A teaching summary podcast of Patience 1988-1989 by Khensur Rinpoche, recorded at Buddha House, Adelaide.
Patience: Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds — Chapter Six
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Tradition: Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism
Venue: Buddha House, Adelaide
Recordings: 17 teaching sessions (1988–1989; 1 blank side)
Source: Corrected transcripts from the Bodhi Archive
Overview
This series is a systematic teaching on Chapter Six of Shantideva’s Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds (also known as the Bodhicaryavatara or Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life), devoted entirely to patience or forbearance (kshanti). Khensur Rinpoche situates the text within the Mahayana — specifically the “vast” category of teachings concerned with compassion, the awakening heart (Bodhicitta), the ten Bodhisattva grounds, and the six perfections. Patience is treated as the direct antidote to anger, which Rinpoche identifies as the greatest obstacle to the development of Bodhicitta and the most destructive of all afflictive emotions.
The teachings unfold in a careful, methodical manner characteristic of the Gelug tradition. Rinpoche begins by establishing the faults of anger and the benefits of patience, moves through Shantideva’s philosophical arguments for why anger is never justified, explores the mechanics of how anger arises and how it can be dissolved through understanding karma and dependent arising, and concludes with an extended treatment of the bodhisattva’s attitude toward enemies and harm-givers — seeing them as irreplaceable conditions for the practice of patience itself. Throughout, Rinpoche grounds the philosophical arguments in everyday experience and encourages students to verify the teachings within their own lives.
Questions from students at the end of sessions cover topics including anger in the context of social oppression (answered with reference to the Tibetan situation under Chinese occupation), the appropriateness of avoiding people who trigger anger, whether anger can be expressed for therapeutic purposes, the place of material possessions in a practitioner’s life, and the relationship between praise, fame, and pride.
Key Teachings
The Text and Its Context
Rinpoche explains that the Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds has ten chapters. The first three deal with the benefits of Bodhicitta, confession, and the bodhisattva vow. Chapter Four develops conscientiousness toward the awakening heart; Chapter Five guards the conditions for it. Chapter Six — the subject of this entire series — is patience. Because anger is the primary obstacle to Bodhicitta, Shantideva devotes the full chapter to its antidote.
The Faults of Anger
Rinpoche opens by establishing that a single moment of anger can destroy positive energy accumulated over a hundred eons of practice — specifically the energy created through actions directed toward those of high spiritual realisation such as Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. For harm directed at beings of equal realisation, the destruction covers a hundred eons of positive actions. The mechanism is this: anger destroys happiness, and happiness is the fruit of positive action. By destroying the fruit, anger in effect destroys the root.
From direct experience, Rinpoche draws further evidence: the moment anger arises, one’s own peace of mind is shattered. Even people who have shown us the greatest kindness become objects of harm under the power of anger. The entire household becomes unpeaceful. The country and ultimately the world’s disharmony can be traced to the anger within individual minds. In future lives, habituation to anger leads to ugly bodies, difficult circumstances, and rebirth in the lower realms — as hell beings, hungry ghosts, or creatures that inspire automatic fear in others, such as snakes and scorpions.
The Benefits of Patience
By contrast, the master Chandrakirti’s teachings confirm that habituation to patience in past lives produces a beautiful body in this life, a kind heart, the liking of others, and the blossoming of wisdom. Patience enables one to understand the operation of cyclic existence and to find the means to liberation. Through patience one can be reborn as a celestial or human being of excellent form and character.
How Anger Arises: The Nine Causes
Rinpoche teaches that anger arises from nine causes grouped under three roots. The three roots are: oneself, one’s loved ones, and one’s enemies. For each root there are three causes — harm done in the past, harm being done in the present, or harm anticipated in the future. Additionally, the primary proximate cause of anger is mental unhappiness. This is called the “fuel” or “nourishment” of anger: the greater the mental unhappiness, the greater the anger. Just as reducing food intake reduces weight, reducing mental unhappiness reduces anger. The practitioner must identify the fuel and begin to starve the fire.
The Antidote: Law of Cause and Effect
Rinpoche’s most practical antidote is the application of the Buddha’s teaching on karma. When harm comes to us — harsh words, being struck, the death of a loved one, loss of possessions — we can recognise it as a consequence of harm we have ourselves inflicted on others in past lives. This person causing us suffering is simply the condition through which our own karma ripens. The actual main cause is always our own past action. Understanding this removes the fuel of mental unhappiness and thereby prevents anger from arising.
Rinpoche gives extended examples: if food causes diarrhea, the food is only a cooperative condition; the main cause is past negative karma. If food brings pleasure, the food is again a cooperative condition; the main cause is past positive karma. The great master Vasubandhu said that all varieties of objects in the world arise in dependence upon karma — even a pebble. This law applies universally, not only within Buddhism.
The Philosophical Arguments Against Anger
Following Shantideva closely, Rinpoche works through a series of arguments:
People have no freedom. Those who harm us are under the complete control of their afflictive emotions. They have no choice in the matter, just as a stick has no freedom when wielded. We do not get angry at the stick; why get angry at the wielder, who is also governed by something outside themselves — their own hatred? Shantideva says: “The Buddha said that sentient beings are not the source of harm. It is the afflictive emotions which are the source of harm.”
People harm even themselves. Under the influence of afflictive emotions, people commit suicide, eat poison, jump off cliffs, and harm those they love most. If they are so enslaved they will destroy their most treasured self, we should not be surprised they harm others. The appropriate response is compassion, not anger.
The case of a childish person. If a person with little understanding has a nature of causing harm, it would be as unreasonable to begrudge them as to begrudge fire its burning nature. If a generally reliable person temporarily harms us under the influence of an afflictive emotion, it would be like begrudging space for allowing smoke to arise within it — both are temporary manifestations dependent on conditions.
The stick analogy. If someone strikes us with a stick, the stick hurts us more directly than the hand. Yet we do not get angry at the stick, only at the person. But the person, like the stick, is a secondary instrument controlled by their own hatred. The hatred is the primary cause of our suffering — and we cannot get angry at a primary cause that is itself under the control of conditions.
Praise and fame. In sessions from March 1989, Rinpoche teaches that becoming happy upon receiving praise and depressed upon receiving insults is “the mentality of a child.” Praise actually harms the one being praised by generating pride, jealousy, and undermining disillusionment with cyclic existence. Therefore, a person who destroys our fame and prevents us receiving praise is actually our friend — they protect us from the causes of being reborn in lower rebirths. For those seeking liberation, those who cause us suffering are “bestowing the great waves of the blessings of the Buddhas upon us, because it is in response to them and not to our friends and our loved ones that we will eventually achieve Buddhahood.”
The Harmer as Indispensable Opportunity
From May 1989, Rinpoche develops one of Shantideva’s most striking teachings: the person who harms us is the unique cause of our practice of patience. Without someone harming us, the practice of patience cannot arise, and without that practice, its results — the accumulation of positive potential toward Buddhahood — cannot be achieved. Just as a beggar is necessary for practising generosity, or a monastic community is necessary for taking ordination, the harmer is necessary for cultivating patience. “It is only our own anger which prevents us from practicing patience — the harmer cannot.”
Rinpoche notes that objects of generosity are plentiful (in India, beggars line the streets), but objects of our anger — beings who actually harm us as a ripening of our past negative actions — are extremely rare. When such a person appears without any effort on our part, the bodhisattva responds with the joy of someone who has found a great treasure appearing in their home. The bodhisattva is therefore grateful to those who harm them, seeing them as assisting in the completion of the path to Buddhahood. The story of Shakyamuni Buddha as a bodhisattva feeding himself to a starving tigress illustrates the bodhisattva’s practice — and the five ascetics who received his first teaching at Varanasi were the reincarnation of the tigress’s five cubs.
Shantideva then addresses a debate: can the harmer be held in high regard if they have no intention to help? Rinpoche explains Shantideva’s answer: the holy Dharma also has no intention to benefit us, yet we venerate it. Just as we depend on the Dharma as a condition for skillful action, we depend on the harmer as the condition for patience. Since both equally facilitate our path to Buddhahood, both are equally worthy of regard.
Sentient Beings and the Buddhas as Equal Fields
In the May and June 1989 sessions, Rinpoche elaborates a major teaching on the equality of the Buddhas and sentient beings as objects of respect and as fields for accumulating the two collections of positive potential and wisdom. The two collections depend half upon the Buddhas and half upon sentient beings. Without Buddhas, no Buddhahood; without sentient beings, no Buddhahood either.
The Buddha said sentient beings are like a field — as a farmer respects and tends his field because it is the source of his livelihood, so we should hold sentient beings as precious. A bird needs two wings to fly; we need both the Buddhas and sentient beings to reach the destination of Buddhahood. Rinpoche explains the Offering to the Spiritual Master verse: “May I complete the perfections by remaining in deepest hells for the sake of even one sentient being.” Geshe Sarawak, a master of mind training, made this prayer throughout his life, and when at death a pure land appeared as his rebirth place, he was disappointed his prayer hadn’t been answered.
The Buddhas are like parents who love sentient beings as their children. Whatever we do to sentient beings reaches the Buddhas as pleasure or pain. Offering incense and prostrations delights the Buddhas only somewhat; genuinely caring for and serving sentient beings delights the Buddhas completely. This is the “greatest offering.”
The Three Types of Patience
Rinpoche provides a formal definition in the November 1988 and June 1989 sessions. The three types are:
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Not retaliating in the face of harm — forbearing harm directed at oneself from body, speech, or mind, and not returning harm in response. Even if all beings in the three realms were to rise up as enemies, speak harshly, beat, or kill — not retaliating, thinking “it doesn’t matter.”
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Voluntarily accepting suffering — willingness to endure the hardships of dharma practice. Milarepa’s example: living in bare conditions, with torn clothing, poor food, cold and heat, for the sake of his practice. Distinguishing this from worldly hardship: all suffering has a final end when borne in the context of dharma, whereas worldly suffering cycles endlessly.
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Abiding in the Dharma — the tolerance involved in persevering in the examination and understanding of phenomena: meditating on the law of cause and effect, the disadvantages of cyclic existence, the advantages of liberation. This is the willingness to endure the difficulty of actually looking into these things, trying to understand them.
Anger’s Dual Negativity
Rinpoche concludes the series by restating why anger is considered the worst of all afflictive emotions. Other afflictions such as attachment and pride are negative — they create negative karma — but they do not destroy previously created positive karma. Anger has a dual negative quality: it is itself a negative action and it has the power to destroy previously accumulated positive potential. Therefore it is uniquely destructive.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bodhicitta | The awakening heart; the aspiration to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings |
| Kshanti / Patience / Forbearance | The perfection that endures harm without retaliation; the direct antidote to anger |
| Afflictive emotions | Mental states that disturb the mind and lead to negative karma; includes anger, attachment, pride, jealousy |
| Karma / Action | Actions of body, speech, and mind whose results are experienced as happiness (constructive) or suffering (destructive) |
| Latencies / Predispositions | Imprints of past actions stored in the subtle consciousness; activated when they meet the right conditions |
| Two collections | The collection of positive potential (merit) and the collection of wisdom; both are necessary for Buddhahood |
| Dependent arising | All phenomena arise in dependence upon causes and conditions; nothing is self-governing |
| Emptiness | The view of the Consequence Middle Way school (Prasangika Madhyamika): phenomena do not inherently exist; they lack self-existence |
| Great eon | A cosmic time unit divided into four sets of twenty intermediate eons: creation, abidance, destruction, and emptiness |
| Bodhisattva | A being who has generated Bodhicitta and is progressing toward Buddhahood through the six perfections |
| Six perfections | Generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditative concentration, wisdom — the practices of the bodhisattva path |
Practice Points
Develop awareness as a spy. Just as armies appoint lookouts to watch for the enemy, we must develop an inner awareness that watches for the arising of anger. When anger is small and just beginning, we can pacify it. Once it becomes strong, it is very difficult to stop.
Identify the fuel. The main cause of anger is mental unhappiness. Every day, resolve: “I am not going to give anger any more fuel. I will not allow mental unhappiness to arise.” Meet difficult conditions with this determination.
Apply the law of cause and effect. When harm comes — harsh words, being struck, loss of a relative — understand: “This is simply a reaction to harm I have caused others in the past. This is the operation of the infallible law of cause and effect.” This understanding is the most powerful means of preventing anger.
Work gradually. We cannot change our minds all at once. Each day, make effort to understand the disadvantages of anger and the benefits of patience. Even keeping one’s mind free of anger for half a day is progress. Through habituation, patience becomes natural.
Prepare before provocations. If you know you are going to meet someone who typically triggers your anger, strengthen your motivation beforehand: “No matter what this person says or does, I am going to be aware and not allow myself to become angry.” On the first day it is difficult. Through repeated preparation and practice, it becomes less so.
See the harmer as rare and precious. Reflect that objects of anger who harm you as a result of past karma are extremely rare. When such a person appears, recognise them as a precious opportunity — “like a great treasure appearing in my house without any effort on my part” — to practice patience and accumulate positive potential toward Buddhahood.
Meditate on love and compassion. This directly addresses the conditions that produce anger and helps dissolve its arising.
Distinguish situations requiring action from those requiring release. If a situation can be changed for the better, think: “How can I benefit this situation?” Acting from this intention prevents anger. If nothing useful can be done, let it go completely rather than rehearsing it in the mind.
For Bodhicitta practitioners. Regard all sentient beings as having treated you with the same kindness as your parents of this life. In past lives, every being has been your mother, your father. Anger toward them is therefore never appropriate. The bodhisattva’s task is to become the servant of all sentient beings — to care for them, respect them, and never harm them — because this is what pleases the Buddhas most.