Bodhisattva’s way of life C5 Patience — 05 BWL

Bodhisattva's way of life C5 Patience (Geshe Doga)

Bodhisattva's way of life C5 Patience — 05 BWL

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Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching from 1984, Geshe Doga offers a detailed exploration of patience, the fifth chapter of Śāntideva’s Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. He opens with a guided breathing meditation, then pivots to the practical heart of the session: how to respond when others harm or insult you. Rather than escalating conflict by retaliating with harsh words, the teacher shows that small provocations mushroom into major suffering when we respond in kind, whereas patience stops the cycle immediately. He uses the image of a brave soldier versus a coward to illustrate that courage springs from mental training, not physical strength. The core instruction is simple: when harmed, change your mind rather than your words. By enduring small slights, you gradually build capacity to bear greater harm. Geshe Doga connects this practice to the bodhisattva path, noting that recognizing your own suffering opens compassion for others and naturally motivates you to abandon harmful actions. Suited for practitioners already familiar with Buddhist philosophical foundations.

First of all, we shall do the the the breathing meditation for a moment. So sit in the posture as we mentioned before and then try to Try to bring down the mind within oneself and without any distractions. So while we do this breathing meditation, then we shall watch breath in and out. And while exhaling, visualize the old ignorance and the misconceptions and all those I mean, the the negativities of your of your body, speech, mind are passing out in the form of the black ray of light while you exhale. And while breathing in, visualize the you are receiving the all blessings of those higher beings like Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

And and then imagine that your mind has completely purified all these negativities and become white light. You can also do the same breathing meditation in another way. Like like, first of all first of all, I mean, imagining the all I mean, the suffering and pains of other sentient beings. And then and then start to do the meditation and just breathing in, and then visualize that now the you are as if you are taking all those sufferings of other beings within oneself in the form of the black ray of light. And then while breathing out, then we feel like that you are giving all your such virtuous actions to the other sentient beings in the form of your white ray of light. And doing this, I mean, breathing meditation will help you to keep your mind stable and peace.

So after having just keeping this mind stable, then you may do other meditation like compassion, love, and bodhicitta, and whatever you like. But because this the breathing meditation will help you to it helps your mind to function a little more pliable and serviceable to any such meditation. Yes. So in the last few session, we we we talked, we discussed that if one practices this patience, then one can endure any suffering. So that means that one can endure any one can endure any such suffering by doing this practice.

Because the our mind our mind can be transformed into any natures with I mean, making familiar with such any object. So it has such nature to transform you any such kind heart or such good heart. So if one does this practice of patience, then gradually our mind could endure more and more suffering. Like, at the beginning, one may start this practice of patience in a way that is tiny harm from other sides. So but starting from that point, and then gradually, one could also bear or endure the worst circumstances from others.

Words. So that is very slight, I mean, effect to to one. If you think, just beat on that. So it’s not hard to endure the harsh words from other sides. So at the beginning, if we just train our mind to endure such, I mean, such harsh words from other people, then then slowly, I mean, we could one can endure the big I mean, such worse comes from others.

Like, if, I mean, some other people say your harsh words, something unpleasant to you, then at that moment if you do the patience, then that will be alright. Otherwise, if you may respond in the same way by saying such hard words to others, so that becomes more worse. Perhaps the beginning of that hard words may be very slight, I mean, mattered. So when you respond to that, I mean, that slight harsh word from other, then it becomes big. And naturally the other will again say another such words.

So in this way, that slight matter at the beginning will become worrisome and it caused you more and more such mental and physical problems. If one thing like that, other people had said me harsh words, harm me before. And he’s now again saying such unpleasant words, harming us. If we think like such, then naturally that would cause to increase our anger. One should not think like that.

So rather, I mean, in that situation, just not think about that and try to do the patience. I mean, Because the purpose of other people to say you some unpleasant words, some harsh words, is to give you some mental or physical, mental problem. Something to cause you some pain. So instead, if you do the patience, then that unpleasant word has no effect upon you. If you smile on that to saying that worse.

Yeah? So but, I mean, since So, it is a great advantage for us to do the patience from the very beginning. So, otherwise, if one doesn’t do the patience to even a slight harm from other people, if one doesn’t do that patience, then that slight harm from other words cause you more and more harm. So better do the patient from the very beginning.

So if one doesn’t, I mean, endure the slight harm from others, that That slight harm will become more harmful to you. And the scope of your practice of patience will become small. When that practice of patience becomes smaller and smaller, the harm from other side will become more So So, during this practice of patience is like if I say one example, What’s the opposite? A coward person. Person. Cold Yeah, cold person.

Brave person. Person. If a brave person goes to war and while fighting with his enemy, if he find any blood in his body, so just seeing the blood, he would encourage to to challenge his enemies. Yeah? On the other side, if I mean, the isn’t it?

A coward person, when by seeing some bleeding, he will become small heart. Small heart. So like this, the one who has good patience increases his courage, I mean, tries to inspire himself when some other people give him say some harsh words or some trying to, I mean, harm him. What I explained before, Milarepa? Geshe-la says about that? So he’s saying that a coward person, you go to war and see the the I mean, some bleeding from other people or even just seeing the the something bleed from other people, he would become I mean, I mean, afraid and become very small heart.

Maybe fell down. I mean, you can’t do anything you do. Wow. So now, if we think about how the different attitude come with those two persons, that one brave man and one Yeah. Coward person.

So if you see, they both have a same weapon and same to, you know, defense, same weapons. So same maybe have maybe they have same physical strength, but still there is difference. So the difference is nothing but they have the different mental attitudes. So the brave man is so familiar with, I mean, fighting with others. Yeah?

On the other side, he is not having So this example shows that our mind has if we change the mind, then we could do anything. We could do anything. So, this showed that one must do the patience of just voluntarily, I mean, during this harm or suffering from So while some other harms you, then at that moment, instead you try to change your mind so that the such action from other won’t have effect upon you. So it is a matter of just changing your mind. If one does the patient, then such action from other won’t cause you to suffer.

Through this practice of patience, those person who is doing the Mahāyāna such part, Mahāyāna practitioner, they do this practice. So, because of this, whenever they find some other people harming them or giving them problems, that won’t affect to them at all. So they that won’t cause to disturb their mind. Why we have to do this, patience, endure the harm from other people. If you don’t endure the harm from others, if you don’t do this patience, then when such a situation arises, then our mind becomes unstable.

It has lost its base and completely the mind, then all our actions of body or on speech, everything would become we would do negative actions by the force of that mental disturbances. So when we are, I mean, indulging in such situations, such when other harms you or says some unpleasant words or does some unpleasant actions. So at that moment, the what we have to do is to use some opponent force to not produce anger within one’s self. Like the patient’s. We are using that opponent’s force of the patient to that anger, So what we have to do is that, for example, when just in the in the relative world, when we have some enemy from some other country or some other people, so if someone voluntarily stand up and if he go to I mean, fight with that enemy, then what we call him he’s very brave man and so brave man.

And he in his mind, he has I mean, he has a full intention to endure all such, I mean, suffering even when he go to the fight. So we call him a brave man and brave man. So in the same way, while we go for the war to I mean, against that anger or those situations, so we must have more than that intentions to challenge that our enemy. Even in the text, it also says that the in the enduring the suffering which is caused by others is one of the very important practices even in the path of Dharma. So because if we endure the sufferings and think about the suffering or contemplate that suffering, then we would know the real suffering.

Recognize the real suffering that within one’s Like, if one aware of one’s own suffering, think about the suffering, then one will realize that the the the so pity condition of oneself, yeah, then this would help you to to even it will help you to to dispel the the pride and such delusions within oneself. So seeing the suffering of oneself, the one one can abandon their pride and seeing the suffering of other people, other sentient beings, then from that situation we develop the compassion. So so only by realizing one’s own suffering, just knowing one’s own suffering, then only one could think about the causes of that suffering. And we know the bad karma or the one who knows that the suffering is among the results of the bad karma, the negative action that is done by oneself. So, by knowing the suffering and its causes, naturally one would abandon those causes of suffering to avoid the future suffering.

And then session, among the three types of patience, now we have finished the patience of voluntarily enduring suffering. So if we think about what we have discussed before, then we come to know.

Translation / བསྒྱུར།

This translation was generated using Gemini Pro 2.5 with a curated Buddhist terminology glossary and verified for register, glossary use, and absence of English leakage. The English transcript above remains the authoritative source.