Last week, I was in Xining, Qinghai to visit my monastic teacher, with whom I shared a joyful reunion. He is a very private person, and his integrity compels him to focus on teaching his students (he does not give public Dharma talks). So I consider it a great honor that he elaborated at length during my visit about the idea of applying patience in everyday life, a question I had asked him during our discussion.
The Geshe channelled Shantideva, an important Indian philosopher in the Tibetan tradition (and author of the Bodhicharyavatara, which Vajrayana monastics of all stripes train in), and declared that there were few more profound practices than the exchange of self and other. Do not seek to merely understand the other’s position, he advised, or even to walk a mile in their shoes. Meditate and “become” the Other, so one can vividly embody the other’s problems and wishes. But if one cannot reach such a transcendent level of empathy, Geshe also noted that there are plenty of more down-to-earth methods to be more patient with others, from those that we do not know to those in our most intimate circles.
We can meditate on impermanence and the truth that all frustrations pass with time. Even the great disappointments or heartbreaks that can scar our timelines will fade from sharp stabs of the brain into tolerable, occasional aches of the heart. Perhaps they might even be healed to a degree, with the right kind of practice and good circumstances. With wisdom, we should be able to discern the severe from the trivial, and in the case of the latter, offenses against our interests, mood, or sensibility can simply be chalked up to the behavior of children. “Imagine the loving mother who is angry with her misbehaving child,” said Geshe. “How long can she be angry with the naughty little one?”
The core of the matter, he said, was that we should welcome suffering with an open heart. This is not a masochistic or mindless kind of embrace where we do not learn anything. On the contrary, “we only grow when we learn from our misfortunes,” he told me. If all else fails, we can adopt the attitude of a bruised student, and assure ourselves that amidst our stumbles and fumbles, we can at least learn from them. Even the misfortunes that we or our loved ones do not seemingly deserve, from illness to accidents, can be seen as the ripening of our karma from countless lifetimes past.
“No suffering or frustration can be completely avoided,” was Geshe’s heartfelt counsel. “The core truth of Buddha-dharma, which is what makes the path so compelling and important, is that dukkha is a fact of life. Dukkha is life; there is no living without dukkha.” While we seek to transcend dukkha and leave it behind, perhaps we have not given suffering its due: how it is not only a fact of life, but our most excellent and critical teacher.
