Practicing the Pāramitās in Daily Life, Part Four: Patience
Description
Patience comes into play when we encounter anger or difficult outside circumstances. This third of the six transcendental perfections, or pāramitās, helps us to remain stable as we face problems in mundane life and in spiritual practice. Here, Tulku Migmar Tsering discusses how we can rely on patience in our daily life. If we can learn how to tolerate difficult conditions without giving rise to anger, we are being patient.
Anger and difficulty do not arise constantly, do they? Tulku-la points out that attachment and clinging manifest more easily because we are distracted by sense objects. For this reason, he comments that many great masters of the past noticed that they did not often experience great anger or difficulty.
Thus, these masters began to carry a monkey around with them to test their own responses. Monkeys can cause a lot of trouble, and these masters would notice their own reaction when the monkey misbehaved. If they became angry easily when the monkey made a mess, then they were able to understand that their own patience was not so steady!
When others make mistakes, or when something doesn’t work out the way we want, patience helps us not to get angry. We can control our own reactions and not feel so upset or disappointed. And this diffuses our short temper and angry reactions. Obviously, in this life, we will face all sorts of difficulties. But if we don’t cultivate patience, then we will often give up in the face of problems. Then we won’t be able to look carefully at the problem and figure out a solution. Patience or tolerance in the Buddhist context doesn’t mean accepting everything with an attitude of defeat. Instead, we really cultivate patience when we calmly tackle our difficulties and resolve issues.
Additionally, when we work to benefit others, we need a lot of energy and endurance. And if we don’t have tolerance for difficult situations, we can’t be very effective in helping people or carrying out meaningful projects. Moreover, as our patience improves, we can easily handle people who might be obstructive or hard to work with—we don’t get so frustrated in our collaborations with others. Tulku-la here gives a very personal example from his experience offering guidance and teaching at a dharma center. He explains that he has applied patience in his own work with individuals as he works to help them overcome problems. By accepting slow, incremental change, he can begin to gently introduce people to deeper dharma teachings.