This
is the second chapter of my booklet Kshanti, originally given as part
of a series of talks at the London Buddhist Centre in 1997
I
believe there used to be a tradition in Japanese Zen monasteries of
making newcomers wait outside for a few days as a sort of test of
their aspiration and commitment to join the monastery. They would
have to hold themselves in a particular position, probably more like
squatting than kneeling, and just wait. Sometimes the Abbot would
send someone out to chase them away. This was a compassionate act to
give them respite from their uncomfortable position, although the
novices wouldn't necessarily know that. So if they really wanted to
join the monastery badly enough, they would just wait - kneeling in
the snow - as I've put it (perhaps fancifully). They would be
patient. Can you imagine the dark, angry, resentful thoughts that
might assail you if you were put in that position? Even if you knew
it was a ritual of waiting - you would still find it hard to put up
with. So the ability to exercise patient endurance was seen as a
necessary prerequisite for monastic life. It's as if the Zen monks
are saying "If you don't have patience, if you can't endure,
well, don't bother, because you won't get very far".
So
this patient endurance is an aspect of Kshanti. And as we can see
from the example, it requires effort. It requires energy to be
patient and to endure. It also requires positive emotion. Without
positive emotion the aspiring monk would simply think that the Abbot
hated him and he would go away disillusioned, despondent and
resentful. Similarly, without positive emotion we may think that the
spiritual life is just too much, that other people are making it
impossible for us, or that we don't have what it takes. So we need
energy and positive emotion, and both of these are aspects of
patience and are developed through the practice of patience.
The
alternatives to patience in the spiritual life are frustration, anger
and waste of energy. By trying to force ourselves to grow we hinder
our growth. If we try to force others to change we prevent them from
changing. Patience is needed to further our own spiritual growth and
to help others to grow. This does not mean a lack of effort, in fact
it means great effort. Patient effort, enduring effort, persistent,
consistent effort is greater, more noble, than the violent effort of
frustration and anger. And patient enduring effort is also more
successful. This sort of effort, the effort that persists day after
day, the effort that persists during good times and bad times, is an
effort that understands and uses the law of karma. The word karma
simply mean action. The law of karma states that actions have
consequences. According to Buddhism actions can be skilful or
unskilful. a skilful action is one which is based on intentions which
are loving , generous and wise. An unskilful action is the opposite
and comes out of ill-will, greed and ignorance. Skilful actions have
beneficial consequences. Patient, enduring effort in skilfulness of
body, speech and mind brings about spiritual progress. Patient,
persistent effort in ethics, meditation and study brings about
spiritual growth. The law of karma is one aspect of an even more
fundamental Buddhist teaching known as the law of conditionality. The
law of conditionality states that everything arises in dependence on
conditions. Spiritual progress too arises in dependence on
conditions, and in the absence of those conditions it does not arise.
We need to patiently and persistently create and put in place the
conditions for spiritual growth to arise. This is in accordance with
the law of conditionality. If we try to attain spiritual insight in
the absence of the right conditions we will more likely achieve a
headache or frustration.
What
are the right conditions for spiritual growth? There are two aspects
to the correct conditions for spiritual growth. There is the
inward-looking aspect that aims at self-knowledge and psychological
integration through ethical practice, through self-questioning,
through reflection and meditation and through internal dialogue.
There is the outward-looking aspect that aims to overcome the
illusion of a separate self-hood, the illusion of ego identity,
through ethical practice, through friendship, co-operation and
communication. There needs to be a constant movement between going
deeper into the inward-looking aspect and being ever more expansive
in the outward-looking aspect. This is the creative tension of the
spiritual life which eventually leads to a transcendence of inward
and outward. Through the persistent effort to gain a deeper and more
honest self-knowledge and at the same time be in more generous and
open communication with others, we create the conditions for
transcendent Insight to manifest in our experience.
So
we have to continuously make an effort in these two directions, the
inward and outward, if we want to make progress. We have to meditate
every day, steadily and persistently and patiently working on our
minds to change unskilful mental states into skilful mental states.
We have to practice generosity constantly in our actions and words
and thoughts, always bringing ourselves back to the spirit of
generosity when we gravitate towards selfishness and fear. Patience,
then, is necessary if we are to progress spiritually.
We
have to exercise patience towards the natural world, towards
ourselves, and, of course, towards others. So let us look at these
three areas now and at how to develop patience in relation to them.
Shantideva,
an ancient Buddhist teacher, says
"There
is nothing which remains difficult if it is practised. So, through
practice with minor discomforts, even major discomfort becomes
bearable.
The
irritation of bugs, gnats, and mosquitoes, of hunger and thirst, and
suffering such as an enormous itch: why do you not see them as
insignificant?
Cold,
heat, rain and wind, journeying and sickness, imprisonment and
beatings: one should not be too squeamish about them. Otherwise the
distress becomes worse."(1)
So
here we are being exhorted to be patient with the natural world;
insects, itches, the weather. Shantideva seems to be saying that we
should use these relatively minor things to develop our ability to
practice patience so that when it comes to more major and significant
things we will be ready. He is also saying that if we don't practise
patience in relation to such things as the weather or itches or
insect bites, then we will increase our suffering rather than lessen
it. To put it another way, the more we seek comfort in our lives, the
more precious we are about ourselves, the less we will be able to
endure any discomfort or hardship, and therefore we create more
potentiality for suffering and distress.
It
has been said that we late 20th century Westerners suffer from the
"disease of preciousness"(2), by which is meant that we
have little ability or willingness to endure discomfort or hardship.
If this is the case, then it is bad news for our spiritual
development. The spiritual life is not easy. It requires discipline
and an ability to endure suffering and distress. Change produces
discomfort and if we shy away from discomfort we will shy away from
change. We will "squander our pain", to paraphrase
Rilke.(3) Hopefully for those of us who are practising Buddhists, it
is not quite so bad, and we understand the need to sometimes "suffer
into consciousness". We can train ourselves to be patient in the
face of discomfort by practising patience in relation to the natural
world - especially perhaps the weather. The glorious variety of the
English weather gives us a great opportunity. Let's hope we don't
waste it in complaining and comfort-seeking. Of course, it's not just
the natural world that presents us with opportunities to practise
patience. There are lots of minor irritations that occur all the time
in city life which we can choose to respond to with anger or with
patience - delays on public transport, the till closing down in the
supermarket or post office, power cuts, burst water mains, and so on.
Just this morning we had no hot water upstairs because our boiler
broke down. So there are all sorts of minor difficulties that we can
use as a way of training ourselves to be patient.
The
second area in which we need to practise patience is ourselves. We
need to be patient with ourselves. This means being patient with our
bodies - with illnesses and the process of ageing. It also means
being patient with our spiritual progress. Because we have a body, we
are prone to illness, ageing, and eventually death. This is how it
is. Sometimes when people are ill they feel very sorry for themselves
and want a lot of sympathy. It is as if they had received an unjust
punishment. But illness goes hand in hand with having a body, there
is no escaping that, and we need to be patient and forbearing in
relation to this fact of life. We should also be truthful. I think
sometimes people are prone to exaggerate their suffering and
illnesses in order to gain sympathy. Not every headache is a
migraine. Not every cold is influenza. We need to continue to be
truthful, in the sense of being factually accurate, even when we are
ill. It is of course important to look after ourselves and to
alleviate suffering where possible, for ourselves and others. It is
also important to let others know when we are unwell so that they can
help if necessary. But we need to be patient with the course of
nature and not childishly petulant. Illness is not a moral
retribution or punishment, it is a physical phenomenon and therefore
the question of justice or injustice doesn't enter into it. Whether
we are deserving or undeserving is irrelevant. You could say that
nobody deserves to be ill. The same applies to the process of aging.
We can refuse to accept it and fight against it. We can expend large
amounts of energy, time and money trying to maintain our
youthfulness. We can be extremely careful about what we eat and when
we eat it. We can take the right vitamin and mineral tablets. We can
wear the right clothes, get the right kind of haircut, and go to even
greater lengths to stay young. But we will grow old and we will die.
It is in the nature of natural things to go through the cycle of
birth, decay and death. So as we start to experience our bodies
deteriorating we need to accept the fact of aging and patiently amend
our lifestyle and outlook so that we can grow old gracefully. After
all there is a lot to be said for growing old. Older people have
gained experience and therefore the opportunity for wisdom. Older
people are less at the mercy of their physical appetites and
therefore have a better chance of attaining tranquillity and
equanimity. When you are older it is less important what other people
think of you and therefore there is a great opportunity for your
uniqueness and individuality to flourish.
As
for death, well from a Buddhist perspective the dissolution of the
body is simply yet another opportunity for the liberation of
consciousness and nothing to be feared. The worst that can happen to
us is that we will be reborn and if we play our cards right, so to
speak, and set up the right conditions and tendencies in our lives,
then being reborn may not be so bad - it may even be better than this
time around.
So
we need to practise patience in relation to our own bodies, our
illnesses, our ageing and our inevitable death. We also need to
practise patience in relation to our spiritual progress. We need to
be patient with our meditation practice and patient with our
friendships.
Sometimes
we hear people say "I'm not a good meditator". In fact I've
heard myself say it! Usually what we mean is that we are not having
strong experiences of bliss and serenity, we are still working with
the mental hindrances to meditation. So the question is, what is a
good meditator? What are the distinguishing characteristics of a good
meditator?
A
good meditator is someone who meditates regularly and who makes an
effort in meditation. Meditating regularly means meditating at least
once a day for a minimum of twenty minutes. Making an effort in
meditation means making an effort to transform unskilful mental
states into skilful mental states and making an effort to return to
the object of concentration when we notice our distraction. A good
meditator, then, is a patient meditator, one who is consistent and
persistent.
Developing
spiritual friendship also requires patience. There isn't really a
point at which you can say "Now I've developed this friendship;
no more effort is required". Spiritual friendship is a process
rather than a thing and therefore there is really no end to it. It
just carries on deepening. If we want to engage in spiritual
friendship we have to be patient with the unfolding process of it,
the gradual deepening of trust and growth in honesty and caring.
In
my experience as a Buddhist teacher for the last fourteen years I
have noticed a number of common issues that people have to deal with
in order to make spiritual progress.
These
are such things as developing positive routines or habits and being
disciplined, not being put off by difficulties, not looking for
powerful experiences, or even the powerful experience and making
efforts to develop and maintain an attitude of goodwill towards
oneself.
The
discipline of a positive routine helps us to be regular and
consistent in our practice. It also builds strength and stamina, both
physical and mental. It builds strength and stamina because we are
not wasting energy. When we set up a positive routine for our
meditation and study and so on, we don't have to engage in any
internal debate about what to do next, and in this way we save our
energy for getting on with what matters. The forces of resistance are
strong in us and if we give them a chance they will take over. The
discipline of a routine helps us to deal with our resistance to
practice.
It
can save a lot of unnecessary heartache if we realise from the outset
that we can expect difficulties. Perhaps we could even go so far as
to say that we should not only expect difficulties, but we should
welcome them. The difficulties we experience in the spiritual life
are often a sign of progress, of greater awareness and greater
ethical sensitivity. When we embark on the spiritual life, the life
of self-transformation, we can expect to experience difficulties
because only part of us wants to progress spiritually. For a time
that may be to the fore and carry us along nicely. But then we become
more conscious and frequently what we become more conscious of is the
parts of us that don't want to change. We become aware of our
resistance to spiritual growth and spiritual practice. We become
aware of internal conflict. And sometimes part of that internal
conflict gets projected outside on to other people or on to the
situation we live and work in. And so our internal difficulty becomes
an external difficulty too, and the spiritual life begins to feel
painful and we wonder what we are doing. Why are we putting ourselves
through all this? After all, we took up meditation because we wanted
to be happy and relaxed. And so, thinking in this way we fail to see
the positive side of our difficulties; we have become more conscious,
we have had a measure of success. If we carry on through our
difficulties we will eventually get a clearer perspective and come to
a realisation of the real significance of difficulties in the
spiritual life.
Although
I've said we should expect difficulties, it is much more in the
spirit of Kshanti as patience to have no fixed expectations at all.
Sangharakshita has said "Fixed expectations are the antithesis
of patience".(4) Really, what is required of us is that we are
prepared for every eventuality, that we learn to live happily with
impermanence and change. Change often does seem to be at the least an
inconvenience, and can even be traumatic. To change is to move beyond
current attachments, and that is difficult, because our attachments
are what give us security and stability. Through our spiritual
practices we are developing an inner stability and security.
A
very common mistake that people make about spiritual endeavour is to
confuse the spiritual path with looking for powerful experiences.
This is a wrong way of thinking about the spiritual life and
constitutes a hindrance to spiritual progress. It is an acquisitive,
even consumerist attitude and has more to do with our mundane
preoccupations than with anything of spiritual significance.
Sangharakshita has spoken about this:
“So
what a lot of people are after is the powerful type of experience,
that is their model for a valid or higher experience, something that
really knocks you off your seat almost, knocks you off your feet,
something violent almost. This is how they think of it. But actually
the more advanced you become in spiritual life, the less likely you
are to experience things in that sort of way.
But
I have been rather interested, not to say rather amused sometimes, by
the extent to which people talk of powerful experiences. They've
almost a hankering after powerful experiences. And in Tibetan
Buddhist circles one sometimes hears people saying things like "Oh,
it's a very powerful initiation" or "such and such lama
gives very powerful initiations" or "he belongs to a very
powerful line" et cetera, et cetera. I think this is quite
revealing. It's as though they don't want to rise above their present
level, they want to just be as they are or what they are, and then
have the experience come along from outside and just hit them, and
give them some sort of transcendental shock. This seems to be their
sort of model of spiritual experience very often.”(5)
You
may have strong experiences in meditation from time to time and they
may give you faith that there are states of consciousness beyond what
you usually experience, but don't get distracted by these experiences
or start to chase after them. What is really important is whether you
are kind and generous and truthful the rest of the time and whether
your relations with others are becoming more friendly. Strong or
powerful experiences in meditation are an occasional by-product of
the spiritual life for some people. They are not what the spiritual
life is about. What is significant in the spiritual life is what sort
of person you are becoming and how you behave, especially how you
behave towards other people.
Perhaps
the single most important factor for most people, in so far as I have
observed, is that they need above all to develop and maintain an
attitude of goodwill towards themselves. An attitude of goodwill
towards ourselves means being patient with ourselves. It means
working from the assumption that we are fundamentally alright. Too
often people seem to have an assumption that they are basically or
fundamentally worthless. This is often unconscious even, but it
nevertheless affects behaviour and relationships. So we need to have
an attitude of goodwill towards ourselves, an attitude of
friendliness, of metta. This is vitally important in the spiritual
life. When you have high ideals and high standards, you will find
yourself often falling short of them and when you do fall short you
can either berate yourself for being a useless person and get into a
self-deprecating, self-hating mood or you can acknowledge your
failing, confess what needs to be confessed and resolve to do better
next time. You are inevitably going to fall short of your ideals
again and again. You need to be patient and with an attitude of
goodwill towards yourself, just keep on making an effort. You cannot
force-grow yourself. Plants which are force-grown are the weakest
plants. In the spiritual life we want to bring all of ourself along
on the path. We want to become a sturdy, robust individual, capable
of coping with the world and capable of handling the experience of
the Transcendental Insight. We don't want to create a beautiful,
effete, head-in-the-clouds sort of person who is easily overwhelmed
by the slightest whiff of a setback, like some hothouse rose. The
foundation, the grounding for a sturdy, robust individual is a strong
feeling of self-metta, a strong experience of goodwill towards
oneself.
We
can exercise patience towards ourselves by being realistic about
illness, ageing, and death, and by applying steady effort in our
spiritual life with an attitude of self-metta.
As
well as exercising patience towards the natural world and towards
ourselves, we must also exercise patience towards other people.
According to the Dhammapada, "patience is the greatest
asceticism".(6) This was quite a statement to make in ancient
India where people practised all sorts of strange and severe
austerities, starving and mutilating themselves in the hope of
spiritual attainment. So when the Dhammapada says that patience is
the greatest asceticism, it is saying that it is both more difficult
to practise than mortification of the flesh and more efficacious than
any other austerity. This probably applies particularly to patience
towards other people.
Being
patient with others means particularly being patient with the faults
and failings of others. It also means being patient with difference.
Sometimes others are just different from us and we interpret that as
a failing on their part and get annoyed with them. The main reason
why it is so difficult to be patient with others is because we
experience ourselves as the centre of the universe. And from this
standpoint we can get hurt and upset and angry when others don't seem
to be going along with it.
So
in order to develop patience towards others we need to get beyond
selfishness and begin to see that real self-interest includes the
interests of others. This requires imagination and a willingness to
question our anger and indignation.
Imagination
is a prerequisite for the spiritual life. Without imagination we
would not be able to conceive of a higher ideal or of the possibility
of changing ourselves. Imagination is also essential to the
development of metta and compassion. It is through our ability to
imagine what it is like to be another person that we can empathise
and sympathise with others. We all have imagination. We daydream, we
fantasise, we tell stories, we exaggerate, we fall in love, we save
money; all of these require imagination. To consciously use our
imagination in order to develop a greater empathy with others is
perhaps more rare. But it is what we need to do if we are to progress
spiritually. And it is certainly what we need to do in order to
develop greater patience in our relations with others. There is a
story in the Pali Canon where the Buddha comes upon some young boys
tormenting a crow with sticks, just the sort of thing young boys do.
The Buddha doesn't chase them away. Instead he gets them to use their
imagination. He asks them how they would feel if they were treated
like the crow. They say of course that they wouldn't like it because
it would be painful. So He explained to them that the crow too feels
pain and doesn't like to be beaten. And understanding this they leave
the crow alone.(15)
Just
like those children, we too need to imagine beyond ourselves and not
just in terms of suffering but much wider and deeper than that. We
have to use the experience of our own humanity, even the experience
of our own selfishness, to make an imaginative connection with all
humanity. By doing this we prepare the ground for loving-kindness
(metta) to arise. Metta can be seen as understanding. Understanding
is a great antidote to anger. If we can understand why others behave
as they do we will be less likely to hold onto feelings of anger
towards them. There is a French proverb, "to understand all is
to forgive all".(7) So if there is someone who annoys us by
their behaviour, perhaps we need to get to know them better, to
understand why they are like they are. When we see others as we see
ourselves we can more easily feel friendliness and goodwill towards
them and we can be more patient with them.
When
we become impatient with others and experience anger and annoyance
towards them there is a strong tendency to justify ourselves. Anger
often masquerades as truth. But we should never trust our anger. It
is more likely to lie to us than tell the truth. When we get angry
with someone or some situation we should make an effort to take our
attention away from whatever happened and turn our attention to a
questioning of our own response. Our tendency might be to go over the
details of what happened in an obsessive manner and continue to wind
ourselves up into fresh feelings of outrage. But we should question
this. We should ask ourselves "Why am I responding with anger?
Is this the only possible response? Is there perhaps a more creative
response? Why don't I choose a different response? What is behind my
anger? How should I have to change in order to have a more creative
response? Do I want to change? What will the consequences be if I
carry on being angry?", and so on. By questioning ourselves in
this way we can use our anger as an opportunity for gaining greater
self-knowledge. We can also create a gap in our experience for a more
creative response to arise. Shantideva has a number of reflections on
anger :
“Having
found its fuel, the frustration of my desires, hatred sets in.
Because I undertake what is to my detriment, and omit what is to my
advantage, frustration sets in. Thus fuelled hatred consumes me. It
is the fault of the childish that they are hurt, for although they do
not wish to suffer, they are greatly attached to its causes. I do not
want to suffer; but in my confusion I desire the causes of my pain -
so why be angry with others when you are the cause of your own pain"
He
also says:
"Why
be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use
of being unhappy about something if it cannot be remedied?” (8)
Elsewhere
Shantideva reflects on the relation between self and other:
“All
have the same sorrows, the same joys as I, and I must guard them like
myself. The body, manifold of parts in its divisions of members, must
be preserved as a whole; and so likewise this manifold universe has
its sorrow and its joy in common. Although my pain may bring no hurt
to other bodies, nevertheless it is a pain to me, which I cannot bear
because of the love of self; and though I cannot in myself feel the
pain of another, it is a pain to him which he cannot bear because of
the love of self. I must destroy the pain of another as though it
were my own, because it is a pain; I must show kindness to others,
for they are creatures as I am myself... Then, as I would guard
myself from evil repute, so I will frame a spirit of helpfulness and
tenderness towards others ... We love our hands and other limbs, as
members of the body; then why not love other living beings, as
members of the universe?” (9)
So
by reflecting in this way, by questioning our irritability and anger
and by consciously exercising our imagination to develop empathy, we
can develop patience towards other people and in the process gain
greater self-knowledge and make progress on the spiritual path.
Perhaps I should make it clear at this point that there is a
distinction to be made between being patient and being passive. To be
patient doesn't mean being a doormat and allowing others to walk all
over you. One can be vigorous and energetic in upholding the truth
and in stating ones views without having to give way to anger or
hatred.
Patience
can create the gap between feeling and response where we can sow the
seeds of spiritual attainment and move towards ever greater
self-transcendence.
Patience
is a very necessary quality for any spiritual aspirant to cultivate.
but patience is not enough. Patience alone could become a sort of
martyrdom or at least something lacking the vitality and spirit of
risk-taking which is so essential to any spiritual life. In the arena
of human relationships there are constant challenges. It is like a
great adventure with many joys and many risks. One of the greatest
joys and risks is forgiving those who have hurt us.
Notes:
- Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara, translators K. Crosby & A. Skilton, OUP 1996, p.51
- Cittapala, The Supreme Mystery, Padmaloka Books 1992, ch. 7, p.4
- R.M. Rilke, The Selected Poetry, translator S. Mitchell, Picador, London 1982, p.205
- Sangharakshita, Seminar on Jewel Ornament of Liberation
- Sangharakshita, Seminar on The Ten Pillars of Buddhism
- Radhakrishnan (translator), p.120, verse 184
- Sangharakshita, The Moral Order and its Upholders, Lecture no. 130
- Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, trans. S. Batchelor, Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, Dharamsala 1979, Ch.6, verses 7, 10 & 45
- Shantideva, The Path of Light, trans. L.D. Barnett, London 1959, p.79/80
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