Patience

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

• Editorial: Wisdom Publications
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781614296423
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Buddhism

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, one of the great living masters of Tibetan Buddhism, guides us through one of the core practices of the bodhisattvas, using a classic, revered text as a guide. The sixth chapter of Shantideva's classic A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life is a beacon of inspiration that shows what patience—one of the essential actions of the bodhisattvas—can really mean, leading us to profound self-realization and a heightened determination for awakened action in the world. Lama Zopa Rinpoche—a teacher whose very name means "patience"—explores Shantideva's teachings verse by verse, unpacking their lessons for the modern reader, including:

• overcoming anger,
• accepting suffering,
• and respecting others and finding happiness in their happiness.

In explaining this quintessential quality of a bodhisattva, Rinpoche shows us ordinary beings the profundity of the practice of patience and the relevance it has in our everyday lives. "Shantideva was like us, but he worked on his mind until he became completely free from delusions... A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life has inspired countless people since it was written over thirteen hundred years ago. It tells us that we too can develop our mind to the levels of realizations that the great masters have attained—and it shows us how to do it."—Lama Zopa Rinpoche

1 : ANGER DESTROYS ALL PEACE AND VIRTUE

VERSES 1–11

THE DISADVANTAGES OF ANGER

Shantideva started the patience chapter of his Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by explaining the terrible destructiveness of anger. Anger is the opposite of patience, and so, in order to develop patience, we need to first see the disadvantages of anger and the advantages of patience. When we understand this, it becomes easy to decrease and eliminate the former and develop the latter.

Anger is a very powerful mind, an agitated mind that wishes harm to what it perceives as the enemy: the being who has interfered with its happiness in some way. It is a mental state, not a physical thing — it is colorless and shapeless — but it can very easily lead to physical actions. When we see two tiny insects on the ground at our feet attacking each other, that is due to anger.

The object of anger can be a sentient being or an inanimate object — it can even be an idea — but the nature of anger is harm, the wish to harm that being or thing. Therefore it is a violent, intense mind. Attachment is often described as like oil that seeps into cloth, because it is almost impossible to separate the attached mind from the object of attachment. In the same way, anger is described as like fire, because it burns every good quality completely.

This is a good analogy. Living with anger is like having a burning coal in the heart. Just as a tiny spark can set off a grass fire that can destroy a city, a spark of anger can lead to creating harm that brings retaliation and then counterretaliation. In this way it can destroy lives. Like a fire can rage through our house and kill our family and destroy all our beautiful possessions, anger can rage through our life and kill our relationships and destroy any pleasure we might have. It destroys our peace completely. It grows into hatred and torments us with thoughts of revenge and the strong wish to somehow harm our enemy. Anger can destroy everything, and therefore it is often referred to as the most destructive negative mind.

Anger is the complete opposite of patience. Patience cannot be in our mind when anger is present. Anger is the mind that wishes to harm the other being — that is its function — whereas bodhichitta, the altruistic intention to attain enlightenment, is the opposite. Bodhichitta only ever considers the well-being of others, and so wishing even the slightest harm makes bodhichitta impossible. Therefore, patience is vital to develop bodhichitta.

Anger Destroys All Virtue and Peace

1[A moment of] ill will destroys all of these good deeds,

as well as generosity and worship of the sugatas,

even if one has practiced them

for thousands of cosmic cycles.

2There is no evil like hatred,

no ascetic discipline like patience.

Therefore, cultivate patience actively

by all means possible.

3As long as the barb of hatred is in your heart,

your mind will find no rest,

no joy or happiness,

it will have no rest nor steadfastness.

Our most urgent goal at present is to avoid the lower realms¹⁰ in our next rebirth and to receive another perfect human rebirth.¹¹ The causes for such a human rebirth are very specific: perfect morality and great generosity, combined with the fervent wish to be reborn as a human. When we are angry, it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain any sense of morality. We might know that harming others is negative and yet we are helpless not to. It is easy to see how anger, because it destroys our merit, also destroys our potential to attain another human rebirth.

Along with heresy — for example, believing existent things such as karma to be nonexistent — anger is considered the most damaging mind to have in that it destroys any undedicated merit. Shantideva said that any virtuous actions we have created over thousands of eons can be destroyed in one moment of anger. Like grain that is completely burned in a fire can never sprout into a plant, any positive merit we have that has been burned by anger or heresy can never ripen into a positive result. Therefore, because we should do everything possible to overcome our anger, we need to think deeply on its shortcomings.

Even the merit we have dedicated in the strongest way, which might not be completely destroyed, is damaged by anger, and it might be many, many more eons before it can ripen. For instance, say we were about to realize bodhichitta tomorrow, but today we get angry. That will delay our realization of bodhichitta for hundreds — even thousands — of eons.

It is like we have done a job and expect to be paid for it tomorrow, but because we have caused some problem, our employer refuses to pay us at once. Maybe they write in the contract that we can claim the money after a hundred years — or a thousand or a billion years! Or maybe the money is in our bank account but we can’t withdraw it until our next rebirth.

The destructiveness of our anger depends on not only its strength and length but also the power of the object of our anger. We shouldn’t get angry at anybody, but when we get angry at something powerful, such as our parents or bodhisattvas, the effects are much worse. Our parents are powerful for us because of our relationship with them. Because they gave us this precious human body and have raised us with such loving-kindness, when we harm them by becoming angry, the negative karma we create is very powerful. It is said to be so powerful that we can even experience the result in this life. But that does not mean the karma is then finished. Because karma is expandable, we will have to experience the results of that one instance of anger for many lifetimes to come.

More powerful than our parents are members of the sangha. Arhats are more powerful than sangha members without realizations; and bodhisattvas, because they have attained bodhichitta, are more powerful still. To be angry at these beings creates incredibly powerful negative karma. It is said that just to glare at a bodhisattva disrespectfully is heavier negative karma than gouging out the eyes of all the beings of the three realms.¹²

Similarly, the actions we take with regard to one buddha are much more powerful than with all the numberless bodhisattvas. The most powerful being of all is our guru — the person we have made a Dharma connection with — and so becoming angry at our guru is the heaviest negative karma of all. Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo¹³ explained that to get angry at our guru for the snap of the finger (which is calculated as being 65 moments, and there are 360 moments in a second), we must stay in the inexhaustible hot hell — the hell with the most suffering — for that many eons.¹⁴ So, the damage a moment of anger creates is tremendous and depends on the level of realization of the being we get angry at. And if this is so for one moment’s anger, there is no need to mention all the anger and negative karma we have been amassing since beginningless time.

That is why I always emphasize the importance of dedicating our merit. In this way, even though a negative thought such as anger may damage what merit we have accumulated, it will not completely destroy it.

Although many texts talk about the consequences of becoming angry with great beings such as bodhisattvas, that does not mean it is acceptable to become angry with ordinary beings. In the sutras it says we should not even become angry with nonliving things, not even a piece of wood; therefore, naturally, we should never become angry with an animate object such as a human being or an animal.

Whether we follow a spiritual path or not, we all need to overcome our anger. Because everybody wants peaceful, harmonious relationships with others, there is really no choice — we must do our best to develop patience. Even somebody who has no belief in karma and reincarnation can see the result of not being patient with others.

With anger there can be no peace. There is no greater hindrance to our journey on the path to enlightenment than anger. Because of this, we must do everything we can to protect our mind from this greatest negativity. Whenever we have the slightest sense that anger is arising in our mind, we must do whatever we can to avert it. The moment before anger arises, we can be sitting comfortably and contently, enjoying a sense of peace and happiness, and then, suddenly, there is anger, and all that is shattered. All of a sudden there is great pain in our heart as the flame of anger flares up, destroying both that moment’s peace and our future happiness.

The remedy for hatred and anger is patience. As Shantideva said, there is no discipline like patience. To overcome the pain and suffering of the angry mind and destroy the inevitable suffering results that anger brings, we must cultivate patience. We must be so careful to watch our mind and never allow anger to arise, as if we are walking along a narrow path on the edge of a high cliff that we could trip over at any moment if we let our guard slip.

As Shantideva said in the first chapter,

Only through the inspiration of the awakened ones,

1occasionally arises in a human being, for one instant,

a thought directed toward the good,

as lightning flashes for only an instant in clouded
night skies.¹⁵

Virtue is very rare, like the lightning in the sky, whereas our mind is like the nighttime without the moon or the stars — completely dark. We can only very rarely generate a virtuous thought and then only for the briefest moment. If that is so, how can we then destroy that precious virtuous thought by becoming angry? Unless we constantly stay vigilant and apply the antidote of patience as soon as we see anger arising, all our merit will be completely lost. This is what Shantideva means when he says there is no discipline like patience.

With anger we are completely unable to experience any peace at all. The moment anger arises in our mind it becomes uptight and agitated, like a knife going into our heart, like flames consuming us. While we have anger, no matter how comfortable or large our bed might be — with fluffy pillows, warm blankets, clean sheets, and even no fleas! — we are unable to sleep at all; the whole night is spent tossing and turning with the anger we feel for the enemy who has caused us such harm. Our heart is blazing with anger. We go over again and again the harm we have been done, how that person put us down so unjustly when we were so blameless.

Right through the night we concentrate on all the terrible things they did to us, creating more and more negative karma for ourselves. We try to remember every single thing — they did this awful thing, they did that awful thing, they said this terrible thing in this place, they said that terrible thing in that place. On and on and on. We don’t meditate on how they harmed us in order to generate compassion for them but in order to justify our anger and determine how we can harm them back, if not physically at least with words. We think about the most hateful words we can say to them and our mind rejoices at how much it will hurt them.

If we manage to get to sleep, because we went to bed with anger, we experience terrible dreams, tossed about by our violent mind. After dreaming of harming the other person or being harmed, we wake up unsettled and irritable, feeling we haven’t slept at all.

At nighttime we go to bed with anger, in the morning we get up with anger. During all these hours we live our life with anger, accumulating so much more negative karma. Even in the daytime our body is uncomfortable, and we derive no pleasure from the things around us. The most luxurious house gives us no happiness; the most delicious food is tasteless for us while we have anger.

Say we have invited somebody to a restaurant and it has gone very badly because of the attitude of the other person. Maybe the food is incredibly special and expensive, where even the mushrooms cost sixty dollars a serving, but the person sitting next to us is in a very bad mood and insults us in some way. Maybe it is just a few words or the way they look at us, but our whole meal is ruined. Overwhelmed by anger at the other person, we eat too fast and hardly notice which dish we are eating. When we leave the restaurant, we can’t even remember what the food tasted like; all we can think about is the horrible person we sat next to. Our mind is utterly focused on that, reciting an angry mantra in our mind — “How horrible they are, how awful, what a terrible person, what terrible things they said, how bad they are” — on and on like reciting om mani padme hum.

We can see how anger physically changes a person. Even if somebody may normally look very beautiful, when consumed with anger their face changes completely, even its shape. The expression becomes fierce and awful, the color changes, the eyes bulge — their whole demeanor becomes terrible. People are scared to even look at them. They might be dressed in expensive, fashionable clothes, with their hair beautifully cut and wearing loads of expensive jewelry, but nobody notices any of that; they see only their terrible, angry expression. When there is anger in the mind, there is no beauty at all.

Agitation that comes from a loss of peace is a shortcoming of anger that can be seen by the eye. When we are agitated with anger, our discomfort and misery are quite visible. Not only that, anger disturbs those around us, making them unhappy and angry. We lose our friends and cause our family to keep a distance. As long as there is anger and hatred in our heart, there cannot be even a second of happiness and peace.

We work so hard to gain a good education and get a well-paid job so we can be happy. But no matter how much education and wealth we have, ...