The Way of the Bodhisattva 08 Patience: How to Voluntarily Endure Suffering

Our modern world deifies, celebrates, and defends anger. However, the world scriptures detail infinite reasons why this negative emotion is destructive and harmful. Despite conceptual knowledge about anger's detriments, extricating this afflictive state from one's mind stream is a daunting task. Fortunately, Shantideva's scripture expounds upon methods for identifying and transforming anger in the moment, specifically through spiritual analyses and meditation. Discover how to comprehend and disempower anger in its multitudinous forms. By countering anger's reasoning with the logic of divinity, one learns to no longer repress or bottle up such explosive emotions (which only resurface with more force later). Through comprehension, one also does not cave in to what anger wants, but diffuses such states with a much more powerful and crushing force: kindness coupled with intelligence and wisdom. See how through an exploration of anger's futility, its nature, dangers, and consequences; the qualities and dynamics of patience; techniques for developing compassion in daily life; reasons why we should not invest in resentment; the purpose of voluntary suffering to acquire wisdom; how and why blame is good and praise harmful for spiritual development; humiliation as a means of initiation;  principles for why we should honor everyone; and the true characteristics of compassion, not complacency with crime. Lecture was recorded on April 4th before Easter Sunday. Resources and References: https://chicagognosis.org/lectures/patience-how-to-voluntarily-endure-suffering