion. That’s different than patience. Patience has this way of some steadiness and allowing things to unfold. So recognizing uncomfortableness, staying connected, and allowing things to unfold how they’re going to unfold. They’ll unfold differently if we have some steadiness, of course they will, if we have some calm.
Patience also is not like being impervious to pressure. It’s not like saying, “Nope, I’m going to stand here and not do anything no matter what.” That’s just stubbornness. So instead, patience is, “Okay, I’m feeling connected. I know what’s happening. I’m allowing things to unfold.” And it might become clear that it would be really wise to do this thing or that other thing, and then we do this thing or that other thing. But we’re not just standing there not reacting just out of principle, even though it might be harmful to others or to ourselves to do that. We’re not doing it just for the sake of doing it.
And patience, the way that I’m describing it, of course, is not passivity. This is work, right? To not check out, not run away, but to stay present. And this is a way that we really can be with conflict. It’s, “Okay, can I hold this?” And not masking or suppressing what’s happening. Maybe flashes of anger come up. Maybe flashes of “Why is this happening to me?” comes up. But we’re not acting unskillfully. We’re acknowledging our experience, and as best we can, we’re holding them spaciously with some patience.
So that’s one way to work with conflict: this patience and mindfulness and calmness. And then the first story with Sakka, when he was asking the Buddha about, “Okay, well, why when everybody wants peace is there so much conflict?” and the Buddha eventually got down to, “Well, it’s about views.” So this is a second way to work with conflict: to have some awareness of what are the views that we are holding on to, or that we are… maybe just to simply become aware of our beliefs. Because most likely, our views and beliefs are not obvious to us. That’s kind of the nature of views and beliefs, that they are kind of buried underneath. They’re subtle, and they have a giant impact on our life, our actions, but they’re not obvious to us. And we may not even recognize them until there’s a conflict and we realize, “Oh, there’s something here that’s getting threatened. What is it that feels threatened?” And this can be a way to just bring some curiosity to this. This could be a way in which we can recognize, “Oh yeah, I have this belief that things should be this way, and they’re not that way, and they should be that way.” We might have that belief, and somehow just recognizing our beliefs and naming them allows them to be held a little bit less tightly. I’m not saying we have to get rid of them. I’m not saying we have to change them all. But if we become aware of them, then we could start to see and recognize, “Okay, what’s helpful? What’s not helpful? What leads to more freedom? What leads to less freedom?” Can we bring curiosity and some inquiry into our beliefs, our inner life, our views? What are we holding on to? Is it helpful?
Maybe I also just want to add in here that beliefs are resistant to change. They’re not something that once we see them, they’re going to be different. For example, we might have a belief, “No pain, no gain.” I think this was a Nike slogan from years ago. But this idea that you have to work hard, and if you’re not working hard, nothing good’s going to happen. I know I certainly had this belief, and it worked until it didn’t. Until the working hard, this idea that I had to work hard, I realized, “Oh, actually, this belief of working hard, I’m using this as a distraction from the rest of my life, from my inner life and all these difficulties.” My insisting that I have to work harder, harder, harder—I just put all my attention and my energy there and was ignoring everything else in my life: my inner life, my relationships, these types of things. I’m not saying you don’t have to work hard, of course not. But we might have a belief that nothing valuable will happen unless we’re doing that, unless there’s a lot of striving. And then there’s a way in which we can dismiss things that are beautiful, uplifting, easeful. We might just be dismissing them when that might be exactly what’s needed. In some ways, many of us need some nourishment of some ease and well-being, and “no pain, no gain” can get in the way of this.
So working with conflict, we can learn from the king of the Gods and the king of the Titans, who have some conflict. I guess that’s kind of what the Buddhist cosmology has. And the Buddha’s teachings about, “Well, look at your views and have patience.” Don’t feel like you have to act so quickly. And when I was thinking about this, I thought, “Well, looking at your views and having patience,” for me, kind of felt like taking the high road, right? This might be a way in which we might understand that in contemporary teaching, like, “Oh, this is what part of taking the high road means.”
And then I’ll end with this last little story about the king of Gods and the king of the Titans. The king of the Titans was really sick, he was ill, and the king of the Gods went to him and offered to cure him. “You know, I can cure you. I can make you not sick anymore. But I’d like you to teach me this magic, Sambara’s5 magic.” That’s what the king of the Gods is saying. And the king of the Titans said, “No, I’m not going to teach that to you, because Sambara used this magic and now he’s in purgatory and in hell. I don’t want you to have to go to hell, so I’m not going to teach it to you.” So there was some kindness there. Here we are, these two beings that are in constant conflict, and yet there was a way they had some care and respect for one another too.
So working with conflict with views and patience, maybe a little bit of respect in there to sprinkle some in, that can’t hurt. And with that, I’ll end and open it up to see if there’s some comments or questions. Thank you.
Questioner: One of the Eightfold Path is Right View, and I’m wondering about enlightenment. Like the Buddha, for example, does he have the right views? Is it possible to have views that are actually correct?
Diana Clark: Yeah, thank you for bringing this up. So, “Right View”—the word “right” is not like the opposite of “wrong” in that setting. It’s more like “right” in terms of the correct tool. The way that if you needed to paint a wall, you would use a paintbrush, not a screwdriver, kind of thing like that. So your question is about… can you ask it again?
Questioner: In other words, enlightenment. Like a liberated being, like the Buddha for example, he must have some sort of views of some nature. Are they actually true, correct?
Diana Clark: I see. Actually, I think the answer is whatever views there are, he’s not holding on to them, clinging to them. So we might say, “Well, this is his current understanding,” or “This is what seems to be true now.” He’s holding things that way. So there’s just an absence of clinging. So it’s not maybe that the views are… I guess they are correct. I don’t know. Next time I meet a Buddha, I definitely will ask them though.
Questioner: But isn’t the Dharma a view? It’s a way of seeing, right? Could it be looked at as a way of viewing the spiritual path?
Diana Clark: Sure, sure. We could view the spiritual path like… the Buddha talks about this. Are we going to learn everything on this path so that we can get better at winning debates with people with other religious traditions? And the Buddha would say, “No, that’s actually not a good reason why to learn this.” It’s more to find more freedom or something like that. So is that helpful? Yeah, great. Thank you.
Questioner: I think I’ll just offer more of a comment. I’m reminded in your discussion of conflict a line from the Talmud, which is, “A hero is someone who turns an enemy into a friend.” And I could just see at the end of the last story some kindness turning to friendship between the king of the Titans and Sakka. Like this kindness coming first. Or even when Reagan met Gorbachev, he was like, “Hey, if aliens were coming to attack your country, would you let me know?” He’s like, “Oh yeah.” And that was kind of the start of a dialogue between the two of them. That’s just the comment. Thank you.
Diana Clark: Nice, nice. Thank you.
Questioner: Just a comment. So two, actually. One question, then a comment. I know in Buddhism, the emphasis often is on equanimity, but I’m wondering if patience… I feel like it could hold an equal place, but it’s not often talked about. Is my understanding correct?
Diana Clark: Yeah, so patience, and this is a good question, like how is it different than equanimity? Patience is part of the paramis6, which are these practices that are usually practiced not on the meditation cushion but out in daily life. But equanimity is a little bit higher bar. Equanimity is… like patience would be more like, “Okay, this is really uncomfortable, and I wish it weren’t otherwise, but I’m going to stay here as best I can and be with it.” Equanimity is like, “Oh, wow, look at that, it’s uncomfortable,” and not with the sense of, “Oh, and I really wish it weren’t here. What can I do to persevere through this?” So equanimity is more like just noticing discomfort as discomfort and not wanting to push it away or get away from it.
Questioner: And the second comment I was going to make was, especially when you talked about patience in terms of being in the conflict, there’s a quote in the Tao Te Ching7, you’ve probably heard it already, the Stephen Mitchell version. He says, “Do you have the patience to let the water settle and let the answer rise by itself?” Something like that.
Diana Clark: There you go. Lots of good wisdom.
Moderator: Diana, there was a question on the chat, which is, “What’s the name of the sutta?”
Diana Clark: So these are two different suttas. The one where Sakka asks the Buddha, “You know, when everybody wants peace, why is there conflict?” that’s the Sakka Sutta. That’s DN 218. And then the other one where the king of the Titans and the king of the gods are in conflict and they’re having this debate, that is SN 11.5, “Fine Words.”9
Diana Clark: Any other comments? Okay. So may you have a… I was going to say, may you have a conflict-free week, but maybe you need to have conflict so then you can practice like, “What are my views? Have some patience.” May you have a wonderful evening. Thank you.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good evening, welcome. Tonight, I want to talk a little bit about conflict. Interestingly, conflict shows up in the early Buddhist literature. Apparently, there is some heavenly realm—this is just a little side story that’s sprinkled in very rarely, but it’s in there a few times in the suttas1—a heavenly realm where the gods and the Titans are always battling. They’re always in conflict.
In Buddhist cosmology, the Gods are just disembodied beings; they have no special powers or special knowledge or anything like this. They’re just like humans who happen to be disembodied. And Titans are… I don’t know what they are. They are other disembodied beings who are not gods. There’s this conflict between the gods and the Titans. The Pali2 word for Titan is Asura, and some people translate them as demons, but they’re not demonic, as you’ll see.
By looking a little bit at how these Gods and Titans interact, and specifically how the king of the Gods and the king of the Titans interact, we can learn a little bit about conflict, how it was portrayed, and what the Buddha had to say about it.
Sakka3, who is the king of the Gods, is always in this conflict with the Titans. He asks the Buddha about this, and I’m paraphrasing a little bit. He says to the Buddha, “When beings, including Gods, humans, and Titans, all wish to live in peace, why are they perpetually embroiled in conflict?” This is a question we could ask ourselves. Everybody wants to live in peace, but why is there so much conflict, disagreement, or violence?
In answer to this question, the Buddha gives a discourse that traces the cause of conflict and hostility. The Buddha first says to Sakka that the reason for conflict is because people have jealousy and stinginess. We could say that is wanting what other people have or not wanting to share what you have. It’s all about “mine, I need more.” We certainly see a lot of that in contemporary times too.
Sakka is very happy to finally learn this, like, “Oh, okay, great. Jealousy and stinginess is the source of conflict. Fantastic, thank you, I understand this.” And then Sakka says, “But wait, what’s the cause of jealousy and stinginess?” The Buddha then points to subtler and subtler things that are undergirding each of these, and it gets all the way down to views, beliefs, and opinions. This is the source of conflict, and it gets expressed in so many different ways.
There’s this way in which clinging to our views leads to conflict. Some of you might be protesting, “But of course I’m clinging to my views! I’m right, they’re wrong!” Of course. But we all know that clinging, holding on tightly to anything, isn’t the way to greater peace and freedom, whether it’s a view or the wish to control other people. Not holding on to, not clinging to philosophies or doctrines or even teachings, including Buddhist teachings—they’re not to be held on to. They can be a support and they can be helpful, but clinging to anything is not the way to the greatest freedom. They can be held, as I often find myself doing, with open hands, as opposed to really holding on.
Part of the way we can recognize that the Buddha is placing this emphasis on not clinging, not holding on to, not gripping our views, is how he describes an awakened person, somebody who has the most amount of freedom, complete freedom. In this small little quote, he says, “An awakened person is not an enemy to any doctrine seen, heard, or thought, but not forming opinions, not shut down, and not desirous, they are wise ones who have laid the burden down.” The burden of trying to hold on, like, “I’m right and you’re wrong. I know things and you don’t.” It’s not that they don’t have ideas, but this word “opinions” here—opinions are often like our views that have implicit in them, “Here’s how you’re wrong, and here’s how you should fix it.”
The Buddha is saying a completely awakened person isn’t one that’s out there fighting with everybody who has different teachings or a different understanding. Instead, they’re helping other people to find more freedom. They’re not spending time putting down everybody else. This idea is to not engage in disputes over beliefs and views because of the recognition that when we get into disputes or conflicts about views, it just tends to lead to dogmatism and fundamentalism. People just dig into their views when they see opposite ones. We see this happening a lot on the world stage or even in our personal lives. We can see that just because somebody has a different view than we do, we often tend to hold our views a little bit tighter. Maybe we feel a little bit threatened by something that’s completely different. We feel threatened, like, “Wait, if they believe something that I don’t believe, then that means I’m wrong. So they can’t be right, because implicit in that is I’m wrong. So I must be right, and they are wrong.” As soon as you have this feeling like “I’m right,” then this “us versus them” dynamic gets created in an even stronger way, and we just dig in in whatever way is necessary.
I heard a story once that had a big impact on me. I think it was from Sharon Salzberg, one of the elders in this tradition. She talks about how she found herself in this really big fight with another Buddhist practitioner from a different Buddhist tradition about what happens after death. Their voices were getting higher and higher, and they were fighting and arguing. Then she realized, “What are we fighting about? We don’t know. We’re not dead. We don’t actually know.” And yet, there’s this big way that they both got kind of dug into their own beliefs and views about this.
The truth is, we have this tendency to think that we know the truth based on our experience. Of course. But by nature, we have a limited experience. We don’t have all possible experiences, so other people’s views often are coming from their experience, and ours are coming from ours. We often are setting up this dynamic of, “Well, my views are based on observation and thoughtfulness and intellect, and their views are just idiosyncratic and weird.” But it’s just really all based on people’s experiences. Nobody’s making views just for the fun of it out of complete nothing.
There’s this way in which our unexamined opinions, assumptions, or beliefs—we’ve just inherited them. We have experiences, but part of this experience is the family we grew up in, the culture we grew up in, the society we grew up in, the society we’re in now. We’re just kind of adopting these without necessarily looking at them or examining them. And of course, in some ways, that’s how we define society and culture—people have similar views. That’s okay. Of course we have them. The problem is the clinging and the insisting that we are right and everybody else is wrong. Us versus them.
With this practice, something that I appreciate so much is that we don’t have to turn off our critical intelligence and just adopt some beliefs. That is absolutely not what this practice is about, what this tradition is about. Instead, it’s the opposite. It’s an encouragement to investigate, get curious about what you hear as the teachings, what you read about the teachings, and about yourself. What are your views? How did you come to have them? Are they helpful? Do they lead to more freedom or not? What I’m pointing to is not the great psychological archaeological dig, which is something a little bit different, but just this openness, this curiosity. Just asking the question, “Where did these come from?” or “What are my beliefs?” It’s the asking of the question that makes the difference. Because asking the question just helps this recognition, like, “Oh yeah, this is a belief, and there might be another belief possible.” If we don’t ask that question, then we just assume there’s only one belief—the one that I have, and it’s the right one. But just asking helps create some space and some room for something else, a new idea or maybe a new understanding or appreciation of people who have different beliefs, different views.
So when Sakka asks the Buddha, “Why, when everybody wants peace, is there so much conflict?” the Buddha starts with something that’s obvious and that we all experience, like wanting more, not wanting to share. And then when Sakka has this conversation, “Well, what about that and that and that?” they get down to views and beliefs. This is a source of conflict.
Now I’d like to share another little story with Sakka, the king of the Gods, and the king of the Titans. The suttas preserve this; the Buddha is telling this story to the monastics. There was a battle between the gods and the Titans, and then the king of the Titans, his name is Vepacitti4, he goes to Sakka, the king of the Gods, and says, “Let’s have a debate and let’s win by debate.” This is after a battle. Maybe they said, “Okay, you know, I’m tired of fighting. Maybe there’s got to be another way we can do this. Let’s have a debate.” I’m paraphrasing here, of course.
And Sakka, the king of the Gods, says okay. So they assembled a panel of both gods and Titans who they said would be able to determine who wins the debate. And then Vepacitti, the king of the Titans, says to the king of the Gods, “Why don’t you go first?” And Sakka, the king of the Gods, says, “No, you’re the senior here. Why don’t you go first?” A little bit of respect there.
So Vepacitti, the king of the Titans, makes his first statement, and this is done in verse, so the English feels a little clunky sometimes. “Fools would vent anger even more if no one would keep them in check. Hence, with drastic punishment, the wise person restrains the fool.” And the Titans applaud, and the gods are silent. For me, I just love this little bit of detail. We see this so much today, right? If you’re on this team or that team or this side of the aisle or that side of the aisle, you’re just like, “Yay!” and then this side is silent. This was composed thousands of years ago, and here we are still doing the same thing.
So the king of the Titans said that, and then he said to the king of the Gods, “Now you speak.” And the king of the Gods says, “I think that this is the only way to put a stop to a fool: when you know that the other is upset, be mindful and stay calm.” And the gods applauded, and the Titans were silent.
Then the king of the Titans speaks next, and he says, “I see this fault, Sakka, in just being patient. When a fool thinks of you thus, ‘He puts up with me out of fear,’ the fool will chase you even more, like a bull chasing someone who flees.” So the king of the Titans is criticizing this whole idea of “be mindful and stay calm,” because he’s saying, “Well, if you don’t really punish them or hit them with force, they will assume that you are afraid. And if they think that you are afraid, they will go after you even more.” And of course, the Titans applauded when the king of the Titans said this.
Then the king of the Gods replies, “Let the fool think this if he wishes, that ‘he puts up with me out of fear.’ Of goals culminating in one’s own good, none better than patience is found.” This idea that patience really supports one’s own good, one’s benefit. He continues, “When you get angry at an angry person, you just make things worse. When you don’t get angry at an angry person, you win a battle hard to win.” I love this, right? If one person’s angry, and then another person’s angry, and they get angry again, then where’s it going to end? You can’t stop anger with more anger. It’s impossible. Somebody has to stop somewhere, or else there’s just this resentment that just brews and gets bigger and bigger. And here’s Sakka, the king of the Gods, saying, “When you don’t get angry at an angry person, you win a battle hard to win.” Otherwise, it just escalates. If you could just say, “You know what? I’m just not going to play that game. I’m just not going to engage and play that game with you,” you win a battle hard to win.
Then the king of the Gods continues, “When you know that the other is angry, you act for the good of both yourself and the other if you’re mindful and stay calm.” So the king of the Gods is also saying that it’s beneficial not only for you to not get angry, but it helps them also. And this is the greater good, right? To support the person who you are in conflict with and to support yourself. To not escalate, but instead to de-escalate by simply being mindful and calm. Of course, this is powerful. It’s not our natural impulse, of course.
And then this ends with the panel of judges, consisting of both gods and Titans, saying, “The verses spoken by the king of the Titans evoke punishment and violence. That’s how you get to arguments, quarrels, and disputes. The verses spoken by the king of Gods don’t evoke punishment and violence. That’s how you stay free of arguments, quarrels, and disputes.” You can imagine that all the gods clapped when they heard that, and the Titans were silent when this final ruling came down.
This idea of being patient, this idea of being mindful and calm in the face of conflict, when meeting somebody who’s perhaps meeting you with anger—this is not something easy. It’s not something that’s straightforward. There’s this way in which we can understand patience is this non-reactivity. It’s not acting on these impulses that aren’t helpful, that aren’t supportive for us. So not raging and not blaming—not blaming others, not blaming ourselves—or not despairing or not making wild stories. But just to say, “Wow, okay, so there’s anger here, and this is uncomfortable. I wish it weren’t here. Maybe I don’t even know what to do.” But not escalating, but instead being mindful, like recognizing, “This is very uncomfortable. I wish it weren’t like this.” Chances are. But is there a way that we can just hold our difficulties, maybe in a spacious way, instead of trying to fix everything as fast as possible by yelling or acting very quickly, irrationally, perhaps, before we’ve had a chance to think things through?
Is there a way that we can have this more openness that feels more peaceful? And this recognition that, “Yes, this is difficult, but I don’t have to fix it right this moment.” Often we want to just get out of that feeling of discomfort. Part of meditation practice—this is not in the advertising—but part of meditation practice is to learn to hold discomfort. Because sometimes it’s just physically uncomfortable to be sitting still, or sometimes we’re meditating and uncomfortable emotions come up or uncomfortable memories come up. And as best we can, to be able to hold them. This is great practice for our daily life. The exact same thing, right? Discomfort arises, and can we hold it? So meditation practice, of course, it allows some steadying of the mind, but even if you’re having a very uncomfortable meditation session, there’s tremendous value in that.
So is there a way that we can not lash out and maintain composure even when we’re met with somebody who is angry? Just instead, maybe just take a deep breath, feel our feet on the ground. And maybe even just doing that, taking a deep breath and allowing that person to see it, maybe that’s enough that can bring things down. Maybe not, too. Don’t underestimate how helpful it can be to feel your feet on the ground. Often when there’s conflict, we don’t have our wits with us necessarily. Instead, we’re feeling like, “Oh, wow, what’s happening?” But feeling our feet on the ground is a way we can feel grounded and maybe steady. Otherwise, the thoughts are more likely to go out and spin and make some wild stories.
So, to have some patience when meeting some conflict. But I want to say a little bit about what patience isn’t, because it’s tempting when we hear about this, “Okay, have some non-reactivity,” to maybe think about it in a certain way. But patience isn’t like this numbing resignation, like, “Okay, all right.” And we just kind of disconnect from our emotions, disconnect from the experience, disconnect from what’s happening. And there’s this kind of, “Okay, well, I’m just going to check out until this is over, and then maybe I’ll check back in later, maybe I won’t.” So that’s not patience. That’s numbing resignation. That’s just checking out. Is there a way that we can stay present, feel our feet on the ground, take a deep breath, and feel the discomfort and not run away, not check out? I’m not saying this is easy, but there’s a way that meditation practice really can support us in this. Just this feeling of discomfort and realizing, “Okay, it’s not going to kill me. I don’t like it.” That’s okay. We don’t have to like everything.
Also, patience is not gritting your teeth, holding on, and just waiting for things to be over, but with a lot of tension. We could call that waiting with aversion. That’s different than patience. Patience has this way of some steadiness and allowing things to unfold. So recognizing uncomfortableness, staying connected, and allowing things to unfold how they’re going to unfold. They’ll unfold differently if we have some steadiness, of course they will, if we have some calm.
Patience also is not like being impervious to pressure. It’s not like saying, “Nope, I’m going to stand here and not do anything no matter what.” That’s just stubbornness. So instead, patience is, “Okay, I’m feeling connected. I know what’s happening. I’m allowing things to unfold.” And it might become clear that it would be really wise to do this thing or that other thing, and then we do this thing or that other thing. But we’re not just standing there not reacting just out of principle, even though it might be harmful to others or to ourselves to do that. We’re not doing it just for the sake of doing it.
And patience, the way that I’m describing it, of course, is not passivity. This is work, right? To not check out, not run away, but to stay present. And this is a way that we really can be with conflict. It’s, “Okay, can I hold this?” And not masking or suppressing what’s happening. Maybe flashes of anger come up. Maybe flashes of “Why is this happening to me?” comes up. But we’re not acting unskillfully. We’re acknowledging our experience, and as best we can, we’re holding them spaciously with some patience.
So that’s one way to work with conflict: this patience and mindfulness and calmness. And then the first story with Sakka, when he was asking the Buddha about, “Okay, well, why when everybody wants peace is there so much conflict?” and the Buddha eventually got down to, “Well, it’s about views.” So this is a second way to work with conflict: to have some awareness of what are the views that we are holding on to, or that we are… maybe just to simply become aware of our beliefs. Because most likely, our views and beliefs are not obvious to us. That’s kind of the nature of views and beliefs, that they are kind of buried underneath. They’re subtle, and they have a giant impact on our life, our actions, but they’re not obvious to us. And we may not even recognize them until there’s a conflict and we realize, “Oh, there’s something here that’s getting threatened. What is it that feels threatened?” And this can be a way to just bring some curiosity to this. This could be a way in which we can recognize, “Oh yeah, I have this belief that things should be this way, and they’re not that way, and they should be that way.” We might have that belief, and somehow just recognizing our beliefs and naming them allows them to be held a little bit less tightly. I’m not saying we have to get rid of them. I’m not saying we have to change them all. But if we become aware of them, then we could start to see and recognize, “Okay, what’s helpful? What’s not helpful? What leads to more freedom? What leads to less freedom?” Can we bring curiosity and some inquiry into our beliefs, our inner life, our views? What are we holding on to? Is it helpful?
Maybe I also just want to add in here that beliefs are resistant to change. They’re not something that once we see them, they’re going to be different. For example, we might have a belief, “No pain, no gain.” I think this was a Nike slogan from years ago. But this idea that you have to work hard, and if you’re not working hard, nothing good’s going to happen. I know I certainly had this belief, and it worked until it didn’t. Until the working hard, this idea that I had to work hard, I realized, “Oh, actually, this belief of working hard, I’m using this as a distraction from the rest of my life, from my inner life and all these difficulties.” My insisting that I have to work harder, harder, harder—I just put all my attention and my energy there and was ignoring everything else in my life: my inner life, my relationships, these types of things. I’m not saying you don’t have to work hard, of course not. But we might have a belief that nothing valuable will happen unless we’re doing that, unless there’s a lot of striving. And then there’s a way in which we can dismiss things that are beautiful, uplifting, easeful. We might just be dismissing them when that might be exactly what’s needed. In some ways, many of us need some nourishment of some ease and well-being, and “no pain, no gain” can get in the way of this.
So working with conflict, we can learn from the king of the Gods and the king of the Titans, who have some conflict. I guess that’s kind of what the Buddhist cosmology has. And the Buddha’s teachings about, “Well, look at your views and have patience.” Don’t feel like you have to act so quickly. And when I was thinking about this, I thought, “Well, looking at your views and having patience,” for me, kind of felt like taking the high road, right? This might be a way in which we might understand that in contemporary teaching, like, “Oh, this is what part of taking the high road means.”
And then I’ll end with this last little story about the king of Gods and the king of the Titans. The king of the Titans was really sick, he was ill, and the king of the Gods went to him and offered to cure him. “You know, I can cure you. I can make you not sick anymore. But I’d like you to teach me this magic, Sambara’s5 magic.” That’s what the king of the Gods is saying. And the king of the Titans said, “No, I’m not going to teach that to you, because Sambara used this magic and now he’s in purgatory and in hell. I don’t want you to have to go to hell, so I’m not going to teach it to you.” So there was some kindness there. Here we are, these two beings that are in constant conflict, and yet there was a way they had some care and respect for one another too.
So working with conflict with views and patience, maybe a little bit of respect in there to sprinkle some in, that can’t hurt. And with that, I’ll end and open it up to see if there’s some comments or questions. Thank you.
Questioner: One of the Eightfold Path is Right View, and I’m wondering about enlightenment. Like the Buddha, for example, does he have the right views? Is it possible to have views that are actually correct?
Diana Clark: Yeah, thank you for bringing this up. So, “Right View”—the word “right” is not like the opposite of “wrong” in that setting. It’s more like “right” in terms of the correct tool. The way that if you needed to paint a wall, you would use a paintbrush, not a screwdriver, kind of thing like that. So your question is about… can you ask it again?
Questioner: In other words, enlightenment. Like a liberated being, like the Buddha for example, he must have some sort of views of some nature. Are they actually true, correct?
Diana Clark: I see. Actually, I think the answer is whatever views there are, he’s not holding on to them, clinging to them. So we might say, “Well, this is his current understanding,” or “This is what seems to be true now.” He’s holding things that way. So there’s just an absence of clinging. So it’s not maybe that the views are… I guess they are correct. I don’t know. Next time I meet a Buddha, I definitely will ask them though.
Questioner: But isn’t the Dharma a view? It’s a way of seeing, right? Could it be looked at as a way of viewing the spiritual path?
Diana Clark: Sure, sure. We could view the spiritual path like… the Buddha talks about this. Are we going to learn everything on this path so that we can get better at winning debates with people with other religious traditions? And the Buddha would say, “No, that’s actually not a good reason why to learn this.” It’s more to find more freedom or something like that. So is that helpful? Yeah, great. Thank you.
Questioner: I think I’ll just offer more of a comment. I’m reminded in your discussion of conflict a line from the Talmud, which is, “A hero is someone who turns an enemy into a friend.” And I could just see at the end of the last story some kindness turning to friendship between the king of the Titans and Sakka. Like this kindness coming first. Or even when Reagan met Gorbachev, he was like, “Hey, if aliens were coming to attack your country, would you let me know?” He’s like, “Oh yeah.” And that was kind of the start of a dialogue between the two of them. That’s just the comment. Thank you.
Diana Clark: Nice, nice. Thank you.
Questioner: Just a comment. So two, actually. One question, then a comment. I know in Buddhism, the emphasis often is on equanimity, but I’m wondering if patience… I feel like it could hold an equal place, but it’s not often talked about. Is my understanding correct?
Diana Clark: Yeah, so patience, and this is a good question, like how is it different than equanimity? Patience is part of the paramis6, which are these practices that are usually practiced not on the meditation cushion but out in daily life. But equanimity is a little bit higher bar. Equanimity is… like patience would be more like, “Okay, this is really uncomfortable, and I wish it weren’t otherwise, but I’m going to stay here as best I can and be with it.” Equanimity is like, “Oh, wow, look at that, it’s uncomfortable,” and not with the sense of, “Oh, and I really wish it weren’t here. What can I do to persevere through this?” So equanimity is more like just noticing discomfort as discomfort and not wanting to push it away or get away from it.
Questioner: And the second comment I was going to make was, especially when you talked about patience in terms of being in the conflict, there’s a quote in the Tao Te Ching7, you’ve probably heard it already, the Stephen Mitchell version. He says, “Do you have the patience to let the water settle and let the answer rise by itself?” Something like that.
Diana Clark: There you go. Lots of good wisdom.
Moderator: Diana, there was a question on the chat, which is, “What’s the name of the sutta?”
Diana Clark: So these are two different suttas. The one where Sakka asks the Buddha, “You know, when everybody wants peace, why is there conflict?” that’s the Sakka Sutta. That’s DN 218. And then the other one where the king of the Titans and the king of the gods are in conflict and they’re having this debate, that is SN 11.5, “Fine Words.”9
Diana Clark: Any other comments? Okay. So may you have a… I was going to say, may you have a conflict-free week, but maybe you need to have conflict so then you can practice like, “What are my views? Have some patience.” May you have a wonderful evening. Thank you.
Suttas: Discourses or sermons of the Buddha. These are collected in the Sutta Pitaka, one of the three “baskets” of the Pali Canon. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is the classical language of Theravada Buddhism. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Sakka: The ruler of the Tavatimsa heaven in Buddhist cosmology. He is often portrayed as a devotee of the Buddha. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Vepacitti: The king of the Asuras (Titans) who is often in conflict with Sakka. Original transcript said “vti” or “V pitti”. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Sambara: A magician or sorcerer mentioned in the suttas. The original transcript said “sbur”. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Paramis: Perfections or virtues cultivated on the path to enlightenment in Theravada Buddhism. Patience (khanti) is one of them. The original transcript said “pyrames”. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Tao Te Ching: A classic Chinese text written around the 4th century BC and traditionally credited to the sage Laozi. The original transcript said “taed Chang”. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
DN 21: Refers to the 21st discourse in the Digha Nikaya (“Long Discourses”), one of the major collections of suttas in the Pali Canon. This is the Sakkapañha Sutta (“Sakka’s Questions”). ↩ ↩2 ↩3
SN 11.5: Refers to the 5th discourse in the 11th chapter of the Samyutta Nikaya (“Connected Discourses”). This is the Subhāsita Sutta (“Well-Spoken”). ↩ ↩2 ↩3