The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion

by Chogyam Trungpa

  Through the practice of the three principles of shila paramita, you are able to let go of your ego. Paramita means going beyond. You are going beyond your preconceptions, your neurotic habit patterns, and your guilt (guilt being an addition from the Western world). Paramita means having arrived at the other shore. Starting out from an ego-structured situation, going to the other shore is like traveling to a foreign land. It takes adaptation, some getting used to. With paramita practice, you are learning how to go to a foreign country, as opposed to staying securely at home.

  It has been said that until you reach prajna paramita, everything that you do involving the first five paramitas is mindfulness practice. It is upaya, or skillful means. Shamatha and vipashyana continue throughout all the paramitas. With the help of shamatha, you learn how to be settled in your own spot; you are able to settle down and make yourself at home in this universe. Paramita practice begins with being: being patient, being exertive, and being meditative. It is a question of how to be a full-fledged buddhadharma person. And when you finally reach the level of prajna paramita, you know how to apply the paramitas in the world. So first of all, you have to be, and then you can act out what you are. It is be and being.

  The paramita of discipline is somewhat a matter of repression. There is repression, but it works, and quite rightly so. The repression of mahayana is inherited from the careful precision of hinayana discipline—and when you get to vajrayana, which is greater and more dangerous, you have to control yourself even further. By comparison, the quality of repression in mahayana is very small. You have to be careful here and there, but you could still take delight in working with others. In general, the wider the highway, the more you want to speed along it—but you have to control yourself. You have to slow down. That is why the paramita that follows discipline is patience.

  In the mahayana, what you are developing is heart, or compassion, and what you are trying to get rid of is conducting your life in an ego-centered and unmethodical way. That may get a little messy. The more aware you are, the more outstanding the obstacles seem to be. But you have to work with them—and I can assure you that there is such a thing as attainment at the end. You are controlling yourself, because whatever you do affects you, and not only you alone but everybody else as well. If you make one little mistake, you mess up hundreds of other people. It is like building a highway: if you build a highway badly, all the travelers are bound to have more accidents and more pain. So in the mahayana, you have greater responsibility—and that is good news.

  1. The traditional simile for discipline is that it is like a jewel mine, because it is the basis for the arising of precious qualities.

  2. For more on the practice of threefold logic, see volume 1 of the Profound Treasury, appendix 2, “Working with Threefold Logic.”

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  Patience

  Patience has the quality of balance and equilibrium. But we need to add to the notion of equilibrium a quality of emotionality, and a desire and longing for the dharma. Some kind of spice has to be added. When that spice has been added, you begin to fully develop the real meaning of patience. Ordinarily, patience means to hold off or to hold on, but in this case it means that you give in and feel the flavor. You might bite your tongue, but that is good. You could taste the blood, swallow it, and use it as nourishment.

  THE THIRD paramita is patience. In the Buddhist tradition, the paramita of patience, or kshanti paramita, means that you are not perturbed by any samsaric conditions. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, patience means being willing to wait a long time for something to happen, but in this case it means that you bear your existence. You hold it as it is, stay where you are. Whether you are wearing green, yellow, red, or gray clothing, whether your stature is tall, short, or distorted, whether you have short arms or long arms, whether you are wearing blue shoes, green shoes, or purple shoes, whether you have short hair or long hair, you remain as you are, on the spot. You maintain your existence and bearing uninterruptedly. The analogy for patience is the ocean: whatever happens, the ocean cannot be disturbed. It remains the same all the time.

  The Tibetan term for patience is söpa, which means “forbearance.” Sö means “bearing any problems,” and pa is “doing so”; therefore söpa means “willing to bear any problems.” The Sanskrit term for patience is kshanti, which means “having equilibrium.” It is a kind of indifference in the sense of not giving in to the discursiveness or chaos of whatever has arisen in you. With kshanti, you are able to practice your shamatha-vipashyana discipline in the middle of Grand Central Station. You are willing to wait for the harmoniousness of a situation to arise by not correcting the disharmony. It is like waiting for good weather to happen.

  OVERCOMING AGGRESSION

  The Buddhist meaning of patience is freedom from aggression, and the main obstacle to patience is anger. According to the sutras, there is no greater evil than aggression, and there is no greater practice than patience. You may have attained a level of generosity and discipline, but if you cannot be without aggression, you have not achieved the paramita of patience. Aggression is the most dangerous emotion, because it does not allow any form of gentleness. One instant of aggression can destroy your connection with the world, including your dedication to the relative and absolute bodhichitta principles. If you want to kill your dharmic connection, a moment’s aggression is your best weapon. It has been said in the scriptures that one moment of aggression will destroy aeons and aeons of virtue.

  Aggression is absolutely terrible; it is anti-mahayana. Passion, lust, and desire may have qualities of neurosis, and they may destroy your mindfulness and awareness, but at the same time they have the nature of acceptance. However, aggression is based on total rejection, whether it is aggression toward yourself or aggression toward other sentient beings.

  When you recognize your ego-orientation or your indulgence in aggression, there is a tendency to punish yourself. However, patience is not based on punishing yourself. Patience means that you wait a minute; you wait and see what happens. It means not coming to conclusions too quickly. Just because you have indulged, you should not panic. Just wait. Be patient.

  The paramita of patience continues the pattern of alternating shamatha and vipashyana through the paramitas. That is, the first paramita, generosity, is connected with shamatha; the second paramita, discipline, is connected with vipashyana; and with the third paramita, we are back to shamatha. Patience is the way to quell the heat of aggression by following the way of shamatha tranquillity and peacefulness—but it is a highly advanced level of shamatha discipline. As we go on to higher and higher levels of paramitas, the standard of shamatha and vipashyana escalates, so the paramita of patience involves a higher level of shamatha than the paramita of generosity.

  The sequence of the paramitas is significant. Generosity is the stripping-off process, and discipline is remaining in the loneliness. Having gone through those two processes, we find our situation unbearable, as if we were being beaten by hundreds of people. All kinds of pain come up in our life, not as the result of punishment but as the result of being generous and disciplined. We actually invite pain by being alone and keeping our discipline. We are like an owl in the daylight, physically and psychically attacked from all directions by visible and invisible forces. The paramita of patience means not getting resentful about that.

  When you have anger and resentment, however disciplined or generous you might be, you are not actually that enlightened. When you have a burst of aggression, it makes everything dry and terribly unproductive. You may have cultivated the soil, sowed the seeds, and watered the ground beautifully, but aggression destroys the whole thing. When you are angry, you reject both other people and yourself. At that point, you have no connection with the dharma at all. When you lose your temper, you are so furious that you couldn’t care less about the sacredness of anything. You couldn’t care less about yourself, or the other person, or your teacher, or your path. But if you reverse the logic, when someb
ody is angry with you and you are patient with that person, you are creating a thousand kalpas1 of merit on the spot. When somebody is angry, that is your chance to be patient. You could breathe in the anger, and not only that, you could project goodness. But if you get angry in turn, you lose it.

  One of the best things about patience is that it is very sharp and clear. It speaks for itself. Anger is anger, and patience is patience. They are very sharply divided, and that distinction should be properly understood. However, patience is not based on suppressing anger. At times aggression may be legitimate, such as when others are doing something wrong and you lose your temper in order to stop them. At other times aggression is not legitimate, such as when you are simply unable to cope with a situation and become impatient. But basically, it is not appropriate to apply anger unless you are in the role of teacher. When you are teaching somebody how to behave or you are helping others, some form of anger may be necessary.

  Anger may be obvious or subtle, but whether you are expressing anger in subtle or obvious ways, the point is to get rid of the anger at the first possibility. Any method that quells aggression is valid. You might even need to manifest your anger first, if that helps, and develop patience afterward. You don’t have to be genteel about the whole thing.

  Overcoming aggression is not simply based on the moralistic approach of saying that you have been bad, so you had better be good. You develop patience and forbearance in order to maintain a quality of continual virtue. Such virtue is based on the idea of basic goodness and the sense that you are a worthy person, a healthy person. You are able to develop basic goodness, and you have the potential to attain enlightenment and eventually be a buddha.

  FREEDOM FROM THE MARAS

  It has been said that when there is no patience, we invite more maras, or more temptations. Basically, there are four types of mara. The first mara is the mara of seduction (Skt.: devaputra-mara). This mara is based on attachment to pleasure and richness. It has a kind of softness or candy-bar approach, based on calculated aggression against discipline and patience, which could be called the setting-sun approach.

  The second mara is the mara of kleshas (Skt.: klesha-mara). It is based on the kleshas, or the confused emotions, accompanied by a sense of aggression.

  The third mara is the mara of skandhas (Skt.: skandha-mara). The skandhas, which are experiences giving rise to a false sense of self, are a more subtle manifestation of aggression, whereas the kleshas are more direct and obvious.

  The fourth mara is the mara of the god of death (Skt.: yama-mara or mrityumara). It is the fear of death, and the attempt to overcome our death and not get old. Patience consists of being free from all such maras.

  THREE CATEGORIES OF PATIENCE

  There are three categories of patience: overcoming other people’s destructiveness, realizing the nature of other people’s aggression, and individually examining. The first two categories are regarded as the kundzöp, or relative truth, level of patience, and the third category is connected with töndam, or ultimate truth.

  Overcoming Other People’s Destructiveness

  The first category is the patience of overcoming other people’s destructiveness. It is related with relative truth. The Tibetan term for this kind of patience is shengyi nöpa la söpa. Shen means “other,” gyi means “of,” nöpa means “harm” or “harming,” la means “toward,” and söpa means “patience”; so shengyi nöpa la söpa means “patience with other people’s destructiveness.” In this category, the point of patience is to control other people’s aggression.

  If you react aggressively to those who harm you, you will only encourage their aggression further. But if you do not respond to others’ aggression with your own aggression, you will stop encouraging them and no longer be under attack. With patience, those who cause harm to you are not regarded as a threat, so you do not have to retaliate. It is quite straightforward. You might have a bad relationship with somebody, but if you give in to that person, they no longer have any reference point for their aggression. If they think they are punching solid rock, they become more aggressive. But if they find that the rock is a pile of balloons, then there is nothing to fight, and they begin to feel that their anger is absurd.

  Realizing the Nature of Other People’s Aggression

  The second category is also related with relative truth: it is the patience of realizing the nature of other people’s aggression. You realize that it is caused by their pain. In Tibetan, it is dug-ngal kyi ngowo söpa. Dug-ngal means “pain,” kyi means “of,” ngowo means “nature,” and söpa means “patience”; so dug-ngal kyi ngowo söpa is “patience with the nature of suffering.”

  People have aggression because they can’t help themselves. So you should not regard their aggression as an attack, but you should develop patience with them. People have no control over their minds, and their impatience is based on ignorance. They may not realize that you are trying to help them, and because of that they attack you without any reason. Such ignorance is the result of preconceived aggression and preconceived reference points. It is the result of people pigeonholing you according to their particular concept of who you are.

  Aggression coming from others could be overcome by analyzing the nature of that aggression. By such analysis, you realize that both your own and others’ aggression is insignificant and can be overcome. There has to be a reasonable, analytical way of cutting aggression and becoming patient. Otherwise, you would have no reason not to lose your temper with your husband or wife, you would have no reason to discuss things—you would just yell all the time. In situations where you are challenged, where something arises that makes you impatient, you could step back and examine the nature of suffering. When you understand that suffering is created by you, by others, or by the situation, you do not react unreasonably. When you have studied and practiced, when you have understood suffering and its origin and the nature of the aggression, you become much more reasonable than those who never heard of such things. The analytical approach is important. You are learning strategies of negotiation and how to talk someone out of their aggression. In turn, you find that you yourself are becoming more patient.

  By realizing the nature of pain, you are also developing patience in relating to personal discomfort. You do not tire of the various practices that are required in the discipline of the path. You are willing to experience discomfort, such as a pain in your back during sitting practice or the pain in your legs. You don’t cop out suddenly, halfway through, but you realize that temporary inconveniences and discomforts are necessary. You are also patient with the discomfort that arises in postmeditation, such as the pain of talking to an irritating person.

  At the kundzöp level, you understand what people are saying to you, who they are, and what they are. You do not want to cause pain to anybody, and you learn to understand other people’s distress. You understand that if you get in a shouting match with someone, it doesn’t help to say that you are sorry or that you made a mistake. It is better to ask where the obstacle or blockage is coming from, to ask who is experiencing the pain, and how that person feels. The analytical approach can usually solve the problem, but it has to be very skillful. You cannot just read a Buddhist text on how to deal with anger, and then try to deal with people in that way. That doesn’t quite work.

  Individually Examining

  The third category of patience is known as sosor tok-pe söpa, “individually examining.” This category is connected with töndam, or ultimate truth. The word soso means “individual.” If you add an r to the end, you have sosor, which makes it “individually.” Tokpa means “examining,” the suffix -pe makes it “of examining,” and söpa means “patience”; therefore sosor tok-pe söpa is the “patience of individually examining.”

  Whenever there are any irritations in your life, you examine them individually. When you look at them individually, you find that they are empty by nature, they have softness in them, and they can provide mindfulness. Whenever irritations or a
ggressions are encountered, they are reminders of your existence. Therefore, you should constantly examine and understand the nature of irritation.

  In postmeditation practice, you do not neglect any small details. If you see that there is a speck of dirt on your well-polished spoon, you could look at that speck of dirt with sosor tok-pe. Gradually you begin to realize that the irritations occurring in your life do not have to be regarded as an attack. Those little irritations do not mean that you have a bad life or that you are being punished by the world. You can still appreciate the basic goodness of your life, that you possess sugatagarbha. Instead of regarding all those little things that happen to you as bad, you could include irritations within your practice of patience. In that way your perceptions and the journey you are making can become very real.

  Experiences of irritation are a kind of message. Sometimes the message is disruptive and messy, but it is a true, good message being presented to you. Maybe one of your chopsticks falls on the floor before you eat your food, or you find that the cracks between the prongs of your fork are filled with dirt. You begin to realize that such situations are messages of patience. They are not regarded as a bad deal.