Whenever a person is super-stubborn, it is often because of pride and conceit. Here we have the three together, right? As I grew up, I didn't know much about astrology and horoscopes but I knew that I was a Taurus. And I knew that Tauruses are supposed to be known for their stubbornness, very stubborn on different things. When I got into Buddhism and learned about the Ten Paramis, I actually saw, hey, stubbornness is one of the Paramis! Which one? Determination, Resolution. When you are determined to do something, when you are resolved to do something, and you stick to it, that is, in other words, for some people, being very stubborn.
Now, what is the difference between stubbornness and determination, since they look so similar? The difference is right view and wrong view. When you have right view and are very determined, fine. When you have wrong view and are very stubborn, then you have a problem. So it is interesting, I bring that in, because of the word stubbornness here, to see that the stubbornness can actually be transformed as long as you have right view with it.
Now, if you are very conceited, do you have right view or wrong view? Of course you have wrong view. If you are full of pride, now there are two types of pride, so I'm going to talk about unhealthy pride, the ego pride. If you are full of the big ego pride, then again you have wrong view. You can have pride as to being a Dhamma practitioner, that is different. That has right view with it, but of course we are referring to the negative pride here. So when you have conceit, pride and stubbornness, boy you have got such a package that it creates so much Dukkha for yourself and everyone else. So if you look at them in the different ways that they relate, you see, sure, they definitely give you more Dukkha. But stubbornness can be transformed, and that is nice. And the pride, if you move it into being happy, in a different sense, having sympathetic joy with your practice, that sort of pride with your Dhamma practice, "I am a meditator, I am a proud that I am a meditator, I am glad that I am a meditator." That is a healthy pride.
I don't go around telling people, "Hey, I am a meditator!" That is the unhealthy pride, but to have happiness, to have Sympathetic Joy with yourself, that could actually be a healthy type of pride and that part is ok. Now, we have transformed the stubbornness a bit, we have transformed pride a bit, can we transform conceit? Basically, we just have to get rid of it. Conceit stays as conceit, it is one of the deep, deep traits that stops people getting enlightened. There are four stages of enlightenment, being a fully enlightened person is called an Arahant. The stages before that, the third stage is super high, a gifted human being, but they still have conceit. Conceit is one of the little things in the mind that is blocking them from getting fully enlightened. So conceit is something that we basically have to be chipping away, chipping away so that hopefully one day it will completely disappear.