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Changing Fear and Anger into Intelligence through Patience

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
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Learning patience teaches us about the dependency on timing and the setting up of proper conditions in order to achieve any desired results and in order to help others. We learn about waiting for seeds to ripen, or waiting until circumstances and people are ready before we speak or act. This represents a very important aspect of interdependence that we need to learn in order to become a Buddha.

Patience involves the middle ground between a sense of Superiority due to pride in our ability to see and understand the details, negative aspects, and differences in a given situation and Fear, Anger and Frustration which come from the desire to avoid, destroy, or eliminate negative aspects of a given situation.

Patience in Investigating Reality:

Ironically the first place that we need to practice patience is with ourselves and our own relationship to our personal situations. We need to recognize that any change or improvement in a situation is a process. Just as with a garden, we need to plant causes, watch over them, nuture them and then wait for them to ripen. If we allow ourselves to become impatient, we will stop developing at whatever point we give up trying or at whatever point we try to force things to happen more quickly than they are able to.

If we only look superficially at the world around us then our own development will be superficial as well. At whatever place we give up and stop investigating, that is as far as our understanding will go. At the point of reacting out of Fear and Anger, or a sense of superiority, our level of understanding stops.

We need to have a firm resolve to question and study the world around us until we have completely understood how it works and how to work with it. This requires endurance and patience in order to continue regardless of the obstacles. We need to make continuous effort and not develop anxiety or frustration over the slow speed of our advancement.

Interdependence - The Workings of Dependent Arising (Karma)

Understanding Karma is very difficult. Karmic influences are not simplistic, but very complex. There are an almost infinite amount of karmic influences for a single circumstance. Patience is required to persist in the search for understanding and we must not settle for simple belief or simplistic reactions such as fear, anger, or superiority.

As we continuously persist in investigating the underlying Karmas in our life situations, our level of understanding will become very detailed. As our understanding becomes more detailed, this will increase our skillfulness in working with our world. This understanding and skill will reduce our fears and frustrations.

The Actual Goal of Buddhahood

The goal of Buddhahood is an actual experience beyond concepts and yet we need to use concepts in order to get close enough to the experience to actually recognize it. Working with the difficulty of actually understanding and then perceiving our Buddha Nature requires time and patience. We need patience in working with and overcoming our bad habits, confusion, doubt, fear, anger, pride, and tendency to conceptualize. Confidence in our own ability and our own BuddhaNature can help reduce our fears. Recognition that perseverence and patient effort will lead to these tremendous results can minimize our frustration.

The Stages and Requirements to Achieve Buddhahood

It also takes time to know and understand all of the steps to Buddhahood. We need to study the purpose and importance of each step and each practice. By working on our own Buddhahood, we will understand that frustration, fear, anger and feelings of superiority are a part of our suffering that we need to eliminate. Determination and patience is required to gain this understanding and to avoid over-simplification or the tendency to be superficial. Patience is required to be thorough and un-hurried in our pursuit of the steps toward Buddhahood and Bodhisattvahood. Even though we may wish to run ahead, we need to recognize that we need to thoroughly understand and then completely practice each step along the way. As long as we try to avoid this thoroughness, we will not attain Buddhahood.

Studying these many components of spirituality takes time, and energy. Results are not achieved instantly and so patience and perseverence are required. We need to recognize that we are planting seeds which will eventually lead to true understanding and the joy that comes from getting the results that we expect.

Patience in Enduring Basic Misery:

Life in the lower realms is full of overwhelming suffering so that we have no time to even contemplate changing our situation, because we're too busy reacting to the current problems. Life as an animal is all about surviving, eating and avoiding being eaten. In the higher realms, life is too easy and there is little incentive to improve our situation.

We need to have a human body to become a Buddha and to help others. Because of this, there are certain miseries that we need to endure in order to be able to fulfill these goals.

Therefore, we need to endure hunger, thirst, cold, heat, and fatique. Having taken on a human body, we are automatically subject to Birth, Old Age, Sickness, and Death and the pains and difficulties that come from these things. We also need to work or make arrangements to provide food, clothing and shelter for ourselves and our loved ones. We also need to deal with the longing, dissatisfaction, fear, frustration, doubt and confusion of ourselves and others until we become able to eliminate them completely.

In terms of spiritual practice, we need to have patience in studying the teachings and in listening and supporting the learning environment. We need to make effort to explain and discuss the teachings and to practice in the midst of many distractions and conflicting opinions, values, goals, and desires.

The more that we recognize the value in working towards Buddhahood, the more we can feel good about enduring these sufferings for the sake of such a valuable goal which will lead to permanent happiness instead of just indulging in temporary pleasures. Recognizing that we are eliminating much of our current and future suffering, from the practices we are engaging in, helps us to be patient with the difficulties that we encounter. If we must undergo suffering, then it is more acceptable if, as a result of our efforts, others will become happier and freer from suffering in the long run. These ideas can make any miseries that we need to experience more bearable.

Difficult People:

In dealing with difficult people, patience requires us to avoid quarrelling, to avoid retaliating for harm done to us, and to avoid insisting too strongly on our own desires and ideas.

We need to learn to avoid quarrelling for quarrelling's sake. We need to recognize when disagreeing with someone or causing a dispute has purpose and when it is fruitless. It is important to keep our connections to others in order to help them when they're ready, and in order to achieve our own Buddhahood. It is better to have harmonious relationships as much as possible. Some people may not be ready to listen or hear what we have to say on a particular subject, so it is necessary to ensure that, in the future, they will consider us a friend or at least worthy of respect and worth listening to.

We need to remember that those who cause harm are not in control of themselves. They are controlled by anger and ignorance and attached or caught up with the object or situation that is causing them to be difficult. The classic example is that if someone hits us with a stick, we do not get angry at the stick because we recognize that it is being controlled by the person. Similarly, we need not get angry or upset at the person, because they are being controlled by attachment, ignorance, fear and anger. Also, if a demented person attacks us, we do not try to harm them and we feel sympathy because we recognize that they are the victims of their illness. Similarly, those who cause us harm are suffering from the illnesses of Attachment, Fear, Anger, and Ignorance.

We also need to remember that any harm that we experience is quite possibly the result of actions that we have done to others in the past. We also need to remember that many of our difficulties come from having a body and a conditioned existence and the ideas and desires that are associated with its maintenance and pleasure.

We also need to remind ourselves that there is no real difference between the faults of a difficult person and our own faults or the faults of our friends.

We also need to remember that difficult people are useful. They give us a chance to practice patience and purify our own anger. They give us an opportunity to understand areas of interdependence that we do not recognize and to expand our abilities to deal with a wider variety of situations. Seeing as we can't become Buddhas without perfecting patience, then we need difficult people to achieve Buddhahood. Also, by creating difficulties, we come to recognize the misery of this world and become more strongly motivated to work towards Buddhahood and thereby having the possibility of becoming free of all such miseries in the future.

Difficult people provide a lesson in the fact that other goals and values besides our own are in operation in the world. We need to recognize and allow for the existence of the desires, values, and ideas of others. Just as we hold our own values and goals as important, others hold their own desires and ideas to be important as well. Effort should be made to show respect and consideration of their desires and ideas when we're working together. If we would like our ideas, goals, and values to at least be considered seriously, then we need to do the same for those of others.

So we need to develop the following attitudes when confronted with a difficult person.

We need to be favourably inclined towards them. Even though they are being difficult, they still may have been our parents, friends or teacher in the past. They are providing us with lessons on interdependence and differing values. They are still suffering beings who are searching for happiness, contentment, compassion, and understanding just as we are.

We need to remember that it is a whole set of circumstances that is creating difficulty and harm and not just the person themselves. Their being difficult is mostly the result of the conflict between our own history, goals and values and theirs. This is a sign for action and not necessarily to be taken as a personal attack, but as a difference of opinion and a difference of experience and, also, an exchange of values.

We need to remind ourselves that all sentient beings are already subject to many miseries, including old age, sickness and death. They are already caught up in Dissatisfaction, Frustration, and Confusion. Inflicting them with more harm, on top of what they will already experience, would be very cruel.

As well, if our goal is to work towards the benefit of all beings, creating fear or reinforcing anger in others would therefore go against our goal. Also, causing them harm in retaliation for their misdeeds would not fit in with our overall goal either.

Contemplation and Placement Meditation:

We need to remind ourselves that impatience and frustration are coming from our side of reality and not from the other side. Instead of trying to cover the whole world with leather to smooth it out, all we need to do is to cover our feet in leather. Similarly, in order to get rid of our frustrations, we don't need to eliminate all of our enemies and negative situations, we only need to develop patience.

We need to review how we perform in situations that make us impatient, frustrated, or angry. When we review these situations, it helps to look at what aspects of the ideas we have been talking about and theses new ways of viewing the situation would have reduced our anger in those situations. We need to try to understand the differing views and circumstances and conditions that are at the root of the frustration or anger and work to eliminate the attachments that are reflected in that understanding.

When we feel our anger reduce and one of the above sentiments arising, then we strengthen and rest in that sentiment for a while (without grasping at it). That is placement meditation in regards to perfecting patience.

Source

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