CONCLUSION: THE DETERMINATION TO DEVELOP PATIENCE

TO DEVELOP our patience, we above all need great determination based on understanding how vital patience is. We do this by constantly reminding ourselves of the benefits of patience and the shortcomings of its opposite, anger. Besides the wonderful verses we have looked at on patience in A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, these are also explained in the texts such as Pabongka Rinpoche’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand and Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo. We should read them again and again.

Even just thinking briefly on the destructiveness of anger will make us determined to avoid becoming angry. Whatever way we look at it, we will see there is no justification for anger and every reason to do whatever we can to fully develop patience. Then compassion rather than anger will arise toward whoever is harming us.

It might seem that we are an impatient person and there is nothing we can do about it. We might see others who have a lot of patience and feel we can never be like that. But we must understand what Shantideva said: everything becomes easier with acquaintance. By training our mind we can definitely develop patience.

At present the opposite naturally happens. Somebody harms us and we dwell on that harm, allowing our anger to grow, going over their harm again and again. Even if we are lying in bed trying to sleep, we can’t relax at all, thinking over what we can do to them, dreaming of ways in which we can cause them to suffer for what they did. In that way, we train our mind in perfecting our anger.

In just the same way, we can train our mind in patience and compassion, thinking over all the reasons that person is so kind, so precious. Just as a negative mind can arise in our mind due to certain imprints and conditions, a positive mind can arise. Any negative mind can be diminished and eliminated — that is its nature — just as any positive mind can be developed and perfected. We can definitely learn, before anger arises, to meditate on patience, loving-kindness, and compassion, and in this way reduce our habit of becoming angry. Whereas before anger would have flared up, we can now avoid it.

Some people feel that getting angry is often useful, that we need to be furious in order to have the energy to change a bad situation, such as demonstrating against a social injustice. They think that the only way to get things to change is by angry confrontation. I think there is always another way to change things without getting angry. We can do something — but do it with patience, loving-kindness, and compassion.

By developing a good heart and patience, we help fulfill the real purpose of our life. Because we have the responsibility for the happiness of all living beings, we must develop patience. With patience, no living being receives any harm from us at all; instead, they receive peace and happiness.

Therefore it is very important when we get up each morning to make the strong determination to practice patience. If something negative happens, such as being criticized, we must determine not to be overcome with anger. We must not allow ourselves to become slaves to anger. We must train in patience like athletes train for the Olympics. They don’t just do a little training occasionally; they put great effort into it every day, diligently, strenuously, making themselves fit for the Olympics. We must do the same.

Until we are very advanced, we know we will be challenged by people trying to harm us and getting angry with us, and so we must prepare ourselves. After a few years we will find that instead of it being very difficult to stop anger arising, it will be very difficult to become angry.

The Kadampa geshe Ben Gungyal56 was a great Tibetan meditator. When he was training his mind, he had a pile of white stones and a pile of black stones. Every evening before going to bed, he checked how many virtuous and nonvirtuous actions he had done that day, placing one white stone in one pile for every virtuous action and one black stone in the other pile for every nonvirtuous action. At the beginning, there were very few white stones and many black ones, but as he persevered with his meditations, the pile of white ones grew and the pile of black ones diminished. Then there were more white than black.

Generally people like to make plans, planning the next vacation or the next party, making lists of what to do and deciding when to do them. We, too, should make plans for our mind training, planning what to do when we meet a difficult situation where anger or other delusions could arise. We should be ready with the most effective antidotes, such as meditations on loving-kindness and so forth. “If anger arises in this situation, I will try to do this meditation. If pride arises in that situation, I will do that meditation.” We should make plans like this.

Whenever we read a suggestion in a Dharma book that we feel would be effective for us on how to combat a negative emotion, we should write it down and plan to use it when the circumstance arises. Reading the Dharma is always good, but we must make use of any Dharma advice we receive, not just leave it as an intellectual idea.

It can happen that we do our best not to get angry but still do, and then we get angry at ourselves for getting angry! I think this is where regret is very useful. Rather than feeling hopeless, thinking we can never change, we can see that we tried and failed this time, and regret having become angry. We can then firmly resolve to try again — and again and again — until we start to control our anger. The stronger our regret, the more determination we will have to change.

If the Olympic athlete still loses after years of strenuous training, rather than feeling miserable about it and giving up, they train even harder in order to be ready for the next Olympic Games. In the same way we should train and not feel despondent if we fail at first. What we are attempting is billions of times more important than winning an Olympic medal.

Patience is a quality, a knowledge, that we can learn. We spend a lot of time and energy learning about other countries’ customs and languages. If we can put so much effort into something like that, shouldn’t we do even more to develop patience? Because this is the most important thing we can learn, we should put great effort into it. Without it we can never find satisfaction, peace, or happiness in our life. Having patience will make our life and the lives of those around us happy and content.

Patience is one of the six perfections and a vital element on our path to enlightenment. When we train in developing our patience, we are truly taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Refuge is not an aspirin we take if we have a headache; it is not some temporary fix for worldly concerns. The methods that the Buddha describes are the complete way out of all our suffering. He has shown us the importance of minds such as patience, loving-kindness, and compassion, and he has given us methods to develop them: meditation; taking vows not to kill, lie, and so forth. Whenever we try our best to not become angry, to not harm others but to help them, we are taking refuge. The moment we rely on the good heart rather than the selfish attitude, we are taking refuge, whether we consciously think of it like that or not.

Within the Mahayana, along with taking refuge, we develop the three principal aspects of the path: renunciation, right view, and bodhichitta. Of these, I would say bodhichitta is the key. Developing the precious mind of bodhichitta makes everything else we need to do on the path so much easier. The mind aspiring to bodhichitta makes the practice of morality and renunciation utterly meaningful and therefore so much easier to achieve. Because of love and compassion, of course there is no thought of harming others. And with a mind undisturbed by selfish thoughts, concentration and right view come far more easily.

Probably we haven’t achieved the full realization of bodhichitta yet, but even to have bodhichitta in a wishing form is a truly amazing thing. Even with aspirational bodhichitta we create limitless skies of merit with every action we do. Aspirational bodhichitta takes effort, though, and so we should reenergize our motivation as often as we can. Before we start something, we should start with the motivation of bodhichitta. While we are doing it, we should remind ourselves of bodhichitta. When we finish, we should dedicate what we have done with a bodhichitta dedication. That way everything we do becomes so pure, so powerful.

As I have said, it is more than possible to develop patience for the wrong reasons, but when it is developed as part of the six perfections, always done with a bodhichitta motivation, it can bring only huge benefit. Practicing patience is not just for the person seeking enlightenment; it is not just for the person seeking liberation from samsara or the happiness of future lives. It should be cultivated by everybody, no matter what religion, skin color, profession, or age. It should be cultivated by rich and poor, by parents and children — by everybody. Anybody who wants harmony in their relationships, who wants happiness and friendship, who wants love and contentment, needs patience.